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Science

Lab-Grown Steak 664

Posted by Hemos from the will-jamie-eat-it dept.
swight1701 writes "New Scientist has an article about several researches who are trying to perfect growing seafood, chicken and beef in the lab without the animal. NASA started the program by wanting to provide burgers for Mars astronauts, and researchers hope to look to McDonalds, et al as funding sources in the future. The biggest problems being nutrient delivery to thick meat and exercise for the sedentary slabs. Processed meats seem to be something that may be a reality soon, while your animal friendly filet mignon may take a little while."
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Lab-Grown Steak More

Lab-Grown Steak

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  • What about quality (Score:5, Interesting)

    by parnasus ( 321445 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @10:46AM (#4988273)
    Just as farm-raised meat has a different taste quality than game meat, I wonder what the flavor of lab meat would be?

    • Re:What about quality (Score:5, Interesting)

      by evalhalla ( 581819 ) <elena.valhalla@ g m ail.com> on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @10:58AM (#4988389) Homepage Journal

      Probably just different.

      I guess that they're going either to make some almost tasteless meat that you're going to eat with lots of sausage, or extra spiced meat that doesn't need anything before it can be eaten, maybe not even cooking.

      I suppose they could give also a "fake game meat" taste, and I also suppose that most people won't care, and that's the sad thing

  • Huhhhuhhuh... laaaab grooownnn buuurrrgggerr... araarrrrraarah slurp slurp

  • Gag. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eviltypeguy ( 521224 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @10:47AM (#4988281)
    This is just sick. I don't think I could even think about eating this. Anyone else feel the same way?

    Who know what the long term effects of eating genetically engineered food are? It seems like more and more corporations are putting profit margins before people...

    • Re:Gag. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bluprint ( 557000 )
      It seems like more and more corporations are putting profit margins before people...

      It seems like more and more, any attempt to make money becomes an *evil conspiracy*.

      If you don't want to eat it, don't. Just because someone has decided this is a good business venture doesn't mean they have taken some action against you personally (or anyone else).
      • bluprint wrote:

        > It seems like more and more, any attempt to make
        > money becomes an *evil conspiracy*.

        I'm terribly sorry, but the "sacred" pursuit of profit and the incorporation of a company does not let the company off the hook of being a responsible part of society. They are not a free ticket to carefree irresponsible brathood. Profit is not more important than the law of the land.

        The same goes for scientists, who for some reason think the "sacred" pursuit of knowledge and a doctorate somehow free them from responsibility for their discoveries.

        > Just because someone has decided this is a good
        > business venture doesn't mean they have taken some
        > action against you personally (or anyone else).

        Give me a break! It has been shown that the Clean Air Act saves lives, and when it is loosened, more people (like me) suffer, and some die. Yet Bush's energy cronies got him to loosen it, because their precious profits were suffering.

        Or take the MPAA and RIAA (please!). To protect their precious profits they want Congress to pass a law that would severely impact the larger consumer electronics and IT industries.

        These are just a few of the instances in which harm to the citizens of this country are being done by corporations in the glorious name of profit. You don't even have to be a customer to be affected by their antics. Yes, corporations have a duty to their investors to produce a profit. They also have duties to their employees, customers, and society as a whole.

        When they decide to grow up and stop being brats, maybe they will get my business.

        "Ridiculous, you have no claim. I'll sue you for interfering with private enterprise."
        Kumoyama, Happy Enterprises, "Mothra vs. Godzilla", 1964

    • Re:Gag. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by XNormal ( 8617 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @10:55AM (#4988349) Homepage
      This is just sick. I don't think I could even think about eating this. Anyone else feel the same way?

      Nope. I'm no vegetarian but I don't see how this is any more or less sick than killing animals and eating their flesh.

      This is not genetically engineered food. It's natural muscle tissue (i.e. meat) grown in vitro instead of in vivo. You can think of it as hydroponic meat.

    • Re:Gag. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Hairy Fop ( 48404 )
      I'm suprised that the parent post has been labelled flame bait it is nothing of the kind. Logically there should be nothing wrong with eating this artificially grown meat the problem in that sense is purely cultural/instinctive because of it's unnatural origins.

      The seperate issue of GM foods being potentially dangerous is a very valid point, but in this case I don't think they are talking about GM'ing (new verb!) the meat just growing it externally. The health risks of externally grown animal proteins have not been explored and there may be dangers there.

  • Is it cosher? Is it lenten? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WetCat ( 558132 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @10:47AM (#4988283)
    Is this food being compliant to be cosher?
    Can it be lenten and be eaten in Christian fasting?
    • It's open to interpretation as to whether or not this is kosher. Not sure what the consensus will be.

