This is topic Finally, a Step Toward Vat Grown Meat in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.


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Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
 
Read all about it.

It's a baby step, to be sure, but it's a step. I really, really enjoy the taste and mouthfeel of meat, but I've been feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of eating animals. For years, I've been wishing that they'd develop meat grown in the lab so that I could indulge without having to kill a vertibrate in order to do so. Looks like they're finally getting there. It'll be a long time before I can have, say, a humanely produced T-bone steak, but still.
 

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Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
 
Soylent Green is yada, yada, yada...



-Bok
 

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Posted by Shawshank (Member # 8453) on :
 
But then we'll be endangering the lives of vegetarians who are because it's cool!

I'm not sure how I feel about this- at least in the beginning- I rather like knowing the idea that at one time the meat I'm eating came from somewhere other than a lab.

Although if the grain that's used now was used to feed peoeple instead of animals (some of it anyways) I would imagine that the price of grain(s) would fall substantially. Might be good for places like Africa.
 

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Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
 
Try buying either organic meat, or kosher meat. You know that the animals were at least killed humanely then, in the case of organic they probably even had a decent life.
 

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Posted by Primal Curve (Member # 3587) on :
 
I don't know, Noemon. I'm more incline to think of "Damn, the bastards are trying to make steps towards vat grown meat!"
 

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Posted by MyrddinFyre (Member # 2576) on :
 
Mmmm, ground meat. I wonder if all of this fake meat would taste like veal, as the muscle hasn't been used.
 

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Posted by Katarain (Member # 6659) on :
 
That really sets off my ick factor. I'm not sure I'd ever be comfortable eating that.
 

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Posted by erosomniac (Member # 6834) on :
 

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Try buying either organic meat, or kosher meat. You know that the animals were at least killed humanely then, in the case of organic they probably even had a decent life.

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Top 10 Largest Misconceptions Ever:

1) "Organic" or "Free Range" meat & animal biproducts are usually produced more humanely.
2) ...
 

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Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
 
So Stephan made an unsubstantiated claim, and you made an unsubstantiated counter-claim. That leaves us... well, I'm not sure where, exactly, but somewhere inconclusive.
 

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Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
 
I agree this is really really cool.... but...

In only replaces ground meat. And the meat that gets ground currently is the "left over" meat.

That left over meat might now go into the trash.

Plus if they managed to replace the whole cow, pig and chicken these animals would possibly go extinct. They're only survival trait is "Useful to Humans"
 

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Posted by Zeugma (Member # 6636) on :
 

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That left over meat might now go into the trash.

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Originally posted by Primal Curve:
Hasn't it been argued by animal rights activists that the specific ritual for killing the animal in kosher shops is not humane? I mean, it doesn't matter to me, but if it matters to you, you should at least consider looking into that before you make such statements.

I eat kosher meat because I know it is going to be clean and free of blood and such.

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I'm sure Tante, Rivka, or StarLisa would be better equipped to answer that. But in my opinion many vegetarian environmentalists see any death as inhumane, I would like to find a non biased source myself.
 

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Posted by Katarain (Member # 6659) on :
 
Zeugma, that IS cool.
 

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Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
 
Stephan, I do. I'd prefer to not have to kill an animal at all if I can help it though.

Primal Curve, why do you feel that way? Here are my thoughts on the plusses and minuses of this technology, were it to mature and become widespread:

Positives (in the order that they popped into my mind as I was composing this post):

• No animals killed, and no possibility of inhumane treatment of animals
• Fewer resources needed to produce a given quantity of meat
• meat can be tailored to contain "heart healthy" fats, as well as being nutritionally fortified
• Slow down the destruction of rain forests, as one of the primary reasons for doing so is to clear land for cattle grazing
• Decrease incidence of damaging food born prions, bacteria, and parasites
• allow stretches of prairie to return to natural state, improving biodiversity
• Possibly lower the cost of meat for the consumer (although there is no guarantee that lowered production costs would result in lower prices for consumers)

• Those lands that could be returned to prairie would need to be managed, as the prairie ecosystem was not a natural one any more than the current grazing lands are.
• The bottom would very likely fall out of the ranching industry, unless present ranchers were able to move in and make extensive use of this new technology
• The bottom would also likely fall out of the meat packing industry, since slaughter houses would largely become a thing of the past. Therre would still be meat to pack, but the process would be much different, and could likely be completely automated.
• It's possible that some species of domesticated animal would become extinct, and fairly certain that at least some breeds within species would.
• This extinction could prove disasterous if we are plunged into circumstances in which we lose the technology to grow meat in the lab.

