In vitro meat

[somone uk]

i am sure everyone here knows where meat comes from and the forever going environmental and ethical debate on the consumption of meat

At the moment it's not economically viable at $1,000,000 a 250g steak but technology and mass production would potentially drive the costs down to be competitive to conventional meat

in vitro meat also adds another advantage in that one could possibly control aspects such as meat fat and protein content which adds an air of flexibility to the meat so you can have a low fat meat for (lets face it) women , a high protein for body builders and a high calorie which would be handy for army rations etc

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/features/article3894871.ece
so would anyone eat it?

 

[The Gardener]

Nope, wouldn't touch that Frankenbeef with a ten foot pole.

I do appreciate the economic and environmental concerns of raising enough meat for the world to eat. However, I don't think the problem is that raising meat is uneconomical, but rather, I think there are too many humans on the planet. We've passed this planet's economical sustainable carrying capacity.

 

[cuebald]

Most definitely would eat this "vat-grown" meat. You could have the finest steak, fortified with vitamins and minerals, at a bargain price. Sounds alright to me. Nice chicken too.
So some people get the "heebie jeebies" that it hasn't been sheared off of a live animal. If it tastes like a duck... that's good enough for me. I'm sure they'll eat their words when the choice is either moss or fake-steak.

Some of the conditions in factory farms are appalling. I know the supermarkets (Tesco in particular) like to claim that their meat comes from organic, free-range farms, but that ain't what the farmers near me say. Farmers round here (South Wales) refuse to shop there.

 

[somone uk]

Well i personally see this as a step forward, there will be problems, such as a debate on whether or not it's halal or kosher.
i think if in vitro meat was available and indistinguishable from normal meat i think i would be one of the first to make the permanent switch

People usually do quite an unscientific and subjective attachment to "eating what's natural" i mean i have seen it 100 times when people have this "E-number" phobia with this assumption that they are damaging without good proof they are, the same goes with organic food where people will go along this assumption that "organic food is healthier" or "organic food is better" but that exists without scientific proof as well

also i could see what giant tortoise tastes like, apparently it's good
maybe they might make in vitro tortoise
[youtube:b1fsh4ls]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k-l1HLj9Nk[/youtube:b1fsh4ls]

 

[HughJass]

yeah, I'd eat it. No antibiotics, no mad cow...just test on somebody else for 100 years first please.

 

[Hammy070]

I'm with Gardener.

The news here and probably over there too in the US, do a remarkable job of avoiding the real issue behind most of humanity' problems, whether global warming or steaks - human overpopulation.

It kind of annoys me why people assume we must be able to breed like rabbits whilst still getting everything we want.

The news though only tells us what we like to hear.

The truth is, having one child will harm the world more than driving a fleet of SUVs everyday, never recycling, always eating non-fairtrade and generally being an environmental ***.

But who wants to be told they can't have it all...

Think how much 'carbon offset' would be earned by not having children.

What's the obsession with children anyway, it's entirely selfish. Families should be more connected - that way one child each would mean several cousins to compensate for siblings. But who needs family and friends anymore, there's facebook.

As for meat - food substitutes are generally....crap. We shouldn't think of them though as the anti-meat. It should be named something that would be in preference to meat, if it is indeed better. I'm a sort of food snob, and millions of others are - we'll always go for original, prime stuff. Synthetic steak is off the list.

 

[Hammy070]

also i could see what giant tortoise tastes like, apparently it's good
maybe they might make in vitro tortoise
[youtube:1430qyhy]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k-l1HLj9Nk[/youtube:1430qyhy]

Sean Locke :bravo:

I foresee a good and a bad. Creating meat that is otherwise unobtainable.

But after a while of synthetic turtles - I imagine...many more people than today, would begin wondering what the original tastes like. Black market meat!

Better to create meat like........dinosaur meat! Or pan fried Ewok.

Barbecued........high elf of Rivendell.

Slow cooked Godzilla stew.

EDIT - Imagine eating....yourself. :shock:

Cannibal markets....fake human meat.

This is scary stuff, despite all being in my head.

If it's scary and freaky, it's probably true. Now I know what I'll start having a go at when I'm an elderly chap.

 

[HughJass]

As for meat - food substitutes are generally....crap. We shouldn't think of them though as the anti-meat. It should be named something that would be in preference to meat, if it is indeed better. I'm a sort of food snob, and millions of others are - we'll always go for original, prime stuff. Synthetic steak is off the list.

