Comments on: It's THE DELICIOUS.

It's THE DELICIOUS.

kliuless — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:42:29 -0800

SCIENTISTS have grown meat in the laboratory for the first time.

and with a little further extrapolation...

In-Vitro Meat will be fashioned from any creature, not just domestics that were affordable to farm. Yes, ANY ANIMAL, even rare beasts like snow leopard, or Komodo Dragon. We will want to taste them all. Some researchers believe we will also be able to create IVM using the DNA of extinct beasts—obviously, "DinoBurgers" will be served at every six-year-old boy's birthday party. Humans are animals, so every hipster will try Cannibalism. Perhaps we'll just eat people we don't like, as author Iain M. Banks predicted in his short story, "The State of the Art" with diners feasting on "Stewed Idi Amin." But I imagine passionate lovers literally eating each other, growing sausages from their co-mingled tissues overnight in tabletop appliances similar to bread-making machines.

BONUS /. & electric sheep [animal 57] also see:

Slow beef - "So... by 'docile', you really mean 'mentally retarded'"
Meet Your Meat - "The turkey wasn't always so dumb"
On the domestication of human beings - "humans in the last 30, 40, or 50,000 years have been domesticating ourselves"
Benton's smoky ham and bacon - "The very rise and continuing existence of humanity is based on the widespread slaughter and extinction of other large mammals"
Is It Ethical To Engineer Delicious Cows That Feel No Pain?
In The Barn

(previously 1 2 3 4 5)

By: liketitanic

liketitanic — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:44:55 -0800

O NO YOU DIDN'T

By: Salvor Hardin

Salvor Hardin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:46:52 -0800

So far the scientists have not tasted it Key phrase.

By: nola

nola — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:46:58 -0800

So far the scientists have not tasted it, but they believe the breakthrough could lead to sausages vegetarians rejoice

By: strixus

strixus — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:49:02 -0800

I am all for this. For all the normal reasons, like how horrible and cruel factory farming is, and environmental reasons, and all of that. ... But really, I want vat meat so I can eat people.

By: bradbane

bradbane — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:52:53 -0800

Taking communion will be a lot more interesting.

By: Lutoslawski

Lutoslawski — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:53:37 -0800

Who the fuck does Science think they are? Jesus? What, next they'll be able to make BREAD in a lab TOO! What an outrage.

By: Skygazer

Skygazer — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:53:50 -0800

But I imagine passionate lovers literally eating each other, growing sausages from their co-mingled tissues overnight in tabletop appliances similar to bread-making machines. Creepy and sexy. Just how I like it. She: So dahling what part of my delicious anatomy will you sample tonight then? He: My precious little raspberry, I think I will sample your liver with a fine a Pinot Noir. She: Fantastic!! Grrrrrr..........

By: Lutoslawski

Lutoslawski — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:54:18 -0800

slant jinx

By: Justinian

Justinian — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:54:26 -0800

I don't think this is anywhere near ready for prime time despite their assertions about 5 years to market. The flavor of meat, particularly red meats like beef, doesn't come primarily from the muscle tissue but from that tissue plus the fat, blood vessels, blood, and all that good stuff. Just growing a hunk of muscle tissue would be nearly inedible. Unless you're one of those people who throws a hunk of beef into a pot and boils it into a grey hunk of bland, in which case hey problem solved.

By: ErikaB

ErikaB — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:54:27 -0800

I have no idea why, but now I have the mental image of Pillsbury Meat, sold in the same canister as their biscuits. Just uncoil the wrapper, poke the seam, pop the tube, and presto! There's yer tube of vat-grown meat! Slice into rounds and cook well.

By: geoff.

geoff. — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:57:56 -0800

I find it interesting that they need to exercise the muscle, though it completely makes sense. I assume actually exercising is not needed to gain muscle mass and that there should be someway to mimic this if you could figure out the various chemicals the brains sends to the muscles to tell them to get bigger. I'm going to go a step further and say this is probably a hard problem, far beyond growing muscle mass in vitro, and if anyone could figure it out they'd make money that would make Vioxx look like a pauper. Good to see sausage companies investing this kind of money in pure R&D though.

