Mad Science, Growing meat without animals?

[fawn]

This is pretty scarey. We've already been transitioned as a society to less than desirable food through factory farming. We can't sit back and watch our food evolve to something our bodies might not recognize. This is such a disturbing article to me.......
Health
Mad Science? Growing Meat Without Animals
By Charles Q. Choi, Special to LiveScience

posted: 19 November 2009 08:03 am ET
.Buzz up! del.icio.us Digg It! Newsvine redditComments (36) | Recommend (10).Winston Churchill once predicted that it would be possible to grow chicken breasts and wings more efficiently without having to keep an actual chicken. And in fact scientists have since figured out how to grow tiny nuggets of lab meat and say it will one day be possible to produce steaks in vats, sans any livestock.

Pork chops or burgers cultivated in labs could eliminate contamination problems that regularly generate headlines these days, as well as address environmental concerns that come with industrial livestock farms.

However, such research opens up strange and perhaps even disturbing possibilities once considered only the realm of science fiction. After all, who knows what kind of meat people might want to grow to eat?

Advantages touted

Increasingly, bioengineers are growing nerve, heart and other tissues in labs. Recently, scientists even reported developing artificial penis tissue in rabbits. Although such research is meant to help treat patients, biomedical engineer Mark Post at Maastricht University in the Netherlands and his colleagues suggest it could also help feed the rising demand for meat worldwide.

The researchers noted that growing skeletal muscle in labs — the kind people typically think of as the meat they eat — could help tackle a number of problems:

•Avoiding animal suffering by reducing the farming and killing of livestock.
•Dramatically cutting down on food-borne ailments such as mad cow disease and salmonella or germs such as swine flu, by monitoring the growth of meat in labs.
•Livestock currently take up 70 percent of all agricultural land, corresponding to 30 percent of the world's land surface, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. Labs would presumably require much less space.
•Livestock generate 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, more than all of the vehicles on Earth, the FAO added. Since the animals themselves are mostly responsible for these gases, reducing livestock numbers could help alleviate global warming.
Need to scale up

Stem cells are considered the most promising source for such meat, retaining as they do the capacity to transform into the required tissues, and the scientists pointed to satellite cells, which are the natural muscle stem cells responsible for regeneration and repair in adults. Embryonic stem cells could also be used, but they are obviously plagued by ethical concerns, and they could grow into tissues besides the desired muscles.

To grow meat in labs from satellite cells, the researchers suggested current tissue-engineering techniques, where stem cells are often embedded in synthetic three-dimensional biodegradable matrixes that can present the chemical and physical environments that cells need to develop properly. Other key factors would involve electrically stimulating and mechanically stretching the muscles to exercise them, helping them mature properly, and perhaps growing other cells alongside the satellite cells to provide necessary molecular cues.

So far past scientists have grown only small nuggets of skeletal muscle, about half the size of a thumbnail. Such tidbits could be used in sauces or pizzas, Post and colleagues explained recently in the online edition of the journal Trends in Food Science & Technology, but creating a steak would demand larger-scale production.

Dark thoughts

The expectation is that if such meat is ever made, scientists will opt for beef, pork, chicken or fish. However, science fiction has long toyed with the darker possibilities that cloned meat presents.

In Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson's epic sci-fi satire "Transmetropolitan," supermarkets and fast food joints sell dolphin, manatee, whale, baby seal, monkey and reindeer, while the Long Pig franchise sells "cloned human meat at prices you like."

"In principle, we could harvest the meat progenitor cells from fresh human cadavers and grow meat from them," Post said. "Once taken out of its disease and animalistic, cannibalistic context — you are not killing fellow citizens for it, they are already dead — there is no reason why not."

Of course, there are many potential objections that people could have to growing beef, chicken or pork in the lab, much less more disturbing meats. Still, Post suggests that marketing could overcome such hurdles.

"If every package of naturally grown meat by law should have the text, 'Beware, animals have been killed for this product,' I can imagine a gradual cultural shift," Post said. "Of course, we still have a long way to go to make a product that is even remotely competitive with current products."

Mad Science? Growing Meat Without Animals | LiveScience

[GME]

Egads, that's disgusting. Why do people continue to think they are smarter than nature (or God, depending on your view)? No good has ever come from it.

[Magicsmom]

You've got to wonder if PETA has had their fingers into this.

[JazzleBug]

Disgusting is the right word! I'm all for making leaps and bounds in science and technology, but this most definitely does not appeal to me. Makes me want to go out and buy my first grass fed beef. Or start raising my own beef.

[CherylB]

I guess we're REALLY going to have to read the labels, from now on... what will they think of next? The world is just moving way too fast for me.

