I'm an ethical vegetarian, so I was intrigued by this story at We Make Money Not Art about the potential to produce meat in the lab.
Two new techniques of tissue engineering may one day lead to large scale production of lab grown meat that tastes like beef, poultry, pork, lamb or fish and has the texture of meat...
I'm not a fan of bioengineered food; the potential for unknown ramifications from both the use of these new "frankenfoods" and the elimination of Mother Nature's own natural whole foods is incalculable -- and scary as hell. On the other hand, I'm even less fond of the barbaric meat industry, with its pollution, waste, and lifelong torture and summary execution of billions of cows, sheep, chickens, and pigs. (KFC alone slaughters over 850 million chickens per year.)
Frankly, I'd prefer if the whole world went vegetarian, but this at least offers hope to reduce the total cruelty in the world. Manufacturing meat would also end the rampant overuse of antibiotics (over 70% of the antibiotics in use go to farm animals).
All in all, since I'm not going to eat it anyway, I'd opt for the Frankenmeats.
2 comments:
What do you propose lions, tigers, and other carnivores and omnivores do moving forward? Is it not true that they also "slaughter" millions of animals each year?
I would argue that we are only one part of the food chain, and arguably not at the top. Regardless of what we like to think about the human race, we are just a component, set out on a course of destruction and devestation.
I propose that mankind is the cancer of the Earth, not the conscious caretaker.
JB,
There's a difference between killing and eating in the natural order of things and maintaining factories where animals are bred and slaughtered. Mankind as the "cancer" of the earth? Time for some consciousness chemo!
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