

Pork grown in laboratory - dc2k08
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6936352.ece

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jamesbressi
This will answer your first question:

"[b]So far the scientists have not tasted it[/b], but they believe the
breakthrough could lead to sausages and other processed products being made
from laboratory meat in as little as five years’ time."

~~~
nfnaaron
Another reason not to eat ground-anything. One, it's harder to keep ground
meat clean; you can't clean off the e-coli once it's been mixed in.

Now we won't be able to tell whether we're eating real or synthesized sausage.

I would be reluctant to eat synthesized meat because we probably don't
understand (or manufacturers will ignore) the entire relationship between a)
the result of the complex process of growing meat on an active bone that's
running around, and b) how our bodies evolved to process and benefit from
_exactly_ that configuration of protein, nutrients and composition.

~~~
andrewvc
We'll just have to see how your diet compares to my lab meat, multi-vitamin,
Metamucil, acai berry extract, and Slim Fast diet.

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TNO
Does that make this pork kosher?

~~~
dfreidin
I suspect that it doesn't, since it's made from cells taken from a live pig,
and the rules are based on characteristics of the animal the meat comes from.
If they could synthesize it totally artificially, it might be kosher, but if
it comes from a pig, it's probably not.

~~~
bwhite
If it were truly synthesized from scratch -- individual atoms plucked one by
one from the air -- the answer to the question of whether or not it is kosher
is mu (<http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/M/mu.html>) as kosher is inapplicable
to non-food items.

Even if the donor cells are from non-kosher animals, there is a modest body of
responsa (case law) that seems to permit it. Some authorities permit the use
of gelatin made from non-kosher animal bones, claiming that the end product is
totally different in nature than the starting (non-kosher animal) product; and
that creating the gelatin required putting the animal product into a state of
total inedibility, thus removing it from the domain of kosher/non-kosher,
notwithstanding its subsequent reconstitution into edible food. Vat-grown meat
is supposed to be very similar if not identical to bio-meat, so it's unclear
if these authorities would rule the same way for vat-grown pork as they do for
pork-derived gelatin.

Even amongst sources who do not abide by the above ruling (and it appears a
majority do not), there may yet be hope for the kosher cheeseburger. If the
donor cells which are vat-cultured are from a kosher cow, the resulting food
may not be considered meat (with respect to the prohibition of mixing meat and
milk). Again, based on responsa regarding the gelatin question, gelatin made
from kosher bones and hides is parve (neither meat nor dairy). However, these
responsa seem to agree that one of the main arguments that this is so is
because one stage of gelatin creation is processing the raw material into what
is essentially non-food, thus eradicating its inherent "meatness" (but nothing
can remove its applicability to the question of kosher). This may or may not
be applicable to the case of vat-grown meat; however, if the process entails
some cells being stripped away from the meat and/or pulverized into something
inedible for a period of time, the resulting product may well be kosher but
not considered meat. The only question left would be: american cheese or whiz?

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maxklein
I forsee a future with 3 categories of meat: Synthetic, Factory and Free
Range. With free range reserved for the top 1% of the population.

~~~
JulianMorrison
I forsee a future with two categories of meat: "cruelty free" and
"contraband", with a voting majority viewing the latter as one small step
removed from serial-killing.

~~~
derefr
Do you actually forsee that, given human nature, or do you just like to wish
it were so?

~~~
JulianMorrison
Actually forsee, and _don't_ particularly wish it was so.

It's like when cars got seatbelts. First they were a good idea, then they were
the law.

It takes 20 years to completely turn over the most culturally productive
sector of society. Children will grow up in the world described by maxklein -
and I guarantee they will ask why cows and pigs are still dying. (There will
be an element of spite-the-rich hiding under the high moral tone.)

Twenty years after that, "abbatoir" will be a word that lives in history books
- and in horrific news stories of police raids on black-market Mafia farms.

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Freebytes
The lab of the United States Congress has had them beaten to this discovery
for years now.

On a serious note, I can see great potential for this, but the question is
raised: Does the damage caused by creating the input outweigh the benefits of
the output?

What is necessary to create it, and is it worth it monetarily? Does it truly
decrease suffering or is there some aspect we are missing?

