The science of tissue engineering and the development of
in vitro meat may one day, hopefully, result in the end of livestock.
And
with it, the end of unnecessary cruelty to non-human animals, a
decrease in the frequency of animal-to-human borne diseases (which is
like, all of them), the alleviation of environmental degradation caused
by animal farming, and an end to unhealthy, unclean, hormone-ridden and
antibiotic laden meat.
Humans eat 240 billion kilograms of
meat every year. Imagine how many animals that represents. Now imagine
each of those lifetimes as they are individually experienced: caged,
crammed, frightened, diseased, poked, prodded, neurotic, psychotic, and
all followed by slaughter. Don’t think so? Read
this,
this,
this,
this, and
this. And then watch
this.
Then
there’s all the cropland, water, fertilizer, pesticides and energy
required to produce animals for the killing floor. And what about the
millions of tonnes of manure and other waste produced every year in
North America?
As
Jared Diamond noted in
Guns, Germs, and Steel,
humans have been consistently traumatized by the continual spread of
diseases, which in virtually every case has been spawned by
human-to-animal contact (predominantly the result of maintaining
livestock). Current health and pandemic risks such as mad cow and avian
flu are all heightened as a consequence of animal farming.
Moreover,
with the introduction of in vitro foods, in vitro meat products would
be far healthier than the real thing. Cultivated meats would be
engineered to be healthier and cleaner.
In vitro meat is still meat in every sense of the term. According to
Wikipedia, the process is as follows:
Meat
essentially consists of animal muscle. There are loosely two approaches
for production of in vitro meat; loose muscle cells and structured
muscle, the latter one being vastly more challenging than the former.
Muscles consist of muscle fibers, long cells with multiple nuclei. They
don't proliferate by themselves, but arise when precursor cells fuse.
Precursor cells can be embryonic stem cells or satellite cells,
specialized stem cells in muscle tissue. Theoretically, they can
relatively simple be cultured in a bioreactor and then later made to
fuse. For the growth of real muscle however, the cells should grow "on
the spot", which requires a perfusion system akin to a blood supply to
deliver nutrients and oxygen close to the growing cells, as well as
remove the waste products. In addition other cell types need to be
grown like adipocytes, and chemical messengers should provide clues to
the growing tissue about the structure. Lastly, muscle tissue needs to
be trained to properly develop.
In vitro meat, referred to
by some as laboratory-grown meat, is animal flesh that has never been
part of a complete, living animal.
According to a recent
Globe and Mail article,
scientists can grow frog and mouse meat in the lab, and are now working
on pork, beef and chicken. Their goal is to develop an industrial
version of the process in five years. It will be at that point that we
can say a viable threat exists to the ongoing presence of animal
farming. And at the very least it will certainly make the presence of
livestock that much less justifiable.
That being said, it will
be a struggle to convince people to eat synthetic meat over the real
thing. Most people who have ethical issues with eating meat are already
vegetarians--so devout meat eaters aren’t really listening. And it’s
doubtful that die-hards will give up their tried-and-true meat over an
artificial and likely inferior-tasting product.
Perhaps it’ll
take the death of millions and millions of people from avian flu for
people to start questioning meat eating culture.
One last thought: if there are
any arguments from
anybody that
in vitro meat is still somehow unethical or demeaning to an animal,
they seriously need to rethink things. A chunk of tissue grown in a
petri dish is as far removed from an existential, emotional, and
conscious creature as is a rock.
That being said, I can already hear the howls of outrage...
Cross-posted from Sentient Developments.