Synthetic chicken breasts plucked from bubbling vats in laboratories - freaky or phenomenal?

It’s possible they’ll be at the grocery store before you’ve come up with a good answer to that. As the New York Times reported, the first In Vitro Meat Symposium convened in Norway this week, where scientists came together to present and discuss research on laboratory created meat.

Scientists involved with the In Vitro meat movement identify themselves as environmentalists. Twenty-six percent of all land on earth is grazed by livestock, and 33% of all cropland is already used for animal feed, and is responsible for everything from deforestation to oceanic dead zones. The scientists say that their creations are a way to ethically and environmentally respond to the fact that global meat consumption is rising by 4.7 million tons each year.

New Harvest, a group promoting research and marketing for laboratory meat, explains the interesting process of its creation:

The production of such "cultured meat" begins by taking a number of cells from a farm animal and proliferating them in a nutrient—rich medium. Cells are capable of multiplying so many times in culture that, in theory, a single cell could be used to produce enough meat to feed the global population for a year. After the cells are multiplied, they are attached to a sponge-like "scaffold" and soaked with nutrients. They may also be mechanically stretched to increase their size and protein content. The resulting cells can then be harvested, seasoned, cooked, and consumed as a boneless, processed meat, such as sausage, hamburger, or chicken nuggets.

PBS offers an on-line virtual taste test, along with a two-minute video documenting the creation of this sci-fi meat.

All I can think is - It’s here. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Michael J. Fox’s Back to the Future II. So we don't all have hoverboards, but our plates are filled with lab-designed vegetables and grains. Now hunks of vat-grown “meat” might nestle against our bomb-proof Round-Up Ready potatoes.

I’m an energy-conscious food Luddite, so naturally, I’m wondering here - why we all just can't try to find some local, sustainably-raised meat? My hunting and fishing friends might ask - why not just go fishing or hunting? And of course, my vegetarian friends will ask - why can’t we all just eat less or even no meat?

But I’m still sort-of fascinated. Could laboratory “farms” remove the ethical and environmental problems associated with conventional livestock rearing? Do we need to rethink the opportunities that biotechnology in food might provide us with? Or does anything made in a laboratory necessarily provide proprietorship, and is thereby destined to become simply a tool of a corporation in the market?

My head hurts. Someone pass me the bacon – the real bacon, for now, please.

Via the New York Times

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.