Test-Tube Meat: Coming Soon To A Plate Near You?

It sounds improbable -- and more than a little creepy -- to eat meat produced in a lab, but in the latest New Yorker, Michael Specter explains why test-tube meat may just be the steak of the future.

In vitro meat works by taking the meat from one animal in order to create the volume of meat from one million animals. Currently, pig stem cells are being placed in "nutrient broth-filled petri dishes," where the cells rapidly grow, NPR explains. Specter spoke with scientists who claimed him that there would be no difference in taste between lab-produced meat and animal meat.

Some of the reasons to produce in vitro meat, Specter told NPR, include the positive impact on animal welfare (PETA approves) and lowering greenhouse gas emissions, in which global livestock is responsible for almost 20%.

It may still sound like a bizarre concept now, but who knows, maybe in 50 years eating animal meat will be considered archaic.

Comments

[brokerallen]

12:22 AM on 05/26/2011

They can make it and sell it but the government better require it be labeled for what it is. The USDA has a history of siding with big business on labeling such things as radiated meat and genetically modified food. Time to call your congressperson and demand labeling.

[RedandGreen]

08:51 PM on 05/23/2011

While science was conceiving of, and developing "test-tube meat" for so long, I, for one had asked of intimates, why can't science grow meat cells that would be grown without the harmful properties of red meat, while eliminating the further slaughter of animals. So, to read about the reality is excellent news to me. However, the real struggle begins. Meat growers, processors and retailers will all gang up on the developers with every conceivable lie and exaggeration they could muster, to stop it. Free market practitioners are like that, you see. Everything be damned save profit making.

[TomP100]

09:33 AM on 05/21/2011

Another vile Franken-food to just say no to. I'll keep hunting and buying local buffalo, thank you very much. Major "ewwww" factor.

[organicconnect]

04:40 AM on 05/21/2011

Another franken-food... This is another deal that will turn out to be less about "saving the world" and more about a patentable product and profits protected by intellectual property law.

[JeanRR]

01:55 PM on 05/21/2011

And this one will be championed by the same people who are railing against genetically modified foods.

[deweydecimal]

01:06 AM on 05/22/2011

Yea no thanks, no vat-pig will ever rival a pig raised well on a farm.

[Jake Thomas]

02:56 AM on 05/21/2011

I thought thats where hotdogs came from!

[Christine Casabar]

12:43 AM on 05/21/2011

Better living through chemistry? I think not. There is something soul-less about growing food in a petrie dish. There are so many small interactive components in food that a small change can be disasterous to your health. Look at the butter/margarine debacle. We need to fix our food supply -- sometimes going backward is going forward.

[Tammy Ashley]

02:35 PM on 05/20/2011

This is one of the most disgusting things I have ever heard of food wise. Yuck!

[Milwaukeetj1]

02:27 PM on 05/20/2011

Damn that's a gross headline....Test Tube Meat.....no bueno!

[pegosus]

02:25 PM on 05/20/2011

Will this also guarantee bacteria free "meat"? If so, I'm for it.

[SuperMom101]

10:13 AM on 05/20/2011

Will they label the USDA grade meat the way they do now?

Hamburger meat: Cloned cow, feed genetically modified corn and administered growth hormones and antibiotics, washed with ammonia - gas inserted in packaging to keep decaying flesh looking fresher longer

Oh wait...they don't need to label cloned meat, GMO food products or .... and we have plenty of PhDs and government experts telling us everything is fine with our food supply.

You know what's strange... America (and her children) have never been fatter or sicker.

[StephenJK]

02:08 AM on 05/21/2011

The real sickness is with the system constantly catering to overpopulation. Finding new and improved ways to cater the ever-burgeoning population is a psychological sickness. SMH.

[pepper1311]

03:49 AM on 05/20/2011

Now they really live with out us.

[jsarets]

02:07 AM on 05/20/2011

This is the future.

Consider Quorn for instance. This is a mycoprotein meat analogue produced from a type of fungus in the mold family called Fusarium venenatum, cultured on a nutrient solution based on corn syrup and ammonia (finally a nutritious use for corn syrup!). The fungus consumes the sugar and nutrients and grows a fibrous network of protein-rich mycelia.

This is a conceptual step in the direction of in-vitro meat, without the need for tissue scaffolding or external organ systems mimicking the more complex animal physiology. Perhaps, with some clever genetic engineering, we can get animal cells to grow more like fungal cells.

Another way to go is to mimic incredibly efficient aquatic ecosystems with multiple trophic levels in a closed aquaculture environment, for example raising rainbow smelt (small schooling oily fish in the salmon family) feeding on copepods (tiny planktonic crustaceans) feeding on cyanobacteria (microalgae). This is probably the most efficient way to farm omega-3 rich animal protein in-vivo.

[shthar]

02:00 AM on 05/20/2011

NEVER!

I'll eat Soylent Green first.

[gdauth]

10:55 AM on 05/20/2011

If the Rs have their way with Medicare, that may be their next solution.

[Atari]

06:28 PM on 05/25/2011

As the worlds population increases, you might have to. Make Room! Make Room!

[Pollytiques]

12:58 AM on 05/20/2011

Shades of Gene Rodenberry. I have always dreamed of just walking up to a machine in my kitchen and turning in an order like they do on Star Trek. NOW they start coming up with an idea that might be the beginning of that dream coming true. Now that there's no hope of me ever seeing it happen. Shuckey DURN. The story of my life .. A day late and a dollar short.

[elcerritan]

12:44 AM on 05/20/2011

Sigh. Yet another article perpetuating the ERROR in the UN report Livestock's Long Shadow -- an error ADMITTED by one of the report's authors -- that livestock is responsible for almost 20% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.