Last month, I came across a horror video about how chicken and cows are
converted to the hamburger you starve for at Macdonald’s. I was horrified
and saddened by the pictures I saw. It was indeed inhumane, cruel and
disgusting that I became a strict vegetarian. Chicken were massively strangled
by machines while cows were put ALIVE in a place that tears them apart into
pieces. Many said to me: well its already killed so abstaining yourself from
meat doesn’t change the fact that million of animals were treated this way in
factories. Buying a burger for me is like encouraging people to continue
this slaughter for the sake of paper money. So I continued my practices hoping
someday this will change.
It actually did: YAY! I came across the most awkward research you could
ever find. Growing animal muscle cell in the lab in vitro to meet your
meat “needs”. (meet, meat it rhymes also!)
Dr.
Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands unveiled the culmination
of five years of research: a lab-grown “test tube” beef burger, cooked in a
pan. According to Post “A few cells that we take from a living cow can be
turned to 10 tons of meat” Post also posted the an animated procedure on how
could that be done:
In other words, we
could get meat by extracting cells from a living cow and clone them to get a
nice burger! The most important thing that it is quite easy to do, doesn't
break any moral values concerning animal abuse and mass slaughtering. on the
bright side this research was actually funded by Google's CEO (a million $) and
we hope that this continues!
Many doesn't seem to feel
concerned about the topic: they will continue to get their daily meat meal like
usual but it is a great discovery for us vegetarians, for fighting the
worldwide hunger, and lowering high meat price! Also real meat does have high
probability of contamination of Ecoli! So you should be concerned guys! The
post suggest that more than 50% of greenhouse gases are emitted from these
animal factories.
The taste! Yea everyone
is wondering what about the taste? is it the same than actual meat
you usually have everyday? Well I am not going to answer that question. I am
going to leave to it to your curiosity. To watch the video with all the details
about this experiment go to:
http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/13/4605528/your-meat-addiction-is-destroying-the-planet-but-we-can-fix-it
I had knowledge of this in vitro burger discovery. However, as nice as the picture you provide makes the meat look, the article I read stated that the cloned meat was actually white in color. I do not know how the test trials went so it would be nice if you provided us with an answer :] However, I wonder if the meat was tested for all the nutritional value that is in actual meat? I am against animal cruelty as well and I believe this could be a way to diminish that as well as world hunger.
ReplyDeleteI dont know which article you read. Anyways the meat color of this test run was red meat (beef). It was done I think in August in London. I need to look it up and see whether this was previously done by someone else. The burger they generated was the fruit of 5 years of research so yea a lot of failed trials here! But with the advance in cloning technology everything is now possible.
DeleteNutritional values! Human are never obliged to eat meat. The only thing we always look at for meat is proteins and proteins are available somewhere else (especially in beans DAMN i like beans!). The only difference between the in vitro meat and real meat is that in the lab meat you dont have the fat because you actually cloned muscle cells. As for fat, trust me we don't need that! The only concern was the taste and the texture which came a little dry due to the lack of fat. I personally like a fat free meat. Anyways, we never saw a vegetarian die for not eating meat so we shouldn't be concerned about the nutritional value of meat because you can get all the proteins somewhere else.. Hope that answers your question!
I didn't really take into account the idea of fat but that would probably definitely help the obesity problem in america :]
ReplyDeletehahah Good luck with that !
DeleteWow...ummm, I'm not sure what to say about this. I love the idea of this advancement, but it just does not seem normal. In addition to this, although it does not fall victim to E. coli, what problems does it possess? There is no way that this has no negative affect, there are always pros and cons to everything. For instance, according to Jessica and Mariah's article, antibiotics are now showing to have negative affects on Human beings.
ReplyDeleteRegardless, I believe we will not have control over it eventually. Just like the food we get in grocery stores are not pure and fresh due to the preservatives and steroids; this cloned meat will be readily available over the "slaughtered" kind at one point or another without us knowing it.
what is your definition of Does not seem normal. is crossing the atlantic ocean in 3 hours normal? is talking to a person via mobile phone normal? is watching a person talk on TV normal? is me talking to you on the net normal? Trust me you would say no to all of these questions if we are living in the 19th century. this meat that does not seem normal today might be the only meat we eat tomorrow. Also negative effects of antibiotics are discovered from a long time, this is not recent (as far as I know). I wish that we all get eliminate this does not seem theory from our minds because we are scientist and we are the pioneers of innovation! we create all kind of crazy stuff. normal is not our title!
DeleteWaste, or leftovers, from processing slaughtered animals is used as supplemental protein (meat and bone meal). It has been speculated to be a possible source of mad cow disease (believed to be caused by prions). This practice seems to be, essentially, turning cows, chickens, and other livestock into cannibals. I stopped eating meat because of such concerns (I have since relapsed, sorry). A few years ago pet cats were dying because of contaminated wheat gluten from China that used melamine as filler to increase the protein content. The potential use of cloning meat (not the whole cow) intrigues me for these reasons (along with the cruelty issue, the global footprint issue, etc). Yes, there is concern about possible long term effects, but this technology is still in its infancy, so I would wait and see how it plays out.
ReplyDeleteThis new meat will be screened for all the possible bacterial infections and prions.so we dont have to worry about possible infection when eating this kind of meat. The experiment succeeded and was perfectly neat but it is costly. Anyways like you said it is still in its infancy and cloning is unorthodox today. I think cloning will expand and will be a powerful tool to find solutions to many problems.
DeleteWhat will they think of next? I think this is really neat but I have to be honest I'm not sold. Recent tests have shown that rats who were fed genetically modified (GM) foods showed multiple health problems including bleeding stomachs, inhibited development of certain organs, and even death. I definitely agree that animals shouldn't be inhumanely killed or tortured for the sake of our convenience, but I'm not sure that the "Frankenburger" will be the answer to this problem.
ReplyDeleteThis burger is not about modified food. It is a clone of real muscle cells.
ReplyDelete