Petri dish meat

[Freedan]

I guess that's what you could call it.

^ So, we could be on the verge of another breakthrough. Producing meat without killing animals.

Scientists have used stem cells from a pig to produce pork. It's not a perfect replica; the texture is different, it doesn't have as much protein, and it would surely taste different. But with enough experimentation, those things could surely be corrected for.

And they believe that the same technique could be used for other meats. Creating 'healthy' burgers, fish, or whatever, and eliminating hunger without harming anything. No slaughterhouses or kill plants, no animal suffering; could this finally be the thing to get PETA to pipe down?

They talk about the benefits, like the aforementioned healthy meat, and reduced water use and gas emissions. But is it a good idea? It would surely take away the livelihood of any number of farmers. Are they 'collateral damage', so to speak? And in the early stages, at least, there's a potential health risk (it'll take time before this kind of stuff is perfected for human health, after all).

Is science on the right track?

[Dark_Gaia]

could mess the balance of nature if used extensively.

[EverPhoenix]

vegetarians vs livestock farmers. i think itll more mess up those people who raise livestock more than anyone else. most people dont have an issue with eating 'real' meat, and i dont see how this would help them at all. unless, they GM it to contain some extra nutrients and vitamins and stuff. but thats a different topic altogether, there are plenty of arguments against GM foods, even from a scientific perspective.

vegetarians dont eat meat by choice, and this is still meat. then again, one of the arguments for vegetarianism is the cruelty that animals sustain. this would remove that aspect. another argument, however, is the unnatural way the meat is produced. factories and the like. this is about as unnatural as it gets. we're growing the meat in a lab, without an animal.

@dark gaia: balance of nature is out of whack anyway, since we are forcing animals to breed for the sake of sending them off to a huge blender and later eating them. i dont think making fake meat like this will upset the natural order much more than our commercialisation of meat already has.

[chicken]

yea, as already mentioned: this could throw the whole planet off balance...

lets think it through: no more animal killing for food. animals reproduce and reproduce. and reproduce.

but also animals need food. us too. if this stem-cells-turn-into-pork-or-whatever is used to kill world hunger, wed also need some more corn and stuff. but in the same time, the animals we no longer kill will need something to eat as well. so what do we do? building more fields instead of homes to have enough food for humans AND animals or shoot the animals that want our food to show them whos boss?

tough one. nothing comes without a bad side as well

[Freedan]

the animals we no longer kill will need something to eat as well. so what do we do?

The animals we no longer kill will no longer exist. The ones that are killed are bred and raised specifically for that purpose. If the need for animal products dies down, there won't be any cow/chicken/whatever breeding.

The animal populations will drop to more natural levels without our intervention, so I don't think the animals eating all the crops is much of a worry.

@ EP: 'Unnatural' as it may be, 'natural' means of producing food isn't always viable with our planet's population being what it is. Organic farming, which is about as natural as you can get, is pretty inefficient. That's what 'unnatural' things like pesticides and such were made for.

Organic farming doesn't seem to have any of the most cited advantages, like better nutrition or environmental impact. It takes about twice as much land space (or more) to produce the same amount of food, which means either importing more to feed everyone, or people go hungry. Land space which is at a premium, as our living space expands.

Producing our own food in a lab may not seem natural, but it's a realistic way of feeding everyone, and in the long run, will probably prove much more cost effective than organic methods (there's a reason organically grown food is so expensive).

[psychokind]

I want my meat to be something that has lived and then get killed for the purpose of eating it. call me old-fashioned, but I find the thought of something like this artificial meat disgusting. same with genetic plant shit.

[Dark_Gaia]

i concur! i want fresh steak! no petri dish meat and no tofu bleeeeeeehh!
yeah freedan thats what i was thinking. some species would become extinct when they are obselete and that would set off more changes in the balance. but, i spose they could do both to a balanced medium. cant say id eat the stuff over fresh produce but

[Mantaray]

this just further tells me that scientists think they're smart. pffffft. i dont wanna be eating stem cells until im old and wearing dentures. if people would stop breeding more people just for the sake of breeding, we wouldn't have this problem.

lol. maybe fake food will evenrually turn us into fake people.. anything we eat will taste like stale potatoe chips..

im gonna go vent now

[edit-- skipping my personal reaction to re-reading this old comment. ^^

All together it's interesting yet questionable.

The initial argument I'd consider is the question if it's truly food we should be eating.

It may be an answer to the current issue of cage farms an industrial scale for example, and maybe even improve conditions on said farms if the overall production went down. Can also see it as helping prevent extinction of species like fish that went out over the last century alone due to overfishing, among others.

The market would need to shift (organic vs grown meat--oh god we can say it now. Vegan meat. QwQ Dear me, if this keeps going.)
We'll have the jobbing/unemployment issue and overall availability on the meats, and if producing this lab-grown meat is any better on the economy, or the environment.

Then there's greenhouse reduction thingie.

It'll probably be awhile before we see how far it goes. I'm not closed to the possibility if this is the regular thing we eat without thinking twice. I'm personally still creeped out by it.

[chicken]

ha yea, thats the next thing: this "unnatural" meat will be good enough for the starving people in the third world but i dont guess ANY of us will get the cheap, probably shitty-tasting lab-meat. as psycho said, we want meat that lived and was killed for being eaten (as it should be).

some things never change

[Freedan]

ha yea, thats the next thing: this "unnatural" meat will be good enough for the starving people in the third world but i dont guess ANY of us will get the cheap, probably shitty-tasting lab-meat. as psycho said, we want meat that lived and was killed for being eaten (as it should be).

some things never change

Who's to say that in 10 years, they won't have corrected for that and the 'lab meat' is indistinguishable from the real thing? Further, what if they engineer it to be healthier than the real thing?

i dont wanna be eating stem cells until im old and wearing dentures.

What would be the problem? That steak you ate used to be some cow's under-developed fetus. But it isn't any more, it's something else. That's how stem cells work; they turn in to something else. In this case, meat tissue virtually identical to pork.

[EverPhoenix]

lets play at some humorous extremes. would you rather a real woman, or a fleshy robot almost indistinguishable from the real thing

[Freedan]

I'll be happy to cross that bridge when hundreds of millions of lives could potentially depend on it.

[inferiare]

I'll be happy to cross that bridge when hundreds of millions of lives could potentially depend on it.

There's a film that essentially talks about a problem like that, and until I remember the name of it, I'll keep out of this, but I figured I'd bring it up.

[psychokind]

ha yea, thats the next thing: this "unnatural" meat will be good enough for the starving people in the third world but i dont guess ANY of us will get the cheap, probably shitty-tasting lab-meat. as psycho said, we want meat that lived and was killed for being eaten (as it should be).

some things never change

Who's to say that in 10 years, they won't have corrected for that and the 'lab meat' is indistinguishable from the real thing? Further, what if they engineer it to be healthier than the real thing?

that's very unlikely, especially in only ten years. science didn't even manage to make artificial vitamins better than natural ones until now.

I agree with chicken. even today, wealthier people buy their expensive meat at the local butcher, while poorer ones buy prepacked at the supermarket.

[Freedan]

10 years was just a round, arbitrary number I threw out.

Let's say "however long it takes for farmland to be at a premium". Which, considering our population growth, probably won't be too long either.