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.