This just scares the crap out of me. From Associated Press and Yahoo news -
Call it pork in a petri dish — a technique to turn pig stem cells into strips of meat that scientists say could one day offer a green alternative to raising livestock, help alleviate world hunger, and save some pigs their bacon.
Dutch scientists have been growing pork in the laboratory since 2006, and while they admit they haven’t gotten the texture quite right or even tasted the engineered meat, they say the technology promises to have widespread implications for our food supply.
“If we took the stem cells from one pig and multiplied it by a factor of a million, we would need one million fewer pigs to get the same amount of meat,” said Mark Post, a biologist at Maastricht University involved in the In-vitro Meat Consortium, a network of publicly funded Dutch research institutions that is carrying out the experiments.
At the end of the article:
“As long as it’s cheap enough and has been proven to be scientifically valid, I can’t see any reason people wouldn’t eat it,” said Stig Omholt, a genetics expert at the University of Life Sciences in Norway. “If you look at the sausages and other things people are willing to eat these days, this should not be a big problem.”
Wait. What! There’s something wrong with sausage?!
This is an interesting read. You can do just that by clicking here.
Laboratory vat-spawned protein is the future. It will be the only thing that allows humanity to subsist underground for another couple decades after the androids turn on us and unleash their nefarious swarm of self-aware nanobots.
I find it interesting that we’re (and by “we” I mean most consumers who have deigned to eat fast food in the last 5 years) willing to eat factory farmed and genetically modified meat but draw the line at science that doesn’t involve killing. Not claiming to be any different, this creeps me out too. I just wonder if its actual safety we’re worried about or just read too many apocalyptic science fiction stories and not enough actual visits to the slaughter room killing floor.
This reminds me of Oryx & Crake by Atwood. She describes chicken fingers being created similarly and how one character embraced the new food while others were equally horrified. Sure, I think we benefit from embracing technology – but where do we draw the line? Is there a moral-high ground to take here? I feel the answer is yes. It’s a gut reaction leaning towards slow food and what’s ‘natural’ (although I realize much of this is subjective). I will choose to avoid the petri pork and nano-chicken.