Synthetic meat created from stem-cells

Dutch scientists are aiming to construct a hamburger from muscle tissue created using stem cells.

This could be quite a breakthrough in terms of reducing the number of animals used for meat in terms of rearing. It's clearly some way off, but I think it's rather an exciting development. Once the process is refined and made more efficient, this could be pretty revolutionary.

Thoughts, anyone?

With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.

If it'll shut the more obnoxious vegetarians and vegans up (probably not), I'm all for it.

Somehow you know that the time is right.

I have great hopes in that. Because it certainly would be more ethical.

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It would be more ethical, but to be honest I'm more excited that it's more environmentally friendly and we're looking at a potential solution to global hunger (I hope, anyway...)

With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.

I'm all for it. Apart from the moral arguments it will make meat a lot more assessible. It's probably the only thing I agree with PETA.

Pretty neat.

Whilst I'm all for more ethically sourced meat, this unfortunately will be a dead end.

It's effectively just a tissue culture, something we've know how to do for quite a while now, and would be extortionately expensive to actually produce any meaningful quantity of meat with.

I do look forward to other possible avenues for vat grown meat though.

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Well, yes, as it stands now, it would be grossly inefficient and expensive as a source of meat. But these are (I hope) the first baby steps towards a process that is economical and efficient.

With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.

Now see, all this is interesting, but the real question is thus:

Did it taste good?

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Last time I heard about something like this, the answer was no. And the texture was crap.

We don't even have enough food for the 6 billion people we already have. :/

Also, it doesn't make clear whether it's adult stem cells or embyronic stem cells. If the latter, it would be interesting to see the conflict between animal-rights advocates and opponents of embryo cloning/IVF on the matter...

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Anyone here heard about Biomeat? *shudders*

@HFM: Actually, we do have enough food (more than enough, in fact). We just have shit for distribution.

And exorbitant pricing, which makes it inaccessible to those that can't afford it.

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We've ben having more than enough food since The '60s.

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If it ends up working, it could not only solve a lot of problems with animal rights, but also even more significant and globally catastrophic ones with overgrazing, farmland usage, and emissions issues related to ruminant meat.

I'm cautiously hopeful.

edited 20th Feb '12 3:36:34 PM by Pykrete

Sounds awesome... I have always stated that I would go vegetarian if people could perfect an imitation meat that is just like the real thing, and synthetic meat is fine enough by my count. When this process improves enough, I shall favor synthetic meat.

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Completely and entirely different matter. Biomeat is about genetically modified animals designed to be as food, whereas this is tissue culture that won't survive outside the lab, and it won't even have a digest system and so it's not going to eat everything in its path.

edited 20th Feb '12 5:49:23 PM by IraTheSquire

Sounds good for both ethical and environmental reasons, though I hear a problem with meat grown this way tastes weird because it isn't exercised.

edited 20th Feb '12 5:47:13 PM by RTaco

If the taste and texture are not at least as palatable as regular meat it will not work as a suitable repalcement.

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I'm all for it if it means that meat can be made with less land and energy (general term) use than current meat farming (which is a horrible waste of petroleum from an economic standpoint).

@Master Inferno: I think the majority of PETA members are also against genetic engineering. That said, it will probably make economic/environmental vegetarians (the ones who object to meat because of aforementioned wastage) happy. (Though such vegetarians are rarely obnoxious to begin with.)

edited 20th Feb '12 7:45:36 PM by Ramidel

I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.

I'm all for synthetic meat but I don't know how much this will impact our farms. We still raise animals for other products like leather and milk from cows and eggs from chickens.

Of course, if they ever managed to make synthetic seafood, we may still save our oceans.

edited 20th Feb '12 7:59:51 PM by nightwyrm_zero

My question is this. How much energy does a meat growing lab need in the first place? You will still need to power an array of machines to produce the same amount of meat that a single cow or pig does.

Not to mention the various parts that are not eaten are used in other parts of industry.

edited 20th Feb '12 8:14:02 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

Not artificial meat, no.