Growing Meat (OT) was: New poll for - Kevin's post

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Kevin asked:

>Now a quick SciFi question. We will soon reach a point at which

>animal protein, in the form of a steak, can be grown in-vitro, in

>volume, using industrial tissue culture. Now this particular 'meat'

>would not come from an animal, so, is it still " meat " from the

>vegetarian, even vegan, perspective?

 

Well....technically it would still be meat, since, well, you had to get the

cells from somewhere...

 

Now, as far as the technology goes, well, it's not entirely out of the

question, but there's a lot of complications. Most being the fact that you

need to grow it in a way that the cells will " stack " up on each other, but

not kill the cells underneath it, or use up the media too quickly. With the

current technology, it can sort of be done, but really, I don't think the

results will be that good. There's enough problems just culturing cells for

experimental use, so. Besides, the way media is, I don't think the flavor

would be good anyway...

 

Although, this is much easier to do for plant foods. In fact, you can get

plant embryos to grow in-vitro (I've done it myself) with the right mix of

nutrients. Plant cells are good that way *grin*. You can stimulate plant

cells to grow in culture and then plant the (what we call) cell plaques in

soil and tada! you've got a carrot (or other veggie...I personally worked

with carrots).

 

Just so you know, I'm a biochemist...

 

Gina