“We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.” (Winston Churchill, Fifty Years Hence, 1932)
Add prescience to a list of Churchill attributes. Within a matter of decades (or sooner), the liberation (and hopefully, extinction) of domesticated animals, created and destroyed for their edible flesh, may come to pass. In vitro meat is actual meat grown in a laboratory from the stem or satellite muscle cells of a livestock animal (just one animal’s cells would be necessary and only for the initial biopsy). Immersed in a “nutrient bath,” attached to scaffolding, and placed in a bioreactor, the cells would form, after some stretching (exercising), into sheets of flesh.
Biologist Vladimir Mironov (Medical University of South Carolina), an in vitro pioneer, says, (NPR, 5/20/08) “I personally believe that this [is the] inescapable future.” He notes, however, that this is not genetic engineering: (Time, 04/23/08) “We use natural cells from natural animals. We don’t change Mother Nature, we just try to imitate it.” Doctoral student Jason Matheny (Maryland) formed New Harvest in 2004 to explore in vitro possibilities, eventually co-penning the first peer-reviewed paper on the subject. Matheny concluded, (UM NEWSDESK, 07/06/05) “With a single cell, you could theoretically produce the world’s annual meat supply. …In the long term, this is a very feasible idea.”
Dr. Mark Post, a physiology professor at Eindhoven University, remarks: (The Sunday Times, 11/29/09) “You could take the meat from one animal and create the volume of meat previously provided by a million animals. We need to find ways of improving it by training it and stretching it, but we will get there. This product will be good for the environment and will reduce animal suffering. If it feels and tastes like meat, people will buy it.” PETA has weighed-in with an offer of $1 million to the first person (people) to create an indistinguishable in vitro chicken meat, approved and competitively marketed in at least 10 states, by June 2012. If (when) successful, the animal and environmental implications would be nothing short of epic.
To be sure, the successful marketing of test tube meat will require some adroit advertising (though it’s hard to envision it being more difficult than making dead animals, sometimes packaged in blood, palatable to the buying-public). I’m not sure if vegetarians/vegans will partake, but that is quite beside the point. What matters is how the rest respond. Simple custom (and a fair amount of repression) maintains our omnivore society. In vitro meat could forever alter the paradigm. How truly amazing that would be.
