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Meat Without the Murder
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Thursday, June 22, 2006
8:50:00 AM EDT
Hearing Loving the Alien -- David Bowie
Hey! You got your burger in my science fiction!
Edible, lab-grown ground chuck that smells and tastes just like the real thing might take a place next to Quorn at supermarkets in just a few years, thanks to some determined meat researchers. Scientists routinely grow small quantities of muscle cells in petri dishes for experiments, but now for the first time a concentrated effort is under way to mass-produce meat in this manner.
Henk Haagsman, a professor of meat sciences at Utrecht University, and his Dutch colleagues are working on growing artificial pork meat out of pig stem cells. They hope to grow a form of minced meat suitable for burgers, sausages and pizza toppings within the next few years.
As it happens, in my next novel The Android's Dream, there's some discussion about meat like this, which I call "vatted meat," and how people generally prefer it to the "real thing," because it doesn't involve killing anything, and indeed allows for new meat combinations not available in nature (the best-selling vatted meat in my book is "Bison Boar," which as you might suspect is hybridized beef-pork). Nice to see the real world catching up so soon, because that means alien space travel is not far behind! Whoo hoo!
Yes, if it tasted as good as the real thing, I'd eat meat grown in a lab, because then I wouldn't have to kill some dumb animal for my burger. How about you?
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8:50:00 AM EDT
Hearing Loving the Alien -- David Bowie
Meat Without the Murder
Hey! You got your burger in my science fiction!
Edible, lab-grown ground chuck that smells and tastes just like the real thing might take a place next to Quorn at supermarkets in just a few years, thanks to some determined meat researchers. Scientists routinely grow small quantities of muscle cells in petri dishes for experiments, but now for the first time a concentrated effort is under way to mass-produce meat in this manner.
Henk Haagsman, a professor of meat sciences at Utrecht University, and his Dutch colleagues are working on growing artificial pork meat out of pig stem cells. They hope to grow a form of minced meat suitable for burgers, sausages and pizza toppings within the next few years.
As it happens, in my next novel The Android's Dream, there's some discussion about meat like this, which I call "vatted meat," and how people generally prefer it to the "real thing," because it doesn't involve killing anything, and indeed allows for new meat combinations not available in nature (the best-selling vatted meat in my book is "Bison Boar," which as you might suspect is hybridized beef-pork). Nice to see the real world catching up so soon, because that means alien space travel is not far behind! Whoo hoo!
Yes, if it tasted as good as the real thing, I'd eat meat grown in a lab, because then I wouldn't have to kill some dumb animal for my burger. How about you?
Written by johnmscalzi Blog about this entry |
Add to del.icio.us | digg this
This entry has 5 comments: (Add your own)
-
I think this is an excellent use of recombinant DNA research. Beats the heck out of Quorn with it's 5% serious allegic reaction rate amongst it's consumers. Gives a whole new meaning to "putting on the pig."
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I think I'll let people like you eat the lab-grown ground chuck for a while, see if any strange mutations, side effects, illnesses, etc. show up, then give it a try.
-
Soylent Green is people!
-Dan -
I hope you're saving up for that rocket car to the moon. Of course, if we are to believe some science fiction, eating that Bison-Boar meat will cause horrible mutations, turning people into hideous vegi-zombies hunting down and killing all of the planet's meat-eaters, and rendering their bodies as fertiliser for huge fields of canola and soy.
-Paul
http://journals.aol.ca/plittle/AuroraWalkingVacation/
6/24/06 1:13 AM