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| Cheeseinvitroburger in paradise? I don’t think so |
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You walk in the door after a long day of work and immediately wonder what’s for dinner. BBQ ribs? Pork roast? Chicken nuggets? Invitroburgers?
Yes, that’s right – now the world is growing meat in a lab instead of on a farm. The first in vitro meat symposium was held earlier this spring in Norway. Yes, in vitro meat – as in, meat grown in a lab, from cell culture, all in the name of environmental stewardship and animal welfare.
How does it work? Well, according to Jason Matheny of New Harvest, a group dedicated to searching for meat substitutes, cultured meat is meat produced in vitro, in a cell culture, rather than from an animal. The production of cultured meat begins by taking a number of cells from a farm animal and proliferating them in a nutrient-rich medium.
Cells are capable of multiplying so many times in culture that, in theory, a single cell could be used to produce enough meat to feed the global population for a year. After the cells are multiplied, they are attached to a sponge-like “scaffold” and soaked with nutrients. They may also be mechanically stretched to increase their size and protein content. The resulting cells can then be harvested,
seasoned, cooked and consumed as a boneless, processed meat, such as sausage, hamburger or chicken nuggets.
If it weren’t for the fact that April has already passed, I would consider this a very poor April Fools’ joke – but it’s not. This is real, and happening in our world.
Does anything sound more unappetizing than cellular grown steak? Or your sausage patty grown on scaffolding? Chicken in the form of nuggets isn’t the healthiest entrée in the world, but grown in a lab? This gives Hell’s Kitchen a whole new twist. In a world where corn that is genetically modified is questioned at every turn and even banned in some countries, it’s unbelievable that now we are willing to consider consuming meat grown in a lab. The only word for it is “crazy.”
Today we have fewer cows producing more milk and fewer beef cattle producing more pounds of edible product. We are burning corn for heat, changing corn into fuel, making clothing, coffee mugs, plastic bags and corn meal muffins from a little golden kernel.
Soybeans are not only used for pig feed, chicken feed, cow feed and people food but we are now running school buses all over our nation on diesel fuel from the small protein-packed bean. We even have small communities where people flip a light on because of gas that is produced and harnessed for electricity from cow manure.
We have the safest food supply produced from farms that are the most efficient operations in the world. Livestock producers have been forced into not only being the best stewards of their livestock but are now having to walk a tightrope of making ends meet with feed prices that have tripled and fuel prices that are through the roof.
Tell me, why do we need in vitro-produced meat? Wouldn’t these research dollars be better used for disease prevention? Or finding a cure for cancer? Or figuring out why so many parents are struggling to teach an autistic child?
Can we please put these research dollars into feeding hungry children and putting warm clothes on cold kids in Romania?
Wouldn’t it be better to give a shot in the arm to a local Salvation Army? Or, how about helping that family whose dad just lost his job because of a failing auto industry? Let farmers feed the world and researchers find the answer to lowering gas prices. |
| 8/7/2008 |
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