Comes Rei Militaris
Scientist tries (for a decade, underfunded) to find a way to grow meat!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110130/...ratory_feature
Wow! That would be interesting. I understand the reluctance of big institutions like NASA or Food's department to fund this research, but I believe that this kind of work is important.
Certainly more important than giving a billion $ for a new tank armor or torpedo etc.
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"Angry Uncle Gordon" describes me well.
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Dux Limitis
Re: Scientist tries (for a decade, underfunded) to find a way to grow meat!
Can't they just grow meat on an animal?
The wheel is spinning, but the hamster is dead.
Biarchus
Re: Scientist tries (for a decade, underfunded) to find a way to grow meat!
Very true. Haahaa.Originally Posted by Helm
It's a neat idea and science is in part invention and invention is finding better ways to do tasks.
I suspect they plan to "grow" meat as the "grow" hearts and livers.
bBrRaaAAiInZ
Biarchus
Re: Scientist tries (for a decade, underfunded) to find a way to grow meat!
Well, they're already capable of growing certain types of cardiomyocytes (heartcells), although a complete patch of tissue isn't viable yet. Advances in this field will solve so many great problems of the world (a lack of donors, starvation) that I can't wait to see this happen.
For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.
Biarchus
Re: Scientist tries (for a decade, underfunded) to find a way to grow meat!
Yeah, sorry for my ignorance. I meant to say they are trying to go these organs. A neat idea, aye?
If real life was a Utopian society then EVERYBODY would be a donor! Then again, if it was a Utopian society we wouldn't need donors, we could just grow the organs. THEN AGAIN, if it was a Uptopian society there'd be no such thing as a need for a new organ.
itz okay, i don need to go to the institution.
Liberalism is a Socially Transmitted Disease
Re: Scientist tries (for a decade, underfunded) to find a way to grow meat!
We grow meat all the time, we just call it a "cow".
Triggering
Re: Scientist tries (for a decade, underfunded) to find a way to grow meat!
This is one of those 'long run' issues. The problem with cows is they make a lot of things we don't really need. The waste, even when not wasted directly, costs more to make than the product. Bones, organs, hair, penises, eyes etc. Sure there might be a market for the stuff, but its not worth the cost of the feed.
Just growing the meat directly could be a lot more efficient, be done in conditions where there is not enough arable land, that sort of thing.
It won't ever be done for the vegetarian sensibilities, thats not a viable path, but it could be for economic ones.
The problems I see are with texture and taste. You might be able to make a stem cell grow into a muscle cell, but without the proper feedback from the other cells, including non muscle cells, you just might end up with nothing but a pile of goopy meat mush.
Growing of 'meat' will be a secondary product of true organ cloning, and you can see the value of that.
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My shameful truth.
Biarchus
Re: Scientist tries (for a decade, underfunded) to find a way to grow meat!
We'd need a way to create the extracellular matrix that surrounds cells. If we can accurately replicate that, on a large scale preferably, cells will actually form into muscle tissue. While this is hard, I hardly think it is an impossible obstacle. This, in combination with that diesel producing e.coli of yours, will change the world.
For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.
Re: Scientist tries (for a decade, underfunded) to find a way to grow meat!
I saw on this website called Ted or something that they were considering growing houses with a medium being either plant or being meat. It was pretty cool stuff if not a bit creepy in my mind (you hungry? go take a bite out of the wall)
Tiro
Re: Scientist tries (for a decade, underfunded) to find a way to grow meat!
It's easier to take a hydroponics garden on a spaceshipt going to Mars than it is to take a herd of cattle. Hopefully, it will taste good with Tang!
An army of rabbits led by a lion will always overcome an army of lions led by a rabbit. Napoleon
Triggering
Re: Scientist tries (for a decade, underfunded) to find a way to grow meat!
If it works, great, unlimited veal.
"When I die, I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like Fidel Castro, not screaming in terror, like his victims."
My shameful truth.
Primicerius
Re: Scientist tries (for a decade, underfunded) to find a way to grow meat!
As long as it taste better than Quorn
Just doing it
Re: Scientist tries (for a decade, underfunded) to find a way to grow meat!
We have already been working on that for a long time in Sweden at Chalmers Technical University (an article about the transplantation part).
Vae victis
Re: Scientist tries (for a decade, underfunded) to find a way to grow meat!
Won't be funded because it is a disruptive technology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology
Blut und Boden
hoi polloi
Re: Scientist tries (for a decade, underfunded) to find a way to grow meat!
Unfortunately its not disruptive its kinda silly. The problem with most arguments that make animal meat production inefficient is that they fail to consider more than a few variables -
Lots of places are simply not suitable for continued cropping - the cost of erosion, degradation of soil fertility over time or lack of from the stat need to be considered, but can as pasture support animals.
Even places that are cannot be cropped continuously without costs - take Iowa you can profitably rotate corn and beans for a decade or so, but you will slowly every year need more fertilizer, more pesticide, more herbicide and suffer soil erosion. Take a 5 year break with the same land in pasture feeding cattle and you reduce break the cycle of herbicide resistant weeds, the reservoir of pests and avoid being a surf to Monsanto.
