This may be one of the scariest stories I’ve read about food, “The New White Meat: Raising Chicken Nuggets in a Petri Dish” in the latest issue of New York magazine.
The story bills this as a major scientific advancement that could end the world’s reliance on, you know, dirty nasty, environmentally unfriendly livestock.
The nonprofit research consortium New Harvest is pushing for the use of lab-grown fish, chicken, and pork. The idea (a really bad one) is that “in vitro meat would reduce the demand for farm animals, slowing the spread of diseases like avian influenza and minimizing the meat industry’s enormous environmental footprint.” PETA’s on board too, having pledged $1 million to the first person to develop a commercially viable way to produce lab-chicken.
I’ll become a vegetarian before I knowingly eat petri-dish chicken or fish. Ick.
Then again, if we all have to launch into space on a mother ship because we’ve destroyed our planet…those petri-dish nuggets might look pretty tasty.
Virtual Farmgirl 
This NYT Magazine blurb (http://is.gd/gMUM) from November ’08 describes the texture as “jelly on fabric,” explaining that the cultivated muscle tissue needs the benefit of stretching/moving (and probably weight-bearing), which is what gives real meat (i.e. muscle) its satisfying texture. I think PETA could focus on more realistic steps, like trying to move more consumers to grass-fed livestock.
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I just rented from my local Dixon Library “The Future of Food”(.com if interested). Boy was that an eye opener for how our food in GM’ed, and I thought I knew about it! If you can find a copy it is worth watching. Also, I might buy a copy and send it around via the USmail, if you are interested.
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I watched “The Future of Food” after you suggested it! It’s available for immediate streaming/online viewing through Netflix (my university’s library also has a hard copy). I recently attended a lecture on GE foods, and the biologist giving the talk basically could have written the script for the entire movie; she talked about the political, social, and industrial chronology and some of the same examples (Percy Schmeisser, etc). The most amazing part was that she had NEVER SEEN THE FILM. She was citing all of these facts and using this timeline based on her own experience in the field, as a former researcher and corn geneticist for a Big Ag company before she had a major epiphany and got out of there. Whew.
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This NYT Magazine blurb (http://is.gd/gMUM) from November ’08 describes the texture as “jelly on fabric,” explaining that the cultivated muscle tissue needs the benefit of stretching/moving (and probably weight-bearing), which is what gives real meat (i.e. muscle) its satisfying texture. I think PETA could focus on more realistic steps, like trying to move more consumers to grass-fed livestock.
LikeLike
I just rented from my local Dixon Library “The Future of Food”(.com if interested). Boy was that an eye opener for how our food in GM’ed, and I thought I knew about it! If you can find a copy it is worth watching. Also, I might buy a copy and send it around via the USmail, if you are interested.
LikeLike
I watched “The Future of Food” after you suggested it! It’s available for immediate streaming/online viewing through Netflix (my university’s library also has a hard copy). I recently attended a lecture on GE foods, and the biologist giving the talk basically could have written the script for the entire movie; she talked about the political, social, and industrial chronology and some of the same examples (Percy Schmeisser, etc). The most amazing part was that she had NEVER SEEN THE FILM. She was citing all of these facts and using this timeline based on her own experience in the field, as a former researcher and corn geneticist for a Big Ag company before she had a major epiphany and got out of there. Whew.
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