Would you eat a 'lab burger'? Synthetic meat created from animal stem cells could be on the shelves by the end of this year,

'Clean meat' products are made by harvesting stem cells from living livestock
These stem cells are then cultured in laboratory vats for a number of weeks
Products could help tackle global warming by cutting greenhouse gas emissions
The prediction was made by Josh Tetrick, CEO of Californian clean meat firm JUST

Lab-grown meats have been hailed as a solution to climate change and ending global hunger.

Now, one manufacturer claims synthetic burgers created using animal stem cells could be on sale sooner than we think.

Josh Tetrick, CEO of San Francisco-based 'clean meat' firm JUST, says lab-made sausages, chicken nuggets and foie gras could be served in Asia and the US 'before the end of 2018'.



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5462877/Clean-meats-sale-end-year.html

I can't think of anything worse. Leave our fucking food alone!

So a solution that could do away with many slaughter houses and animals waiting to be salughtered kept in appalling conditions. It provides an option that I am sure many animal rights people may consider then eating themselves.

I think anyone would cheer that as good news and a way to combat global hunger.

I certainly would not dish something, until I had actually tried it for myself.

I'd probably give it a pass, but I don't have a problem with others eating it.

Even if I ate meat, the answer would be no.
In any case, a lot of meat is full of hormones and pumped full of water to make it plump anyway.

eddie wrote:Even if I ate meat, the answer would be no.
In any case, a lot of meat is full of hormones and pumped full of water to make it plump anyway.

Exactly.

I'd give it a go. Am actually keen to try it

I have read about it before apparently the biggest 'issue' with it is it lacks the direction muscle fibre that real meat has, so it has a texture more like funguses such as Oyster Mushrooms.

I think it would be an interesting ingredient to use cooking, I am curious as to it's properties when used with varying techniques.

Considering the horrific treatment of farm animals and the environmental impact of meat consumption, coupled with my love of eating meatong, I'd love it if this became a reality (provided it was indistinguishable). The sooner the better in fact!

Whenever some startup company promises to "solve the world's problems" with their latest innovation ordevelopment,  I often wonder just how much some of the more high tech' solutions will really cost...

Synthetic "meat" production,  mile-high factory farms,  hydrogen cells to power cars,  trucks and buses running on gas turbines,  chemical sheep shearing,  housekeeping or farming robots,  autonomous cars and trucks,  mining the asteroids for future mineral supplies,  shooting garbage into the sun, floating houses or underwater houses on the fringes of large western cities,  "terraforming" Mars..

On and on and on.

In a world that is already so environmentally damaged by man's activities, with a population already exceeding sustainable levels by a couple of billion, where 20% of the people use 80% of resources, and where over 1.5 billion people go to bed hungry each night (half of them seriously malnourished..),  where the polluters, pilferers, poachers, and their financiers refuse to change their ways,  when places like India and many African nations refuse to countenance birth control and 'ZPG', and so many places keep on cutting down trees and extending their deserts..

How the fuck is the world expected to pay for any of the great and wonderful "blue sky" promises   ???

We have inadvertently developed a powerful way of helping influenza to kill us, 100 years on. This is our addiction to cheap chicken and pork — and the factory farm industry that supplies it.

Factory farms present one of the greatest potentials for catastrophic disease because they pack animals together by the million in conditions that can be fetid incubators of disease.

These giant industrial farms were the birthplace of H1N1 swine flu that emerged in 2009 and killed up to an estimated 575,400 people worldwide.

Scientists traced the virus’s genes to a massive North Carolina pig farm in 1998. Originally, the virus contained three human flu genes. Within a few months at the farm, it had acquired segments of two bird flu genes as well.

Pigs eat almost everything, so their guts are the perfect mixing bowls for flu strains. When pigs eat droppings of sick wild birds or the chickens living near them, the flu viruses in their digestive systems can swap their genetic material to create new strains.

Pig guts can add multiple germs from the humans that the pigs come into contact with, too.

When new flu strains acquire their genes, it makes it easier for them to infect people.

Factory farms could very likely be the birthplace of the next killer pandemic. The renegade influenza viruses they spawn could one day annihilate the people they feed.

Reducing the risk posed by farm animals requires us all to fight factory farming. We can vote with our mouths. If we eat meat or dairy products, we can eat them less often, choose meat labelled organic (which, in the UK, is generally reared without routine antibiotics) and buy from places that don’t rely on factory farm sources (goodbye, High Street fast-food chains).

