Scientists around the world are researching or seeking the funds to research ways to produce meat in the laboratory—without killing any animals. In vitro meat production would use animal stem cells that would be placed in a medium to grow and reproduce. The result would mimic flesh and could be cooked and eaten. Some promising steps have been made toward this technology, but we're still several years away from having in vitro meat be available to the general public.
PETA is now stepping in and offering a $1 million reward to the first scientist to produce and bring to market in vitro meat.
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Where do the stem cells come from?
These people are hypocrites. They think its cruel to raise animals for food. Yet their willing to play god(even if at the smallest level) to satisfy their own insecurities about todays agriculture. Do the vegetarians eat GM produce and grains? How do they expect us to eat food grown from a petree dish? Does peta feel bad about the hundreds of thousands of acres of natural habitat that are destroyed every year to grow new crops(especially now with the expansion of bio-fuel crops and the dwindling food supply in poverty stricken countries) I may be wrong but it seems like Horticulture is doing far more damage to our environment than the meat industry. While I definitely don’t approve of industrial farming and prefer to know where the food I eat comes from, meat grown in a lab is not my idea of an alternative. What the hell is wrong with these peoples heads?
Most people don’t realize that the medium used to grow tissue in laboratories has components derived from animals. Good luck growing meat in a lab without using fetal calf serum.
Hi sleep,
I sometimes wonder about that too. It’s so hard to find trustworthy information about the effects of the meat industry or horticulture on the environment. So much information is tainted by the political or social agenda of those providing it.
I’m not a vegetarian and have no moral qualms against eating meat. However, I do think we should provide better lives for the animals we eat before we kill them, and of course we should try to kill them as painlessly as possible. I also think Americans need to eat less meat than we do, for dietary and nutritional reasons. From what I’ve read, we eat far more meat than is actually good and healthy for us.
We could use some work in all those areas. This is especially true of the industrial farming industry.
Do you have experience with farming?
Yes, I grew up on one. My family Runs Dines Farms in New York. Its a very small farm on about 200 acres in the catskills. They raise free range chicken and turkey mostly but also usually have a 100 or so pigs running around and some steer. I live in the city now but I always worked on farms when i was young. It is sad how most of the small farms in upstate NY(or the entire east coast for that matter) are completely gone. There were four good size dairy farms all within a mile of my house growing up, and I worked at them all at one time or another. They are all gone now. Most of them were reduced to living on a small plot of what used to be their land in a pre-fab house built with the money from the sale of their farms. Only one old timer too set in his ways stayed. And you cant blame him, these old men don’t know any other way of life. How does a man born almost a century ago make a living in these times? While the farm doesn’t operate anymore the old man, now pushing 85 still keeps about ten dairy cows for himself and his family. And if you ride down route 81 in Oak Hill on a summers day you can still find him out there solo, making hay in 90 degree weather. Making a few bails, jumping off the tractor and on the wagon to stack them before continuing. While this generation may have the technology and the know-how, I still admire how people like that just wont quit. Its not pride they possessed so much as it was utter determination . Something our generations hopefully inherit when theirs is gone.
Growing up on a farm sounds lovely.
My grandparents lived out in the country and had a fairly large vegetable garden that, to a small child, seemed like a farm. I loved visiting them nearly every weekend and playing and exploring outside.
I believe (and there is research that supports this idea) that family-owned farming is good for the individual who farms and good for the rest of society. It’s healthy to be more in touch with the land and nature, and to know where your food comes from and to have a hand in growing it.