      On one hand, it doesn't come *directly* from a cloven-hoofed, cud-chewing quadriped. Also, there is no animal slaughered in a kosher manner.

      On the other hand, the genes had to come from somewhere, and maybe that animal was slaughtered properly.

      P.S. It's "kosher" with a "k"
      • The only question is if it's meat. If it is meat it must conform to the rules of kashrut. Since the animal was not slaughtered in the proper manner by a shochet it's meat is not kosher. The fact that the meat was rasied in a dish probably reinforces this position rather than weakening it.

        P.S It's "kashrut" with a "kav"
        • If the original animal that provided the base meat was slaughtered in the proper manner by a shochet, then the meat grown from that initial seed meat might be considered to be an extension of it, and as such covered.

          Alternative interpretation: Once the original (kosher slaughtered) seed meat is provided, no other animals are harmed. The subsequent meat, since it is not derived from harming an animal, might be categorized in the same way as milk is.

          If viable, this latter interpretation would in theory allow for kosher cheeseburgers as long as the meat was grown not raised (you wouldn't be mixing).

          Except, you're not allowed to do something that appears to violate the law. Unless it was instantly obvious to a passerby that the new type of cheeseburger was not made with real meat, it would not be legal. Or in theory if a person was in a restaurant marked as kosher that ONLY served grown meat cheeseburgers, so no doubt would be placed on the eaters actions.

    • Since this is still going to be derived from animal meat, I'd say this would fall into the 'meat' category as far as the laws of kashrut apply. However, there could be a little grey area there, if the animal were not actually seriously harmed to produce the food, then it would seem to fall more into the 'milk' category.

      The origin of the kosher guidelines stem from the old testament phrase (roughly): do not boil the calf in its mother's milk. Which is more about respect for the humane treatment of animals than for any bizarre reaction between meat and milk.

      If you could grow animal protein from an animal biopsy, I don't see the problem with grilling up a cheeseburger out of it. But religious laws are usually not that flexible or sensible.

  • Noooooooo.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by DeadSea ( 69598 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @10:47AM (#4988285) Homepage Journal
    I want to be able to meet my meat. Why can't they just breed cows that desire to be eaten. Then we could all have a nice meal at The Restaraunt at the End of the Universe.

  • Basic Chemistry Safety (Score:5, Funny)

    by gazuga ( 128955 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @10:49AM (#4988296) Homepage
    Doesn't anyone remember in high school chemistry, they said never *ever* eat anything from the lab? I kinda feel like that situation applies here.

    --gaz
  • Tastes like "Chicken Little"!

    Anyone else remember "The Space Merchants?"

  • hmm... I wonder if it will be kosher... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nacks1 ( 60717 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @10:52AM (#4988327) Homepage Journal
    Seriously, I wonder if my jewish friends will be able to partake of the grown meat. I mean, it does not have cloven hooves or chew cud when it was grown in a vat.

    Any Rabbi's out there want to give this a shot?

  • KFC? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Neon Spiral Injector ( 21234 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @10:53AM (#4988333)
    I thought KFC was already doing this. That is why they had to change their name [snopes.com].
    • on a somewhat related note, take a look at the colonel sanders logo and think of that tie of his as a stick body . . . it's incredibly more fun that way!
  • I wonder what kind of restrictions would be put on this - would it be classified as beef / chicken / etc, or as something like the 'herbal remedies' that doesn't have to undergo the same FDA testing?

  • Eat me. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by irqzero ( 15301 )
    Perhaps sometime in the not too distant future,
    your host at a dinner party will *really* make the meal him/her self. You might be inviting people over for George Goulash, or a nice Fred with hollandaise. Each with their own unique flavor. What are the ramifications of this; if we can grow any meat we want, would eating "human" flesh still be wrong? Sure, it's revolting, but attitudes will surely change if there's "cruelty-free" lab grown meat.
  • For people staying on Mars, wouldn't it be much easier and cheaper to bring some frozen embryos and grow them there? If they get a few males and females born from the test tubes then they could breed them. It would also prevent the negative response from much of the public.
    • Well no, they'd have to wait for the animals to grow up before they can eat them, then there's all the extra feed they'd have to haul to Mars just to feed the livestock, then there's the extra space they'd take up, life support, power to keep them warm, the risk of them getting sick and dying, what if the embryos aren't viable (remember the radiation the ship will be subjected to during the voyage) etc etc.

