Submission + - In-Vitro Muscle Cells. It's What's For Dinner (reuters.com)
wanzeo writes: Within the last decade, many of us have experienced the encroachment of ethics into our mealtime. Phrases such as vegetarian, vegan, organic, bST, GMO, etc. have become part of common grocery store advertising. The most recent addition to the list of ethically charged food is in-vitro meat, or meat that was cultured in a petri dish, and was never part of a live animal. The project has been brought to fruition by Mark Post, a biologist at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. Grown using animal stem-cells on a nutrient medium, the nearly see-through strips of muscle would need to be stacked nearly 3,000 times to approach the thickness of a burger. The practice promises to be more humane, sustainable, and efficient than conventional meats, with one analysis suggesting it would, "use 35 to 60 percent less energy, emit 80 to 95 percent less greenhouse gas and use around 98 percent less land". In a world where nearly half of all crop production is used to feed livestock, a move towards artificial meat may be inevitable.
