The future of food has arrived:
Scientists turn stem cells into pork
Call it pork in a petri dish – a technique to turn pig stem cells into strips of meat that scientists say could one day offer a green alternative to raising livestock, help alleviate world hunger, and save some pigs their bacon.
Dutch scientists have been growing pork in the laboratory since 2006, and while they admit they haven’t gotten the texture quite right or even tasted the engineered meat, they say the technology promises to have widespread implications for our food supply.
“If we took the stem cells from one pig and multiplied it by a factor of a million, we would need one million fewer pigs to get the same amount of meat,” said Mark Post, a biologist at Maastricht University involved in the In-vitro Meat Consortium, a network of publicly funded Dutch research institutions that is carrying out the experiments.
Post describes the texture of the meat as sort of like scallop, firm but a little squishy and moist. That’s because the lab meat has less protein content than conventional meat.
Feeling queasy yet?
To dispel any notions that this is some sort of hoax, check out the very real and very sincere Web sites of The In Vitro Meat Consortium and the Orwellianly-named “New Harvest,” a man-made “cultured meat” advocacy group which insists,
Arguably, the production of cultured meat is less unnatural than raising farm animals in intensive confinement systems, injecting them with synthetic hormones, and feeding them artificial diets made up of antibiotics and animal wastes.
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| 21st-century cuts of pork. |
Personally, I’m a level-5 vegan — I won’t eat anything that casts a shadow — but even I get the dry-heaves just thinking of the possibility of test-tube meat.
While meat grown in a lab has until recently been the stuff of speculative fiction, even Winston Churchill had the foresight in 1936 to predict that we’d all be eating simu-meat eventually: “Fifty years hence, we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.”
As usual, Churchill was right on the money, and his prediction is about to come true — because lab-made animal tissue is, according to some scientists, only a couple years away from the supermarket shelves:
“To produce meat at an industrial scale, we will need very large bioreactors, like those used to make vaccines or pasteurized milk,” said Matheny. He thought lab-produced meat might be on the market within the next few years, while Post said it could take about a decade.
For the moment, the only types of meat they are proposing to make this way are processed meats like minced meat, hamburgers or hot dogs.
“As long as it’s cheap enough and has been proven to be scientifically valid, I can’t see any reason people wouldn’t eat it,” said Stig Omholt, a genetics expert at the University of Life Sciences in Norway. “If you look at the sausages and other things people are willing to eat these days, this should not be a big problem.“
No, but if it was tasty, cheap and versatile probably so. Hey, I survived on C-rats, the analog analogue of fauxmeat
If bio-ethicists and religious-minded folks have moral objections to growing human stem cells in a lab for medical research, on the principle that even headless living human flesh possesses some kind of sacred spirit; then why wouldn’t the substantial contingent of “ethical vegetarians,” who refuse to eat animals because as living creatures they also possess some kind of spirit, object to and refuse to consume lab meat on the same moral objections — that even disembodied pork that was never part of an actual animal is still connected to the oneness of life?”
Is it Kosher/Hallal?
This is going to be an issue.
So far as I can recall from my distant past there was a Talmudic standard, concerning food, something about “fit for a dog to eat”. I think that related to Passover laws but seems as reasonable as anything else. An early attempt at defining a chemical byproduct vs. an derivative product which still resembles the original.
So I take some DNA, plug it into something else and grow it up in totally acceptable media. It is transformed into something novel. A brand new thing created by human ingenuity. Not an animal exactly yet some other thing we need to figure out.
And we can eat it and thrive. Presumably.
Sounds interesting. Thank you again Zombie.
Is this real? Does it come in briskit or chicken?
Spindok
Shrug. Wouldn’t bother me — sausage and hotdogs are grosser, as is factory-raised meat.
“there are so many soy-based and gluten-based vegi-meat products on the market now that are so tasty”
Now that’s just a complete lie!!