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Both battery cage and "free-range" egg hatcheries kill all male chicks shortly after birth. Since male chicks cannot lay eggs and are different breeds than those chickens raised for meat, they are of no use to the egg industry. Standard killing methods, even among "free-range" producers, include grinding male chicks alive or throwing them into trash bags and leaving them to suffocate.

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According to The Washington Post Magazine, in the case of birds, the term "free-range" "doesn't really tell you anything about the [animal's]…quality of life, nor does it even assure that the animal actually goes outdoors."

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Companies want consumers to believe that products labeled “free-range” or “free-roaming” are derived from animals who spent their short lives outdoors, enjoying sunshine, fresh air, and the company of other animals. Labels, other than “organic,” on egg cartons are not subject to any government regulations, and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) does not regulate “free-range” or “free-roaming” claims for beef products.

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Like the “free-range” label, the “organic” label does not indicate that animals were treated any differently while being transported or slaughtered than animals raised on factory farms.

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Originally posted by The Pixiest:
I agree this is really really cool.... but...

In only replaces ground meat. And the meat that gets ground currently is the "left over" meat.

That left over meat might now go into the trash.

Plus if they managed to replace the whole cow, pig and chicken these animals would possibly go extinct. They're only survival trait is "Useful to Humans"

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According to the article, though, they're actively working on ways of producing lab grown meat that would have the properties of an actual cut of meat.

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It will be interesting to see how they can get specialized structures to grow, without forms of cloning getting uncomfortably close to full-on animal duping.

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There will be challenges to be overcome in order to get us there, but I don't think that they'll be insurmountable. I read what you wrote, erosomniac, as implying that you thought that they would be. Was that something you were trying to convey?

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Sorry, there was no intended sneer; I'm actually INTERESTED to see how it will be done!
 

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Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
 
Noemon: The left over parts can be dumped into the Oil-Making-Machine and will be used to generate electricity and drive cars. We'll use every part of the animal, even if we're not eating it.

Oh how wonderful it will be!

Pix
 

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Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
 
Ah, glad I asked! I didn't think that it seemed in character for you, which is why I did so.

I know that they can currently grow blood vessels on biodegradable scaffolds. I wonder if they'll do that first, and then, with another biodegradable scaffold built around the blood vessels, grow the muscle cells, using the blood vessels to get nutrients to the growing cells. That way they could grow much thicker slabs of meat.
 

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Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
 
Pix, I do hope that the anything to oil technology takes off in a big way--it's one of those technologies that has the potential to change everything. If other waste streams that can produce oil include sewage, random junkyard crap, and agricultural waste, though, I don't know that the price that they'd be able to get for the unused portions of the brain-stem animals you're talking about would be high enough to offset the costs of growing them. Maybe so, though--I'm certainly not an expert in any of this.
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
That's a cool site, I just got a link for a new topic there.
 

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Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :
 

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Originally posted by The Pixiest:
What if they could grow whole animals without a brain (except the parts required to keep the heart beating and such)

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Of course, pigs go feral pretty easily, and cattle probably could--certain breeds of them, anyway.

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Originally posted by Katarain:
The thought that comes into my mind thinking about this lab-grown meat is that there will be a sinister disease gotten from eating it, sort of as a cosmic punishment for messing with life or sidestepping the "natural order" of things.

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Originally posted by Noemon:

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Originally posted by Katarain:
The thought that comes into my mind thinking about this lab-grown meat is that there will be a sinister disease gotten from eating it, sort of as a cosmic punishment for messing with life or sidestepping the "natural order" of things.

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I know that the cosmic punishment when we started moving around on trains was pretty severe. The one when we started flying around in airplanes was even worse. Both of them pale in comparison to the one we received when we abandoned our hunting/gathering ways and started farming though. Don't even get me started on that one.

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Originally posted by Brinestone:
My guess is that even if this technology becomes so good that a vat-grown steak tastes more or less exactly like a range-grown steak, the rich will still want the real thing sometimes just to say they can. Also, third-world countries will take longer to acquire the technology, so their populations of domesticated animals will still be in existence if and when we ever plunged into another dark age.

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Well, the farming thing really was problematic. It created a population explosion, more wars then even religion can be blamed for, and introduced many diseases into the human population. It's probably the single biggest cause of the harm done to the Earth's biosphere.

