The Sausage of the Future
It's been a while since this blog featured the kind of foul, disgusting, vomit-inducing post that you all adore. So I've been scouring the Internet today, looking for something that would turn your stomachs. And when I read the following headline, I knew I'd found it.
"Scientists Grow Pork Meat in a Laboratory."
Apparently lots of people have greeted this news with great joy. After all, lab-grown meat could feed millions, help reduce the greenhouse gases emitted by farm animals, and save cute little piggies from slaughter. (Even NASA is keen to know if meat can be grown in space.)
That's all great, of course. However, my interest started to fade when I learned that the research was funded by a sausage manufacturer. Which probably has NOTHING to do with the scientists' belief that their breakthrough "could lead to sausages and other processed products being made from laboratory meat in as little as five years."
Take your time, ladies and gentlemen.
Still hungry for more news?
Vanilla can be extracted from cow dung. Now how about some dessert?
posted by Kirsten Miller at 3:43 PM
33 Comments:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't like labs: they give me the creeps!!!!!!!!!!! I can't imagine my food coming from one of those. also, it would put tons of people out of jobs. poor pig farmers!!!
AWESOME! This blog has the coolest stuff! I love it!
Well, I definitely am a chocolate ice cream person now. (Not that I wasn't before)
FIRST COMMENT!!!!!!
well i'm a vegetarian so yay!!! I will never eat vanilla ice cream ever again!!!!
wow i dont think i would ever have that lab meat but it might be good for the people who really need it, and could save tons of lives. And im glad that i am and will always love chockolate waaaay more than vanilla :P
wait... montana irregular... chocolate-chip cookies have vanilla in them... please tell me u r'nt going 2 stop eating them!! that would b a tragedy!!!!!!!!!!
!!
yum.
nope actually i'm eating chocolate right now!!! yum!
yum...
plus whats with the freaky baby picture???
sorry my blog is montanairregulars@blogspot.com
MushroomCloud: You'd be surprised at how much food you would wish would come from labs. If you knew....
yeah.... that's true. My ss teacher had us read the THE JUNGLE in class. it was awful. it's all about how they kill the animals and what goes into the meat... it was really creepy!!!!!!
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Just in case you need a source for more critter info...
I'm back!
Hm, maybe they're making it for vegetarians.
Montana Irregulars: That is a child of the future looking with horror at the food it's mother will feed it.
Sorry, looks like my comment didn't go through from the library. I said, MushroomCloud: You'd be surprised at how much food you would WISH could come from a lab. If you knew.....
Okay, it looks like it did go through. I'm an idiot.
P.S.S For anyone here who likes crazy socks(I'm trying to make a point to this dismal town I live in) go to Sockdreams.com. They have some cool stuff. Not just socks. But mostly socks.
MushroomCloud: AGAIN. 'poor farmers?' what about the innocent, defenseless pigs? Hmm?
Apart from the ethical concerns this raises, I don't quite see the problem. People have no problem with penicillin and other drugs grown in labs. The issue of whether the scientist fudged the data so it said what they wanted, i.e. you can make sausages so the sausage company will continue to fund them, and it's not actually safe, is different.
As for the vanilla, I think it's a great idea! Recycling+frreing up land so that it can be used for other things, e.g. food+getting rid of a chemical that doesn't decompose well=the only problem is the ick factor. Eventually, people may get over that. It seems to be irrational, because this would never be allowed as a food additive if it weren't safe. If we're from lead in our bicycle tires (Do you suck on your bicycle tires? I sure as heck don't.), we'd better be protected from manure in food.
Hazel: Your comments are always very thought-provoking. Thank you for that. (I can't wait to hear what you say about Subway Hamster! Just kidding!)
In all seriousness, here are some of my concerns about lab grown meat.
1. I would prefer independent research rather than research funded by a company that stands to benefit. (Yes, this is very pollyannaish of me, but I think we should have extremely high standards when it comes to food.)
2. While I don't find lab-grown pork particularly appetizing, my hesitation has nothing to do with squeamishness. I simply don't think we know enough about the long-term physiological effects of all the stuff we've been cooking up in labs lately. I'm not just talking about meat, but also the various genetically modified ingredients, chemicals, and pesticides that end up in our food. Call me crazy, but I think I'll stick with 100% natural for now.
However, I live a privileged life. I have never gone hungry. So it's very easy for me to turn up my nose at something like lab-grown meat. There are billions of people out there who aren't so lucky, and I'm glad there are scientists who are thinking of ways to help the hungry. (Though I do hope most of the scientists don't work for sausage companies.)
As for the vanilla, I agree with you. It's a nasty thought, but we should all get over it!
EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
IT'LL BE LIKE SPAM!!!
EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!
I don t eat pig, alive or test-tubed
EeEeEeEeEeEwWwWwWwWwWw!!!!!!
I am never, ever going into a lab again!(Even though I will probably have to for class in the next week or so)
Keep on keeping on!!!
Hazel: You want to be protected from manure in food? Don't eat hamburgers.
As for the vanilla, Kirsten is right. Hey you guys know that pink, purple, red Trix yogurt everybody LOVES so much? You don't want to know the thing that are in that.
Lioness: Please excuse my rude bluntness, but are you Jewish? Or vegetarian? Peskitarian? Vegan? Someone who has a pet pig? Do you just not like pork?
Woohoo! Chocolate and Strawberry win!!
I totaly would not eat "grown" sausage. I mean, its cool and all, but... BeLcH
Its just nasty.
~BUt still cool
Where do you find all this stuff???
EEEEEEEWWWWW!!!!!! the dairy is supposed to come out of the utters and no where else!!!!!! D:
Gnat: They don't mean Vanilla ice cream. They mean V. extract. And V. Extract is not dairy.
that baby= my new desktop
on a side note, while i myself don't eat meat, i think this artificially grown stuff could be a good alternative to clear-cutting land for our meat. saving the environment and animals at the same time!
and i don't get why everyone's freaking about the vanilla. i think they mean vanilla extract, people :)
Pollyannaish? On the contrary, I belive she had very low expectations. (On everything, not just aspects concerning food.)
i agree w/ 42, Pollyanna is the happiest person EVER..... and Forrester: i do feel sorry for the pigs, ut if its pigs or humans, i vote humans. Plus, pigsare really scary, have ypu seen a full grown pig???!!!! they're tremendous!!!!
Ananka: I totally get what you're saying about the funding. But on the other hand, I don't quite see what else to do. Research needs some pretty hefty sums of money, and people are likely to give to research that will benefit them. I guess we need more rich philanthropists who love trying to help mankind.
And while I think "They grew it in a petri dish? Eeew, I'm not eating that!" may be irrational, I definitely think there's a lot to the "They grew it in a petri dish? Good gosh, what did they do to it that made that work? Eeew, I'm not eating that!" argument. Probably lab-grown meat should be required to be labeled as such.
And while it would be great if this could help end world hunger, I've heard it estimated that enough food is produced every year for every single person to eat three thousand calories every single day. If that's true, we need to fix distribution, not production.
Pork in labortories.... Something to do with the piggy flu...?
kitty: u may be right, but they could've been developing this before the whole problem of the swine flu popped up...
Wow.
After almost a month of fasting from vanilla yogurt, I found this in the article-
"The vanillin extracted from the feces could be used in products such as shampoo and aromatic candles but not in food, said Yamamoto, who works for the Research Institute of the state-run International Medical Center of Japan
Booyah!
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