Eating feat (fake meat) will become a very socially acceptable thing while the real deal will be frowned upon and you'll become a real meat outcast, a left-over from another age who harms the planet.


The moment i started using those eco-friendly shopping bags from the supermarket instead of the plastic ones I immediatly disowned anyone I knew who still used them, even good friends. I'm better than them now.

 

[Hammy070]

I sometimes misunderstand people, but was your last paragraph a swipe at the green brigade? I hope it is...

I just think synthetic meat is far away from being acceptable.

The truth is, once it achieves it, I have said in the past I'd definitly adopt it.

I feel terrible about the way animals are treated - I have seen them being slaughtered on farms, and saw how nature does it too. In an ideal world, nobody would have to maul and tear apart anything.

I did hear a good point from an anti-green person who said "would you prefer they be tore into and ripped apart by predators?"

 

[somone uk]

As for meat - food substitutes are generally....crap. We shouldn't think of them though as the anti-meat. It should be named something that would be in preference to meat, if it is indeed better. I'm a sort of food snob, and millions of others are - we'll always go for original, prime stuff. Synthetic steak is off the list.

Eating feat (fake meat) will become a very socially acceptable thing while the real deal will be frowned upon and you'll become a real meat outcast, a left-over from another age who harms the planet.

i can definitely see that happen, maybe even real meat being banned in 50 years time

i don't see in vitro meat being a crap substitute, unlike tofu etc this is supposed to be an exact duplicate of animal muscle grown from stem cells

i do see the planet being overpopulated as a serious problem but i don't see that as a reason to not try and adapt in case people....keep having kids
i mean we could try and make people think more before having kids but it's always good to have a plan b in case we fail to stop people from having kids

 

[s.a.f]

You should need a license to beed. :hump:

 

[cuebald]

I am going to have as many kids as I possibly can. I do hope they will have cured male pattern baldness in twenty years though :mrgreen:

 

[The Gardener]

The problem IS human overpopulation.

The only reason why it isn't being openly discussed in the mainstream media is because the powers that be don't want it addressed. They don't want it addressed because curtailing the growth of human population would crash capitalism... as our capitalist system relies on endless growth.

 

[somone uk]

The problem IS human overpopulation.

The only reason why it isn't being openly discussed in the mainstream media is because the powers that be don't want it addressed. They don't want it addressed because curtailing the growth of human population would crash capitalism... as our capitalist system relies on endless growth.

the problem is we are stuck in a pensioner pyramid scheme, it's a economic nightmare because our economy relies on there being more young than old, if we reduce the number of births there are gonna be less people to support the old, thus reducing quality of life yet if we have more kids we delay the problem but the delayed problem gets worse and worse
the only ethical (people won't agree with killing the old) solution is to cure aging, human society is soon to move to a class 1 civilisation, energy is really the start and end of it, multi story farms on 24 hour light, cities on the sea, harnessing energy on what would otherwise be a natural disaster, other things such as the earth loses lots of energy from infra-red radiation being reflected into space, if we manage to store that, we would have considerably more energy and even resources so you are right in the sense that we are increasing our population faster than the science can increase it but it's not at a constant

 

[Preston]

I have one concern about this .
While I think it's a very good thing for ethical and ecological reasons , someone here as spoken of the mad cow disease , wich is a "mutated" protein , meaning a normal protein that as folded in an unpropper manner and become infectious ( whe didn't thought that was even possible before that ) . One of the essentials components of meat is proteins , it might be dangerous to produce that sort of thing until we haven't fully understood the mecanisms of protein folding wich are very complex , but I could be wrong , don't know exactly how this is produced .

 

[somone uk]

I have one concern about this .
While I think it's a very good thing for ethical and ecological reasons , someone here as spoken of the mad cow disease , wich is a "mutated" protein , meaning a normal protein that as folded in an unpropper manner and become infectious ( whe didn't thought that was even possible before that ) . One of the essentials components of meat is proteins , it might be dangerous to produce that sort of thing until we haven't fully understood the mecanisms of protein folding wich are very complex , but I could be wrong , don't know exactly how this is produced .

well we have programs like folding@home trying to better our knowledge of proteins but as far as diseases go we can more closely monitor in vitro meat and terminate production if a disease was found and we could nip it in the bud so in a way we would be avoiding diseases and making a meat diseases less economically disastrous because it would halt 1 production line in 1 factory (or the entire factory in extreme cases) rather than crippling multiple farms and causing international problems