Manufactured Meat : Beyond Geneticallly Engineered Food
July 8th, 2005 | Filed under: Biotech, Future, Health, Scary, Science | 11 Comments »
Jason Matheny and his colleagues at University of Maryland have described, in the journal Tissue Engineering, methods to grow meat in a lab. Scary, feasible, and has benefits? [article](pdf)
Relative to conventional meat, cultured meat could offer a number of benefits. With cultured meat, the ratio of saturated to polyunsaturated fatty acids could be better controlled; the incidence of foodborne disease could be significantly reduced; and resources could be used more efficiently, as biological structures required for locomotion and reproduction would not have to be grown or supported. Whether or not cultured meat is economically practical is a different question. A number of tissue engineers have speculated on its prospects.
via Reuters
It’s one of those ideas that’s good, but gross. If this ever became cheaper than slaughterhouses, then we might be able to use it to combat world hunger . . . but the “ick” factor is just really difficult to get over.
Meaty Things Of The In-vitro Style
I hate how meat is produced, but I love it so much. Luckily, there might be a solution to my dilemma (direct link to the pdf). Lab grown meat. Mmm-mm-mm. via Future Feeder…
I wonder how vegetarians react to this?
[...] Researchers have figured out how to grow meat in a labratory, without the cow. Gross, cool, and usefull all at the same time. [...]
Future Feeder
Three cool links in a row from Future Feeder (“Feeding Technology, Design + Architecture”), one my new favorite weblogs: Santiago Ortiz’s Spheres project: A multi-lingual, community-constructed visualization of the linguistic and philosophical conne…
[...] Manufactured Meat. Researchers at The University of Maryland have described, in the journal Tissue Engineering, methods to grow meat in a lab: Relative to conventional meat, cultured meat could offer a number of benefits. With cultured meat, the ratio of saturated to polyunsaturated fatty acids could be better controlled; the incidence of foodborne disease could be significantly reduced; and resources could be used more efficiently, as biological structures required for locomotion and reproduction would not have to be grown or supported. Whether or not cultured meat is economically practical is a different question. A number of tissue engineers have speculated on its prospects. [...]
I think what is being missed here is the quality of lab meat. Muscle tissue develops best through use. This is what gives meat certain textures that may or may not make it better. How can lab grown meat be exercized? In addition to this is the issue of flavor, anyone who knows anything about meat knows that the most flavorful meat is that which is next to or near a bone. Will there be bone grown for the meat to develop on as well? This also goes back to the execize issue. What of cuts of meat? Will the meat be grown as replications of certain muscles or muscle groups or will it all be a non-specific meat, ambiguous as to what cut it ought to represent? Again this affects both texture and flavor. If these things cannot be accomodated we will have an utterly unappealing “meat” product. Furthermore some people like various organ meats. If we are to grow “lab meat” that truly meets or surpasses the quality of normal meat all these things must be accounted for. I have to wonder why this would be better than just raising an actual cow or pig or whatever other livestock that would be used for meat?
i think the lab meat idea is great but i like the thought of a cow dieing for me. that he gave his life for me! obviously i’m not a vefetarian i perosnally wouildn’t eat this meat but it would cheap and a valuable aid for those who need it most. it could be an aid to starving children or countries. it could have it’s own offshoot of redcross.!
I love this site. Good work…
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If you take a look into the future, it might be possible that meat will not be produced out of animals any more, due to urgent reasons of efficiency, ecology and world hunger, animal rights or health. It might be produced directly from cells, using tissue engineering methods. The result is called “cultured meat” or “in vitro meat”. Improved vegetarian meat might be another option for the future. See http://www.futurefood.org.