I’m not a vegetarian but if they can safely and accurately reproduce the meat given to us by animals without having to kill any then sure! I’d rather do eat vat-meals than meat that an animal had to die for.
But if it was unsafe, expensive or not as tasty as a real animal… well, I’m sorry Mr Chicken, but I’m still gonna eat you.
Why not?? I mean, if it came down to vat-grown meat or meat made from shit, not even a thought. :eek:
Meet the meat that can’t be beat
It grows in a vat and has low fat
With that sweet beef taste and less…calories.
No thanks. This offers the same problems as the current culture of most of the world partaking of only a few crops as foods. If a parasite or disease gets into one, it gets into all and the supply of vat meat might be virtually wiped out a la Ireland’s potato famine.
I think it is good to host as many different, natural species as possible. I eat meat less often than I used to and I try to get my supply from sources I can trust to raise the animals humanely. I don’t always succeed, but at least I try.
I’m not a vegetarian and I’m not too concerned about eating animals, but I feel bad about eating meat that wasn’t raised humanely (I still do it, but I feel bad about it - I’m working on it). I would much prefer vat-grown meat so I don’t have to think of all those poor pigs living their lives in terrible conditions so I can eat delicious ham.
Assuming that it has less of an environmental impact than natural meat, I’d prefer it. I enjoy meat because it is delicious, not because an animal died so I could eat it.
I don’t think I’d be able to kill an animal and eat it. But I have no problem eating meat anyways. It’s just a gross out factor.
I said I’d prefer vat meat, but one thing hit me as I was going down: how many animals only have a thriving population because we’d eat them? Part of my conditions would be zoos where we keep farm animals alive, as part of the reason I am not persuaded by veganism is that many animals wouldn’t be around, otherwise.
I also share Argent Towers’s incredulity, though. They might be able to make it indistinguishable to some meat, but meat raised differently will taste different. And maybe that’ll solve the above problem. Just like we still sometimes like to eat farm raised meat or wild game, maybe we’d sometimes want the taste of meat that is raised differently.
It seems to me that vat meat would solve both of these problems. It seems to me that it would be very difficult for a parasite to get into a sealed vat, and a hunk of beef floating in a nutrient bath is going to be exposed to vanishingly fewer disease vector than a cow that’s hanging around a farm filled with other livestock. The vats also serve as handy quarantine chambers. There’s no particular reason for the vats to be directly connected with each other, so if one vat gets contaminated, there’s probably not an easy way for it to spread to other tanks. And if something does get into the whole beef supply, we just dump the tanks and start growing new steaks from a secure and known-clean genetic seed. On the consumer end, we’d probably barely feel the interruption.
As to variety, vat meat would vastly improve it. Most of the capital expense in building a vat ranch comes in the vats themselves. Once you’ve got those, you can fill them with whatever the hell you want. You can have cow in one vat, right next to pig, right next to deer, right next to koala bear. You don’t need to maintain a whole breeding herd, you just need a spare tank and some sample genetic material to grow it from.
Sign me up if the taste and texture are right. I am grossed out by things other than muscle tissue in my meat (bones, tendons, blood vessels, etc) so “pure” meat from a vat would be a welcome improvement.
I’d imagine that’s going to be the biggest challenge, the texture. Cow muscle (meat) has grown and developed through use. While they’re often fattened up before a sale, it’s not without reason the saying “Strong as a bull” came into place.
How an amorphous chunk of tissue growing in a vat is supposed to replicate that is anyone’s guess.
Electrostimulus?
The texture of veal is not bad, though.
People, please. Do not fight the hypothetical. We are in pretend land now, and in pretend land scienticians can create meat without using or harming animals and it tastes exactly the same as farmed and slaughtered meat. Understood?
I’m all for the idea. It will happen in near future; sooner the better… however I’d wait for at least the 3rd gen version(s) to have a taste.
If life forms are as what I evidently understand them to be (accidental forms of random collection of star-dust w/ unlikely probability to ever be alive again), then I want as many living things to fully experience their turn of “this”- reality without getting robbed of their only chance.
My first question would be “Is it tasty” and next would be “Is it cheaper than regular meat?”
It might for a bit. But then Frito-Lay would take it over and it would all become a single bit of vat mean with different flavorings sprinkled on the top, in the same way that Doritos, Fritos, Cheetos are all corn. :rolleyes:
The idea is a little off-putting, but I’m sure I’d get used to it. There might be a steep learning cure if “Chicken Little” grew in a tub full of blood, and throbbed incessantly.
Mostly though I wanted to say how happy I am that few people chose the “wait for reports from a trusted source” option. Yeah, nobody is going to want to eat vat meat without reading reviews and without expert approval, but it’s a wimp answer.
I don’t quite understand the thoughts behind people picking the no preference answer. I can sort of see the “I wouldn’t eat it” because people might get squicked out by it, but if we’re assuming a perfect world and it tastes just as good and costs just the same - why in the world wouldn’t you prefer one that didn’t result from an animal being raised in captivity and slaughter? All it takes from you is expressing a mere preference, but it’s not worth it to create animal-free meat?
Now if it were more expensive, or not quite as good - fine, then you can decide if it’s worth it. But the hypothetical is basically asking you “so, would you like to see less animals harmed and slaughtered at no cost to you?” and your reply is shrug
Some people don’t care if a part of the process of getting meat onto their plate involves animals being mistreated. It’s a complete non-factor for them.
Even if there’s literally no other difference whatsoever? “Check here and have an animal suffer and get killed for you, check here if not”, people wouldn’t care? Bizarre to me that you couldn’t take the most minimal possible action that has no cost to you to prevent some degree of suffering, even if you perceive it to be miniscule.
Ditto. And I’d make my own call on that; screw the double-blind tests.
True, but it’s hard to imagine that that would be the case. Part of the reason animal protein is so expensive in terms of resource consumption is that the cow doesn’t just have to eat enough vegetable protein, etc. to get big enough to slaughter; it’s got to do that on top of eating enough every day just to keep it alive and in good health for another day.
With the vat-grown meat, it’s hard to see that you’d need to keep hundreds of pounds of vat-grown meat alive in order to grow the next 50 pounds.