io9: meat

Vat-Grown Meat Alive in the Lab, But Not Ready to Eat

Lauren Davis — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:55:02 PST

Want real meat that's completely cruelty free? For the first time, scientists have grown a pork chop in a laboratory, a breakthrough that could lead to a future of meat that could be harvested without killing animals.

Researchers at Eindhoven University, backed by funding from a sausage manufacturer and the Dutch government, have grown pork from cells harvested from a live pig. Although meat from goldfish has been grown from a lab, this is the first time mammal meat has been grown in-vitro.

The researchers harvested myoblasts from the muscles of a live pig. These cells are programmed to repair damage and grow into muscle, and the team was able to culture a mass of muscle cells by incubating the myoblasts in a nutrient-rich "broth." The resulting meat is a bit soggy, and needs exercise to be as tough as the meat that comes from a once-living animal, but the team is looking for ways to "train" the meat and improve its texture. They are also looking to create a synthetic version of the incubation broth, which is current made from the blood products of animal fetuses.

Laboratory rules prevent anyone from actually tasting the meat, so we don't yet known how the flavor of soggy, lab-grown meat compares to that grown on pigs. But the researchers believe that in-vitro meats could be available to consumers in as little as five years. Cue the references to Arthur C. Clarke's story "The Food of the Gods."

But at least real science has nearly caught up to Veridian Dynamics:

Scientists grow pork meat in a laboratory [Times Online]

"Ethical" Beef Cows Could Be Engineered to Feel No Pain

Lauren Davis — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:07:41 PDT

Meat eaters looking for ways to enjoy a guilt-free hamburger have looked to ethical ranches and more humane slaughtering methods. But some suggest that instead of getting rid of factory farming, we should eliminate cow's pain.

In a paper published in this month's Neuroscience, philosopher Adam Shriver suggested that genetically engineering cows to feel no pain could be an acceptable alternative to eliminating factory farming. And some neuroscientists are on their way to making Shriver's suggestion a very real possibility. Zhou-Feng Chen, a neuroscientist at Washington University, has been working on identifying the genes that "affective" pain, the unpleasantness associated with painful sensations. Chen and his team have identified a gene called P311, and have found that mice who lack P311 do not have negative associations with pain, although they do react negatively to heat and pressure. Chen believes that, with the removal of the same P311 gene, livestock like pigs and cows could be engineered to feel no pain.

So what are the ethicists saying? Peter Singer, the famed bioethicist and author of Animal Liberation, has often advocated vegetarianism and veganism to avoid animal suffering, but says if livestock could be bred to feel no pain, he would not take issue with the cruelty aspect of factory farming. However Singer, and other ethicists note that, even with pain-free meat, the environmental impact of factory farming cannot be ignored.

Pain-free animals could take suffering out of farming [New Scientist]

California Store Sells Beef Jerky Reclaimed from Cows Mutilated by Aliens

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 09:30:00 PST

Maybe you've heard of the Alien Fresh Jerky store in Baker, California, where you can buy tasty, dried strips of beef taken from the carcasses of cows abducted and mutilated by aliens. It's the ultimate in recycling, actually - the aliens do their experiments, and people driving the highway through Baker get a tasty roadside treat.

Recently the fiends at NotCot visited the store and delivered up a nice photo essay of what you'll get if you shop at Alien Fresh Jerky. It's all natural!

Note: Aliens apparently do not abduct buffalo or tuna. So all you get is beef jerky. But check out the Notcot post to see all the other alien stuff you can get, meaty and otherwise.

Alien Fresh Jerky via Notcot, thanks to Marilyn Terrell

Vat-Grown Meat About to Hit Your Local Market

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 07:00:00 PDT

In five years, you'll be eating a hamburger that no animal died for. Instead, that burger will have been grown from a tiny sample of cells in a plant-and-mushroom bath. The cow who donated the cells will be frolicking in a meadow somewhere, having long forgotten the annoying poke from a tissue engineer with a syringe. At a meeting in Norway of the In Vitro Meat Consortium late last week, scientists and entrepreneurs gathered to discuss the future of "cultured meat," or meat that's essentially grown like cultures in a lab (pictured here). This meeting, the first of its kind, signaled the beginning of a viable industry around the production of vat-grown meat.

