Access
This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Please note this is News in Brief, and so will be a short article.
Published online 30 April 2008 | 453, 12 (2008) | doi:10.1038/453012a
News in Brief: Sidelines
Sidelines
Scribbles on the margins of science.
Zoo News
On the record
Scorecard
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Please note this is News in Brief, and so will be a short article.
Comments
Reader comments are usually moderated after posting. If you find something offensive or inappropriate, you can speed this process by clicking 'Report this comment' (or, if that doesn't work for you, email redesign@nature.com). For more controversial topics, we reserve the right to moderate before comments are published.
Bravo to PETA for attempting something "sensible" for a change. However, there are obvious problems when it comes to marketing your "lab-meat". There is trouble enough trying to get the public to accept GM crops. Now genetically engineered cloned meat patties for little Jimmie's school cook-out? I don't think so.
How is Lab Grown Meat not an animal? Doesn't meat constitute circulation of blood and nutrients and removal of waste? Same as a plant does, so you have to add things back into the system. At what point is it an animal-less meat? So use all the same energy and resources to produce flesh without a skeleton and neurosystem, but a neuro system would be required to contract the muscles and move the fluids. Then at what point do we stop, the lab meat will need a control unit and if you add that, do you make it an animal. What does PETA really want here? A lot of muscle grown in a solution and grown with electrical stimuli? Why not just eat plants who we do not consider to be alive in the animal sense? Or derive protein products from the waste matter from biofuel production from marine algae. Make that taste like meat. It seems that it will be difficult to win the prize unless they have a well defined definition of what meat is... How does this differ from breeding rats for scientific work? How does this differ from factory farming of meat? You will still have to harvest it.
I guess this gives new meaning to 'boneless chicken'.