I wouldn’t see any reason that vegetarians would *necessarily* be against this kind of thing. Many (most?) people “against stem cell research” are only against embryo-destructive stem cell research, after all; as an example I’m against any stem cell research that would destroy or damage an embryo, but I’m not against studying stem cells from umbilical cords or noses or whatever. So I imagine a vegetarian (especially one okay with eating honey, drinking milk, or using eggs) could be okay with consuming animal flesh that didn’t actually involve any real animals getting hurt.
Congrats on your new digs, Zombie! I posted my comments here:
http://spinstrangenesscharm.wordpress.com/2010/01/16/zombie-soylent-pink-on-vat-grown-meat/
I personally would embrace this.
As for kosher status: aside from having to come from a permitted animal, there is the requirement that the animal be dispatched in a certain manner which, in Talmudic times, was the most painless one available. Also, circulatory blood should be removed.
Methinks that if something is never an actual living, breating animal to begin with, not only might the meat be kosher but it might actually be parve (“neutral”, i.e., neither [halachically] meat nor dairy). So you might actually be able to combine it with dairy products without violating kashrut!
Fascinating.
Seems like a question of perspective, and contemplative extrapolation -
Reading the article, its possible to consider it as nothing more than a technical advance facilitating the synthesis of complex organic molecules encountered previously in naturally occurring bio-systems.
The shock value stems from the original blueprint (or template) for the matrices involved. . .
Reviewing the logistical considerations of an industrial scale version, on the face of it, it sounds not too dissimilar from, oh, let’s pick a good one – making beer.
Large vats, growth mediums, controlled environmentals. . .
Does the concept, when applied to the potential envisioned, via science fiction, for large ‘yeast vats’, producing a variety of synthetic foodstuffs resembling/mimicking a variety of ‘naturally’ occurring items engender more, or less revulsion? Or an revulsion at all?
On the other hand, if you handed a modern combo/candy bar (e.g. a Baby Ruth) to someone from ancient times, just how quick would they be to pop something in their mouths that quite likely resembled, in their view, a piece of fecal material?
I’d say go for it, muck it on down – it tastes like chicken!
I think I’ll throw up. Modern food is quite lousy enough, thank you.
We already eat tasteless garbage, just people are so used to eating crap that they don’t know how lousy their food is. Coming from a backwards, primitive country where we had no ”modern” methods of food production or cooking (& being old enough to remember how things used to be) I still know what real food tastes (& smells) like.
The “religious” objection to stem cell research is concerned primarily with the harvesting of stem cells from unique developing individuals which results in their termination. As far as those unique developing individuals “not having a soul”. One should be more careful in such assertions (I recognize that the author did not make such assertions). Though there are other ethical issues, many forms of stem cell research are not destructive and are actually yielding viable results in opposition to the aforementioned research.
I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give honest meat, or give me honest legumes.
This vat grown meat concept is even creepier than TVP.
Vegans turn me off real fast. God made us meat eater’s.
“So who, aside from astronauts and European mad scientists, would ever want to eat this stuff?”
To echo another poster, if it’s as simultaneously harmless, expensive, nutritious, and tasty as meat, I’ll give it a shot.
As for veganism, I have no more obligation to refrain from eating meat because animals have souls, nor stain on my soul because I do not refrain, than I incur in not preventing animals from being consumed by predators in the wild.
It is the natural course of things.
If and when acceptable artificial meat appears, that will also be the natural course of things.
Our intelligence is natural.
So, the old urban legend about KFC and its lab-grown mystery meat may finally be coming true?
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/food/kfc.asp
Whole Foods. Eat food in its natural form. Eat butter, not margarine. Eat eggs. Drink milk. Eat real chickens. This is what our bodies expect through eons of evolution. Every time they invent some new trendy health product it turns out, years later, they miscalculated.
Well, actually, yes, I would eat it, if it was good, nutritious, and cheap. Which is really my standard set of parameters for anything I chow down on.
As a longtime SFan, I have no ethical problem with it. As long as it’s, say, decent chicken, beef, or bacon, I really don’t care whether it squawked, mooed, oinked, or just sat in a vat and burbled before it ended up on my plate. Although if I can’t discern a difference in the flavor, I’ll probably suspect myself of having a much less refined palate that Lucas Trask in “Space Viking” by H. Beam Piper. (BTW, the notes on Piper and Kurd Lasswitz in the Wiki article were my doing.)