[fawn]

Cheryl, it's moving way too fast for most of us girlfriend. We need to slow it down. The farther ahead we get with food and the human frame, the farther behind we too shall fall in health.

In the last 10,000 years, our bodies have not evolved as our food supply has changed.

We should have learned from the tragedy of refining.

[Joy-FL]

Originally Posted by fawn

This is pretty scarey.

Baseless speculation is scary?

Seriously, note the utter lack of any reference to current events aside from growing penis tissue in rabbits. (Human tissue? For transplants? It doesn't say.) It's fear mongering.

DON'T BE SUCKERED, PEOPLE! Critical thinking! Think beyond what the article writer WANTS you to think!

Think about how GREAT it would be if they could do this. It takes less than two minutes to come up with some thrilling ideas on your own. Free transplant organs! Truly cruelty-free meat! Solve world hunger!

Originally Posted by fawn

...you are not killing fellow citizens for it, they are already dead — there is no reason why not."

Um, hello. Human meat tastes nasty, like all other carnivore meat.

I find it funny that people think we've been writing novels about how AWFUL and morally reprehensible certain things are since the beginning of time... and suddenly human nature is going to change to find them just peachy! once the first factory opens.

[Kerry]

for some reason after reading this I got visions of Wall-e in my head with the humans who had to leave earth...

[Looweewoo]

I'm with Joy.

1) It's a scare article, throwing in "cannabalism" is a red flag the size of Texas.
2) If it's good enough for transplantation, it's real meat.
3) I doubt that it can be made really cost effective, considering that you have to grow and then preprocess the plants to feed even lab meat.
4) I'm mostly worried that they won't grow fat along with the muscle.

[Joy-FL]

Originally Posted by Looweewoo

I'm mostly worried that they won't grow fat along with the muscle.

I shouldn't laugh, though. You're right.

[Looweewoo]

Yeah, but if they could grow a perfect steak, with luscious marbling and no gristle, which was consistent day after day... I would try it.

[CherylB]

It's great news for transplant patients; I used to be married to one. But I prefer to eat things that God has made, the old fashioned way.

[Looweewoo]

I don't mean to be argumentative, but just so I'm clear, I believe in eating things that God has made too. But, one, God, as I understand God, made everything, nothing is made that God did not make. Two, the process they are talking about (the real science, not the scare article) is not really making anything, it's growing things that God made. I understand the difference between "on the hoof" and "in the lab" and I just don't feel that either is more or less Godly. YMMV.

So I would try it. I would be saddened to see humanity depend upon it, but I would try it.

This is not even new. There have been people growing heart tissue in the labs since the 1910's. You have to keep it trimmed very thin so that blood can permeate it, but it grows and beats. You can do it with most tissue, but the heart is more impressive since it beats. These people have just found ways to grow it into a larger structure.

[Joy-FL]

I went on a nursery tour recently and learned that they can clone plants from single cells. You chop up a plant and put one cell in a nutrient solution and it grows back into a whole plant. Doesn't even matter which part it is, or what kind of plant. Neat, huh?

[Looweewoo]

Ya, very cool! I did that with orchids for a while, with varying success. Sometimes I would get a whole bottle full and other times nothing. It was fun, as a hobby, but I never ended selling them as I told my wife I was going to do. Mostly I planted them in trees around the neighborhood.

I just realized that's what I should do with my mosses! You can blend moss into milk or yogurt and it grows where ever you spread it. I really want moss to grow in my little indoor gardens and I've been scraping little chunks out of the edges of buildings around here, I should just clone a bunch.

[fawn]

For organ transplants wonderful, for our food chain and selfish consumption, I vote no.

You misquoted me joy. That was from the article, not me.

[tempted_by_food]

next they'l be growing steaks in plant pots on windows sills

[GME]

Originally Posted by tempted_by_food

next they'l be growing steaks in plant pots on windows sills

That, I might do.

[flatferenghi]

FRANKENHEN, FRANKENHOG, scarier than the KILLER TOMATO. Love & Profits: FLATFERENGHI

[Looweewoo]

Originally Posted by revitol

thanks dear very useful

I agree, first that FF is a dear person, who never tries to offend and always tries to add good cheer to our board, second that the good cheer and humor are among the most useful things in a world where people take themselves too seriously and get offended at the slightest breech of what they think the proper order of things should be.

Thank you FLATFERENGHI, whoever you are, for your very useful posts. Love long and Profit.

BTW, the spam post above has been flagged.

[JazzleBug]

Originally Posted by flatferenghi

FRANKENHEN, FRANKENHOG, scarier than the KILLER TOMATO. Love & Profits: FLATFERENGHI

That's hilarious.