Scientists claim that the first hamburger made from stem cells may soon be available for consumption. From the Telegraph story:
By generating strips of meat from stem cells researchers believe they can create a product that is identical to a real burger. The process of culturing the artificial meat in the lab is so laborious that the finished product, expected to arrive in eight months’ time, will cost about £220,000 (EUR250,000).
But researchers expect that after producing their first patty they will be able to scale up the process to create affordable artificial meat products. Mass-producing beef, pork, chicken and lamb in the lab could satisfy the growing global demand for meat – forecast to double within the next 40 years – and dramatically reduce the harm that farming does to the environment.
Let’s fast forward those 40 years, a time in which steak, chicken breast, burgers, meat combinations, etc. can be purchased for the same price as those taken from slaughtered animals–and with nutrients added to maximize health:
1. Should we assume safety? Some people–not me–are upset by GM grain and such, and think it unsafe. What about meat created from stem cells?
2. What will it mean to human society if we can get our meat from labs instead of farms and ranches? Will we be harmed by the severing of our connection to the land and the domestication of food animals? We will certainly be changed materially with urbanization growing even more pronounced.
3. Would it be morally acceptable for vegans and vegetarians to eat lab grown meat since no animals were raised in its creation and we are biologically omnivores?
4. Once we got used to growing food in the lab, would it become easier to accept transhumanizing ourselves?
My stomach is queasy about this. Revolted, actually. My inner Luddite is screaming. But in this case, I don’t trust the wisdom of repugnance. I can see tremendous good, particularly in the alleviation of human hunger. But it would also cause great dislocation and transform human beings in culturally radical ways. And it would destroy ways of life that have nourished human thriving for millenia.
The test tube and the laboratory would become, in a sense, the center of human existence–particularly since it wouldn’t just be our food. Tower of Babel or merely the next step in human self design, akin to the move from hunter/gatherer clans to farm/animal domesticating communities? (The term “human evolution: would inapt here, I think. Only exceptional humans are capable of intentionally generating such transformations.) Probably both.
February 20th, 2012 | 11:42 am
“… trust the wisdom of repugnance.” Marvelous. Humankind yearns to break our dependence on the order of things. We usually do that by breaking that order instead of taking up the standing offer to both abide by AND transcend it.
When men are no longer dependent on living creatures for their being — there will be no more living creatures with whom we share a necessary relation, and shortly, fewer living creatures with ANY natural relation to men.
Our connection to our nature is more and more fragile. If we willingly subsist unnaturally, do we not shortly become inhuman?
February 20th, 2012 | 12:59 pm
Economics will be a bigger factor than ethics. This “meat” has to be made from something, and there is extensive processing involved. I doubt they’ll be able to bring the per pound cost down to where it’s competitive with letting a cow or sheep eat grass for 2 years and then butchering it.
Nutritionally, I doubt it will be equivalent to lean natural meat. I think it will be, ironically, too pure. We get more nutrition from meat than just protein. Natural foods have micronutrients whose value we barely understand.
This stuff would be, essentially, tofu. We have that already.
Chris Reply:
February 21st, 2012 at 9:14 am
@padraig, Good point, we often miss out and have trouble accounting for all the nutrients that get passed on through the ecosystem. I remember hearing a few years ago about a section of the country called the stroke belt, and someone reasoned that the soil was short on a particular mineral. The human body is so complex, it would take a lifetime to accurately study the affects of robo-meat. I for one am sticking with the good old-fashioned thing until the government outlaws it. Cow farts will cause the apocalypse don’t you know?
February 20th, 2012 | 1:16 pm
1. Never assume safety. But, safety can be tested easily.
2. It will fit into the larger picture of individual’s general increasing disconnect with Nature and its mechanisms – energy balance, chemical cycles, evolution, selection, adaptation, etc.
3. Perfectly acceptable as long as cultured cells are obtained from media that is not animal dependent. Further, with synthetic gene (and even genome) assembly, no animal need be touched. Don’t count on biochemical literacy and logic from vegans, though.
4. It should. People should see we are cells composed of chemicals and these can be manipulated. There is no “vital source” necessary. There is no “soul” needed for survival of biological components. No supernatural forces need be invoked.
I would add question #5: how could such a scenario change agriculture and ecology? This has very serious economic and environmental consequences, which are the major long-term concerns facing humans and. Answers to these questions, unfortunately, seem to be shaped by values, rather than data. [Values and ethics are not the greatest long-term concern as empathy is evolving.]
