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MikeOLogical
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Scientists aim for lab grown meat
#4538636 - 08/15/05 03:39 PM (18 years, 8 months ago) |
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http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Scie...l?oneclick=true
Scientists aim for lab-grown meat August 15, 2005 - 9:39AM
Researchers are dishing up the perfect conundrum for vegetarians - meat grown in a laboratory dish, not on the hoof.
While it may be years before you savour laboratory-raised meat from your backyard barbecue, researchers say the technology exists now to produce processed meats such as burgers and sausages, starting with cells taken from cow, chicken, pig, fish or other animal.
Growing meat without the animal would not only reduce the need for the animals - which often are kept in less than ideal conditions - meat production is also blamed for a variety of environmental ills.
Cultured meat could also be tailored to be healthier than farm-raised meat, while satisfying the increasing demand for protein by the world's growing population, proponents say.
Brian Ford, a British biologist and the author of The Future of Food, said the widespread acceptance of meat substitutes such as 'quorn', a cultured fungus, "shows that the time for cultured tissue is near".
Techniques for engineering muscle cells and other tissues were first developed for medical use, and now a small handful of researchers are looking into growing edible muscle cells, said Jason Matheny, a University of Maryland doctoral student who co-authored a paper on in vitro meat techniques.
Industrialising the process could involve growing muscle cells on large sheets or beads suspended in a growth medium.
The sheet would have to be stretched, or the beads would have to be expandable, to stretch the cells and provide the exercise, if you will, needed for the cells to develop, he said.
"If you didn't stretch them, you would be eating mush. It would be like pink-coloured Jello," Matheny said.
Once the cells have grown enough, they could be scraped off and packaged. If edible sheets or beads are used, all of it could be eaten.
"The technology is there to produce something like a processed meat, you could produce a heavily processed chicken meat just like, perhaps, a nugget," Matheny said.
"The technology to produce something like a steak or chicken breast is still quite a ways off, there's a lot of technological challenge to producing something that has a structure to it."
Growing a steak, for example, requires more than just muscle cells. Blood vessels, fat and connective tissue would also have to be grown.
If too many muscle cells grow on top of each other, for example, the cells on the inside of the muscle mass will no longer be exposed to the nutrients in the growth medium and will die, Matheny said.
In June, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said they had taken a step toward solving that problem.
The researchers, studying the creation of replacement parts for humans, said they used a mix of cells to grow muscle tissue that had its own blood vessels.
The human tissue was implanted into mice where they watched blood flow into the engineered muscle.
Touro College bioengineer Morris Benjaminson said fish muscle cells cultured at his laboratory for NASA passed a "sniff panel", and he believes seafood might be the first to be laboratory cultured.
"We actually did cook the fish meat we grew," Benjaminson said.
"It looked, according to them, and smelled like the fish you can buy in the supermarket."
However, the panel did not eat the cultured meat, he said.
While growing meat in a dish is currently too expensive for anything but space travel, Benjaminson thinks it is feasible to one day produce a cheaper, tastier, fishless-stick.
"With a little bit of money and time we could produce probably something that resembles a fish filet," he said.
"There's no reason to think it would be just as flaky as any other fish filet."
Crab, shrimp or other shellfish also could be cultured, he said.
Dr Vladimir Mironov, director of the Shared Tissue Engineering Lab at the Medical University of South Carolina, envisions a countertop device like a bread machine could one day produce sausage or hamburger.
Instead of flour, water and yeast, it would need muscle stem cells, a growth medium, and an edible structure for the cells to grow on, he said.
While Benjaminson's research required the fish to be killed to get the muscle cells needed to start the process, eventually the process could be refined to allow the use of a cultured cell line or a biopsy so the donor fish could live, he said.
While many growth mediums are animal based, Benjaminson said he has also developed a mushroom-based growth medium.
Researchers at South Dakota State University have also developed an animal-free medium, Matheny said.
If a product is brought to market, Matheny admits he is not sure how consumers would react.
"In some ways, this is a product of biotechnology in the same way bread and wine and cheese are products of biotechnology," Matheny said.
"You take something that's found in nature, and reproduce it in a controlled environment."
How regulators might react is also not known. The US Food and Drug Administration, for example, has asked companies that clone animals not to market any products involving cloned animals until the safety of the products has been evaluated.
Ford said many are already turned off by meat because of the miserable lives many animals suffer.
Cultured meat could appeal to those consumers, but it is not likely to appear in stores soon.
"People will take time to get used to the idea, and it will be a slow process of adaptation," Ford said.
Pitfalls include viruses that could infect meat cultures, he said.
If the idea is rushed to market before it is shown to be safe, the public will be turned against the concept.
"That's what has already happened with genetically modified crops," Ford said.
"The idea of cultured meat has great appeal to me, but we must move cautiously."
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baraka
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Re: Scientists aim for lab grown meat [Re: MikeOLogical]
#4538970 - 08/15/05 05:01 PM (18 years, 8 months ago) |
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Some how a slaughtered cow sounds tastier then a lab grown burger.
