Would you consume in vitro meat?

[Neal Winkler]

Would you eat in vitro meat?

http://invitromeat.org/content/view/12/55/

[Blairbob]

it poses a lot of interesting questions as it I saw it a long time ago as in how to create slabs of it versus just strings.

[Felipe]

Sure, I'm waiting for it. Reasons behind the choice:

1) More efficient

2) Standard Quality for every piece

3) No more poor animal being killed

[Neal Winkler]

Although I don't think it's wrong to kill an animal for food, I do think it will be nice to not have too.

[Alvaro Antolinez]

No (by the moment)

[Razz]

Hell no, although it seems nice I just don't believe in it.

[Nicholas Sortino]

Interesting Idea...

I have no problem with the killing of tastey animals for the purpose of eating, and this presents many issues I cannot work out in my feeble mind.

I just cannot see them growing meat that is really the same stuff. What about the other factors like diet, lifestyle, etc that affects the meat from a living cow. How would those things play into lab grown meat? What about fatty tissue? I believe animal fats are a very important part of my diet.

And about 100 more questions that I am too stupid to articulate. I really don't know about this....

If everything was the exact same as real meat and there were no ill effects, I suppose I wouldn't have a problem with it though, although that seems rather far fetched to me.

[Guest]

Loosely related to this, I'm interested in hearing people's thoughts about the consumption of insects. They are a great source of protein and other nutrients but using them as food seems to be a cultural thing (i.e., Western societies in general don't eat insects but many other people do). There's quite a lot of research being done now on how to incorporate insect 'meat' into the Western diet and also on in vitro cultivation of insect cells for the production of protein that can be added to foodstuffs.

I would have no problem consuming in vitro meat as long as the nutritional quality of real meat can be replicated. And I would have no problem eating insects either - fried grasshopper for example is great stuff.

[Josh Schmitter]

I was a long time vegan(10+years) just recently converted over. As my diet was based entirely on an ethical standpoint, and I do think it is healthier, especially with serious exercising, to eat meat. I will eat anything as long as it is/was treated with respect and a healthy animal itself. I'm not sure where I put all my study links, but there are plenty that show if we didn't have all this factory line meat and went back to pasture/free range everything, it takes significantly less energy to upkeep animals. Check out Food Inc.(documentary) as there is a lot of decent info there.

As for the in vitro...I don't think I would have a problem with it, but there would need to be so much testing and many years of research until you found out if it was just as healthy as a grass fed, free roaming cow. To me, it just doesn't seem necessary at this point...it looks as if some are looking to go in a direction that doesn't need to be stepped toward yet.

[Cole Dano]

Its great that science continues to push the frontiers of human knowledge. I just hope that before this is forced on us as product that it is thoroughly tested. I'd have no problem eating it if it was shown to be healthy. As it is i won't even eat the meat that's grown the 'normal' way, which, with all the hormones and overcrowd living conditions is a far cry from a naturally grown animal.

On the cautionary side, look at what happened with the GMO produce. Now Monsanto owns the seeds and in effect owns the farmers who find it impossible to grown anything without being under Monsanto's thumb. Even if a Monsanto seed blows onto a farm Monsanto can claim rights infringement, and have sued farmers for this. Crazy stuff going on.

Food Inc, though slanted in its own way is very eye opening, well worth the watch.

[Josh Schmitter]

Yes, agreed. It is definitely biased, as almost everything is, but it does have a lot of good information once you know that. The key to any study, documentary, opinion is understanding what the bias is, then going from there. Monsanto is just the tip of the iceberg if things keep going as they are. Intellectual property(in this case a certain kind of GMO seed) is just ridiculous is so many ways...we'll see which way the pendulum swings soon enough.

[Razz]

It's like gene modified corn and that shit, wouldn't touch it! Give me real, organic, quality foods, please. Even if proven to be exactly the same I'd still go for something natural not made by man.

[Josh Schmitter]

Here is one of the articles I was looking for before about factory vs. pasture raised/free roam farming.

http://c4ss.org/content/295

[Joshua Naterman]

You know, for one thing I think it's ridiculous that they would try to sell this as non-animal meat. Its animal meat. That's like saying "Hey, if we just start growing HUMAN tissue and eating THAT, we're not really cannibals because we're not eating people!" The problem is that it is still human tissue. Now this would actually be the nutritionally ideal meat, as it would provide exactly what our bodies are made of in precise quantities, but it would still be people meat. That's like saying that if you make steel from subatomic particles using nanomachines that it's different from steel made with ore. It's still STEEL. Just because it didn't come from the same place does not change what it is.

I also have an issue with the apparent lack of discussion regarding fatty tissue in the meat. Animal fats are incredibly important nutritional resources, are we just going to do away with those?

Finally, as far as the article goes, I worry about GMO techniques being used to effect differentiation. There would have to be long-term testing on meat-eating animals to see whether there are any adverse effects, such as changes in gene expression or illness rates over quite a few generations, with no negative results.

On a more personal level, we take life to sustain life. This is part of what life is... it consumes itself to sustain itself. This is how it has always been. If we attempt to leave behind one of the basic truths of the universe, what are we setting ourselves up for? Will we, at some point, abandon competition too? What happens to us in the future when current livestock practices have been lost because so many people are eating franken-meat and there is either a huge war or some other cataclysmic event? We know they will come, it is a question of when. Should we abandon basic survival to make PETA happy? I, for one, do not want to lose the ability to take life, and to do so when necessary, to maintain a healthy diet and to preserve at least the basis for human survival in pre-industrial life (meaning the consumption of actual, organic plants and animals). To do so is to abandon the very nature of reality. Besides, we aren't actually changing anything. That meat will still be alive. Can it moo at us? No, but it is still living tissue. We still consume it. We are still taking life. We would just be fooling ourselves into thinking we are more moral than we are.

As we make life easier and easier we start to lose the value of life. Nothing has value without struggle, without a price having been paid for it. This is very well supported by research. That new Lexus? If daddy gave it to you chances are you are going to drive crazy in it, spill drinks, and simply not take care of it on your own very well. If you work for 12 years and own 3 crappy cars in that time just so that you can get that same Lexus, you're probably going to take much better care of it. That 12 year struggle for the car gave it value far beyond the purchase price. While this paragraph is a bit less relevant to the post, I do think that this is an overall problem that we are continuing to exacerbate for ourselves as a species.

[Josh Schmitter]

I would totally eat human...free range only though.

[Joshua Naterman]

I would totally eat human...free range only though.

Gives a whole new meaning to the term "MANWICH!"

[Blairbob]

A few years ago there was a spoof about man-meat like Soylent Green. Maybe 8 years ago.

Not being able to attach fat to the meat would bring up some complications. Honestly just doesn't sound worth it.

[Cresta]

In vitro meat just sounds very weird at the moment. I could see the production of test-tube cows or chickens or pigs and eating them but it just sounds weird to "grow" meat. I would consider going vegan.