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Bacon in the 22nd century

M

Maladominus

SOC-14 1K
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_med_petri_pork


Scientists turn stem cells into pork

LONDON – Call it pork in a petri dish — a technique to turn pig stem cells into strips of meat that scientists say could one day offer a green alternative to raising livestock, help alleviate world hunger, and save some pigs their bacon.

Dutch scientists have been growing pork in the laboratory since 2006, and while they admit they haven't gotten the texture quite right or even tasted the engineered meat, they say the technology promises to have widespread implications for our food supply.

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would you eat this 'meat' grown from stem cells??!
 
dean said:
I think you hit that one on the head, Bill. And when that day comes the only place you'll see cows and pigs will be in the zoo.
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Dean,

That day has arrived in many places.

Story time!

I rented a farm house on an old dairy farm for a period back in the 90s. I was travelling for a living at the time, travelling rather extensively, so renting the house and having a housemate worked very well for me. Mail got collected, the fridge didn't turn into a science project, and all sorts of other things got handled while I was away. It worked well for my housemate too. She had a horse and was able to keep it on the pasturage there with the few cows our landlord still kept. We each had are own bed and sitting rooms while sharing a parlor, kitchen, bathroom, and screened porch. I had a small office too.

Anyway, a fellow from our Singapore branch was over for a few months undergoing some training. They put him up one of those nice apartment hotels, but I'd have him over weekends when I was home. He absolutely goggled at the cows and horse, plus the sheep across the road, and was physically afraid of them for a period. It took a couple of visits, but we eventually coaxed him up on the horse and took a picture for his wife to see. She did not like the fact he'd been on a horse and bitched him out several times via long distance!

ObTrav: We talk about folks living in sealed habitats on hellworlds developing agoraphobia, but how would they handle animals? Cherryh touched on this in Hellburner or it's sequel when one of the belters wouldn't eat anything other than fish because that was the only animal that with which she was familiar. Chickens and, heaven forbid, cows were simply too strange and scary for her to even contemplate eating.


Regards,
Bill
 
Whipsnade said:
Somewhere H. Beam Piper is chuckling...
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Not to mention Pohl and Kornbluth. They may not have coined the word 'carniculture' (it does indeed seem to be attributed to Piper), but they did describe it in "The Space Merchants" a decade before Piper mentioned it.


Hans
 
It wouldn't bother me to do that, because, to be honest, it actually bothers me now that we harvest living, breathing, thinking creatures for their skin and body parts. It's not entirely necessary, strictly speaking, but it's a de facto necessity because of the society we live in.

Me, I love soy meatballs on spaghetti. They're just as good as regular meatballs, and I'm a pretty big guy. I haven't had them in years because I needed to cut pasta out of my diet to keep my weight down. Still, good protein substitutes would help the world go a long way in repositioning itself on a healthful foundation.


p.s. my "y" key is sticky and it's really annoying! :frankie:
 
Somewhere in my decades of Sci-Fi reading I remember the phrase "vat-grown meat" (or something very similar)... as well as reading Piper, et al.

Then there was the story (title and author remain elusive to my memory function) which had rabbits running free in space habitats, feeding on plants that were hydroponically grown on most corridor walls... and both were consumed by the human occupants of the facilities.

The author stated that rabbits were the ideal animal for that function... they made less mess than most with their waste products (which were used to fertilize the plants anyway), they reproduced rapidly, they grew rapidly to harvesting size, and had just about the most efficient plant consumption to flesh production ratio of any animal small enough to live in habitats and which grew big enough to provide useful quantities of flesh.
 
There's a great scene in Peter F. Hamilton's novel - Fallen Dragon, when the hero discovers the meat he just ate was from an animal!!!! Which makes him puke with revulsion. He accuses his "traditionalist" girlfriend of being two steps up from a cannibal.
It was a nice little reminder that things that are regular and normal today will be considered barbaric some day tomorrow.

For me, what's most exciting about the prospect of sythetic meat is that it can be engineered to be low calorie, zero cholesterol. Guilt-free tripple whoppers here I come :-)
 
Maladominus said:
One of these days, they'll accidentally create a shoggoth from all this vat-grown meat stuff!
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And there'd be hungry people there, knives and forks in hand, waiting.

All this talk of protein makes me so hungry. As hungry, in fact, as this guy:-

The-Master-doctor-who-the-end-of-time-9434263-450-450.jpg
 
lucasdigital said:
*snipperoo*
For me, what's most exciting about the prospect of sythetic meat is that it can be engineered to be low calorie, zero cholesterol. Guilt-free tripple whoppers here I come :-)
Click to expand...
Oh man, that'd be heaven ... no more donning Groucho Marx plastic glasses with schnoz and mustache to make a trip to Burger King's drive through ... *droooooooool*
 
Maladominus said:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_med_petri_pork


Scientists turn stem cells into pork

LONDON – Call it pork in a petri dish — a technique to turn pig stem cells into strips of meat that scientists say could one day offer a green alternative to raising livestock, help alleviate world hunger, and save some pigs their bacon.

Dutch scientists have been growing pork in the laboratory since 2006, and while they admit they haven't gotten the texture quite right or even tasted the engineered meat, they say the technology promises to have widespread implications for our food supply.

-----

would you eat this 'meat' grown from stem cells??!
Click to expand...

That is probably the concept behind "Carniculture" -- which is cloned 'meat' in TL 11 Hydroponics usage. I would imahine that in say 100 years, Carniculture will be a lot better at 'meat' and taste, etc ...
 
The Judge Dredd universe in 2000AD features "orchards" of meat trees being grown in plantations out in the Cursed Earth.

I daresay sufficiently high - tech worlds would have something similar. The towering arcologies of cities from TL 12 on up, for instance, could have entire banks of levels dedicated to cultivating meat plants - either "plant" as in "plant and machinery" or literally hanging from branches like trees.

Cultivated meat could be a major freight item, delivered in bulk in refrigerated containers from high tech worlds to low - population, high-tech colonies which cannot cultivate their own crops. And not just edible meat.

It may also eventually be possible to culture genetically-modified vegetation designed to excrete silks and plastics or to minerals from soil such as potassium salts, copper or gold, or to create insulin or hormones and secrete them in the flesh of their fruits.
 
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MMMmmmm Bacon. Add or wrap ANYTHING in bacon, and it tastes better!

Point proved by the California company that makes bars of Dark chocolate filled with bacon bits.

I'll bet it even makes those petri dishes palatable!
 
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