      Much easier, efficient and inexpensive to simply grow the meat in trays, especially since they'll only be staying for a year initially...

    • I hope you mean cow embryos...

  • Reminds me of the scene in "The Fly" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by binaryDigit ( 557647 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @10:56AM (#4988363)
    ... where Jeff Goldblum sends the steak through the transporter. He has Geena Davis take a taste of the "molecularly re-engineered" steak vs the "real" steak. She has an immediate negative reaction and her complaint is that is tastes like something that is trying to be a steak (not her exact words, but the gist of the whole scene). This is how I imagine this meat being.

    This is also similar to some of those vegetarian "meats" available. One hamburger product I tried reminded me a lot of that scene. It tasted more like a burger than any other veggie burger I tried, but was perhaps a bit too close without being perfect. The end result was that it was more "disturbing" to eat because though it sorta tasted like meat, it had a weird "there is something not right here" kind of taste to it.

    Of course they'll realize (too late of course) that given the right combinations of other foods/chemicals that the meat will continue to grow while in the gut. This will at first be disturbing as burger gluttons everywhere start exploding, but then people will realize that you only have to eat one burger, and given a good protein shake, you can "replenish" it any time you want :)

    • Re:Reminds me of the scene in "The Fly" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rik van Riel ( 4968 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @12:04PM (#4988922) Homepage
      It tasted more like a burger than any other veggie burger I tried, but was perhaps a bit too close without being perfect. The end result was that it was more "disturbing" to eat because though it sorta tasted like meat, it had a weird "there is something not right here" kind of taste to it.


      To me, the same is true of corn-grown beef or beef from animals who've been fed too much growth hormones. The meat has a strange taste or just feels like a sponge.

      The best beef comes from the happiest animals, the ones who grew up roaming the lands and eating grass. The kind of beef grown in Alberta (Canada), Argentina and Brazil.

      Having said that, I suspect that the artificial beef will just add another gradient to the taste and structure scale of beef. I doubt it'll be a lot different from real beef since it is real beef, only grown in a lab. If the researchers are serious about making the artificial beef "exercise" I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up tasting better than the beef from cows who are locked up in stables all their lifes.

  • IF nothing else it may force more peope to think about where their food comes from and how it is processed.

  • The other PETA... (Score:5, Funny)

    by axis-techno-geek ( 70545 ) <rob AT goshko DOT ca> on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @10:56AM (#4988369) Homepage
    As a member of the other PETA (People for the Eating of Tasty Animals) I object!

  • I woke up this morning, and for some reason, I was absolutely famished, can't figure out why, had plenty of food for dinner, etc.



    Any and all traces of hunger that I had are now completely gone thanks to this. And I have this sudden desire to kill all of the meat that I eat from now on, just so I can verify its' source...

  • ...might be to *use* the muscle power a slab of steak represents, to perform work.

    But obviously this is an important step towards developing Matrix pods. Full steam ahead, and pass the soylent yellow!

  • Oy Gevalt! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Quick, somebody go get the rabbi! This stuff CAN'T POSSIBLY be kosher! Well, maybe. But it's going to take an awful lot of pilpul, I mean, Talmudic discussion, to determine, what kind of food, exactly, this stuff is in terms of the usual criteria. I mean, does it have a cloven hoof? It's got NO HOOF AT ALL! Does it chew it's cud? NO! That can't be good, bubbehelle, nu? Just give me an old-fashioned steer and let me slit his throat, OK, you meshuggenah shagitz scientists!

  • Excellent... (Score:5, Funny)

    by CommieLib ( 468883 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @11:01AM (#4988407) Homepage
    Sedentary meat delivered to be eaten by sedentary Americans.

  • Why? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by oliverthered ( 187439 )
    Well, I eat quarn, make from mushrooms, no animals in sight.

    Is there really an ethical market for cow free beef?

    (BTW I'm not a veg or a vegan, my family has a long history of heart desease, steak isn't in my diet)
  • NASA started the program by wanting to provide burgers for Mars astronauts

    This is a perfect example of what's wrong with NASA. They had two options:

    1. Go to the store and pick up some ready-made beef patties at $2.50/lb.

    2. At a cost of $97 bazillion in taxpayer money, invent cowless beef in a laboratory.

    And they went with option 2. Is there any wonder they're running short on cash and haven't done anything useful in a decade and a half?

    • Re:now see (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 0x69 ( 580798 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @11:37AM (#4988687) Journal
      Allow me to suggest you try a couple things before bashing NASA for spending a few dollars on this:

      1. Spend a year living between a large (cattle) feedlot and the waste ponds of a modern (huge) pig farm. (Having a surgeon seal up your nose is not allowed.)

