NASA has been looking into making meat in a lab. A recently published academic paper proves thatchicken nuggets no longer need to be attached to those clucking chickens.
In addition to the obvious life-saving benefits, manufactured meat would allow the manufacture to control how much nutrients are in each slice. For example omega 3, which is a good thing, can replace omega 6, which is not as good for you.
One reason some people are vegetarian is because of the environmental effects of raising livestock for human consumption; lab meat will make environmentally unfriendly farming obsolete.
Sure some vegetarians may have to reexamine if they should/can eat lab-made-meat, but the fact that sentient beings may no longer be killed for human consumption is good.
er…this is a kinda disturbing concept to me. do i want to eat some meat product made from a test tube? not so much. nebulous animal body parts as food…..i think i’d rather eat a veggie burger really. at least then i’d know kind of where it came from.
fake meat is a pretty cool concept, and as much as i tend to feel that animals aren’t really nessisary to our diets i also think that it tastes really good and makes me happy to sometimes eat. when it comes to a test tube however i think that living mammals don’t really need to be recreated. there are plenty of vegetarian knockoffs of meat that taste great and involve much less manipulation of living bodies in my opinion. they may not be sentient beings from our perspective but toying with nature is still a bit iffy when we consider that we still really understand very little about the makings of ourselves and how perfectly mastered our natural chemistry really is.
of course the same goes for those animals we consume regularly.
i think flesh is something to be respected and as is the case with many things nature really does it best.
I was thinking more about this.
The meat North Americans (and to a lesser extent the World) eats is not natural at all – so how can it be better?
If nature meant meat to be cultivated in factories with animals being juiced on steroids and hormones than yes, the meat people eat is very natural. But if nature designed animals to graze, be outside, have a decent living experience, then this manufactured meat may in fact be more natural.
Very good point Adam. Much of the meat ‘produced’ these days is extremely unatural. It is basically grown as if it were a vegetable and treated often with even less respect than a rutebega. It is pumped full of steroids, antibiotics and often kept in ridiculous conditions. I don’t feel like it is a natural process the way that much of North America and other parts of the World deal with meat products. I guess it is my personal ideal that we should be able to consume meat through more respectful means. I realize that most people don’t give thanks for their food let alone realize that whats on their plate was once a living entity. However in my personal experience I eat only meat that was raised without antibiotics and steroids and fed a meat free diet. Preferably locally raised and given a large roaming ground to live on. Then before I eat it I give thanks to the animal for providing me with the nutrients and life that it is giving me.
Ideally I wish that others would give thanks and respect to the animals that we use as food….but I realize that with mass consumption also comes mass production. I don’t support this mass genocide of animals even though I have been known to eat the occasional fish or other being. But to me recreating an animal part for food seems almost as bad as mistreating one that you raise because it involves looking at animals as food for our consumption alone rather than the fact that it is a life. Making meat that isn’t ‘alive’ seems to almost perpetuate the idea that carcass is made for our consumption and thus we should create and treat it however we like. I realize that it would mean not having to physically kill animals we eat….but I almost wish people WERE more aware of the killing that goes on to get meat to their tables because it would mean we are giving respect to the life that is given in order for us to eat. There is almost an organic process to it that is sacred….if done with love rather than greed. I realize not many others share this opinion….but I am a believer in all things organic. And I think eating animals can even fit into that equation.
happy meat=good meat