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RedNucleus
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Re: Scientists aim for lab grown meat [Re: baraka]
#4539169 - 08/15/05 05:42 PM (18 years, 8 months ago) |
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yay i am all for this, it will probably taste awesome
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Randolph_Carter
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Re: Scientists aim for lab grown meat [Re: MikeOLogical]
#4540484 - 08/15/05 11:16 PM (18 years, 8 months ago) |
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That's almost straight outta cyberpunk. Wow.
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moog
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Re: Scientists aim for lab grown meat [Re: MikeOLogical]
#4541073 - 08/16/05 02:17 AM (18 years, 8 months ago) |
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cool. this is great news.
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notahippy
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Re: Scientists aim for lab grown meat [Re: moog]
#4550480 - 08/18/05 03:34 AM (18 years, 7 months ago) |
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Theres no way the cattle farmers of the world will let this happen. Theyll lobby it away or spread disinformation about it.
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Baby_Hitler
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I want to eat my own lab cultured flesh.
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daimyo
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Re: Scientists aim for lab grown meat [Re: MikeOLogical]
#4557936 - 08/20/05 05:37 AM (18 years, 7 months ago) |
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I wonder how many vegetarians this would convert.
I want some pink-colored protein jello. Sounds like some futuristic space shit.
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Baby_Hitler
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Re: Scientists aim for lab grown meat [Re: daimyo]
#4562870 - 08/21/05 02:01 PM (18 years, 7 months ago) |
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CptnGarden
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Re: Scientists aim for lab grown meat [Re: Baby_Hitler]
#4562972 - 08/21/05 02:30 PM (18 years, 7 months ago) |
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"The technology is there to produce something like a processed meat, you could produce a heavily processed chicken meat just like, perhaps, a nugget,"
I betcha micky d's will be the first to use that one.
"It looked, according to them, and smelled like the fish you can buy in the supermarket"
Theres a few ex-girlfriends I could say the same about.
who names their kid Benjaminson? wtf?
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RuNE
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Re: Scientists aim for lab grown meat [Re: MikeOLogical]
#4565914 - 08/22/05 06:31 AM (18 years, 7 months ago) |
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That is the most disgusting thing i have ever read.
Fuckin cool. This might put an end to all those millions of animals killed yearly in the most horrible methods. Sure it might be 10+ years in the future, but still a great idea.
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LeftyBurnz
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Re: Scientists aim for lab grown meat [Re: RuNE]
#4568265 - 08/22/05 09:06 PM (18 years, 7 months ago) |
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ditto, theres no f*cking way im going to eat a lab grown anything........ who knows what it will do to you, what the hell is the matter with these scientists, next theres gonna be genetically altered pets for our amusement "mommy i want a kittygerbildog"...... and next after that "its amazing people, youll never have to have dirty sinful intercourse again, you can have your baby mailed right to your door.... just send one egg and one load to....." some people sicken me..... who the hell wants to eat mcdonalds "Lab Nuggets".
EDIT: reply meant for baraka.
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Edited by LeftyBurnz (08/22/05 09:08 PM)
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ferns
fellow traveler
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Re: Scientists aim for lab grown meat [Re: LeftyBurnz]
#4573866 - 08/24/05 03:04 AM (18 years, 7 months ago) |
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there's a big difference between genetically altered pets (besides, what do you call a chihuahua?) and lab grown meat...one is pure human selfishness, the other has the potential to eliminate the suffering of millions of animals and supply food where there otherwise might not be enough. the poultry demand in china, for example, is rapidly outpacing supply.
i think it's ironic that in your signature you say "Who has the right to tell me what i can and can't put into my own body but myself?" and yet someone who would consider this alternative to animal slaughter "sickens you".
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Edited by ferns (08/24/05 03:05 AM)
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LeftyBurnz
Mr. I Eat Butthole
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Re: Scientists aim for lab grown meat [Re: ferns]
#4575178 - 08/24/05 02:31 PM (18 years, 7 months ago) |
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animals have been slaughtered since mankind came to be, and until its a proven science im not touching it, who knows if this stuff can affect you in a negative way or not. when its proven they dont cause cancer or any other serious ailment, then ill eat lab nuggets.
and yes i know they have altered pets now, i was thinking more along the lines of a freak pet like a cog, or a dat, or maybe a snouse. i guess i shouldve been specific.
and i dont know what you find ironic, it simply means only i should be allowed to govern my body, and you yours. i could give a rats ass if you wanna eat lab meat or not, thats up to you, but it is my decision to not want to eat something that man is just starting to tinker with.(wish i followed that belief when i bought windows 95 when it first came out lol) yes it saddens me that millions of animals are slaughtered in the most inhumane ways to feed us, but do i feel guilty? no, men have eaten animals since we learned we could catch them, i find it much less discusting to raise animals and slaughter them, then to take them out of nature, because the cows and chickens and pigs that are raised only know that life until they die.
hopefully reincarnation applies to animals as well so that they might have a better life next time.... unless they end back up in a farm.
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