Grow your own meat (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

By David Cohen
Technology Reporter

Mark Post has been given €300,000 to make a hamburger, in one year. Easy money, you might think, but try doing that without using meat that has come from an animal.

Professor Post is one of the few people on the planet who can. As head of the department of vascular physiology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, he is in the vanguard of a new wave of research to create a way of producing meat that cuts out the need for animal husbandry altogether.

Prof Post is not the first to dream this dream. In the mid 20th Century, Dutchman Willem van Eelen - back then a budding medical student - dreamt of creating meat without killing animals, by using stem cells.

A stem cell is a special type of cell capable of replicating itself many many times and differentiating into specialised cell types, such as muscle cells.
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Why go to all that trouble? Take a look at the carbon footprint of meat production, and the justification is clear: livestock farming accounts for around 18% of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions - greater than emissions due to transport.

The UN forecasts that world demand for meat will double by 2050, making that problem much worse. On top of this, around 80 per cent of all farmland is devoted to meat production, and cattle consume around 10 per cent of the world's fresh water supplies. Farming for meat is a very costly process.
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more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15402552




Their title, not mine. :D




One would think felafel, seitan, and mushrooms would provide plenty of alternatives ... but no ...

[idiotgardener]

1. I hope this catches on quick

but I know a lot of people will think this is "disgusting". Those people probably eat gelatin.

[MedicalAdmin]

4. I'll be taking a pass.

And I hate jello, agar, and any other made from the hoof products. Yuck (it's a texture thing for me).

Give me a pot of dahl and some rice and a good spicy tofu and I'm one happy camper.

[mainer]

8. Agar is vegetarian, made from algae

Not from hoof products. So eat away, especially if you like Japanese food!

[MedicalAdmin]

27. Whoops. My mistake.

I was thinking of aspic.

I'm still not a big fan of Agar which is strange because I like tapioca.

[michnied123]

29. tapioca

Sooooooo good. 10x better than rice pudding.

[RebelOne]

6. So do I. I have been reading about this for the past 2 years.

I am a vegetarian, but I would love to have a filet mignon and know that an animal was not killed for it.

[Capitalocracy]

19. I'm not particularly interested in eating it...

but after streamlining production to make it cost-efficient and extensive testing to make sure it's safe, I'll certainly be glad it's there.

I might consider eating it since I guess it would technically fall under the definition of not having been a living animal... but I haven't really even been interested in eating meat for years.

[RebelOne]

28. I have not been interested in eating meat in years either,

but when I am in the grocery store passing through the meat department, those sirloin steaks and pork chops sure look good.

[shireen]

9. yes, i like meat and would prefer cultured meat

I suspect that this will meet with great opposition in the US since cattle farming is big business.

[idiotgardener]

10. Definitely.

But every person like you who tries it will help reduce the amount of animal abuse, so thank you for being open to it.

[Initech]

2. I've seen how this ends: soylent green is people!!

[Matariki]

3. That money would be better spent on finding an end to poverty

and it's accompanying by-product: over population.

[Kurska]

5. I don't think 300,000 is going to solve poverty.

Are we not allowed to do science until poverty is over?

[Matariki]

17. The article suggests that "cultured meat" addresses the problem of a rising demand for meat

I'd suggest that that's only a symptom of a problem no one seems to want to deal with. It's a proven fact that poverty leads to higher population because of both high infant mortality rates and relying on large families as the only social safety net for the elderly.

This particular bit of 'science' is only attempting to slap a bandaid on the actual problem. Not to mention that it's a step away from wholesome and natural food and is pretty disgusting.

[Hydra]

7. Overpopulation is a by-product of exploitive systems

Without disposable people, systems like that can't function...and normally humans choose not to procreate when given the choice.

So +1 for that. Poverty should be our focus, but everything is going into sustaining systems that shouldn't exist.

[unblock]

11. no sex threads!

:evilgrin:

[Kali]

12. each of those "stats" is wrong or extremely missleading

the carbon footprint for livestock INCLUDES transport - of animals, feed, and meat distribution so comparing that to "emissions due to transport" is well, bullshit.

so are the numbers for cropland and feed. cattle can be raised easily on RANGE - that is land NOT suitable for crops, and even with intensive feeding that 80% figure is (again) bullshit lots of cropland is grazed after harvest...etc etc etc

besides, some of us LIKE animal husbandry (not to mention the taste, texture, and nutrition of real meat)

[XemaSab]

14. Why don't you plow under your ranch and plant soybeans, Kali?

Soybeans are good for you, and good for the planet!