The most frightening type of infectious flu we know of today — the H5N1 strain of the virus (known popularly as ‘bird flu’) — also came from an animal. It probably jumped to a human through contact with a diseased bird slaughtered on a poultry farm or in one of Hong Kong’s markets.

H5N1 killed its first human victim in 1997 in Hong Kong. From 2003 to the start of 2016, there have been 846 confirmed human cases of H5N1 virus infection in 16 countries.

That may not sound like many people. At the moment, H5N1 is not very contagious. But this strain has killed more than half the people it has infected. By comparison, the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 had a mortality rate of between just 2 and 3 per cent.

This makes H5N1 one of the deadliest viruses scientists have ever come across. It’s still very much out there: it continues to stir in the blood soup of chickens and ducks. Meanwhile, swine flu still mutates in the blood of pigs and remains a threat to humans.

If a new and highly contagious strain of H5N1 were to evolve and hitchhike with an unwitting passenger on to a cruise ship or an aeroplane, the pandemic situation would quickly assume disaster movie proportions.

Therefore, to keep ourselves, our children and their children alive, nothing is more important than fighting these viruses.

We must pay proper heed to Public Health England’s ‘Catch It, Bin It, Kill It’ campaign. This encourages people to adopt good respiratory and hand hygiene, such as using a tissue and washing hands thoroughly. It really is an effective line of defence.

If you do get ill, you must protect others by staying home from work. We know from experience in American cities that encouraging people with flu to stay at home can cut transmission rates by half.

The most important thing that humankind can do, however, is to develop a properly effective universal vaccine against flu viruses.

As a doctor, I know that nothing can protect people against illness as effectively as a vaccine. It is the single most cost-effective public health tool we have.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5465241/Why-believe-killer-flu-pandemic-just-corner.html

Yeah....and yet you’ll be accused of being a whackadoodle if you take any of that even halfway seriously.

There is nothing odd about Horatio's post. Even if true, surely that provides further reason to approve of lab grown meat. Since pigs living and eating styles are the reason for those viruses, according to the article, then isn't lab grown meat a cleaner alternative.

If you can grow meat in a lab that tastes the same as anything on a farm, but cuts out mistreatment of animals, butchering of animals, risk of contamination and a gross environmental impact, then surely we should all support that, right?

Eilzel wrote:There is nothing odd about Horatio's post. Even if true, surely that provides further reason to approve of lab grown meat. Since pigs living and eating styles are the reason for those viruses, according to the article, then isn't lab grown meat a cleaner alternative.

If you can grow meat in a lab that tastes the same as anything on a farm, but cuts out mistreatment of animals, butchering of animals, risk of contamination and a gross environmental impact, then surely we should all support that, right?

Meh, 7 billion of us... who cares not like we're endangered.
The Biggest threat to humans is that there is too many humans.

it also Cuts down on the existence of those animals at all.

Screw You guys I plan to wrap my Lab meat in Bacon

Eilzel wrote:There is nothing odd about Horatio's post. Even if true, surely that provides further reason to approve of lab grown meat. Since pigs living and eating styles are the reason for those viruses, according to the article, then isn't lab grown meat a cleaner alternative.

If you can grow meat in a lab that tastes the same as anything on a farm, but cuts out mistreatment of animals, butchering of animals, risk of contamination and a gross environmental impact, then surely we should all support that, right?

Sounds ideal, but is it?

HoratioTarr wrote:

Eilzel wrote:There is nothing odd about Horatio's post. Even if true, surely that provides further reason to approve of lab grown meat. Since pigs living and eating styles are the reason for those viruses, according to the article, then isn't lab grown meat a cleaner alternative.

If you can grow meat in a lab that tastes the same as anything on a farm, but cuts out mistreatment of animals, butchering of animals, risk of contamination and a gross environmental impact, then surely we should all support that, right?

Sounds ideal, but is it?

I'm optimistic enough to think it's better to at least try, than to just amble down toward disaster as we are doing.

Eilzel wrote:

HoratioTarr wrote:

Sounds ideal, but is it?

I'm optimistic enough to think it's better to at least try, than to just amble down toward disaster as we are doing.

I'd rather have nut loaf

I'm only going to eat organic lab meat.