Hunter-gatherers never hunted species into extinction. It actually took farmers to do that.

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It created a population explosion, more wars then even religion can be blamed for, and introduced many diseases into the human population.

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Originally posted by Noemon:
Agriculture has given us the breathing room to explore and express the best and worst elements of our species' character, I'd say. I don't really see that as a cosmic curse.

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Originally posted by El JT de Spang:

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It created a population explosion, more wars then even religion can be blamed for, and introduced many diseases into the human population.

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The first of those claims I don't doubt, but the rest seem suspect.

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One side-effect of domestication has been disease. For example, cattle have given humanity various viral poxes, measles, and tuberculosis; pigs gave influenza; and horses the rhinoviruses. Humans share over sixty diseases with dogs. Many parasites also have their origins in domestic animals.

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Agriculture takes much, much more work than hunting.

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This is actually the opposite of the typical claim. The big advantage of agriculture is that one person can grow enough food for many, which directly led to the formation of villages and then towns by allowing people to perform specialized jobs and trade services.

The farmer sells his crops in the market, or trades them for a blacksmith's services, or a seamstresses, or a miller's. Granted, these things didn't happen overnight, but one can hardly argue against the good done by agriculture. Especially arguing on the internet, on a computer, in a room with electricity, none of which would likely exist were we still hunting and gathering.
 

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Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
 
What Lisa is saying isn't completely wrong--people come into contact with living animals for much longer periods of time if they live with them and tend them than they do if they simply hunt them, and that does give diseases an opportunity to jump between species. Another important way in which agriculture leads to increased disease is that it leads to the formation of cities, where population density is high enough for diseases to really take off.

In addition, her claim that agriculture leads to warfare is also right--it provides populations large enough (and food surplusses large enough) to support the creation of armies.

I disagree with her about the superiority of hunter/gatherer societies to agricultural societies, though. I'll talk about it more later, but I'm having an unusually busy day at work, and haven't had as much time for hatracking as I'd like. In the interests of posting *something*, I'm going going to click "Add Reply" for now and come back and talk more about all of this later.
 

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Posted by erosomniac (Member # 6834) on :
 
*sniffs*

This thread is starting to sound like a Daniel Quinn debate.

<flees>
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
Read Guns, Germs and Steel, it does a FAR better ob of explaining how domesticated animals lead to most human diseases. Also, without farming the population densities we now have would be impossible to maintain, and it is those population densities that cause contagions to spread so quickly.


While we might have had some domesticated animals before farming, we didn't have enough to spread disease...at least not anywhere near the same rates. Repeated contact with animal viruses allowed them to adapt to human hosts, with disastrous results. Also, waste products from humans (garbage and food mostly) contributed to the spread of a lot of vermin, which have very short life cycles. A lot of our diseases are/were spread by those vermin, and their diseases mutate often, allowing them to jump species unusually fast. Their close proximity to human habitation provided many chances for exposure, leading to many diseases.


Also, before farming we didn't "own" land in the same fashion, did we? Most societies were hunter-gatherers, and while they had "ranges" they didn't own property on a regular basis, not as individuals. Also, once again the population density caused my a sustainable food resource is what caused many wars....everyone wants the best growing land, and are willing to fight for it.


Without farming and animal husbandry it would have been impossible to support the massive armies needed to wage war as well.

Once we had a surplus of food specialty classes, such as protector classes and priest classes, because possible. So even religious wars were caused by farming and animal husbandry, at least indirectly.


Farming and animal husbandry caused many problems for humans. I still think it was worth it, of course, but they were NOT problem free at all.


or in other words, what Noeman said, dammit!

[ June 22, 2006, 04:47 PM: Message edited by: Kwea ]
 

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Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
 

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In addition, her claim that agriculture leads to warfare is also right--it provides populations large enough (and food surplusses large enough) to support the creation of armies.

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Yeah, I forgot to mention this, but that part is also true. The thing about it I disagree with is the statement that agriculture has caused more wars than god. Not that it can't be true, I just can't see a way to prove it one way or another. Wars usually come from more than one cause, and I don't think it's as simple as grabbing a list of wars throughout history and checking either (a)agriculture or (b)god under "Cause of War?"
 

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Posted by FlyingCow (Member # 2150) on :
 
So, um, would vat grown meat be considered kosher? And, would it be considered meat in the sense of not being able to mix it with dairy? What if you also had vat grown dairy?

This thought struck me today... I don't know why.
 