By: bunnytricks

bunnytricks — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:58:06 -0800

The Republican National Committee is rejoicing at the possibility of actually being able to grow their 2020 VP candidate in a bastard farm. Palin/Freeh '20, securing America in the hands of the strong!

By: Salvor Hardin

Salvor Hardin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:58:56 -0800

It's too bad there isn't some kind of edible biological material that could be grown directly from base nutrients and sunshine....that could really change the world.

By: floam

floam — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:59:37 -0800

Justinian: But we can make fake fat (hydrogenated plant oils) or a number of other things, and I bet faking the taste of blood is pretty simple. Just need something kind of iron-ey.

By: codswallop

codswallop — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:00:17 -0800

Isn't veal unexercised meat?

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:01:04 -0800

it's a pity the shroud of turin isn't real - just think what the catholics could do with that ...

By: Anything

Anything — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:01:40 -0800

Meat, one must remember, is muscle. Soon there will be giant industrial-scale vats of it. "We have a flex on sector seven. I repeat, a flex on sector seven. At least ten people injured."

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:03:04 -0800

The nutritional profile will be different. For example omega-3 can't be synthesized.

By: parudox

parudox — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:05:52 -0800

Not too long ago, animals were raised on weeds, pests, scraps, or on pasture. Now animals are raised in feedlots on industrially grown, cheap-oil-fueled corn and soy (perhaps grown on newly destroyed rainforest), with some antibiotics thrown in. And apparently we're planning on continuing to take it upon ourselves to use cheap, generally non-renewable energy to crappily replace the things nature can do by itself. Sure, sometime in the not too distant future, we'll be able to grow meat in a lab. But that's not the happy end of the story. Those nutrients will have to come from somewhere, and so will the energy for the entire process. It's not going to come from sunlight, and the corn and soy are not going to grow and process themselves into the right (or wrong, as it just might turn out) combinations of nutrients. It seems to me that the net environmental footprint of vat-grown meat will be higher than feedlot meat, to say nothing of pasture-raised meat, or for that matter a vegetarian diet. Just because it's OMG SCIENCE doesn't mean it's a good idea.

By: WolfDaddy

WolfDaddy — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:10:11 -0800

So far the scientists have not tasted it Despair? /Better Off Ted

By: floam

floam — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:14:27 -0800

It seems to me that the net environmental footprint of vat-grown meat will be higher than feedlot meat. Why? Do you realize how much land, food, water cows use? The amount of energy it takes just to get an ounce of beef is so sickening that I can't help but imagine there's no way growing it without the living cow could possibly be worse. Let alone the lack of global warming farts.

By: effbot

effbot — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:15:01 -0800

So far the scientists have not tasted it, but they believe the breakthrough could lead to sausages Sausages are evil.

By: Panjandrum

Panjandrum — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:20:39 -0800

...omega-3 can't be synthesized. It's true, magical Omega-3 gnomes painstakingly insert omega-3s into fish while they sleep. You don't want to know how it gets in nuts.

By: nathan v

nathan v — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:21:33 -0800

The nutritional profile will be different. For example omega-3 can't be synthesized. Are you sure about that? Sounds fishy. sorry Sure, omega-3 fatty acids can't be synthesized by normal human physiological processes, but it's not as if all the world's omega-3 falls from outer space. Surely there's some animal that synthesizes these chemicals-- meaning there's some obtainable enzyme for the creation of omega-3 fatty acids. Still, of course, an isolated organ won't be exactly the same as an organ that is part of a complete animal, at least until we have a perfect understanding of biochemistry (by which time we will all be beautiful, ageless creatures, who don't need to exercise). Whether those differences would translate into meaningful differences in nutrition, taste, or health is another matter.