[Kali]

21. already done, only we are growing giant granite boulders instead of plants

they make nice landscaping gravel for tan stucco houses when they are ground up:P

organic, baby!

[idiotgardener]

23. "nutrition"? LOL

Maybe it's not so much about what YOU personally like, and more about the horrible animal cruelty and environmental devastation.

[Kali]

24. maybe I have a little actual real-life experience and understanding

and thus know what I am talking about:hi:

[Duer 157099]

13. So I wonder what protein source the cell culture will use?

Most cell cultures contain some form of cow serum, usually fetal. If not that, then bovine serum albumin.

Where will that come from if not cows? :shrug:

[BB1]

15. Two things come to mind;

one: go Maastricht! One of the top- rated Universities in the Netherlands, of which the smartest students are... (wait for it) blonde women!
two: Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton. It's a SF book in which the main character is confronted with vat-grown meat (and incidentally also takes a short trip to the Netherlands to smoke dope)

By the way, The Netherlands are one of the most populated countries in existence. Small wonder theycome up with stuff like this.

[eppur_se_muova]

25. Vat-grown meat has been an SF staple for decades ...

(pun intended :) ) http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?bnum=1002

but cultured fungus (which is all mushrooms are) is probably much more resource-efficient. Wood waste (even sawdust), newspapers, manure can all be turned into food. And fungi don't even need sunlight.

[hunter]

16. I've always figured it would be much less trouble to grow insects.

Run 'em through one of those machines that makes chicken "nuggets," add flavorings and colors, and there you go.

Insects, the other white meat...

wikipedia

I can't help but worry that growing beef, pork, or chicken from stem cells might somehow create new pathogens such as cancer viruses, mad-cow like diseases, or super flus, especially if the meat is grown by corporations that have already demonstrated they don't care if their food products are hazardous to human health.

Do you really want to buy your meat from the same corporations who bring you trans fatty shortenings and HFCS-80? Or worse, grown in China by the same sorts of shady businesses that add melamine to gluten and dried milk or recycled cardboard to sausages.

And what if some human stem cells get into the mix? Ooops, mixup at the stem cell lab.... Would eating vat-grown human meat be cannibalism?

[Capitalocracy]

20. I agree with your concern about shady business practices...

but I sincerely doubt that there will be a stem cell "mixup", and in a proper laboratory environment with testing of the final product, I don't really see how a superflu or cancer virus would be created this way.

[eppur_se_muova]

26. Termites, raised on sawdust and newspapers ...

I think someone was considering that several years ago, don't know if they went through with it. Don't have a reference, alas. IIRC this was in Africa, in some parts of which termites (or their larvae??) are a traditional snack.

And let's not forget "Mexican caviar" ...

[Shagbark Hickory]

18. I'd sure like to.

[Nye Bevan]

22. I *want want want* a porterhouse tree! (nt)

[mainer]

30. Unfortunately, it's just a culture of muscle cells. No fat.

ergo, no marbling. Tough, needs marination, does not equate to rib-eye.

[jmowreader]

31. The Japanese are already working on this...

I assume they told Professor Post he wasn't to make his meat out of shit, though.

http://www.dailytech.com/Japanese+Make+Delicious+Nourishing+Steaks+From+Human+Feces/article21932.htm

[lumberjack_jeff]

32. Cool. Hanging meat farms.

Read the book "feed".

Our feeds caught a banner from a farm that invited visitors, where you could walk around and see everything grow, so we swerved for there and landed. There weren't many other people there that day so we were almost alone while we walked around.

It was real peaceful. We walked along holding hands, and our elbows rubbed, too. Violet wasn't wearing sleeves, so I could see the little frowns made by her elbows.

It smelled like the country. It was a fillet mignon farm, all of it, and the tissue spread for miles around the paths where we were walking. It was like these huge hedges of red all around us, with these beautiful marble patterns running through them. They had these tubes, the were bringing the tissue blood running around, up and down. It was really interesting. I like to see how things are made and to understand where they come from.

It was a perfect afternoon. They had made part of it into a steak maze, for tourists, and we split up in the steak maze and tried to see who could get to the center first. We were like running around corners and peeking and diving, and there were these mirrors set up to confuse you, so you'd see all these nonexistent beef hallways. We were big laughing and we'd run into each other and growl and back away. There were other tourists in the steak maze, too, and they thought we were cute.

Amazing book.