Of course, you really can’t tell by me. After all, I happen to like Spam.
cheers
eon
“3. Spindok:”
Actually it is not about growing human stem cells. I do not think even the most religious has much issue with that.
No, rather it is where do you get those stem cells in the first place. If in getting those stem cells requires you to murder a human life ….. as in embryonic stem cells. Then there is the moral problem for any who disparage murder.
I realize you have no problem with that any more than did Josef Mengele.
Zombie -
Another question is – Would “Lab Meat” be considered to be Kosher or Halal if generated from the appropriate animal. An interesting conundrum, eh? -S-
So who, aside from astronauts and European mad scientists, would ever want to eat this stuff?
Well, in your own article, you report that the mad scientists developing this stuff haven’t tried it yet. I would be very surprised if that changes in the future.
This is just another product, for which millions upon millions are being spent in R&D, and for which there is no demand, and for which millions upon millions will be spent in marketing to get a weak pulse of demand, and the inventors of which have no intention of using themselves, all in the name of solving a problem that theoretically exists and theoretically can be noticeably mitigated by having the vast run of people in the lower and middle classes downgrade their standard of living to third-world levels.
But those proles and middling folk won’t want to put this stuff in their mouths any more than the technicians who invented it or the elites who direct taxpayer money to its invention will. So the elites will eventually force them by government fiat.
I don’t eat pork but if they can make this in lamb, deer, elk, beef or roo I’d eat the hell out of it.
Why hasn’t anybody proposed harvesting Level 5 vegan stem cells from Zombie and raising a race of headless meat loathing pseudohumans. Done on a sufficiently industrial level, these meat-loathing humanoids would displace the real meat eating variety, thus we wouldn’t need any colloidal synthocarn. Problem solved.
“If bio-ethicists and religious-minded folks have moral objections to growing human stem cells in a lab for medical research, on the principle that even headless living human flesh possesses some kind of sacred spirit; then why wouldn’t the substantial contingent of “ethical vegetarians,” who refuse to eat animals because as living creatures they also possess some kind of spirit, object to and refuse to consume lab meat on the same moral objections — that even disembodied pork that was never part of an actual animal is still connected to the oneness of life?”
First of all, most vegetarian types are really utilitarians… think Peter Singer… the religious objections to embryonic stem cells come from the fact that you blot out what you once were…
“So who, aside from astronauts and European mad scientists, would ever want to eat this stuff?
Would you eat a test-tube kielbasa in order to save Mother Gaia?”
To answer the second question, “no,” since I don’t buy the whole AGW argument. BUT, I am confident that plenty of people would eat it, if the cost was below what could be raised on a farm, and/or the nutritional content or taste were better. “Consistency of scallops” sounds fine to me; I love scallops. Would I eat pork-flavored ones? Well, I might actually give that a try, since one of my favorite treats is bacon-wrapped scallops.
I really think the bottom line here is cost and nutrition. I don’t believe there’s enough of a market for a more expensive product based purely on the “greenness” (and I think past experience bears me out). But this is somewhat exciting. Even if it never compares to real cuts of meat, there seems to be potential for sausage, ground meat, novel products (“New! Pork Scallops!”), and animal feed. The critical test, again, would be cost (and it would have to be pretty low, since sausage, ground meat, and animal feed are pretty cheap already).
But, take my word for it, this actually sounds reasonably appetizing. I am surprise at the progress that has been made; last I heard, the “best” lab-grown meat was not at all appetizing, and there seemed to be no reasonable expectation of progress in the near future.
In the 1953 science fiction novel “The Space Merchants”, by Fredrick Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth, one of the food sources for the planet earth is “Chicken Little”, a huge lump of genetically engineered chicken meat, which grows continuously and is harvested by slicing chunks off the edges.
First two pages of the novel are here and here. I’m surprised to discover that we are almost there.
Would you eat a test-tube kielbasa in order to save Mother Gaia?
