bman

Easy to feel squeamish about it, but I don't think it's that big of a deal. What they're trying to get isn't some new spam product. They're trying to make hamburger and sirloin. They're also years and years of research away. Let em try and see what they discover. If it's bad, I promise you don't have to eat it.

I know Rou... but.... damn

If beef becomes a thing of the past, you could always learn to like tempeh. PETA might get their way and get us all to be vegetarians after all . . .

"There's a yuck factor when people find out meat is grown in a lab..." Yes. In this we agree.

There can also be an argument that there is a yuck factor in killing a living breathing animal that bleeds and eating it. There is also be a big yuck factor in seeing the conditions of most feedlots and slaughter houses where animals wallow in their own crap. If you saw (or even smelled) a large commercial pig farm you might not look at sausage the same way. If you saw many chicken coups and were overcome by ammonia, it might not be so appetizing.

I really don't see beef in a beaker to be much more disgusting than how most of the meat in the supermarket is raised and/or processed. If mass produced meat were my only option now, I'd still be a vegetarian.

I've been in a cattle slaughter house. I've lived within smelling distance of large scale chicken farms. I've been on pig farms.

I still love meat. Steak, bacon, sausage, chicken, veal, lamb, and all manner of sea creature. Tastes great, and I don't particularly care if we kill animals to get it.

That said, I don't think beaker meat is intrinsically something to avoid. The arguments in the article are compelling. The amount of land required to raise animals is massive. The ecological impact of animal farms is significant. And, there is no way we can realistically continue to expand the current situation as the planet population expands. Beyond that, I keep a little hope in my brain that sometime in the next 50 years, we may leave this little ball of rock again, and we'll probably want to have steak again without carting a couple hundred cattle along with us.

Rou, if you've seen those places you can understand why I said that there is a yuck factor involved.

I was a vegetarian for 5 yrs because of it. I eat meat again after finding locally produced meat. I am fortunate in that regard. They raise animals like they should be raised, not in disgusting conditions that required prophylactic use of antibiotics. I get wild caught seafood for the same reason.

I have seen them (that's why I said I've seen them). Comes from a rural upbringing in hill billy land. I've never understood why people let it bother them.

Yuck factor? Don't really see it. Stinky sure. Kill rooms are messy, but that's the nature of the beast. Maybe it's the autonomy of the process, or the "inhumanity" of it. Dunno. Obviously, for people that are bothered by the process, lab grown meat would be an improvement.