(would it open up grasslands or make no difference as we largely use feed lots? would livestock genetic diversity decrease? what about cash feed crops, would we stop growing so much corn – which means less GM glyphosate resistant corn? does this complement biofuel production from plants? would the energy input for such meat exceed energy input from traditional animal growth and slaughter? we would use less antibiotics, that’s a plus for problems with evolved resistance)
padraig Reply:
February 20th, 2012 at 3:09 pm
@David, I have to vehemently disagree with your answer to #1. Look at the process companies go through for FDA approval. It’s anything but easy. It’s particularly difficult when you’re trying to get something completely new approved, as this would be. Not to mention proving there are no long term safety issues, which is particularly difficult and expensive.
Then, add in possible environmental issues from the production process.
Even if they had this perfected today, it’d be many long and expensive years before you could buy a nice filet of stem cell.
Chris Reply:
February 21st, 2012 at 9:24 am
@David, You were making a very well reasoned and wise point until the end: “I would add question #5: how could such a scenario change agriculture and ecology? This has very serious economic and environmental consequences, which are the major long-term concerns facing humans and. Answers to these questions, unfortunately, seem to be shaped by values, rather than data. [Values and ethics are not the greatest long-term concern as empathy is evolving.]”
This is why liberals get such a bad name from conservatives, here you are arguing that values and ethics can be ignored and lamenting their influence on decisions; if the “data” shows positive results, screw the ethics? Seems odd that someone so caught up in “data” would spend so much time arguing and promoting your values on this blog… I thought liberalism was all about enlightened principles and the importance of liberty and justice, not some vague utilitarian belief in a inevitable utopia.
February 20th, 2012 | 7:32 pm
Hey Wesley! Victor has promised that he would not comment during “Lent” so “ONE” of his future transhuministic ESC just wanted to say HIGH, “I” mean hi, and also to tell you to tell your stomach Stem Cells not to be so queasy cause “IT” won’t hurt you a bit!
I hear ya! You’re telling me that you’re not really all here Victor? :)
February 21st, 2012 | 1:09 pm
Humankind yearns to break our dependence on the order of things.
Since the results of this yearning have resulted in millions of lives lost and untold suffering, we might be wise to observe the history of science: for every plane that flies, there are how many that don’t make it off the ground?
I don’t want to be your Thalidomide baby. People are welcome to yearn for whatever they like, but with that yearning comes a responsibility – in this case, the burden should be entirely on the people producing this stuff to demonstrate its safety and answer all ethical concerns. It should not be the burden of everyone else to prove that we should be cautious until concerns are cared for.
The reason GM crops are of concern is because right now, to grow normal healthy crops and have those crops labeled “organic”, the burden is entirely on the organic grower to shield their crops from the non-organic growers. People who want to grow organic crops have to buy three times as much land as they need – 1/3 for growing crops on, and 2/3 to provide as a buffer, to absorb their next door neighbor’s contaminants. How is this fair? How is this reasonable?
The question of whether experimental things ought to be allowed contains another, hidden question: who should bear the risks and burdens of allowing these things? Should the people doing the experiments be expected to contain and control contamination, or should they be allowed to simply do whatever they like until and unless it is proven that they have done harm (possibly catastrophic harm)?
The ultimate question is not whether we will allow progress. The question is whether we will pursue that progress responsibly – that is, using ethical assumptions (where the priority is to harm nobody, even if that means erring on the side of caution), or whether we will continue to pursue progress irresponsibly.
The assumptions of the scientific method – for instance, Ockham’s Razor and the assumption that lack of proof may be taken as proof of lack until proven otherwise – these are great tools for gathering knowledge, but they’re not great tools for living by. When we try to apply them to our lives, we turn our nation and our world into a laboratory, when the reality is that there’s no guarantee at all that experiments will always work out the way you expect them to. Sometimes – maybe even most of the time – experiments fail.
So I don’t care if you want to pursue petri-dish foods, but please do not try to slip it into the food supply unlabelled, and can we please skip the usual routine where you demand that I give you a green light for you to use my community, its people, and its farmland as your personal experimental laboratory?
Victor Reply:
February 21st, 2012 at 2:21 pm
@Blake,
Hey Men! NO Ha Men! NO NO! “IT” is suppose to be Amen!
OK! Amen Blake!!!
Piece Wesley??? :)
February 25th, 2012 | 2:02 pm
Assuming that it is tasty, I think cultured meat is a good idea. Animal husbandry is a very land intensive. Cultured meat will reduce this use of land, thus freeing it up for other purposes. This is a good thing.
Also, who says home kits for growing and producing your own meat are not possible? I think “home-brewed” meat will be possible and could be quite popular.
I don’t understand this romanticizing of traditional agriculture and animal husbandry anyways. If cultured meat is better and dominates the marketplace, I have no problem with that at all.
Also, biotechnologies such as cultured meat will be necessary for seasteading and space colonization. So, we need these technologies anyways.
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