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Sunday 28 July 2013

'In vitro' beef - it's the meat of the future !

A week tomorrow, at an exclusive west London venue, the most expensive beefburger in history will be nervously cooked and served before an invited audience. Costing somewhere in the region of £250,000, the 5oz burger will be composed of synthetic meat, grown in a laboratory from the stem cells of a slaughtered cow.

The scientist behind the "in vitro" burger believes synthetic meat could help to save the world from the growing consumer demand for beef, lamb, pork and chicken. The future appetite for beef alone, for instance, could easily lead to the conversion of much of the world's remaining forests to barren, manicured pastures by the end of this century.
 
The precious patty will be made of some 3,000 strips of artificial beef, each the size of a rice grain, grown from bovine stem cells cultured in the laboratory. Scientists believe the public demonstration will be "proof of principle", possibly leading to artificial meat being sold in supermarkets within five to 10 years.

Stem cells taken from just one animal could, in theory, be used to make a million times more meat than could be butchered from a single beef carcass. The reduction in the need for land, water and feed, as well as the decrease in greenhouse gases and other environmental pollutants, would change the environmental footprint of meat eating.

Read more on this story here.

OMG I just couldn't believe what I was reading. I checked, was it April 1st? But no it's a sunny day in July! Ah I thought that explains it then, too much sun has gone to their heads, oh how I wish this were true. This story is fact where will it all end?

All the best Janet

6 comments:

paul1976 said...

My god! 'FrankenBurgers' whatever next!!

Anonymous said...

GM Foods, now "In vitro beef". No thank you I will stay clear.

Kate

Lowcarb team member said...

Many thanks for your comments Paul and Kate.
I have to agree 'FrankenBurgers'. I will definitely be staying clear. But what the future of so called food will hold for future generations remains worrying.

All the best Jan

Unknown said...

If you truly want to be afraid of the future of food and this planet, listen to Sean Croxton's latest podcast on the book "Bet the Farm" (how food stopped being food):

http://undergroundwellness.com/podcasts/bet-the-farm-how-food-stopped-being-food/

I really fear for future generations sometimes.


Anonymous said...

I don't think this is so bad really; I eat a lot of meat but I don't have to take part in any of the 'care, raise, kill' part of getting that bacon or chicken to me. If I did I probably wouldn't eat it because I'm too soft.

If you can produce meat that is actually meat without having to kill a living thing then that must be good right?

Meat production is incredibly environmentally damaging and this would seem to alleviate that?

Is this any more a 'Frankenstein Food' than the strawberries that we eat which have been bred to be so sweet and large that they bear no resemblance to the tiny tart wild strawberries you still can see?

I try to eat free range organic food as much as possible but it is crazily expensive so when I don't have it I hate to think of the lives of the factory farmed animals that I am eating.

Just because something is new doesn't necessarily mean it is bad; as a Type 1 I'm the product of meddling with the natural order of things; I take synthetic insulin every day. If nature had its way I would have been off the planet more than 30 years ago...

Best

Dillinger

Lowcarb team member said...

Hi Dillinger

Thanks for the comment. I think comparing the discovery and synthetic manufacture of insulin and GM foods doesn’t stand up. Man has studied nature and brought fantastic advances that have saved countless millions of people including us. But not all of mans work has been for the benefit of mankind. GM food is not about improving quality of food, it is about taking over the worlds food resources and holding the people to ransom. Multinational outfits like Monsanto etc. are gaining a monopoly on the worlds food, and causing untold misery and poverty in many countries.

Eddie