Candida Kutz's Blob, er, Blog: Up in Arms about Genetically Engineered Veggies? How About Lab-Grown Meat?

July 23, 2005

Up in Arms about Genetically Engineered Veggies? How About Lab-Grown Meat?

My ex- thought it was really sick of me to muse that chicken mcnuggets might actually be chunks of flesh grown on a petri dish. Well Tom, not so crazy of me after all to think they could be.

While doing some invisible web surfing, I came across this article describing a recent paper published in the June 29 issue of Tissue Engineering. (And whoa! This piece even makes mention of chicken mcnuggets!)

University of Maryland doctoral student Jason Matheny says of "cultured meat":

"There would be a lot of benefits from cultured meat." . . . "For one thing, you could control the nutrients. For example, most meats are high in the fatty acid Omega 6, which can cause high cholesterol and other health problems. With in vitro meat, you could replace that with Omega 3, which is a healthy fat.

"Cultured meat could also reduce the pollution that results from raising livestock, and you wouldn't need the drugs that are used on animals raised for meat."

The Dutch government thinks this is such a swell idea, they've given a grant to one of Matheny's colleagues, Henk Haagsman, Professor of Meat Science at Utrecht University "as part of a national initiative to reduce the environmental impact of food production."

As a conservationist and someone who tries her best to stay healthy, I'm all for a solution that seeks to reduce environmental stress and increase our over-all physical health, but the notion of eating lab-grown meat is pretty darn gross, don't you think?

July 23, 2005 in Nature/Science | Permalink

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July 23, 2005

Up in Arms about Genetically Engineered Veggies? How About Lab-Grown Meat?

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