I hope that the scientists can achieve the look and taste of normal meats. It would be difficult to eat fabricated meat products unless they closely resemble the real thing.
I suppose that people can learn to accept whatever is placed before them as food, but thus far there is little interest in eating insect protein that is available in great quantities. Unfortunately, some of us that have been around a while have become accustomed to eating specific items and have high expectations. Dave -----Original Message----- From: Axil Axil <[email protected]> To: vortex-l <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, Feb 20, 2012 1:03 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:In vitro meat production Meat production already takes up more than half of the world's estimated agricultural capacity, in one way or another. U.N. figures show that animal farming takes up 30 percent of the planet's exposed land mass. And over the next 40 years, the demand for meat products is expected to double. If the researchers' assumptions are correct, growing meat in the lab "could reduce the energy expenditure by about 40 percent," Post said. Lab-grown meat has also won the endorsement of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, because the stem cells could be extracted without killing animals. For more see: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/19/10449704-lab-grown-hamburger-due-to-be-served-up-this-year-for-330000 On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 5:34 PM, Axil Axil <[email protected]> wrote: The efficiency of food production can be increased many fold by the elimination of most non-essential animal parts and systems. The elimination of unproductive body parts such as skin, bones, fat, nerves, head, hoofs, beaks, claws, hair, feathers, intestines, reproductive parts, and the others sundries that have evolved over time to keep an animal viable as an independent biological machine can be eliminated with a concomitant gain in power and cost efficiency. Not having to walk, keep warm, think, excrete, and the other essentials of everyday life greatly reduces the food processing waste products and real-estate requirements involved with animal based food production. Not having to meet the nutritional interfaces of standalone and independent biological systems is a real plus. A pound of hamburger or frankfurter protein can be produced with great efficiency from a soylent green type slim based cultured biological emulsions in million barrel vats compared to current animal husbandry technology by at least an order of magnitude in productivity in terms of power consumed per pound of product. On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 1:59 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote: In a thread infected with the recursive Vo error, Harry Veeder <[email protected]> wrote: Growing plants for food may be energy inefficient, but eating animals strikes me as indulgent and unethical if we could chemical synethsize all our food needs. I do not think it will be possible to synthesize food in the near future. Perhaps it will hundreds of years from now. For the next few hundred years I expect conventional biological methods will be used. For plants, this means production in food factories, probably with hydroponics. For meat, I predict it will mean in vitro production. See: http://www.new-harvest.org/default.php I believe rapid progress is being made in this field. I hope it succeeds, soon. I agree that it is cruel and unethical to eat animals if we have a humane alternative such as in vitro production. I expect the product of in vitro production will be healthier for the humans who eat it. - Jed