Attendees listened to talks with names like "What product features will influence an animal advocate's decision to move from vegetarianism to In Vitro Meat?" and went to panels devoted to "large-scale tissue engineering." While it's still more expensive to produce cultured meat than it is to raise chickens for the slaughter, the economics are changing as swiftly as the technologies to produce cultured meat. Mostly the barriers to market entry in a few years will be the meat industry itself, which may attempt to scare consumers away from the stuff or pull strings in government block the synthetic flesh via regulations.

For the record, cultured meat tastes just like regular meat — it's tissue-engineered muscle, made of exactly the same biological ingredients as meat from dead animals. It can also be a lot less fatty. Texture is one of the remaining issues, which is why proponents of cultured meat suggest it will first come to market as chicken nuggets and ground meat.

Andrew Revkin of the New York Times Dot Earth blog imagines vat meat as an eco-alternative:

But one could envision someday a model, say, of a solar-powered facility in southern California or Singapore basically turning sunlight and desalinated seawater into growth medium and then tons of cruelty-free, sustainable nuggets of chicken essence.

He goes on to ask Peter Singer, vegetarian ethicist and author of Animal Liberation, whether cultured meat is an ethical alternative to dead animal meat. For the record, Singer is pro-vat meat. He tells Revkin:

Whatever works best. If it is harder to move people [to stop slaughtering animals] on ethical grounds than it is to provide a sustainable humane substitute, I'm all for the substitute.

Hamburgers and sausage without the killing? Not sure I see a downside.

Can People Have Meat and a Planet Too? [Dot Earth]

Alien Torture Porn Is The Only Good Part Of Torchwood

Charlie Jane Anders — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 14:30:07 PST

This scene from last night's Torchwood almost made me puke and cry, it was that good. The whole business with the callous humans abusing yet another alien visitor for financial gain was incredibly well done, and really horrifying. It was one of the best examples of a humans-are-the-real-monsters story ever. Unfortunately, the other half of the episode was Torchwood at its rock-bottom worst. Click through for spoilers.

I'll stick to the Torchwood recap checklist I've been using, even though the show continues to be way less sexy and gay than it used to be. All of that space has been filled with idiotic drama, so I guess it's a fair trade-off.

Was there a plot? Yes, and it was awesome. Basically, these evil dudes have gotten hold of an alien space whale and they're cutting chunks of meat off it. The thing grows so quickly, and regenerates itself so fast, they can keep slicing it up forever without killing it. But it's in horrible pain and they have to keep giving it more and more sedatives. The creature looks really impressive, right until the end when it starts rampaging and suddenly looks like a muppet.

The naughtiness: The bit where Captain Jack hits on Rhys' secretary was actually pretty awesome. "Do you need a trucking license? I can go long distances..." Ha ha ha. If only that was all Captain Jack ever did, making sexy innuendo, this would be my favorite show.

How gay was it? If you have to tell us something is homoerotic, it just isn't. That should be rule number one, enforced by a bitchy drag queen with a cat-o-nine-tails. So the whole sequence where Jack and Rhys argue automatically loses what little gayness it might have had. Oh, and there may have been a a few glances between Jack and Ianto.

Who gets laid? Nobody, I think.

The drama: Ugh. The pain. I felt as though I was having psychic chunks carved off me by a man in a yellow helmet, every time Gwen screamed at Rhys or Jack. There was just too much screaming in this episode, and it felt as though everybody was Acting as hard as they could. Oh, and that business where Gwen says there's only one sexy man around, as far as she's concerned? And then she kisses Rhys while staring psycho-killerishly at Jack? Eww. Oh, and let's just pretend all the Toshi-flirts-with-oblivious-Owen stuff just didn't happen. This would have been such a great episode if it hadn't had any of the Torchwood people in it.

Will the kid-friendly edited version make sense to anybody? I can't possibly imagine how. The whole plot is guaranteed to make a kid's hair fall out.