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Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
 
FC, it would depend where the original culture was derived, what the growth medium was, etc.

A definite maybe.
 

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Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :
 
There was a discussion about this on the Avodah list (a list with discussions about various issues in Jewish law) about a year ago. There are a lot of rabbis on the list, and the general consensus was that it would probably have the same status as soya imitations of meat, regardless of the source.

The question of the growth medium, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have been addressed. That could make a difference, I imagine.

Rivka, if you'd like links to the discussion, let me know.
 

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Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :
 
I second rivka's "maybe" on the kosher question. And it is likely that there will not be an overall consensus on whether it is permitted or not. This is fairly common in contemporary times -- one rabbi will certify a product to be kosher, and some folks will not accept that certification because it is not stringent enough. And in the case of ambiguous foods, some will always choose the side of caution, while others will not. Gelatin is a case in point.

I can't count the number of people who are shocked to find that many kosher-observant Jews (myself included) will eschew Hebrew National Frankfurters because they do not consider them to be kosher.

And there are long-established traditional groups of kosher-observant Jews who disagree about what foods, exactly, are allowed or forbidden on Passover.

That said, as described here, vat-grown meat sounds very very icky. They will need some very clever marketing to make people want to buy it. I am certainly put off by it.
 

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Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
I believe that in GG&S, the conclusion Diamond readched was that farming takes less work now...but in that very lengthy, millienia-long duration between mechanized farming and manual-labor farming, it is actually more work-intensive than hunter--gathering.
 

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Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
 
I think Tante has the right of it. And sL, I believe I may have read that discussion. Not to mention participated in a similar one over on the torah.org fora a while back.

The thing is, I also agree with Esther on the squick factor. So I don't much care.
 

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Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
 
See, I just don't get the squick factor at all. It could be the death of lab grown meat, at least for the near future, because it seems pretty common, but it doesn't make any sense to me.
 

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Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
 
Is vat grown meat an ANIMAL? It may be grown FROM a small part of an animal but is it an animal in and of itself?

If it's not an animal do kosher laws apply? (because I don't seem to remember anything about plants....)

Pix
 

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Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
 
That's actually the third time the kosher question's been asked, Pix. The consensus seems to be "maybe".

The tissue starts out as stem cells, so it's definitely animal derived.
 

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Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
 
noe: sorry, it's monday morning and brain isn't working. Need more brain fuel. mmmmm coffee....
 

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Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
 
No problem--it's a pretty natural question, and my response was a little snappish. Maybe some coffee would do me good too. Mmmmmm, coffee....
 

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Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :
 

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Originally posted by Noemon:
Mmmmmm, coffee....

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Originally posted by Noemon:
See, I just don't get the squick factor at all. It could be the death of lab grown meat, at least for the near future, because it seems pretty common, but it doesn't make any sense to me.

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The remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served us nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.

-- Calvin Trillin

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Kind of like that.

This is both why I find it somewhat squicky, and why it may be a kosher issue -- it's hardly ex nihilo.
 

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Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :
 

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Originally posted by rivka:
I think Tante has the right of it. And sL, I believe I may have read that discussion. Not to mention participated in a similar one over on the torah.org fora a while back.

The thing is, I also agree with Esther on the squick factor. So I don't much care.

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Have you ever been to a slaughterhouse? 'Cause I have, and if that didn't squick me out of eating meat, I can't imagine that a meat-jet printer would be any worse. Being able to eat yummy meat without having to think about the animals it used to be is a major plus in my book.
 

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Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
 
Yup. Doesn't bother me. (Well, the smell was rather nasty, but other than that.) Neither did reading The Jungle. (I believe I was one of only two people in my college class of ~30 who didn't find it deeply disturbing.)


 

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Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
 
Lisa, you responded just so you could say "Meat-Jet Printer" didn't you? =)
 

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Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
 
Hey, if I'd thought of that phrase, you can bet that I'd have invented a reason to use it.
 

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Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
 
Hey, I didn't think of it and I'm still looking for reasons to use it. Unfortunately I doubt it will come up in conversation very often.
 

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Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :
 

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Originally posted by The Pixiest:
Hey, I didn't think of it and I'm still looking for reasons to use it. Unfortunately I doubt it will come up in conversation very often.

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Originally posted by rivka:
Yup. Doesn't bother me. (Well, the smell was rather nasty, but other than that.) Neither did reading The Jungle. (I believe I was one of only two people in my college class of ~30 who didn't find it deeply disturbing.)

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