Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Tastes like chicken

When Meat is Not Murder
What if meat were just grown in a lab instead of carved off of a dead body (you will probably prefer the word "carcass")? Looks like they've had some success in making fish in a dish, but don't know what all the health issues will be if it's eaten (there's no consensus among experts on food we've been eating for thousands of years!).

Here are some of the issues I can think of. First of all, there would be some vegetarians who would eat this. I'm not sure I would. It's very unappealing. Honestly, I'm not sure, and kind of doubt it.

They say they can already create fish. Fish is generally regarded as a healthy food (if it wasn't loaded with mercury and other toxins... which it is... although the manufactured version would not be). Beef is not generally regarded as a healthy food -- so would the ideal manufactured meat be like beef? Probably not, except for just satisfying particular tastes. Soooo, instead of just replicating the meat of a particular animal, what if they go for some perfect hybrid conconction that is ideal for humans (maybe other recipes for pets). What if the "people chow" is very much like the meat of of a cat? or a dog? And here's the corker... what if the ideal meat for human consumption is very much like human meat?

Would you still eat it?*

If you are what you eat, then do you eat what you are?

*Factory farms feed cows to cows (that's where the mad cow danger comes in) even though they are vegetarians and certainly not cannibals by nature, yet people have no problem with this. I guess if you have no problem with the whole slaughterhouse process, then you won't care about this detail.

Pic snagged from Petri-Meat.
New Scientist article.

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