I am no vegetarian, but after reading about mechanically separated meat, washed with ammonia, infused with "flavor," and formed into common products like pepperoni, I would rather have my low-grade meat be lab-grown.<p>Reference:
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanically_separated_meat" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanically_separated_meat</a>
<a href="http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/04/whats-the-deal-with-tuna-scrape/" rel="nofollow">http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/04/whats-the-deal-with-tu...</a>
I can imagine this going over well with people that want to eat meat, but don't really want to kill animals. I could see them paying twice as much for a steak produced this way.<p>Then, as it becomes cheaper and cheaper, it will become the norm for meat. Eventually "real" meat from animals will be the the luxury item.
The way we treat our meat we might as well grow it in a lab. I love a good chicken as much as the next guy, but when you blast it with chemicals, drugs, and then freeze it for a few days, unfreeze it, freeze it again, and then finally shove it in my salad it doesn't taste any different than if you grew it in lab.<p>At least we can engineer the lab grown stuff to taste good after you beat the flavor out of it.
A slightly off-topic question this brings up in my mind - considering the current availability of multivitamin pills, protein + carbohydrate bars / shakes, various iron/mineral supplements, is it not possible to sustain yourself using just engineered products? Without having to buy the staple food we currently do (breads, meats, salads).<p>From reading the article, it seems we're still a fair bit off lab grown food - but certainly for future generations it may just be the norm.
With how easy it seems to be to make meat carcinogenic [1][2], I'm going to wait a while on this one. (Yes, I eat meat, but limit what type and how much.)<p>[1] <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16526695" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16526695</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/23/cut-red-meat-cancer-researchers" rel="nofollow">http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/23/cut-red-meat-can...</a>
If lab grown meat, even if at first it is only hamburger, can be economically viable, then the boon to tissue engineering science could be very big indeed. There would be much more work done on bioreactors and biomaterials.
I didn't know Veridian Dynamics set up shop in The Netherlands.<p><a href="http://www.movieweb.com/v/VIq12vszWI4Ftx" rel="nofollow">http://www.movieweb.com/v/VIq12vszWI4Ftx</a>
This is how "starving" will be solved in the future, with much cheaper lab-brown (replicator-grown?) food.<p>Of course for the first 2 decades or so it will still be in "beta" mode, and I wouldn't really want to be one of the early adopters. Hopefully regulators will monitor the whole situation and force them to put labels on it that clearly separates it from normal meat.
I'm excited about this, but there really needs to be societal consideration here. While I'm all for eating whatever tastes good, many of my meat-eating friends are grossed out even when they think about how regular meat is procured. I don't want to think how they'll react to test tube meat.<p>Then again, the next generation won't know anything else.
"Vrandin, the new near meat will bring about a higher culture in the butcher fraternity" [1913]<p><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1338&dat=19130331&id=-M0zAAAAIBAJ&sjid=QPQDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5145,2823878" rel="nofollow">http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1338&dat=19130331&...</a>
Deja Vu: <a href="http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/221975/march-17-2009/world-of-nahlej---shmeat" rel="nofollow">http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/22197...</a>
I think that it is the wrong approach to try to make lab grown meat taste indistinguishable from real meat.<p>Instead, they should aim to make it taste better than real meat.