By: idiopath

idiopath — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:26:45 -0800

parudox: "It seems to me that the net environmental footprint of vat-grown meat will be higher than feedlot meat, to say nothing of pasture-raised meat" The colories consumed by a cow over it's lifetime per calorie of meat is so high that vat grown should be able to easily surpass it in efficiency, factoring in all the energy needs of running the facility. For one thing you are not expending energy to build bone and nervous tissue and keep the whole thing alive for years. Even if the maintinance costs were the same, the turnover time would still be a huge increase in efficiency (meat in maybe a month or two vs. meat in two to eight years).

By: Lutoslawski

Lutoslawski — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:34:46 -0800

It seems to me that the net environmental footprint of vat-grown meat will be higher than feedlot meat. Why? Do you realize how much land, food, water cows use? I'll be interested to see the numbers on this. I mean, parudox does have a point. Considering the amount of energy and treasure it takes to build labs, lab equipment, feed and house lab techs, scientists, let alone material costs, the resources to grow lab food are not insignificant, and I can see where many folks would take 'grown in lab' to mean 'very eco-friendly' in the same way that folks tend to assume mass solar panel construction is inherently eco-friendly (without considering the secondary costs for construction of the panels, etc). Floam, you have a great point, but parudox was comparing lab meat v. old school meat, like meat without hormones and machines and the like. What needs to be pointed out is that most animals raised for meat these days are, for all intents and purposes, grown in a lab, considering the equipment, genetics, etc...so my *guess* is that the energy costs are probably relatively equivalent, or at least more equivalent than the surface - and certainly the marketing - would lead one to believe. The colories consumed by a cow over it's lifetime per calorie of meat is so high that vat grown should be able to easily surpass it in efficiency, factoring in all the energy needs of running the facility. Also a great point, but again I'd be interested to see the numbers. I wonder what the breakdown is in terms of how many humans need to be grown in order to produce lab meat. It sounds silly, but a lot of farmers can raise many, many cows, whereas I would bet it takes a lot of scientists - going down the line a bit but not to absurdity - to raise a much smaller amount of lab meat. I also wonder if the new 'humanely raised' will now be restricted to meats from non-conscious origins.

By: oddman

oddman — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:38:40 -0800

By: Bonzai

Bonzai — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:41:52 -0800

By: Optimus Chyme

Optimus Chyme — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:43:25 -0800

Wow several different cheap shots at religion that are totally unrelated to the thread topic. I wish I was shocked. You guys are so nice and enlightened. Gosh, golly why can't everyone be so dang pleasant as you all? posted by oddman at 9:38 PM on November 30 Can . . . can you please quote something so I know what the hell you're talking about? Religion? What? Where?

By: mccarty.tim

mccarty.tim — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:50:14 -0800

This is all well and good, but if there are going to be huge vats of muscle tissue, how do we know a terrorist will not implant the muscle tissue into his arms so that he can punch through our national defenses? If he uses MMA, he will be doubly unpredictable and dangerous. Or maybe he would wire up his vat-o-beefiness to a galvanic switchboard, sending out a meatbot to torment the masses. It's a well known fact that the government's plans for gigantic robots do not apply to synthesized biological robots. Atomic weapons and other EMP sources will not stop it, as it's using 18th century technology in place of more modern semiconductors. It's times like this I wish I had the commitment to write a short story without getting bored and deciding to go to the library to take out books I probably won't read.

By: parudox

parudox — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:51:36 -0800

I'm by no means sure about my comparison of feedlot and vat-grown. But while there are inefficiencies in all the non-meat elements of a cow, my suspicion is that the transformation of soy to "nutrient broth" in the lab will in practice have an even higher inefficiency. Just because when you have cheap energy you use that instead of coming up with the kind of clever systems biology/evolution do. If the price of oil goes up by a factor of ten tomorrow, all cows will be eating grass, we will be eating fewer cows, and this vat-grown meat nonsense will look ludicrous on a balance sheet. Mostly this is about the footprint of grass versus that of input- and processing-intensive corn and soy.

By: Dipsomaniac

Dipsomaniac — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:51:51 -0800

They're made out of meat.

By: Scattercat

Scattercat — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:05:37 -0800

If someone named Haviland Tuf is involved in this in any way, I'm leaving. The planet, the solar system, the universe, whatever.

