meat of the future

[cinderflower]

in vitro meat: would you eat it?

i just discovered this when i was looking for new meat analogues. i don't look for things that taste like meat, i'm usually looking for protein-dense non-animal product items.

it's also called "cultured" meat. it's grown in a laboratory, i'm thinking from original cells (remember dolly, the cloned sheep? something along those lines).
here's a small excerpt from http://invitromeat.org/

An environmentally friendly cultured meat technology rests on four basic premises: (1) the culturing of muscle progenitor cells from farm animals of choice that are able to proliferate at a high rate, (2) the application of a growth medium that does not contain animal products, (3) the efficient differentiation of the progenitor cells into muscle cells that contain all nutrients present in conventional meat, and (4) the organisation of the muscle cells into 3-dimensional muscle structures.

it's my understanding that this research is primarily being conducted to provide an alternative food supply for many reasons, but the primary one is that raising cattle is relatively not cost-effective and there are parts of the world where it isn't feasible.

PETA has offered them $1 million if they can be the first to put it on the market. it's 100% cruelty-free: they'll just grow (among other things) chicken breasts without the chicken. no animals ever have to be harmed again. the only aspect that isn't dealt with is dairy and eggs--and if you think about it, those cows and chickens are treated worse than the ones that are slaughtered because they have to lactate and lay eggs continuously for several years.

so aside from the dairy/egg issue, if you want to be a vegetarian but miss eating meat, would you eat meat that was originally grown in a laboratory? i mean, most people are already eating gmo's (genetically modified organisms) whether they know it or not. it might not be a good thing for people but it's always good for monsanto. right now, it's prohibitively expensive to market but i don't foresee that lasting. so if it were comparatively priced, would you eat it or would you refuse?

i've been a vegetarian for so long that i wouldn't even try it. i don't have a need to, i don't crave meat, it doesn't seem like a suitable food to me--not that i think about it consciously, it's just second nature to me. i'm just curious who would find it an acceptable solution for cruelty-free meat.

another excellent off-label use would be cat food. no longer would they have to eat eyeballs and trachea. now that i would buy.

[MowMow]

That wouldn't be for me and I wouldn't feed it to my cats.

The journey from morbidly obese to a healthier weight (still have a long way to go to my goal weight) has really changed and set my views on food and how I eat.

I don't like the idea of eating 'manufactured' foods of any kind. I want my vegetables non GMO and my meats real. It's how we were built to eat and what our bodies were built to process. This vacation away from home and eating the way I used to has shown me just how much damage it does to the body. I'm exhausted, my hands/feet/ankles are STILL swollen, digestion unhappy, and sinuses a disaster. Glad to be back eating healthier REAL unprocessed foods again. I know it's going to take a few days to repair the damage I did.

Here in the Willamette Valley there is an unlimited supply of locally raised cruelty free (butchered mindfully to minimize/remove the pain/fear) and grass fed/cage free meat/eggs/milk/cheese to go with my non engineered and un 'enhanced' locally grown vegetables.

Keep the fake stuff. I want a well rounded mix of real foods for me and I try to give my boys as close to that as possible. I don't imagine they would turn down a real eyeball or a trachea if it was offered raw and I'm sure they don't mind it ground up in their cat food.

That said, I would be thrilled if I could find a cruelty free brand that has protein sources MowMow could eat.

[Zilla]

Um maybe the chickens that produce eggs experience cruelty but I don't think the cows do... So much anyway... I used to live next to a small dairy and the cows were treated nice there. I guess in bigger establishments its probably a different story though


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[cinderflower]

Originally Posted by Zilla

Um maybe the chickens that produce eggs experience cruelty but I don't think the cows do... So much anyway... I used to live next to a small dairy and the cows were treated nice there. I guess in bigger establishments its probably a different story though


