21
Apr
The Race Is On to Create In Vitro Meat
- posted at 12:53 PM
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- Comments (5)
I’m not sure what you’re all going to think about this, but it should create some debate… Ok, PETA US is offering $1 million (over £500,000) to the first person to come up with a method of producing commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat. I can see a rift already beginning to develop here – you have your hardcore vegans on one side trying to stop themselves throwing up at the thought of eating meat again, and then your meat-eaters who wish there was a kinder way to eat animals. My thoughts? Well, if there’s a way of stopping the slaughter of billions and billions of animals every year for their flesh and this is the way to do it…
To qualify for the prize, the quantity of meat produced by the scientist must be sufficient to market in at least ten US states at a price that is competitive with chicken prices. Switching to lab-grown meat would be a boon to the environment, as a recent UN study concluded that raising animals for food generates more greenhouse-gas emissions than all the cars, trucks and planes in the world combined and is a top contributor to land degradation and water pollution. In vitro meat, or a vegetarian diet, would help solve these worldwide problems.
In the Guardian today, Ed Pilkington talked about cloned meat but this really is not going to help either the environment, the starving poor or, of course, animals destined for the slaughterhouse. Cloned meat is no different from ‘regular’ meat, so that plan can be dropped right away.
Oh, and this isn’t an April Fools prank – I promise. If you’re a scientist and think you have the answer, go ahead and enter the contest. There’s $1 million in it for you. So, would you eat in vitro meat?
this idea has been around since the late nineties, and in fact since 2002 some scientists have been growing in vitro meat. one problem would be the massive cost of doing this versus the cost of current sources of meat.
“So, would you eat in vitro meat?”
If it was better (or as good as plus cheaper) then sure, why not? Personally I have no ethical problem whatsoever with eating animals any more than I have an ethical problem with a shark eating me (we all have our place in the food chain so it is simply not an ethical issue in my view), but I do not see anything ‘wrong’ with the idea of ‘in vitro meat’.