Frankenscience Links

[Jez]

Bit of a weird thread title perhaps...:lol:...but certain elements of science are getting more that way inclined...check this out for an example:

Test Tube Meat Nears Dinner Table (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0621-03.htm)


What if the next burger you ate was created in a warm, nutrient-enriched soup swirling within a bioreactor?

Edible, lab-grown ground chuck that smells and tastes just like the real thing might take a place next to Quorn at supermarkets in just a few years, thanks to some determined meat researchers. Scientists routinely grow small quantities of muscle cells in petri dishes for experiments, but now for the first time a concentrated effort is under way to mass-produce meat in this manner.

...

The advantage, he says, is you avoid the inefficiencies and bottlenecks of conventional meat production. No more feed grain production and processing, breeders, hatcheries, grow-out, slaughter or processing facilities.

"To produce the meat we eat now, 75 (percent) to 95 percent of what we feed an animal is lost because of metabolism and inedible structures like skeleton or neurological tissue," says Matheny. "With cultured meat, there's no body to support; you're only building the meat that eventually gets eaten."

:shock: :shock: :shock:

Often I reflect on just how bizarre our world could become if traditional mass sources for energy reserves were not becoming severely limited.

Please post other similar links under this title so we can keep them all categorised in the right place without creating stacks of new links for similar topics.

[Tezza]

MMMMMMMMM Yuk manufactured food we got that allready,ever work in a food processing place........Youd never buy anything to eat again If the average shopper took food manufacturing visits...thered be a lot more skinny people around thats for sure...

People who support corrupt Idealogies by working,inventing,distibuting,selling,producing, any job in the world that abuses the basic rights of the average "life form"...

These are The "people" we need to change their personal attitudes....

No point is changing Pollies minds (they dont have one)

Its the people who work for them...the little guys.....Johnnys chaufer,i wonder what his work place agreement is worth.. His press,and other secrataries,Do they agree with everything,their masters say?..Parliment House...Id love to know how the average parlimentry cleaner enjoys their working lives,and their agreements...

Work place Agreements........I wonder what % of workers are actually agreeing with their offer........

Im Sorry but its no good complaining about Pollies.....

Id like to See Kim Beazly mowing Parl Houses Lawns,Alex Downer in a french maids outfit doing the dusting.Amanda head cook at Naru.....
Little johnny as a cleaner....Costello he can be the compost expert.

Its scarey ....thnx Jez glad to see you around again...and you to "Corny"


Tezza

[PeterM]

:shock: Despite some misgivings, this seems like it would be a very promising breakthrough, and it would be interesting to see some debate around this topic.

Leaving aside moral objections related to breeding mammals for slaughter, think of all the problems and environmental damage cattle cause; land degradation, methane emissions, forest destruction (e.g. the Amazon), indiscriminate use of hormones and antibiotics which leaks into the broader food chain, varying degrees of cruelty, wasteful use of land that could be better used for sustainable crops, etc. The list goes on and on.

Imagine if such technology could create safe, healthy, meat? If the process was efficient, environmentally safe, and could create a product indistinguishable from meat cut from a cow carcass (or maybe even of a far better and more consistent quality), I’m sure people would get used to it for the taste and health aspects alone regardless of the positive benefits to the environment. I’d much rather have my sausages made from something other than the miscellaneous animal bits mushed together in a meat processing plant. And if they could make it taste like a juicy Kobe beef steak, so much the better!

This quote was especially interesting from a health perspective:

If successful, artificially grown meat could be tailored to be far healthier than any type of farm-grown meat. It's possible to stuff if full of heart-friendly omega-3 fatty acids, adjust the protein or texture to suit individual taste preferences and screen it for food-borne diseases.Considering the total rape of the oceans and disasterous crashes in fish stocks along with heavy metal contamination of most of the larger fish, and with fish being our prime source of omega-3's, this aspect alone could be very beneficial.

Anyway, what do you guys here think? Am I crazy?? :?

Writing this has made me hungry! :lol:

[Douglas J.E. Barnes]

Vat meat vs Soylent Green.

I saw this news last week through Common Dreams and it immediately hit me as something wrong.

First their claims about no more grain-fed cattle, etc, thereby saving grain: Well, as we all know, cattle can turn grass into protein without eating grain. Grain is just a fast weight gain technique, so the technology does nothing for us here.

Secondly, the first law of thermodynamics tells us there is no such thing as magic. In other words, vat meat must be grown from something. Raw materials are needed. What are these? Grain again? Something else?

Thirdly, as Tezza touched on, is a further (and very insidious) expansion of capitalism into the very processes of life itself. This is the discovery of a market that nature formerly had a monopoly on (if you can forgive those metaphors). It is stealing away the sacred for profit . Now the corporate model has a firmer grip on our lives than ever.

And we can already write the PR for this ourselves: "This wonderous new advance will end world hunger and bring improved nutrition to impoverised nations." "[i]How could anyone object to that?" Never mind that the problem is not lack of food but the insistence (literally using force and violence in most cases) on using unjust distribution systems.

But an important question has been asked here. What if the technology could be used to produce safe, healthy meat in an efficient and environmentally sound way? Then it would be a total waste of resources. Why? Because we can do all that now (see Chapter 12 of the Designerr's Manual) with all sorts of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles without wasting any resources (time, money, materials) on developing another way to do what we already know how to do.

And to what end would we develop this? Naturally, the motivation is to increase the wealth of corporate owners - such a noble goal. But might we use it to push ourselves even further past the carrying capacity of the planet? That doesn't seem like such a great idea to me.

[Douglas J.E. Barnes]

Perhaps I should add that unsustainable fishing practices (not an overpopulation of whales as the Japanese whaling lobby would tell us) are the cause for the loss of pelagic species. And the use of the ocean as a sewer is the reason behind the various contaminants present in ocean fish.

Again, we do not need a tech fix. No technology is needed to prevent abusive husbands from battering their wifes. They just need to stop doing that. No technology is needed for us to stop battering the planet. It's like the old joke about the guy who goes into the doctor's office and says to the doctor, "Doctor, it hurts when I raise my arm like this." Don't do that.