By: mccarty.tim

mccarty.tim — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:06:54 -0800

> I would think that most of the manhours (especially the expensive PhDs) would take place before the meat was produced, for research and development. After that, I would think they could design and build an automated incubator to grow the meat from a good strain and maintain a good environment for the culture. Of course, there will still probably be human labor for harvesting, packing, sorting and shipping the meat, but that is pretty much the existing meat industry, minus the rancher. This creates an interesting hump for profitability, as this means that most of the expense will come before the product comes out, and worse, the initial product will be worse than whatever is already on the market. The fact that it says this is good for "sausages and other processed meat" means that this is likely grisly, pale muscle tissue that will need to be ground up and mixed with other ingredients (likely MSG and hydrogenated vegetable oil to make up for missing flavor and texture) to be palatable. It'll be too expensive for the regular processed meat industry, and chances are vegetarian companies will have a stigma against it at first, especially for potential liabilities (consumers may not take kindly to a product that claims to be vegetarian that does contain animal tissue). Investors who consider this will probably be wary. However, in the long run, advances in computers, the technology itself and robotics as well as rising costs of resources will lead to vat meat eventually falling below the price of grass fed beef (the current human option), and then factory farmed beef. It has a leg up on those existing industries, too, as it benefits more from the inevitable advances in robotics and computers. This is a new technology, so it can adapt to instruments better than cows. An automated feedlot/ranch would need to call for a system that understands different shapes of cow, animal behavior, the ability to judge if a cow is healthy enough for meat, the ability to diagnose and treat veterinary issues, etc. If a sterile lab is kept and the culture grows to fill the shape of the vat, it'll be easy to mechanize and automate more of the process. It's definitely an inevitable that we will be eating cultured meat. Concern is rising about the ethics (both for the cows and the environment), and the cheap oil that enables the cattle industry can't stay around forever.

By: Talanvor

Talanvor — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:08:34 -0800

So does this mean I'll have a bacon machine before I die? If you can get that one for me, Science, I'll forgive the lack of jet pack and hover car.

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:10:25 -0800

Wait, I thought Slim Jims had been made like this for years now.

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:12:34 -0800

Wait, I thought Slim Jims had been made like this for years now. No, those are obtained from an inextinguishable tire fire that has modified firefighting planes that dump the spice mixture instead of fire suppressant on it.

By: darkstar

darkstar — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:16:47 -0800

Just uncoil the wrapper, poke the seam, pop the tube, and presto! Rawr.

By: chimaera

chimaera — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:24:14 -0800

"Jesus," Molly said, her own plate empty, "gimme that. You know what this costs?" She took his plate. "They gotta raise a whole animal for years and then they kill it. This isn't vat stuff."

By: parudox

parudox — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:28:21 -0800

This is all well and good, but if there are going to be huge vats of muscle tissue, how do we know a terrorist will not implant the muscle tissue into his arms so that he can punch through our national defenses? On a serious note, if meat is ever going to be grown in labs, the production will likely be even more centralized than the current meat processing industry, with more severe food safety consequences of contamination. These labs will make a mighty attractive target for terrorism.

By: qvantamon

qvantamon — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:32:09 -0800

The mechanism is composed of a robotic priest feeding a robotic catholic from a regular bread machine.

By: killdevil

killdevil — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:36:29 -0800

Quorn is unsettling enough. Can't we stop while we're ahead? A few posts on the right Web sites suggesting that this is actually made of babies and Glenn Beck'll be organizing anti-vat-meat protests before you know it.

By: maxwelton

maxwelton — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:42:47 -0800

These labs will make a mighty attractive target for terrorism. TERRORISM

By: Ghidorah

Ghidorah — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:13:00 -0800

Who will be the first person to market it under its proper name, I wonder? Who would have the balls to proudly exclaim: Try our new Soylent Green! It's vat PEOPLE!