A lot of modern agriculture is expensive or inefficient (or only efficient because of various unsustainable uses of resources) but Animal production is not a stsand out nor uniquely so.
Cultured meat could eventually become cheaper than what Genovese called the heavily subsidized production of farm meat, he said, and if the public accepts cultured meat, the future holds benefits.
And grain production is not also heavily subsidized ?
"Thirty percent of the earth's land surface area is associated with producing animal protein on farms," Genovese said.
Much of which is not likely good for much else - take drive into SW Texas. You just are not goining to raise a wheat crop there year or year or likely more than once if you can even find that much water...
Last edited by conon394; February 04, 2011 at 02:44 PM.
IN PATROCINIVM SVB Dromikaites
'One day when I fly with my hands - up down the sky, like a bird'
But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.
Hyperides of Athens: We know, replied he, that Antipater is good, but we (the Demos of Athens) have no need of a master at present, even a good one.
hoi polloi
Re: Scientist tries (for a decade, underfunded) to find a way to grow meat!
I just cannot agree Phier.This is one of those 'long run' issues. The problem with cows is they make a lot of things we don't really need. The waste, even when not wasted directly, costs more to make than the product. Bones, organs, hair, penises, eyes etc. Sure there might be a market for the stuff, but its not worth the cost of the feed.
Waste -> fertilizer [I agree in the extreme form of modern confined animal facilities the situation is inefficient since it creates a concentrated waste/ethical and health (need for all kinds of antibiotic use for example do to the risk of close confinement) issue that is not really sustainable]
Bones-> feed additive/soil additive/ edit: and jello..
Organs penises, eyes->. That food last time I checked unless your some silly city folk who thinks food comes the store but you can always make pet food out of it, or protein additives. Personally I admit I can't stand some things like kidneys, liver (filter organs) etc I do cook and feed them to my chickens, but a lot things are quite useful what do think sausage is inside of (unless you like the ideal of plastic cased sausage)? But anyway heart is for example quite a nice meat for a long cooking stew...
The original article has a lot to say about the cost of meat but not the cost of growing in a lab... I see no indication it would not just a resource intensive - just different resources.
Fur/Hide/Leather/Wool/Feathers - > you gotta replace a fair of material there with what?
Plus you than the problem of what do with land that is good for grazing but not for cropping - unless you use massive amounts of petroleum/fertilizer and irrigation - > not more long term sustainable than modern Pig facilities.
You also loose a viable and efficient and important crop rotation alternative.
Last edited by conon394; February 12, 2011 at 02:01 PM.
IN PATROCINIVM SVB Dromikaites
'One day when I fly with my hands - up down the sky, like a bird'
But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.
Hyperides of Athens: We know, replied he, that Antipater is good, but we (the Demos of Athens) have no need of a master at present, even a good one.
the poodle bites...
Re: Scientist tries (for a decade, underfunded) to find a way to grow meat!
All true: most folks simply cannot see beyond their dinnerplates, to recognize that meat is but one product of animal husbandry. Without domesticated animals even vegans would suffer, as all plants are dependent on animals' roles in nutrient cycling.
Don't forget that responsibly managed grazing also performs a service to humanity. My goats eat my weeds and clippings, saving me time and energy, and their poo is composted and used to nourish my plants. You can "rent-a-herd" for $200 a day who will clear 10 times as much brush as 1 human, or even more given treacherous footing and other adverse working conditions. Without goats, much of Texas would never have become cattle-country.
You forget a rather important part of animal physiology here: without movement, you have no muscle development...only fatty, atrophied, useless threads of limp meat. Unless you're gonna give em electric shocks to induce twitching, but then you've got an electric bill...then you've still got to deal with waste products and maintenance. Not to mention lab facilities substituting for an open field...cost effective?
At least a mobile animal can swish flies away, thermoregulate by moving between sun and shade, eat-drink-poop in different areas to avoid contamination, take advantage of wind and rain shelters, give unassisted live birth, support an immune system, regulate its own mineral uptake, live out-of-doors, and so on. Lab-grown meat shares the dietary appeal of truckstop buffet JellO, and absolutely none of the maintenance advantages of an independent animal which instinctively behaves in its own self interest (until slaughter-time).
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Domesticus
Re: Scientist tries (for a decade, underfunded) to find a way to grow meat!
I do remember seeing some article about this artificially grown meat in the local paper.
They raised the issue that while artificially grown meat does have great potential and wouldn't be as wasteful, you essentially have to have it so that the cultured meat has essentially same or better, flavor, composition, and healthiness as naturally grown products.
Biggest challenge will probably be to get the taste right. Cultured meat products like minced meat and chicken nuggets would be considerably easier to make than a cultured steak with blood vessels, bones, tendons, a properly tasty and cooked steak. And since we all love a good steak, instead of chicken nuggets, this is indeed worrying news.
"What do I feel when I kill my enemy?"
-Recoil-
Jean-Snow
Re: Scientist tries (for a decade, underfunded) to find a way to grow meat!
Bring on the Soylent Meat!
Protector Domesticus
Re: Scientist tries (for a decade, underfunded) to find a way to grow meat!
It takes 4kg of feed to get 1kg of meat. Its inefficient and will not last if the human pop goes to 10-15 billion, which it could in the next 100 years.
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