~~~
jerf
We can't answer those questions until someone tries to scale it up, which will
be a ways off yet. However, it is not hard to imagine that it will be
radically more efficient than current systems; you won't be maintaining much-
less-useful organs in the pig, you won't be gated by the efficiency of the
pig's digestive system (which is good as biological digestive systems go, but
it's still a biological digestive system), you won't have the gut bacteria
creating undesirable and effectively uncontrollable methane emissions, etc.
(Some sort of waste will still exist, but it will be controllable, and the
odds that it can be profitably used in some other application are much higher;
methane is valuable when collected, it's just very difficult to collect from
mobile animals.)

It's hard to do a full accounting, but it's hard to imagine how it won't be a
much better environmental choice than current techniques.

This, by the way, is a small example of why I don't think total ecological
panic is entirely justified. There are bad things happening for sure and we
should take steps, but the implicit assumption that so many people hold that
technology has already reached its apex is very wrong. Can you imagine a meat
factory that takes the waste products from the meat, uses on-site solar power
to re-energize the waste products back into biological food, and feeds them
back to the meat with extremely high efficiency and only simple, safe inputs
to the system? I can. (When I say "panic", I mean the emotional response, not
that you shouldn't be concerned about anything.)

~~~
wooster
Cattle rancher here.

The amount of energy it takes to run a cattle ranch is dwarfed by the amount
of energy it takes to, say, air condition a moderately large office building.
In this case, you'd probably be air conditioning a huge factory. And what
would you feed the lab meat? Some sort of sugar slurry? I'm not sure how
that's any better than corn. Or, in your posited scenario of "re-energizing"
waste, are you going to cook it? That takes a lot of energy. If not, you're
going to end up with serious problems if you create a closed loop protein
system (think BSE).

Then the big energy inefficiencies come when you start packing, shipping,
refrigerating, and then throwing away (most of it, sadly, as most people don't
buy deep freezers) your protein.

~~~
jerf
The amount of energy _that you pay for_ is dwarfed by air conditioning,
certainly. But if we're going to talk environmental impact, you have to count
all the other inputs, too.

It would certainly start out less _economical_ , but I still wouldn't care to
bet about the final outcome if everything is considered. To some extent it
would depend on your accounting; "tons of carbon" isn't my personal favorite.

~~~
wooster
What other inputs? Sunlight and water? Grass is an efficient way of harvesting
solar energy. If you're talking about a growth cycle which doesn't involve
animal fertilizer inputs, you've got to have a huge external energy source
involved to manufacture fertilizer, so that's a pretty big cost of _not_
raising animals on available pastureland.

That, and don't even get me started on methane emissions, which is a handy way
to deflect discussions about CO2, but not a great way to actually do anything
productive (look up radiative forcing and the relative atmospheric lifetimes
of greenhouse gases).

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dagobart
I read most of the thread here but not all, so I hope I'm not repeating
anything yet said: I'm convinced that once we can produce meat rather than
butchering animals, why in the world would anybody want to farm animals? I
guess cows and pigs would be the next animals going to be extinct soon.

So I doubt it's that a good idea to be able to produce meat.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Well, let's see.... perhaps the farmed animals taste better, perhaps some
people enjoy the connection with the land and Nature by growing/raising their
own food, animals aren't just raised for meat: many animals (sheep, goats,
etc) are also raised because their wool/hair can be used for clothing, cows
provide leather, beef shanks probably aren't going to be grown in a lab, but a
slowly braised shank of beef is absolutely divine!

Put a simpler way: you can buy cheap beef at the grocery store, but the bison
farm down the road from me that sells grass-fed, pastured bison meat still has
a 4-6 month backlog on orders...

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leif
Is anyone else reminded of Better Off Ted?

~~~
noonespecial
"Tastes like despair" was the first thing that sprang to mind.

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mahmud
Yet another petri-dish I can not enjoy :-(

Seriously, this might be good news for people concerned about animal welfare
or about the CO2 emissions of livestock.

~~~
gregwebs
For anyone concerned about the environment or aninmal welfare, they should
find pasture raised animals, which sequesters carbon as the topsoil grows.
This lab meat is going to end up getting its energy from oil until our society
is powered by renewable sources of energy.

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jim-greer
"Shmeat is inescapable future of humanity!"

[http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-
videos/22197...](http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-
videos/221975/march-17-2009/world-of-nahlej---shmeat)

(Skip to 1:00 for relevant segment)

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stavrianos
Another moral question is made moot! Science, you've done it again!

~~~
ibsulon
Not yet, but soon.

