I want to know what everyone thinks of this...Test Tube Meat

[mtnester]

I looked at this article, and for some reason this bothered the heck out of me...my first reaction is "no, I would not eat that." I have a feeling this will be controversial on about a zillion levels.

Here is a snip from the article with a link for the entire piece:

(snip)

By Lakshmi Sandhana|
02:00 AM Jun, 21, 2006


What if the next burger you ate was created in a warm, nutrient-enriched soup swirling within a bioreactor?

Edible, lab-grown ground chuck that smells and tastes just like the real thing might take a place next to Quorn at supermarkets in just a few years, thanks to some determined meat researchers. Scientists routinely grow small quantities of muscle cells in petri dishes for experiments, but now for the first time a concentrated effort is under way to mass-produce meat in this manner.

Henk Haagsman, a professor of meat sciences at Utrecht University, and his Dutch colleagues are working on growing artificial pork meat out of pig stem cells. They hope to grow a form of minced meat suitable for burgers, sausages and pizza toppings within the next few years.

Currently involved in identifying the type of stem cells that will multiply the most to create larger quantities of meat within a bioreactor, the team hopes to have concrete results by 2009. The 2 million euro ($2.5 million) Dutch-government-funded project began in April 2005. The work is one arm of a worldwide research effort focused on growing meat from cell cultures on an industrial scale.


More... http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71201-0.html?tw=wn_index_12

[flvegan]

1. Considering how

piss-poor so much of the drug research is spun and sold (then retracted once folks start to die and or sue) I still wonder how safe any of this is. Secondly, I'm still not putting that crap in my body.

[Exultant Democracy]

2. Not for me but anything that resembles meat sends me running

but I would rather have other people eating this junk then real animals.

[AlienGirl]

3. Gross, but not unethical

I don't know if I could ever get over the fact that it was animal tissue (ewwwwww) but I don't see an ethical problem, as long as the original samples were obtained without harming the donors.

Hey, they could even grow human muscle tissue for all the savor of cannibalism with none of the guilt! :eyes: I'd donate a muscle biopsy for that, then I could really tell people to "eat me!"

Tucker

[mtnester]

4. OK, that was funny

Tucker indeed!

[Exultant Democracy]

5. Soylent Green is Tucker?

[NMMNG]

6. Ethically it sounds ok

But otherwise....ewwwww! x(