It's (not) alive! "Franken-meat" lurches from the lab to the frying pan

A hamburger that looks like one you'd get at any fast-food restaurant comes with a price tag of $330,000 — and it isn't even made out of natural meat. When volunteers taste it on Monday, in front of rows of VIPs and TV cameras, they'll be eating the first publicly available burger that comes from a laboratory instead of a dead animal.

To produce the patty, researchers will mix lab-grown beef muscle cells with salt, egg powder and bread crumbs. Beet juice and saffron will be added to give a more natural color to the bloodless burger. It'll be fried up in a pan, and seasoned with a dash of salt and pepper. With any luck, the burger should taste pretty much like your typical ground beef. . .

Study after study has shown that the way farming is currently done will be simply unsustainable by 2050, due to rising population and a growing hunger for meat in countries such as China and Brazil. Plant-based protein substitutes could help head off the crisis — but so far, veggie burgers haven’t exactly taken hold in mass markets.

Full article here.

As an aspiring vegetarian, I commend the scientists involved in this effort.

Of course, it would be ideal if individuals could simply suppress their desire to eat flesh and content themselves with the numerous meat substitutes already on the market, but I suspect that would be expecting too much out of people. No, whatever replaces meat and leather is going to have to contain elements of the actual animals humanity is fond of exploiting, if it is to really take off.

Thank you, Admin, for that illuminating post.

Celtiberian wrote:As an aspiring vegetarian, I commend the scientists involved in this effort.

Of course, it would be ideal if individuals could simply suppress their desire to eat flesh and content themselves with the numerous meat substitutes already on the market, but I suspect that would be expecting too much out of people. No, whatever replaces meat and leather is going to have to contain elements of the actual animals humanity is fond of exploiting, if it is to really take off.

I don't really expect this to become a widespread phenomena in the near future, but I sincerely hope that in time such alternatives as the one highlighted in this thread become a staple in our society. The method they use to create this artificial "meat" IS invasive, but it is far superior to the inhumane practices of the meat industry that are common today, there is no contest. But more than that, even if you aren't a proponent of animal rights, the facts don't lie. The industry as it functions today is unsustainable, and unless an alternative is utilized en masse, who is to say what the future holds in regard to this matter. As with so many other things, it will probably have to reach its boiling point before anything is done on a larger scale.