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CNN’s ‘Eco Solutions’: In-vitro Flesh and Paul McCartney’s Meat Free Mondays
Sir Paul McCartney in an ad campaign for the German chapter of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) (Image source: Wikimedia Commons)
Remember those rumors a few years ago about Kentucky Fried Chicken changing its name to KFC because it no longer used actual chickens, but rather some ghastly headless lab-grown creatures kept alive by tubes? Well those rumors were true.
OK, they weren’t. But in a bizarre twist of technological fate, scientists are now developing lab-cultured “in-vitro meat” as a less expensive, healthier and more eco-friendly alternative to conventional livestock farming.
This is eerily – and I admit as a huge scifi fan, somewhat excitingly – reminiscent of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which the crew of the starship Enterprise would eat instantly prepared, synthetically manufactured, yet highly tasty and nutritious food on demand and seemingly out of thin air as created by the ship’s replicators. Unfortunately we haven’t achieved that type of clean, sterile nanotechnology yet, folks. The reality, according to the August 8, 2009 CNN.com article “In-vitro meat: Would lab-burgers be better for us and the planet?”, is significantly different:
In-vitro meat is made from samples of animals conventionally slaughtered. For example, “pork” is made from pig ovaries retrieved from slaughterhouses, which are fertilized with pig semen, transforming them into embryos. They are then placed in a nutrient solution, where they grow and develop.
I know: gross. But so are factory farming, slaughterhouses, and the entire meat industry, and they’re also crueler. So there.
Actually, I don’t know exactly how the question of cruelty fits into the cultured meat industry. It would still involve some slaughter and a lot of moral questions such as whether the lab grown meat bags have any consciousness or not, experience pain and suffering and if this practice represents the ultimate commodification of animal life. Besides, it’s a little too disgusting to get too enthused about.
“Yuck factor”
Will people “swallow” this new in-vitro meat? Honestly, I don’t see why most wouldn’t. A McDonald’s Chicken McNugget is a mixture of minced and mechanically separated meat, phosphate salts, chicken skin and batter, which is molded, fried, frozen and then deep-fried before consumption. And people eat countless boxes of those every day, the world over. No one popping a McNugget into their maw is thinking about roosters crowing in sunny bucolic settings any more than imagining chickens pecking each other’s eyes out on industrialized poultry farms. They just want something salty and fried and they want it now.
However, certainly many will still find lab grown meat-things unappetizing. CNN reporter Kristie Lu Stout calls this eventuality the “yuck factor” in the article’s accompanying video segment. Still if it’s a choice between industrial live stock farming and saving the Earth, go with yuck.
Sir Paul’s Meat Free Mondays
Long time veggie campaigner and former Beatle Paul McCartney is spearheading a campaign encouraging people to give up meat for at least one day a week. This time the emphasis is on the environment rather than animal welfare, but let’s face it: both would be winners if the public adopts Meat Free Mondays, what to speak of a whole meat free week.
If we are to believe the article and report’s statistics, both in-vitro meat and Paul McCartney’s Meat Free Mondays should cut down significantly on our collective and individual carbon footprints. For cultured meat, this could mean up to an 80% reduction in emissions, according to Hanna Tuomisto of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, University of Oxford, while simply participating in Meat Free Mondays could cut agricultural greenhouse gas emissions by 10-20%; this statistic from a Greenpeace biologist.
Stranger than science fiction?
What’s particularly encouraging about these reports is that the mainstream media are continuing to put more and more emphasis on how livestock farming is the largest culprit when it comes to climate change and environmental pollution and that eating less meat is probably the Greenest thing one can do as an individual. The solution may come partly in the form of lab-grown “frankenburgers” as well as the many meat alternatives that already exist today. Those who cannot give up meat totally or even one day a week may find an alternative in in-vitro meat, but part of me can’t help but want to scream: Are you really that desperate? Just stop eating meat! But maybe I should be more understanding, especially since soy is getting a bit controversial these days as a food and rainforest destroyer. Still, there is something Matrix-y and macabre about in-vitro, which is both fascinating and repellent and perhaps better left to science fiction than real implementation. Well, I suppose it’s slightly better than a full-blown Soylent Green – It’s people. Soylent Green is made out of people! – scenario. Reach for the popcorn.
By Graham Land
Tags: climate change, CNN, in-vitro meat, Meat Free Mondays, Paul McCartney, PETA
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