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yeah you live in kansas so i'm sure there are plenty of smaller farms where the animals are fine. dairy cows are treated so badly that i'm not even going to go into any of it, plus the stuff that ends up in the milk. slaughterhouse by gail eisnitz covers most of the problems with packing plants. four meat packing plants slaughter 80% of the meat consumed in the united states. swift (jbs), tyson, cargill and national beef. 35 million cows a year. there's a cargill plant in wichita and i've been to the jbs one in greeley. even though conditions and practices have improved since 1906 when upton sinclair wrote the jungle, there has been a steady decline since the 50's. factory farming is just abominable.

slaughterhouse is 15 years old but you can bet that things haven't improved much. i don't think they've gotten a lot worse (if you read it, you won't be able to see how they could lol) but if people think the pet food industry is bad, they should probably think about what they're putting into their own mouths. we all eat GMO's because they don't have to be labeled. even though i only eat fruits, vegetables and grains, i can't even escape them unless i buy 100% organic and it's just too expensive. california is trying to pass legislation that requires labeling but i don't think monsanto and other huge companies involved will let that happen.

[Arianwen]

I wouldn't touch it personally - I don't even eat genetically modified vegetables if I can help it (I know it gets sneaked through sometimes). I eat free range animal products (mainly local and mainly organic) and organic veg (some of which I grow for myself).

[cinderflower]

you're lucky to be able to grow some of your own, and i don't know how far monsanto's reach goes (probably globally). i've always said the only way for me to know exactly what i'm eating would be to grow it myself, and unfortunately i live downtown. i have to eat something lol, it's getting down to water and spicy dust.

[MowMow]

Originally Posted by cinderflower

you're lucky to be able to grow some of your own, and i don't know how far monsanto's reach goes (probably globally). i've always said the only way for me to know exactly what i'm eating would be to grow it myself, and unfortunately i live downtown. i have to eat something lol, it's getting down to water and spicy dust.

I would suggest looking for a community garden in your area. I live in an apartment complex and late last summer starting looking (in preparation for this growing season). I found 6 within easy driving distance all with varying degrees of strictness in their rules.

The one I settled on is about 15 minutes from my house (driving, but hopefully by this summer I'll be bicycling there). I found a wonderful local company that sells NON GMO seeds and in fact doesn't sell from ANY Monstanto affiliate.

Through my new community garden contacts I've also found a cow share (pay into the care/feeding of a cow at a local dairy) for hand milked (no big machines suctioning her dry) raw milk and also a 'steer' share. I pay with however many other people (depending on how much meat I want) and the local farmer does the disposing of himself and the butcher immediately takes the carcass. Mr steer doesn't have to leave his field and is dispatched humanely where he feels comfortable.

It will all be a bit expensive up front but it will REALLY lower my bills through the year (once I buy a freezer and canning supplies) and I know where all my food is coming from.

[Arianwen]

Originally Posted by cinderflower

you're lucky to be able to grow some of your own, and i don't know how far monsanto's reach goes (probably globally). i've always said the only way for me to know exactly what i'm eating would be to grow it myself, and unfortunately i live downtown. i have to eat something lol, it's getting down to water and spicy dust.

I often know the chickens where I get my eggs from personally!!!! And they are way from being factory farmed. if you need a hand milker - I'm your woman!

More seriously, I am seriously worried that the farming practices I despise will eventually reach my area.

[cinderflower]

Originally Posted by MowMow

I would suggest looking for a community garden in your area. I live in an apartment complex and late last summer starting looking (in preparation for this growing season). I found 6 within easy driving distance all with varying degrees of strictness in their rules.

The one I settled on is about 15 minutes from my house (driving, but hopefully by this summer I'll be bicycling there). I found a wonderful local company that sells NON GMO seeds and in fact doesn't sell from ANY Monstanto affiliate.

Through my new community garden contacts I've also found a cow share (pay into the care/feeding of a cow at a local dairy) for hand milked (no big machines suctioning her dry) raw milk and also a 'steer' share. I pay with however many other people (depending on how much meat I want) and the local farmer does the disposing of himself and the butcher immediately takes the carcass. Mr steer doesn't have to leave his field and is dispatched humanely where he feels comfortable.