By: nowonmai

nowonmai — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:27:49 -0800

From the Times article: "The cells were then incubated in a solution containing nutrients to encourage them to multiply indefinitely. This nutritious "broth" is derived from the blood products of animal foetuses, although the intention is to come up with a synthetic solution." I can't find any publications pertaining to this research - seems to be one of these annoying press releases that contains outrageous, easily-misinterpreted, headline-grabbing claims and no actual information. But I am willing to bet that you have to put many times as much foetal serum into these dishes as you get pig muscle out. There is nothing to suggest that there is anything here that could reduce the enviromental impact of meat production.

By: benzenedream

benzenedream — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:11:31 -0800

Nowonmai beat me to the fetal bovine serum quote. At only $0.50/ml, fetal bovine serum is a steal. Or, you could use serum-free media to grow the cells if you engineer them so that they don't need normal growth factors, which would basically turn them into tumor cells. That's quite a bit cheaper at ~ $0.05/ml. Unfortunately one of the major ingredients of serum-free medium is BSA (bovine serum albumin), so you don't escape the problem of killing cows to grow dubious quantities of sausage gristle. Anyone who seriously thinks that this is a pathway towards vat-grown meat has no inkling of how expensive and delicate the process of cell culture is. Mammalian cells have to be kept in special temperature and atmosphere controlled incubators while continually covered in buffering media containing all the growth factors the cells need just to not commit suicide. Mammalian cells have a large number of genes devoted to suicide, triggered by such things as "not being next to the proper neighbor cell type". Cell culture attempts to trick cells to grow by showering them with hormones which trick the cells into thinking they are in a fetal environment and should replicate, thus the fetal bovine sera. This delightful nutrient broth and all containers must be kept completely aseptic, and as backup usually has several antibiotics added to it in order to prevent bacterial growth from overtaking the mammalian cells in case of contamination. This usually means that cell culture is done in fairly expensive single-use plastic flasks with small-pore air filters. Given the above, the cost of making this "meat" is likely $10,000/kg (anybody with experience in mammalian cell culture bioreactors please correct my wild-ass guesstimate). The more likely pathway towards environmentally sustainable GM "meat" is algae or soy engineered to produce animal proteins - the inputs would be sunlight, water, and fertilizer. GM soy-produced omega-3 is due to hit the market soon (not a great achievement, since algal omega-3 is already being produced). Also, if growing muscle was so easy, don't you think that we'd be growing human muscle and using it for medical muscle transplants first? Perhaps 20 years after we are proficient at growing artificial muscles to replace injured human ones, the cost of growing muscle will have dropped to less than chicken feed.

By: dchrssyr

dchrssyr — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:42:55 -0800

For those of us paying attention to these things: this tread existed for 2.5 hours without a Soylent Green joke.

By: Ghidorah

Ghidorah — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:09:06 -0800

Shocking, wasn't it? I couldn't believe the ball was dropped so badly. I was happy, though, to oblige.

By: archagon

archagon — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:10:16 -0800

Interesting, but sadly unsustainable for the reasons mentioned above. It would be much, much healthier for the environment to go back to grass-fed farming. I wish I had that Joel Salatin quote from Food, Inc. about our tendency to create perfectly engineered solutions to the wrong problems.

By: Malice

Malice — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:33:51 -0800

I approve of this, although I wouldn't eat it myself simply because I do not eat meat as it is. However, if this is a way for those who want to continue to eat meat to do so without harming living creatures (aside from low-paid meat-massaging workers) then I think it's pretty awesome. I hope they're able to truly synthesize the taste and texture of 'real' meat so as to appease the meat-eating masses.

By: daq

daq — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 02:55:30 -0800

It's Wendy Meat! I want me some Caribou Eyes and Long-Pig. Go down to the corner and pick me up a Monkey Burger! Sorry, had to get that out of my system. It's a first step. There are a ton of things that are wrong about the reporting of this, but hey, we get there in steps, not leaps. I'll wait until version 4 to start getting excited. Probably around the time McDonald's signs a contract.

By: chillmost

chillmost — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 03:30:26 -0800

Wow! Just think of the huge rolls of bacon that will be available at CostCo! Blech.