No, but I’d probably do it to annoy and irritate vegetarians and vegans. Small payback for decades of tiresome preaching.
I think Vegans are just mad because products like this will yank the moral high ground out from underneath them ^_^
“If bio-ethicists and religious-minded folks have moral objections to growing human stem cells in a lab for medical research, on the principle that even headless living human flesh possesses some kind of sacred spirit; then why wouldn’t the substantial contingent of “ethical vegetarians,” who refuse to eat animals because as living creatures they also possess some kind of spirit, object to and refuse to consume lab meat on the same moral objections — that even disembodied pork that was never part of an actual animal is still connected to the oneness of life?”
To follow up on what others have said, by saying this you completely mis-characterize the entire religious objection to EMBRYONIC stem cells.
In addition, I would like to note for the record that all of the medical discoveries from stem cells thus far have come from ADULT stem cells, which most religious organizations with a stance on the subject have been promoting as morally acceptable.
In short, those darn Christians and other religious folks aren’t standing in the way of SCIENCE! the way that you seem to assume they are. And, while I am no religious authority, I see nothing offhand that would make cultured meat any less attractive to the faithful than, say, the soy products added to the cheapest hamburger patties.
I like pigs.
A quotable chap once said, “Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. But a pig will look a man right in the eye….”. On the other hand they are very, very tasty. So this is brilliant.
This concept opens up a whole can of worms. In the graphic novel “Transmetropolitan,” synthetic meat is a staple, and the market responds by synthesizing meats from all kinds of animals including endangered species and yes, you guessed it, “long pig.”
Ideally (and through most of human history) a farm animal was an engine for converting things humans can’t eat into things humans can eat. Cows and other grazing animals digest the cellulose in plant matter that people can’t digest, and make it into steak and dairy products, which people can. Unfortunately, industrialized farming and things like “corn fed beef” have kind of screwed this concept up.
I would have to see the numbers proving that a chemical factory turning out the same amount of meat that a stockyard does uses less resources, less petroleum, and creates less pollution.
Y’know, I don’t have an issue with the concept of test-tube meat but speaking as a woman who as observed numerous debacles of the scientific/medical community pronouncing various treatments, tweaks, or medications perfectly safe and that everyone should take them (sun, cigarettes, estrogen/progesterone birth control, Depo-Provera, etc.) and then find out 10-20 years later that those things are often a death sentence, I really have to question whether trusting our oh-so-brilliant governments (any of them) with this is a good idea.
We’re already having problems with GMO grains and plants that hybridizing natural plants & sterilizing them in addition to giving the agricultural corporations & governments too much power over our food supply. Our meat animals are so inbred they can’t survive outside of factory farms and regular people have very little control over their food supply. Food is another way oppressive governments exert control over the populace, it’s not just gun-control.
I just think this is a totally bad idea…and not just because I hate scallops.
“I think Vegans are just mad because products like this will yank the moral high ground out from underneath them ^_^”
Hammer meets nailhead.
Also, the title of this article is a very poor attempt to connect two things which really aren’t similar at all.
This is WAY less gross then eating animal corpses. And more efficient, and better for the environment.
I say, mmmmmmm, frankenfood, gooood (salvates)
Once they’ve perfected the taste and consistency, brought the cost way down, and sped up the growth process by several orders of magnitude, you’ve basically got the Star Trek replicator.
Sounds good to me, and I wouldn’t hesitate to try it.
It probably would be Kosher since there was no need to slaughter it in the first place. I would imagine that most Rabbis would say it is as Kosher as any vegetable. As for whether it is Halal, I really don’t know.
As for whether I would eat it, I don’t see why not. If it tastes good, it is reasonably nutritious, and it doesn’t contain any particularly harmful things one shouldn’t eat, it ought to sell pretty well.
I wouldn’t eat it to “save the earth”, however. That case would have to be made pretty strongly before I would consider it.
Big D is correct. Zombie I suggest you read a bit before you write.
