So, the whole thing seems like a no-brainer, from many points of view. Also, anyone who has reservations about lab-grown meat should visit a slaughterhouse and then a laboratory, and compare the two. "If people are unwilling to stop eating animals by the billions, then what a joy to be able to give them animal flesh that comes without the horror of the slaughterhouse, the transport truck, the mutilations, pain and suffering of factory farming," mused Ingrid Newkirk, the co-founder and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.Īpart from the obvious ethical advantages (although cattle and chicken and pig farmers may violently disagree), there are clear environmental advantages as well: animal farming consumes enormous amounts of natural resources, from water to energy, not to speak of the deforestation that comes with the package. (Writing these lines makes me realize even more strongly why I'm a vegetarian.) In-vitro meat can be produced in a petri dish, at least in principle, by placing a few cells in a nutrient solution and coax them into proliferating. When we say we eat meat, we mostly mean eating muscular tissue of various animals. and international patents for the "industrial production of meat using cell culture methods." After much effort, van Eeelen also convinced the Dutch government to fund research in cell-cultured meats scientists are beginning to take the idea seriously. In 1999, Willem van Eelen, a Dutch entrepreneur, finally managed to get U.S. Dozens of laboratories around the world are pursuing the elusive feat of producing lab-grown meat, as Michael Specter explored in his somewhat recent New Yorker article " Test-Tube Burgers."
If this sounds like something from a scifi movie, think again. If we grow vegetables, why can't we grow meat? I can hear echoes of what I call the Frankenstein Syndrome, the irrational fear of science going where it hasn't gone before.
Which one would you choose? At least today, my bet is that the vast majority of people would choose the "natural" meats, as opposed to the lab-grown ones, even if scientists guarantee that there isn't any obvious difference between the two at the hormonal, nutritional, or molecular level. A yellow label is all you have to tell the difference between the two: natural vs. Further down the counter, you will find chicken breasts, natural and lab-grown, and, across the hall, natural and lab-grown tilapia fillets. Imagine that one day you will go to your local supermarket and find, along the usual cuts of sirloin and pork chops from the usual cows and pigs, lab-grown sirloin and pork chops.
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