By: DU

DU — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:49:54 -0800

Vat-grown beef is the best way to turn everyone vegetarian.

By: Ritchie

Ritchie — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:56:02 -0800

It's too bad there isn't some kind of edible biological material that could be grown directly from base nutrients and sunshine....that could really change the world. Usher me unto the bacon shrub, kind sir!

By: Kid Charlemagne

Kid Charlemagne — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:25:51 -0800

The nutritional profile will be different. For example omega-3 can't be synthesized. 1) You're making baby Friedrich Wöhler cry! 2) It wouldn't be synthesized, it would be grown. We don't synthesize anything at work. We have cell lines for that. Benzene, we grow stuff with nothing that comes from a cow. The agencies have gotten real fussy about injecting people with anything that involved an animal product anywhere in it's preparation.

By: Splunge

Splunge — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:29:00 -0800

Whenever I hear about in vitro meat I think of: Tuf Voyaging by George R R Martin

By: Durn Bronzefist

Durn Bronzefist — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:32:25 -0800

I find it interesting that they need to exercise the muscle, though it completely makes sense. Ah, clearly you have not seen The Island. This delightful nutrient broth and all containers must be kept completely aseptic, and as backup usually has several antibiotics added to it in order to prevent bacterial growth from overtaking the mammalian cells in case of contamination. This is my first thought. If we're already adding antibiotics to animals partly because of the unnatural conditions we're deeming cost effective to raise them in, what kind of chemical stews are these growing lumps of meat going to be?

By: 256

256 — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:56:49 -0800

The Vegetarian's Dilemma

By: Cat Pie Hurts

Cat Pie Hurts — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:21:32 -0800

This is going to do wonders for the sex toy industry. I'll be first in line for the new RealMeat line if products.

By: peacay

peacay — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:28:51 -0800

Also previously.

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:07:15 -0800

IT'S MADE OF SHEEPLE!

By: emjaybee

emjaybee — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:22:40 -0800

Interesting, but sadly unsustainable for the reasons mentioned above. It would be much, much healthier for the environment to go back to grass-fed farming. Grass-fed farming means healthier animals, but good for the environment on a large scale, it's not. On a small scale you can do it, but then meat becomes a real luxury item. I love meat, and in general, have no ethical problem with eating other animals. But raising lots of it has really torn large areas of the planet up, even before factory farming. I've had to become a reluctant mostly-vegetarian for that reason. And vat-meat-technology might be around for my grandkids, but probably not for me. On the other hand, legumes are delicious.

By: bonehead

bonehead — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:29:55 -0800

Hydroponic vegetables need to be grown with much less pesticide load (with a few exceptions) because inputs are more controlled and cleaner. I can see this being true for vatmeat too. In fact, I expect it will be a selling point of the product: lower anti-biotic loads. "Jesus," Molly said, her own plate empty, "gimme that. You know what this costs?" She took his plate. "They gotta raise a whole animal for years and then they kill it. This isn't vat stuff." This is implies some of the others: higher efficiency and lower ecological impact. To grow a steak now, you need to raise a whole cow. It takes at least a year or 18 months, thousands of litres of water and hectares of hay and corn to raise one animal. It's less than 10% efficient in energy terms, much worse in terms of water. That's the target vatmeat needs to beat. I wouldn't be surprised if it's better even in this first attempt. They're only growing muscle, after all, not the whole animal.

By: functionequalsform

functionequalsform — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:31:55 -0800

Oh no. This thread is making nauseous. Why? A little mom 'n' pop processing plant near my apartment has been emitting this warm, sweet, semi-putrid, vaguely meaty smell. I just found out it is actually... A HOT DOG FACTORY. That means boiled butt smell. And now all I can think about is what vat-meat could smell like, en masse. Vom.

By: lothar

lothar — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:49:41 -0800

The article mentions Pohl & Kornbluth's "The Space Merchants" (1958) as an early source of the science fiction idea of vat-grown meat. But we all know "Mrs. 'Awkins" from Heinlein's Methuselah's Children (1941) predates that by nearly twenty years, amirite?