I’m an ethical vegetarian and for me the issue centers around suffering and/or killing. Vat grown meat does not seem to me to be capable of suffering (no brain!) and does not seem to meat (sic) the definition of a “living being” which one can “kill.”
I’m pretty sure I’d be fine eating vat meat, and am looking forward to it. Too much soy protien can’t be great for you.
=darwin
A list of progressive [BTW, I know zombie is not one] nutty ideas bordering on insanity (since they don’t apparently generate any doubts in the holder) in no particular order:
– AGW true believers who won’t consider CO2-free modern nuclear power under any circumstances
– ‘ethical’ vegetarians who also generally support abortion on demand
– feminists waking up to the slaughter of unborn girls in China, who also generally support abortion on demand
– liberal academics who simultaneously insist all gender is ‘culturally constructed’ but homosexuality is completely innate
– feminists who insist that men and women are no different… except where women are better
The people in Delaware eat scrapple, how could vat pork be any worse?
31,
They aren’t there yet on the efficiencies. But theoretically, it might take fewer resources.
You’re not growing brains, spines, guts and poo. And not just the cow you’re looking at, but all the cows between the calf and the one you’re looking at in the end. What the calf was made of by the time it becomes the cow-for-slaughter is long gone. All those cells were replaced in the years it took to get from there to here, some many thousands of times over. So you’re not growing that, either. It’s hard to know how much there there is there, since we shed our skin and destroy our own tissues.
Then there’s the methane.
I’m sure someone has hit this already, but the title of your article should read “Soylent Other White”.
Seems to me that this could help tackle starvation pretty well
At first I thought that people would recoil in horror at the thought of eating a test tube burger, but then I remembered the thriving market for hot dogs, bologna and other meat-style products that fill the deli aisle of the grocery store. I suppose that people will adopt it as much as they have adopted any of these other creations, although I hope that we always have real (formerly) live beef, pork and chicken available.
I’ll probably try it, but I don’t expect to make it a staple of my diet. I’d prefer to have one really good cut of meat than several cheap ones.
Why bother with stem cells. Just get all the stuff you would eat in a day, porridge, toast and marmalade, a cheese sandwich and an apple, some meat, potatoes, cabbage and carrots, throw the lot in the blender and reduce it to a horrible sloppy mess. Then eat with a spoon.
Why do scientists have to find complicated ways of doing simple things.
My own opinion (for the nicklel it is worth) is that this is neither Kosher, Halal, nor Vegan.
It is pork, as presents here, and please dont make me review the science. Life is too short for that.
It is a novel human way of making that. If we can look at the tissue under a microscope or biochemical or molecular means, and find it in few ways indistiguishable from the average pork chop, except perhaps in the way the different types of cells are arranged, it is stll what it is.
That is a big if.
The question of living as a vegan or kosher or whatever is individual. We know that humans can do well on many different diets and anyway your choice what to eat.
Eat what you wish and enjoy. Thank the almighty we have food.
Spindok
There’s an old joke about a three-legged pig. When the salesman asks, the farmer explains how this is a smart pig, a hero pig who actually saved the family from a fire. The salesman asks, “So he lost the leg in a fire?” “No, no, not at all. It’s just when a pig’s this good, you don’t eat him all at once.”
Maybe not so funny in print, but I laughed when I heard it. Still, it’s relevant to this topic. If you didn’t kill the pig, just amputated and ate his leg, is that kosher or halal? I suspect not. Well, the stem cells are similarly a part of the pig, even if harvested from an otherwise happy, healthy, live pig.
If the amputated pork chop is not kosher JUST because it’s pork and thus forbidden, then the stem cell pork shouldn’t be kosher. On the other hand, if the amputated pork chop is not kosher because of the pig’s suffering, welll… What if we extract the stem cells without hurting him?
And if the amputated pork chop IS kosher, then I know less than zero about Jewish dietary laws.
The amputated pork chop (or lamb chop) is not kosher and in fact is supposed not to be eaten by nonjews either, because of the prohibition about eating an amputated limb from a live animal. Look up “ever min ha’chai”. This is only for actual flesh (i.e. nonjews may eat blood from the cow as some do in Africa).