      2. Spend your own money to launch a freezer filled with 1000 burger patties to Mars, dump 500 patties there, then return with the rest. (I'll even throw in the patties FOR FREE when you pay for the rocket, launch facility, etc. up front.)

      (Yes, "a few dollars". Look at NASA's budget a bit before bashing - basic R&D is NOT where the $$$ is going.)
    • 1. Go to the store and pick up some ready-made beef patties at $2.50/lb

      1.1 Fill up precious cargo room in the ship with it (Enough for several months round-trip supply)

      1.2 Find a way to keep it edible for months on end

      1.3 Blast it all into space at a cost of a few thousand dollars per pound, still costing taxpayers bazillions of dollars and making the ship much larger and heavier that it needs to be, which could possibly jeapordize the whole mission. ...or...

      2. At a cost of $97 bazillion in taxpayer money, invent cowless beef in a laboratory.

      2.1 Use a fraction of the space and weight on the ship for the required equipment and renewable supplies

      2.2 Recycle nearly all of the material in the ship (Sewage processing. Already done with water!)
      Thus reducing the total cargo requirements while extendign the availability of fresh food almost indefinately

      2.3 Develop long-lasting food supply sytems for future deep-space missions

      2.4 Aquire nifty spin-off technologies and generally advance scientific progress in genetics, cloning, medicine, and resource management, etc etc

      Hmmm..... doesn't sound so stupid in the long run.
      =Smidge=
  • NASA started the program by wanting to provide burgers for Mars astronauts...

    Hold on there a second... I have a suggestion. I think instead NASA should provide Mars astronaughts with 1) a way to get to Mars and 2) a way to get back and maybe 3) some things to do while they are there.

    After NASA does that, then they can work on the fake burger thing... ;)

  • talk about your soylent greens.

    i'll need a dna parentage workup on every hamburger i meet (sic):

    40% cargill wannabeef
    30% amgen chickenoid prozac delivery fewd
    20% roche fishy fish
    10% raelian elohim eat the flesh of thy prophet

  • I seem to remember a short science fiction story where congress debated if new product of this type should be allowed on the market. The problem was that the new product was not beef but long pig (human).
  • So Slig anyone?

    Just ask your friendly Bene Tleilax dealer for details
  • Namely:
    1. Nutrition.
    2. Efficiency.


    Forget wether it's meat or not or whatever - what's the most nutritious and efficient way to raise food, be it for space travel or use here on earth?

    For the astronauts, things can be flavored. For regular consumers, likewise. For fighting hunger, hungry people probably aren't that worried.

    I applaud this. It's fascinating. But I'm not sure it's exactly as thrilling as it sounds.

  • Moral adjustment (Score:4, Funny)

    by Strange Ranger ( 454494 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @11:20AM (#4988561)
    Hmm..I know people who say "I don't eat anything that had a face."

    Now they'll have to say "I don't eat anything that has face-building information in its genes."
  • Not being a big meat eater (I try for diverse protein and fat sources), I still see a huge advantage here - growing meat in a sterile environment.

    Worries about the effects of eating BSE-tainted meat, salmonella, trichinosis, ad nauseum. Lab-grown/machine grown meat could certainly provide a safer source of meat than current methods.
  • I imagine that PETA will be thrilled,.. but what about vegetarians? Many vegetarians become vegetarian because of their ethics toward the treatment and killing of animals. Many vegetarians stay vegetarian because of the health benefits of having a meatless diet. I'd imagine that the meat that is generated with this new process would be incredibly lean and healthy. So. Would any vegetarians out there consider eating this type of meat? Since this meat is grown in a lab.. could it technically be considered a meat, or would it be a vegetable?

    And to expand on this subject a little.. if scienctist in the future were able to "grow" leather, furs, ivory, et al, would vegans then be liberated to wear such articles?

    • I became vegetarian for the health benefits (and partly because I was never that fond of meat to begin with), and generally try not to make that big a deal of the ethical issues. They are one of the reasons I am a vegetarian now, but it's a tiresome dinner-table topic of conversation.

      So, to answer your question, no, I wouldn't start eating vat-grown meat, as the ethical reasons are only part of the story for me. (I might consider a weekly vat-salmon, if it was shown to have health benefits. Maybe) . However, I would certainly welcome the widespread adoption of this kind of meat because it's cruelty free and environmentally smarter.

