"In-Vitro Burger - aka Tanks, like in SAAB" Topic

The world just keeps getting a little stranger, every day:

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This quote cracks me up, since it's such a bold-faced lie:

"Red beet juice and saffron have been added to bring out its natural colors".

The natural color is the color it is, before colored juices, or dies are added to it.

"Success, in Post's view, would mean not just a tasty burger, but also the prospect of finding a sustainable, ethical and environmentally friendly alternative to meat production".

Call me a traditionalist, but I think I'll stick to old fashioned, dead cow.

Of course, you know that once they can do this, they'll be clamoring to make entire humans this way too, and not just skin, or other parts, like is already being researched, and grown in labs now.

Hopefully, they don't decide to put them on the menu too.

It certainly is a brave new world.

Soylent Green/In-Vitro Burgers anyone?

McD's better be worried, since they may have some cheap competition.

No doubt, if the stuff is even reasonably palatable, people will be fighting over the "recipe" for this new food, not to mention the factories where it is grown.

That might make for an interesting twist to your next near-future, or Sci-Fi scenario.

This "meat" never had to exercise, expend energy to find food, etc.
Food is more complex than the sum of its parts. This probably as close to beef as a fish oil capsule is to Salmon.

Carniculture is an old sci-fi idea.

Wasn't KFC accused of doing this instead of using "real" chickens?

The hubbub surrounding genetically altered and/or irradiated foods would be nothing compared to the uproar generated by this. (This, of course, is a first world problem. The starving people around the world could care less if their food was vat-grown, genetically altered, irradiated.)

McD's better be worried . . . if the stuff is even reasonably palatable . . .

"Reasonably palatable" would be a step up for McDonald's.

Unless it's an arguement about possible safety or economy, I don't see why this *should* generate any controversy.

This type of process would create edible tissues without any nervous sytem at all; a foodstuff that cannot suffer, and thus frees us from the need to harm another sentient (or even sapient) creature, just to eat (admittedly delicious) meat.
And since we'd only be growing the parts we use, there would likely be considerably less waste created (unless the process itself is somehow wasteful).

Mr Elmo's complexity arguement is a valid one: we can probably simulate many of the effects of the tissues being part of an actual animal (electrically stimulated contractions, for one), but there will likely be something missing that makes it not quite as good as "real" meat, although the moral benefits seem to me to outweigh a slight reduction in nutrition or tastiness.

"Unless it's an arguement about possible safety or economy, I don't see why this *should* generate any controversy."

Tell that to the cattle industry. They will claim safety issues whether there are any or not.

"No doubt, if the stuff is even reasonably palatable"

That's what salt is for…. ;-)

In the last 15 years, tissue culture has moved from an arcane art to a regular process – so much so, many vegans studying and working in the field have raised to possibility of biopsying their own livers, then culturing them as a source of iron-rich ethical meat for themselves. Literally, becoming heterotrophic like plants.

Not sure it's been done yet, it is considered an acceptable idea by most vegetarians.

That's probably what kicks off the zombie apocalypse.

No amount of salt will cover that up, I suspect.

Unless the zombie virus is slug-based.

Well, in that case, lots of salt will work.

I imagine the latest women's facial craze of having slugs traipse all over their faces may be responsible for that, should it occur.

It'll probably be due to an errant one crawling up the nose of an dozing customer, and taking control of their brain.

Jonathan Swift was ahead of his time with "A Modest Proposal"!
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Soon you'll have to visit a zoo just to see a chicken,cow or a sheep……….oh there won't be any zoos either………

Yep, there's a song about that too, from Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, called Karn Evil 9.

Here's the appropriate verse:

"Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends
We're so glad you could attend
Come inside! Come inside!
There behind a glass is a real blade of grass
Be careful as you pass.
Move along! Move along!"