Synthetic meat

It could be on the shelves before too long: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16972761

The question is, veggies and vegans, would you eat it?

YES! I want it so much!

I'm a veggie and no I wouldn't. Meat and animal fat tastes horrible and has a nasty texture, and it's probably not going to be very nice anyway.

Vegetarianism is a bankrupt extremist ideology.

Has anyone read Oryx and Crake? I don't think I'd be able to eat this stuff without images of that popping into my head. Seems potentially a great thing though, might help solve the whole chopping all the trees down to raise cattle problem.

Read it recently after all the recommendations on here. This news story from last week

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/8420787/project-proposes-brainless-ch...

is basically Margaret Atwood's 'ChickieNobs' TM:

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1559

I want me a Racunk

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What's your opposition to eating meat / meat products? I always got the impression it was animal cruelty, so I don't understand why 'real' vegetarians (presumably you're in this group) would have a problem with something that doesn't originate from a 'live' creature. Isn't it morally equivalent to tofu or quorn?

Pigoons: http://jason-courtney.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d2gom8e

I agree with Arthur, it doesn't kill or hurt the animal so is morally similar, if not quite the same. I don't think I could eat it because, although I went veggie through moral / environmental reasons (which don't apply here) I think I will always associate meat with negative reasons and on the 2 occasions I've eaten meat in the last 15 years (both times a waiter giving me the wrong dish when eating out) it's tasted foul because I'm not used to it.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds though people who say "I'm a vegeterian, but I eat chicken sometimes" deeply annoying. ;)

i wont wear shoes that contain vegetables. Espeicially sprouts

This makes me feel slightly queasy. Why does anybody think this is a good idea?

And its all to easy to make some terrible mix up in the lab...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12666171

Why does anybody think this is a good idea?

Because the amount of meat we've got used to eating is a serious environmental problem if we carry on doing it the same way.

Where do we stand on having a huge alien blob type monster which has hunks of meat carved out of it, but remains alive? Like that Torchwood episode.

Or a sentient one that serves you, like in Hitchhiker's?

I can't see the relevance that link has to a "terrible mix up in the lab" - it sounds more scientific miracle than mix-up!

The two most obvious reasons it could be a good idea, ignoring the suffering that can (but does not necessarily) arise a a result of farming and slaughter, are...

A: a lot of people are never going to stop eating meat, either because it tastes too nice, for some other reason or simply because nobody has convinced them that they shouldn't. Synthetic meat cannot yet be produced in large quantities, but a time will come when we can produce as much of it as we want, freeing up land currently used to raise livestock for agriculture. That means more food for people who don't have enough of it.

B: Since the entire process is closely managed, in conditions that can be far more easily controlled than a farm, it will presumably be easier to produce meat that can be guaranteed free of BSE, salmonella or whatever the next big health scare happens to be. Likewise, levels of fat and cholesterol could be controlled; meaning that us rich Westerners could gorge ourselves on as much meat as we wanted without the health effects that come with doing so.

Would I eat it? Don't know yet. It's been such a long time since I last ate meat that it now smells weird to me, as do dairy products. The fat and blood that needs to be mixed into it also means I'll have to say no, unless somebody comes up with a vegan way around that. Otherwise, I can see no reason not to - no animal has been born nor killed to produce it and it's probably more environmentally-friendly than many crops. The queasiness around eating something synthetic and laboratory-produced that seems to put some people off doesn't bother me. After all, many of the flavours in food I already eat, the inhalers I use to stop dying from asthma and the pills I take whenever I get a headache were all produced in laboratories.

If vegetarians aren't going to eat this, nobody who selects their food on the basis of how it tastes will, may as well cancel the project.

I imagine some vegetarians will, just as some "vegetarians" eat fish and chicken. While at present the flavour doesn't sound appetising, that'll no doubt be sorted in the future and as the procedure is perfected it'll become cheaper too. I reckon 50p 14oz prime steaks will probably sell quite well - most people who buy the cheap "meat" in supermarkets obviously don't care about how it's produced - if they did, there'd be no value brand sausages and burgers. Who knows what goes into those?

Those who eat bad food out of bad taste deserve our sympathy, those who eat bad food out of ideological fanaticism deserve our scorn.

If they could make a sausage that tasted more like a sausage than a meatless sausage does I'd be happy. I do like a hot pork injection.

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Do you object to stem cell research?

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It's arguable whether vegans should eat quorn anyway, since it's made from fungus and fungus has much more in common with animals than it does with plants.

I think the egg in Quorn is more of an issue ...

Not all Quorn recipes contain egg - as of 2011, the range has included an egg-free burger suitable for vegans. They're planning more, apparently. I won't try them though, because Quorn tastes like shit.

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Except, as has already been pointed out, the Quorn burgers which don't contain egg, nor anything else that comes either from or out of an animal.

so cardboard is not in fact animal

The stem cells come from an animal in this fake meat.

Since stem cells can be harvested without killing the donor, a vegan could argue that their use to produce synthetic meat is acceptable as it could lead to such a massive reduction in slaughter. Buttercup the Cow might be more than willing to provide a sample of her adipose tissue and bone marrow if we tell that her descendants won't face the abattoir (best not tell her that they won't even be born, assuming we'll probably have worked out how to synthesize milk before long too) - chances are, however, that being a cow she probably won't care that much either way and will just get on with singing and dancing and laughing and all that stuff that cows do in adverts.

One possible long-term problem with synthetic meat is the eventual extinction of cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, etc...

Nah, they'll be the main attractions at Super Farmworld.

Extinction of the totally unnatural (much as I hate that term) domestic versions we keep on farms, at any rate. Wild buffalo and bison (sadly not the aurochs, as we killed all of those), wild boar, red junglefowl and mouflon will probably all keep surviving without paying much attention to what we're doing.

Must admit, I'd miss cows and pigs. I don't give a shit about chickens and sheep.

I'd happily keep a couple of goats if that's of any use?

Goats wouldn't become extinct even if we had no use for their meat, milk, hide and hair - they have too many other uses. Also, they're all good mates with Satan; he's likely to protect them.

I love meat, hate veg...If it's cheap, I will eat the synthetic stuff...

That's precisely why it will sell if they can get the flavour right - people like the taste of meat.

My preferred solution would be to genetically engineer animals to be 10 times the size, vegetarians would approve as it would reduce animal slaughter by a factor of 10.

That's enough to convince me Troll's a genius.

now i know what to do with the dinasour DNA at the back of the shed

You feed beef burgers to swans. You have big sheds, but nobody's allowed in. And in these sheds you have 20ft high chickens, and these chickens are scared because the don't know why they're so big, and they're going, "Oh why am I so massive?" and they're looking down at all the little chickens and they think they're in an aeroplane because all the other chickens are so small. Do you deny that? No, I think his silence speaks volumes.

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How about if we stop farming cows and make simple people into burgers instead?

Tops cat food = Top Wrongfellow food. :)

goats will always be needed: http://cuteoverload.com/2012/02/22/king-of-the-phil/

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Kneaded.

"People who are vegetarian for moral reasons - the environment, the treatment of animals - have a moral obligation to eat this meat."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17113214