      And grown ivory and leather - I'd be all for that. I imagine it would be much easier to get people to adopt as well, as there's no yuck-factor. Although, if there are still lots of real cows being eaten, there won't be much motivation for companies to make their own leather, as lots will still be readily and cheaply available. This could be a very good step for better stewardship of the planet, though. I think it's good news.

  • I realize that most /.ers can't even remember what they had for dinner last night but I think we've been through this one before [slashdot.org]. I know it must have been hard for the editors to find since it had such a dramatically different title..."Lab-Grown Meat. Chunks...."

    Anyway, while this is interesting from a tech POV it seems like a dramatic waste of resources for its intended target. Wouldn't growing and processing soy and soy-based products be much less resource intensive?

    BFL
    (former vegetarian...mmmmm...steak)
  • Is anyone else having Cheers flashbacks of Norm talking about the "Baff" and "Loobster" served at his favorite eaterty?

    (shudder)

  • Expensive pant load! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by paiute ( 550198 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @11:31AM (#4988655)
    My first reaction is: why? Why not just be a vegetarian? Hell, millions of Indians are, and they seem to be doing okay, building supercomputers and hand-held computing devices like gangbusters. We need less saturated fat, not an uberexpensive supply of it.

    My second reaction is that astronauts should be eating no meat, anyway. Those of you who remember how the diaper smell went from interestingly aromatic to puke-inducing as soon as the baby started to eat meat will want your space station comrades to stick with the rice and lentils and a side of naan.

    • Astronauts need to breathe (Score:4, Funny)

      by dachshund ( 300733 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @12:23PM (#4989077)
      Clearly you haven't lived in a tight space with four other people all eating rice and lentils. The methane alone will asphyxiate them all.

      Though perhaps they could use it as some sort of power source?

    • Re:Expensive pant load! (Score:4, Informative)

      by DuckDodgers ( 541817 ) <(moc.oohay) (ta) (flow_eht_fo_repeek)> on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @12:36PM (#4989173)
      I just want to throw in my two cents with everyone else here...

      Infants diapers start to stink because of the bacteria that take residence in the lower digestive tract. My younger siblings and I had a diet of breast milk and Gerber veggies until about 11 months. I remember vividly that my little brother's diapers started reeking to high heaven long before he ate meat.

      And I can't speak for rice, but lentils are a legume, aren't they? I don't know any legumes that don't cause plentiful and noxious flatulence.

    • Re:Expensive pant load! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @01:31PM (#4989573)
      "Why not just be a vegetarian?"

      Because we are physiologically omnivores and need both animals as well as plants to stay healthy. Vegetarians in general and vegans in particular need to go through effort to find suitable replacements for the protiens they would be getting otherwise in order to maintain status quo. And even then, they usually end up eating more mass of food than a non-vegetarian in order just to keep up.

      When you're on a manned space mission where a million things can go horribly wrong, why do you want to add more complexity for the crew to deal with? Let alone the extra mass needed for the food...
  • I don't eat anything that never had a mother. Take that PETA :b
  • More junk food! Sad thing is it's inevitable. Little Soylent Green slabs of stuff grown in factories from reprocessed organic waste repurposed from dead pets, cow brains, post-corporal digestive residude, failed clones, and... well, why the heck not, dead bodies.
    Everyfood we've invented in the last 2,000 years is junk food: white starch, white sugar, white fat, white beer. White meat is the obvious next step.
    'Xcuse me but I'm going to stick to my diet of edible roots and leaves, nuts, whole grains, seafood, goat, milk, and cheese. Luckily alcohol was invented more than 5,000 years ago, so it makes it onto my "good" list.
    Cheers! And happy Hogmanay to all of you.
  • I have to wonder, why would NASA spend $ to research developing lab-grown meat when you could just turn veggie for a long-duration mission? Is it a weight/power/space issue? (Space as in the amount of space it would take in the ship to grow hydroponics?)

    Now, I'm a true-blooded American Carnivore (TM) and eat just about anything you put in front of me. A vegan diet (within reason) is plenty sufficient and I'd certainly adopt one as a requirement to go on a long-term mission.

    OTOH, I certainly can support any developments that would put a dent in the factory farms.

  • SPAM (Score:2)

    by dnoyeb ( 547705 )
    For those too young to know, SPAM stand for Scientifically Produced Animal Matter. And this is a perfect example of it.
  • Perhaps they could use VEGF [sciencedaily.com] to encourage blood vessel growth for thicker pieces of meat.

    Google link for VEGF [google.com]

  • I think this technology would be good for Taco Bell, Pancho's, any school cafeteria, airlines, and any Mexican food buffet where the "meat" is "meat". Grown meat would be better than whatever is they're serving.

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