It will all be a bit expensive up front but it will REALLY lower my bills through the year (once I buy a freezer and canning supplies) and I know where all my food is coming from.

there are a lot in the denver area, the closest is denver urban homesteading, which isn't really a garden but like a co-op that has an open market certain saturdays. i wanted meat for cat food, and they sell beef but the only kind of chicken you can buy there is alive LOL. they'll wring their necks for you but it's $25, so i passed on that. plus i wouldn't know who plucks them (most likely ME--wrong) so it just wasn't feasible.

DUH got them to pass legislature so that everyone in denver county can have 8 chickens (all hens, no roosters) and 2 goats, but i'm pretty sure i'm not going to do that either. the garden thing i'll have to figure out later, i was just on complete bedrest the last four months. it probably would have been two months but i got up to feed the cats. dry would have been much easier but they're already addicted to canned and i didn't feel like redoing the whole acclimation process.

i don't know if you'd like it or not, but because my metabolism goes all pear-shaped when i'm on prolonged bed-rest, i get deconditioned and have to work it back up so i got a fitbit a couple of years ago. it's really cute and little, and it measures steps, distance traveled, calories burned, stairs climbed (altimeter) and then a little flower grows leaves the more active you are. then there's a clock. i guess the steps thing isn't as accurate if you bike or drive but it's a ballpark. it talks to you too--well not out loud but you put your name in it and it tells you "hi _________" and then has i don't how many auto-messages (probably 40) like "walk me", "you rock", i can't even remember. there's a free online thing you can log your food, calories, activity, mood, blood pressure and i don't know what else. i don't use it because i mostly like the step counter. then i know if i'm down 1,000 i need to do some more, and if the flower only has a couple of leaves, it's fun to make it grow five. they sell a lot of stuff at fitbit.com but the version with the watch works for me. oh yeah, it also has a sleep measurer (but you have to remember to turn it on when you go to sleep and off when you get out of bed, otherwise the online thing won't count it) that's fun. it shows when you were restless (or moving around i guess).

Originally Posted by Arianwen

I often know the chickens where I get my eggs from personally!!!! And they are way from being factory farmed. if you need a hand milker - I'm your woman!

More seriously, I am seriously worried that the farming practices I despise will eventually reach my area.

yeah DUH Market is pretty into chickens. if i hadn't given up eggs i'd probably get mine there. once i stop eating something though, i just don't crave it or think about it. well, except for cheese or ice cream.

see if you have a community exchange in your area. they are usually most instrumental in getting legislation passed and would be the people to go to over inhumane farming. maybe you could keep it out of your county or territory or whatever it is called in wales.

[OliverandCo.]

As for the in vitro meat- I saw that article a while back and thought about it. I think I feel even worse about eating something like that when I have my soy alternatives. I think of that vitro meat as some galactic monstrosity- I might try it but chances are the cost of them at first would be out of my range. I have been vegetarian for 11 years now, as much as I like the smell of bacon I could never even be tempted to stick meat in my face again. And some alien test tube meat would be weird for me to eat. I psychologically couldn't do it as much as I couldn't eat meat now. (Boyfriend accidentally made me pasta with meat sauce over Xmas break, he didn't know there was meat in the sauce and after one bite my stomach was turned). The only thing good I see coming from this new factory method would be cruelty is lifted off those poor animals. Factory farming is truly a sin against nature, if I ate meat I don't think I could eat factory farmed meat just on principle.

PETA can just... Oh, don't get me started on them. Really.

Here in my city, certain areas can keep chickens and my old neighbour did and gave us eggs all the time. MUCH better than buying eggs. Currently, my student loan budget does not allow me to buy free range, organic eggs but believe you me, when I'm done school I will be buying up some hens and keeping them as pets I love chickens.