Lab-grown meat: The future of food?

[Deleted]

Lab-grown meat: The future of food?


Would you eat it?  More and more companies are beginning to produce meat in labs as a way to combat such issues as greenhouse gases emissions, overfishing and animal welfare concerns.

Take a look:  CLICK - link

[deyana]

Me not like the thought of this at all.

[deyana]

But.... if it helps in saving some poor animal's life, I might consider it.

[mikemarshall]

I am against this type of 'food' and the GM crops (among the other nasty aspects of them) have been shown to produce an increase in sterility.

I can find no valid reason for this type of food cultivation.

What is necessary is to put agriculture on a FAIR footing and help people in poorer countries develop so that we can look on famine as a sad period in history rather than an everyday reality.

It is neither necessary nor desirable for this type of 'food' to be developed.

Monsanto is one of the most corrupt companies in the world - not simply greedy but wedded to global dominance and the deliberate destruction of independent farmers.

[Kyng]

As long as it can replicate the taste and the texture of the real thing, I'd certainly be up for it. It's not just the ethical argument that it would save animals' lives: it's also the fact that producing meat the conventional way is a very environmentally-inefficient way to produce food.(Beef is the worst in this regard: it's responsible for an obscene amount of deforestation in the Amazon, for example. I don't see how this is sustainable at all, and I fully expect 'real' beef to become an expensive delicacy within my lifetime. Since people seem to enjoy eating beefburgers, some kind of alternative is going to be needed!)

I suppose another alternative to this, which would be more humane and environmentally friendly, is making them out of insects. But that faces an even worse public perception problem than lab-grown meat does: I'd be pretty disgusted by it sign0137  ....

[deyana]

This is an interesting subject. You mention insects as a form of food, Kyng. In some places of the world, they are already being used and quite common place. China for instance.(It's all in the spices you use!).

I could quite easily live without meat. There are alternatives that are similar, although I know that certain amino acids that we need can only be found in meat. But vegetarians seem to do okay nevertheless...

Lab created meat is certainly worth a second look.... I just find it very unappetizing. Maybe they could market it better?

[Deleted]

Not for me, there is enough chems in food as it is, lab stuff will make it worse

[deyana]

Might just increase serious diseases such as Cancer.

On a plus side, if all that was available was Lab meat, many would become vegetarians!

[Springschick]

Food has been genetically engineered for millennia. Species of plants and animals have been cross-bred throughout history to produce bigger, better, more resistant produce and meats.

[Springschick]

So, combining genes in nature, or performing the same service outside of the organism are completely different? How so?

[Springschick]

I wholeheartedly agree with keeping steroids and antibiotics out of our food supply.

You know I like to look at things from a different perspective. We fertilize human embryos outside of the body (in a lab), but still consider those conceived that way to be normal human beings. It defies nature, if you are honest about it. Cloning and genetic manipulation can have some great prospects, like growing a new organ that can be transplanted without fear of rejection.

There are legitimate concerns with genetic engineering of plants, but, in my opinion, the benefits as we know them today far outweigh the risks as we know them today. Might that change in the future? Of course. But to dismiss things out of hand because they sound scary is doing a disservice to science.