By: bonehead

bonehead — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:53:26 -0800

The cost of making this "meat" is likely $10,000/kg. Today, sure. But consider: when aluminum was first being produced it was consider far more valuable than "common" metals like gold and silver. When the human genome project started, it was seen as a laughably impossibly huge task which might never be possible to finish. the economics of both of those changed radically in less than ten years, by three or four orders of cost. $10/kg would be a reasonable target for vatmeat.

By: dirtdirt

dirtdirt — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:00:21 -0800

So far the scientists have not tasted it Suuuure they haven't. Reminds me of that Greg Egan book, Distress, maybe? Where the trendy dish is made from dis-corporate human clone meat with a human name. Certainly not the first to think of harvesting non-sentient clone meat, but predates the H+ reference by a good ten years. Great book.

By: CynicalKnight

CynicalKnight — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:04:00 -0800

This meat, it vibrates?

By: chairface

chairface — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:20:16 -0800

This is a nomenclatural nightmare. We already have fake meat. If we have real fake meat, will we have to rename fake meat to... what? Fake fake meat? The food formerly known as fake meat? Or is the new fake meat not fake at all, thus forcing us to rename real meat to once-ambulatory meat? It's also creepy.

By: darkstar

darkstar — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:31:03 -0800

Creepmeat. *runs to trademark the name*

By: Never teh Bride

Never teh Bride — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:00:02 -0800

Please taste good. Please taste good. Please taste good. As a vegetarian who stopped eating meat to avoid killing but misses meat like the dickens, I so want vat meat to taste delicious. GET IN MY BELLY, VAT MEAT!

By: Durn Bronzefist

Durn Bronzefist — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:02:27 -0800

Hot dog factory = boiled butt smell, ok, I have no doubt. Yet people eat tons and tons of hot dogs. If that's the standard for "tasty" meat, this will have no problem whatsoever.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:05:30 -0800

I prefer free-range scientists. They have much more flavor.

By: Uppity Pigeon #2

Uppity Pigeon #2 — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:25:22 -0800

Woo!

By: xedrik

xedrik — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:37:17 -0800

This is news? The internets tell me that KFC has been doing this for years.

By: bonehead

bonehead — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:43:11 -0800

KFC has been doing this for years. I give you... Pepsico's Animal 57! (pic)

By: intelligentless

intelligentless — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:57:27 -0800

Oh man, I cannot wait to eat historical figures. The permutations are endless when I can make a sandwich out of Rasputin and Benjamin Franklin. Just need to salvage a few cells. Step 1, buy shovel.

By: mouthnoize

mouthnoize — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 11:03:15 -0800

Every bit of news about this makes me happy.

By: ODiV

ODiV — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 11:13:01 -0800

Wow several different cheap shots at religion that are totally unrelated to the thread topic. Please. If we talk about not-quite-meat grown in vats then inevitably it's going to turn to synthesized human meat which will then lead to (spoiler!) Soylent Green and transubstantiation. If a little ribbing on the Internet is all you get in terms of consequences from ritualistically eating what you believe is human flesh, then I think you're doing pretty well.

By: tkchrist

tkchrist — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:40:15 -0800

It weirds me out that people only care how it tastes. To me there a thousand unanswered questions. Chiefly, what are the unintended consequences? I'm hardly a knee-jerk anti-science type person by any stretch but I remember when Food & Big Agri Scientists were touting the awesomeness of trans-fats and the "Green Revolution" in agriculture. And both those things have seriously fucked up people and the planet leading to levels of human misery we have never seen on the planet before. So. Color me skeptical.

By: chrillsicka

chrillsicka — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:05:20 -0800

Just today I was thinking about not eating mammals anymore. This might tip the scale.

By: samsara

samsara — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:31:26 -0800

Not a single reference an impending zombie apocalypse so far...ready by 2012 as well? I'm stocking up on MRE's!

