SYNTHETIC BEEF

Today, the world's first synthetic burger will be eaten.

Here's a quandry: meat that is manufactured in a lab that may one day go a long way to addressing many problems including the ethical treatment of animals, the freeing up of much land and the cheaper, less environmentally taxing potential to feed the world's less fortunate.

Divisive, certainly - and not least because it has been funded by one of Google's co-founders.

Any thoughts?

Cheers,

JBArk

I'm personally not so hot about it. I don't see it being better for health than pastured, ethically-raised animals. I've been really burned in my life because of the type of wheat we have today, developed in the '50s. It literally made me lose 10 years of my life, since tests wouldn't show that my body couldn't handle it (as many others are now discovering too, if you do a google search on the subject).

My problem with it is that having a cloned-type meat means that you only eat the same type of meat over and over. The beauty of eating real food is that different animals (even from the same species, but grown on a different environment) have different nutrients to offer you. I'm not talking about the 5-10 different well-known vitamins here, but also other types that our science hasn't cataloged yet. So when I eat a rabbit in the US and a rabbit in my native Greece, I can get slightly different compounds, and as importantly, maintain a healthy balance of various bacteria in my gut (which is very important). Same goes for the veggies, not just for meat.

With cloned food, you don't get that diversity. It is a similar situation to the type of foods we eat today, which are not as diverse as what people were eating 100 or 1000 years ago. Just 130 years ago in Estonia, people were eating over 60 types of wild vegetables (plus the non-wild ones). Today, they only eat the non-wild ones (which usually are about 50 species out of the 4000 edible ones worldwide). As a result, the gut bacteria of Western people is now very different (== problematic) to that of what aboriginal people have (who still eat a proper human diet in the wild). Having the wrong gut bacteria is among the biggest reasons why the West has so many illnesses today ("diseases of Civilization" ).

So that's my opinion on the matter. I'm afraid that if we start cloning meat, we'll end up with 9-10 types of it, and each being exactly the same as the last one we ate. It might be good for the welfare of animals, but not for my fragile health. This is the reason why I still eat only wild fish and not farmed ones, even if I know that our seas are close to collapse. Not because I have no empathy for these fish, but because my body has seen such an abuse during my bad health years, that right now I need the best of the best to keep it up.

So basically, I guess, AS LONG AS I can still buy pastured/wild meat/fish, I don't mind such an option existing in the market. But I don't want this imposed to me, I need traditional, real food for me to survive. I don't need another "new, better wheat" type thing in my life. While such an imposition might not happen for another 50 years, I wouldn't want "another me" in the future not having the option of REAL food.

Excellent point (I abridged your post a little for emphasis). Akin a little to having only one strain of corn, though without the extinction danger inherent in single strain crops.

This just posted:

THE TASTE TEST

And a short reportage:

Video

It's difficult to argue against this if you seriously consider the current state of things - demography, demand and sustainability.

Most of the population (or at least, the first world population that really sets the pace in over-consumption) eats too much animal protein, and the time required for changing that mentality seems much longer than the time left to cross the event horizon as far as ecological balance is concerned. Assuming we haven't crossed it yet, that is.

If production of synthetic meat is efficient enough, it will inevitably attract the meat lobbies. The progressive replacement of factory farming looks definitely good as long as there is a demand for cheap meat, and the traditional ways of raising cattle should stay around as a more pricey alternative. If real animal protein gets paid at the price it really deserves, and at a much lower scale of production but with decent quality standards both for the customer and the animals, where's the problem?

Of course, a large population mass would be consuming a synthetic product surely poorer in nutritional value, but again, what's the alternative? I mean besides alien invasion.

nope I would never eat that.
Id rather switch to insects than eat some synthetic meat. The entire world can get all nutrition requirements met if they just ate insects(as a protein source). It is arguably the most nutritious animal protein to consume anyway and most traditional cultures have eaten insects for a long long time.

Also..what about dairy and butter? Are they going to synth that too? I don't even eat beef really..maybe once ever couple months. But I do eat grass fed raw cheese and butter, and I get it from a local farm that is polycultured grassland.

It should not be a choice between factory farming or frankenstien synthetic meat.

Well, this is obviously conjecture, but I suspect if a large portion of the world's population suddenly switched from meat to the consumption of quadrillions upon quadrillions of insects, this population skewing would likely result in some serious ecological imbalances, the result of which would be too conjectural even for this conjecture.

Plus, Euuuuuhhh! (would you like an ant garnish on that praying mantis rogan josh?)

(just kidding, I know it's a cultural bias, but one I would not be able to overcome).

At any rate a with a shift to insects we'd be back to square one with an ecologically untenable and unsustainable source of food. The problem is overpopulation and the exponentially increasing consumption of non-renewable resources. Not having to raise and feed animals on land and slaughter, butcher and distribute them in exponentially increasing numbers to match our population growth would go a long way to addressing this problem (or at least a part of it).

I think the production of synthetic meats from real bovine (and eventually poultry and porcine) stem cells is an interesting technology, but a potential ethical and pragmatic quagmire also. I am not convinced, but rather intrigued. I wanted to see the panoply of views here, given the intelligent and varied minds on the nexus.

Cheers,
JBArk

no you can raise insects in a polyculture food forrest very easily. It is the most sustainable animal product to be eaten and there is lots of info on the net about this. You don't even need grassland. You can raise insects in a food forest type of farm situation. Not all insects are going to eat your crops. You can also raise insects yourself in your back yard very very easily to sustain yourself with little space.

You can also make insect meat taste pretty good.

I am not convinced we need to stop raising other animals anyway. We just need to stop factory farming asap and all get onto polyculture.

I profess ignorance - but can you produce enough in a small backyard (or an urban apartment) to provide the protein requirements of an entire family? Every day and year round? That sounds like a lot of insects and a lot of space.

Or would it be farmed on land where veggies are grown? in that case could enough be realistically farmed to feed 400 million people in North America?

Just wondering. You can also make cow brain very tasty but I just have a rather strong psychological blockage to these kinds of things. I wish I didn't, but there you have it.

JBArk

http://www.theguardian.c...ating-insects-feed-world
http://www.theguardian.c...e-human-food-security-un
^that one is about feeding animals with insects but we could just eat the insects.

http://news.nationalgeog...ience-food-bugs-beetles/
http://channel.nationalg...videos/cricket-stir-fry/
http://www.treehugger.co...w-impact-meat-video.html
http://www.livescience.c...le-meat-alternative.html

Of course if all cities/municipalities etc were smart they would zone everything so that all people with a yard could keep a few chickens or something as well..we don't properly manage our own resources, yet we are obsessed with trying to get everyone else in less developed countries to do so. There is just so much that we could be doing based on our current scientific understanding that would not require cloned meat to come into the picture.

I think science can also back up the fact that it seems now than mono anything is not good for us. That is not how biological systems thrive. Nature is dynamic and it is that dynamic diversity that made us more genetically robust in the past. Our modern mono cultured clone diet has weakened us.

I think next summer I will try raising some insects. I have no problems eating them I have eaten grasshoppers, ants and worms in the past. I would like to have a goat for raw milk but I don't think my landlord would want a goat running around here. He said I can keep bees and stuff though.

Wow - thanks for the links. I read three but had to take a pause. My stomach was churning and I had to wipe the "ick" expression from my face. These cultural bias things run deep, don't they? I wish I could imagine eating insects, but there are enough widely accepted edibles (eggs, most seafood, tripe, certain vegetables...) that elicit the gag reflex in me that I doubt I'll ever get there.

I will read the rest though. I find it encouraging that there are at least the vestiges of solutions out there and that they are getting mainstream media attention.