Lois’s answer to “In your Miles books you often talk about how vat-grown meat makes it ethical to eat meat. What diet…” > Likes and Comments
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I divide my veg friends into two groups (with some overlap): Ethical Vegetarians feel that it wrong to kill in order to eat; Chemical Vegetarians feel that eating meat is bad for you. Probably some truth to both camps, but I remain an unrepentant meat eater.
Vat meat is coming! They’re experimenting with it now. There will be some interesting issues with it, because it starts with actual animal cells, so... is it kosher? Halal? Can vegans eat it if it started as meat? Interesting - and no longer science fiction!
Revisiting old discussions. Just three years later - and we are getting closer to the reality of vat meet. Cell cultures should be labeled both kosher/halal/eco-friendly and sustainable, because not even a muscle tissue there, let alone any neuronal acitivity sufficient to call the product a being. I am just interested in the technology - how are they going to produce the muscle fibers and the very special marbling effect with the fat? Will there be shell-less eggs? Milk from some other protein (no almonds and oats, thank you)? Or will we finally learn do have our coffee black and otherwise drink water? How very cool. So sorry I am not some sort of a lab technician/bio-boffin.
A relevant read on this topic: The Carnivore Code by Paul Saladino.
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I divide my veg friends into two groups (with some overlap): Ethical Vegetarians feel that it wrong to kill in order to eat; Chemical Vegetarians feel that eating meat is bad for you. Probably some truth to both camps, but I remain an unrepentant meat eater.
Vat meat is coming! They’re experimenting with it now. There will be some interesting issues with it, because it starts with actual animal cells, so... is it kosher? Halal? Can vegans eat it if it started as meat? Interesting - and no longer science fiction!
Revisiting old discussions. Just three years later - and we are getting closer to the reality of vat meet. Cell cultures should be labeled both kosher/halal/eco-friendly and sustainable, because not even a muscle tissue there, let alone any neuronal acitivity sufficient to call the product a being. I am just interested in the technology - how are they going to produce the muscle fibers and the very special marbling effect with the fat? Will there be shell-less eggs? Milk from some other protein (no almonds and oats, thank you)? Or will we finally learn do have our coffee black and otherwise drink water? How very cool. So sorry I am not some sort of a lab technician/bio-boffin.
A relevant read on this topic: The Carnivore Code by Paul Saladino.
* Bruce Sterling's 'Islands in the Net' has proponents of an 'Unnatural Foods' movement (all natural vegetable foods no matter how domesticated still include traces of toxins meant to protect them from being eaten) and various products based on 'scop' (single-cell-protien).
* In Anne McCaffrey's 'Sassinak' (part of the Planet Pirates' series), there is this: "He’d had an aunt who wouldn’t eat anything synthesized from perennial plants, on the grounds that shrubs and trees might be sentient." mentioned in the context that mutineers who sank low enough to eat meat might as well be cannibals.
So, it's a recurring theme, and I suspect that the way it will work out in practice is that vat-grown meat (and engineered vegetable protein crops) will eventually 'win' simply for being cheaper and more sustainable than slaughtering animals that inefficiently convert vegetable protein into animal protein.