Scientists 'grow' meat in laboratory

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The move towards artificially engineered foods has taken a step forward after scientists grew a form of meat in a laboratory for the first time.

By Nick Britten
Published: 3:18PM GMT 29 Nov 2009

Researchers in the Netherlands have created what was described as soggy pork and are now investigating ways to improve the muscle tissue in the hope that people will one day want to eat it.

No one has yet tasted the product, but it is believed the artificial meat could be on sale within five years.

Vegetarian groups welcomed the news, saying there was “no ethical objection” if meat was not a piece of a dead animal.

Mark Post, professor of physiology at Eindhoven University, said: “What we have at the moment is rather like wasted muscle tissue. We need to find ways of improving it by training it and stretching it, but we will get there.

“This product will be good for the environment and will reduce animal suffering. If it feels and tastes like meat, people will buy it.

“You could take the meat from one animal and create the volume of meat previously provided by a million animals.”

The scientists extracted cells from the muscle of a live pig and then put them in a broth of other animal products. The cells then multiplied and created muscle tissue. They believe that it can be turned into something like steak if they can find a way to artificially "exercise" the muscle.

The project is backed by the Dutch government and a sausage maker and comes following the creation of artificial fish fillets from goldfish muscle cells.

Meat produced in a laboratory could reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with real animals.

Meat and dairy consumption is predicted to double by 2050 and methane from livestock is said to currently produce about 18 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases.

It was supported by animal rights campaigners. A spokesman for Peta said: “As far as we’re concerned, if meat is no longer a piece of a dead animal there’s no ethical objection.”

However the Vegetarian Society said: “The big question is how could you guarantee you were eating artificial flesh rather than flesh from an animal that had been slaughtered.

“It would be very difficult to label and identify in a way that people would trust.”

The advent of meat grown for consumers could reduce the billions of tons of greenhouse gases emitted each year by farm animals and help meet the United Nation’s predictions that meat and dairy consumption will double by 2050.

However, the latest breakthrough is certain to cause concern amongst the anti-GM lobby.

Last week Prince Charles, a fierce opponent of GM food, warned that people were creating problems by “treating food as an easy commodity rather than a precious gift from nature”.

His comments came as the results of a survey commissioned by the Food Standards Agency revealed concerns about long-term health and environmental impacts of genetically modified products.

It showed shoppers want to be told when meat and milk from cows is genetically modified through clear labelling.

GM supporters say they are aware of risks associated with "engineered" food but believe it benefits the Third World.
 
It would be interesting if this all came about.I wonder if meat eaters would be interested, or be grossed out, or weirded out.Which would not make any sense to me, they enjoy eating animal flesh from carcasses rich in bacterias, that spent their lives sitting in their own shit and piss.They may also say it is not natural, which , it is not,but I really cant say much of the meat peddled these days is natural.

Perhaps they can wash it down with a nice big glass of puss and blood, you know, milk.
 
This reminded me of the ethical meat in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.



I myself wouldn't want to eat meat of any variety. As The Vegetarian Society pointed out, I doubt people would find it very inticing to eat, even without the 'anything made in a laboratory will kill you' attitude I often see in The Daily Mail and its ilk.
 
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Eeewww. Beef Jerky.
 
Milk is neither pus nor blood.
Milk is composed of a particular combination of lipids, proteins, salts, and water as secreted by specialized apocrine gland cells in the mammary tissue.
Milk can contain some neutrophils, but normally does not contain pathogenic bacteria or blood.
There are ethical sources of milk available (although few and expensive.)
 
Well if it's good enough for, you know, baby cows then it's good enough for, you know, me.

Actually, much of it is really no longer fit for baby cows, either, because the calves' mothers have been pumped full of growth hormone and antibiotics. They are pumped full of antibiotics because the people who raise them don't want to spend money on, you know, actual veterinary care for them, so they just give them drugs in the hope that they don't get sick.

But, yeah, a calf who is very lucky gets to drink his mother's milk for a couple of weeks before he gets moved to a feedlot where he stands knee-deep in shit and piss, and eats corn that his digestive system is not designed to digest, which makes him sick, for the last few weeks of his short, miserable life.
 
Actually, much of it is really no longer fit for baby cows, either, because the calves' mothers have been pumped full of growth hormone and antibiotics. They are pumped full of antibiotics because the people who raise them don't want to spend money on, you know, actual veterinary care for them, so they just give them drugs in the hope that they don't get sick.

But, yeah, a calf who is very lucky gets to drink his mother's milk for a couple of weeks before he gets moved to a feedlot where he stands knee-deep in shit and piss, and eats corn that his digestive system is not designed to digest, which makes him sick, for the last few weeks of his short, miserable life.

Now you're just being a downer.

Yer big meanie you.
 
I was goping to start a thread on this. I think the militant veggo's response to this is interesting. Philosophically, there should be no objection. I think it's a fantastic idea, once we can get it to work. Here's an article from H+:

http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/bio/eight-ways-vitro-meat-will-change-our-lives

Of course, the really exciting prospect of this technology is that irt will allow us to grow new organs cloned from the patients' own DNA, so nobody will ever suffer or die on donor lists, and there will be no risk of rejection because it's their own tissue. It's awesome. Here's an article at SingularityHub.com:

http://singularityhub.com/2009/11/03/harvard-grows-heart-tissue-watches-it-beat/

Apparantly, there was a very successful recent expiriment at Harvard replicating mice heart tissue that could actually beat. Barring some existential catastrophe, you can expect this technology to become widely available in the next decade or so.

Getting back to the topic at hand, it's an awesome idea. We could produce cheap, low fat meat with no hormones, essentially equivalent to free-range organic, we could even directly control the fat content. Like I said it could be produced much more cheaply and in greater quantities, it would do a lot to end hunger, and very negligible pollution, by comparison, at least. Also, finally, yes, you'd cut out the cruelty issue altogether so we can be done with that.

I can't wait until this technology is perfected.
 


Just kidding. It sounds like a great idea. I wonder if the nutritional value of it is the same, better, or worse than real meat.
 
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I wonder if they'll eventually be able to grow a certain part of the body like, say,...a mouth....or something. My friend wants to know.
 
The question that occurs to me is, where does the nutritional content come from? Tissue is one thing, but is it not the case that the nutrition that meat contains ultimately results from the things the creature eat? Surely protein, vitamins etc can't be simply grown out of thin air in a laboratory without input of something? Or is there something I haven't grasped here?

cheers
 
I was goping to start a thread on this. I think the militant veggo's response to this is interesting. Philosophically, there should be no objection.

I don't think you can lump everyones philosophies like that. People have different reasons for being veggie. I'm anti-GM, more than I'm anti-people eating meat. I'd rather people ate real free range (as in, completely-free-kill-it-yourself-range) meat than this stuff. So, I do have a philosophical objection.
 
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