By: archagon

archagon — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:56:27 -0800

"Grass-fed farming means healthier animals, but good for the environment on a large scale, it's not." If The Omnivore's Dilemma is to be believed, Joel Salatin's innovative crop rotation method, though limited in yield, actually improves the environment. I think he has a valid point: if more brainpower was devoted to creating farming systems that worked in tandem with the environment rather than against it, we might be able to feed everyone healthy food, at reasonable cost, indefinitely. "On a small scale you can do it, but then meat becomes a real luxury item." Really? I've read that it can still work, but that we'd need a lot more farmers and farmland that we currently have. In any case, I don't mind the idea of meat becoming more of a luxury item in exchange for better health and a better environment.

By: floam

floam — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:05:49 -0800

In any case, I don't mind the idea of meat becoming more of a luxury item in exchange for better health and a better environment. Honestly, I think preventing poor people from getting a food we've evolved for a very long time to require is a worse sin than factory farming. Steak should be a luxury, meat should not.

By: archagon

archagon — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:23:37 -0800

By: floam

floam — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:37:00 -0800

True, but if we keep producing cheap, unsustainable meat, whether through factory farming or in vats, it will really suck for everyone when the system finally becomes unfeasible. We might not even be able to go back to sustainable farming at that point. Maybe I'm missing something, but how is grass-fed beef more sustainable than factory farming? It needs more land, and energy, doesn't it? It costs more. In some sort of economic apocalypse, it seems to me that grass-feed cows, organic tomatoes, and caviar are going to be even more out of reach. We're going to need modern agriculture more than ever.

By: Smedleyman

Smedleyman — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:21:31 -0800

So now we need a Shake and Frylock.

By: archagon

archagon — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:53:33 -0800

"Maybe I'm missing something, but how is grass-fed beef more sustainable than factory farming?" To paraphrase Michael Pollan, factory farming operates in a sequential manner, accepting inputs and producing outputs. Many of the inputs have to be synthesized and brought in from elsewhere, and many of the outputs (manure lagoons?) are contained to be dealt with later. Significant portions of this system (for instance, transportation and fertilizer) also require oil, a non-renewable resource. On the other hand, sustainable farming has very few inputs outside of its ecosystem (Polyface farms says it only adds chicken feed -- the plants and animals do the rest of the work) and recycles most of its waste. The energy that it uses comes mostly from renewable sources, and the land gets improved in the process. Why deal with the inputs and outputs by hand when all the work can be done by the ecosystem? (I probably shouldn't have used the term "grass-fed". You can feed a cow grass all its life without the operation necessarily being sustainable.)

By: Cody's Keeper

Cody's Keeper — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:07:40 -0800

Does this remind anyone else of Chicky Knobs? We all know how well that turned out don't we...

By: floam

floam — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:09:10 -0800

Why deal with the inputs and outputs by hand when all the work can be done by the ecosystem? Because I thought this type of use of the ecosystem was damaging. I'll need to do more research, clearly, as I am totally naive on this subject, but I was under the impression it means cutting down more trees and laying waste to a lot of land compared to the amount of land destroyed by a factory, per ounce of beef produced. And I meant sustainable more in the economic sense, since we were talking about oil prices and whatnot (although my intuition was that modern agriculture is going to be better in both senses in the end) Somebody above was making the argument that if oil prices go up, that market forces are going to lead to stuff like vat-beef and factory farm beef being ludicrous on a balance sheet.

By: archagon

archagon — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:07:10 -0800

I guess it depends on what chemicals vat-beef requires and how they're produced.

By: bad grammar

bad grammar — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:07:28 -0800

Oh man, I cannot wait to eat historical figures. Ghouls. Are you the Honourable Archibald Fitzhugh or the Bishop of Bath and Wells?

By: yohko

yohko — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:27:48 -0800

Tastes like chicken little.

By: exlotuseater

exlotuseater — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:58:11 -0800

Can . . . can you please quote something so I know what the hell you're talking about? Religion? What? Where? --Optimus Chyme Optimus-- it was the couple of throwaway jokes about the no need for transubstantiation anymo'. You know, if we could get a hold of of Jeezus DNA, instant host. (NOW WITH PAPRIKA!)