Cultured Meat

kitling pointed out this article: Paper Says Edible Meat Can be Grown in a Lab on Industrial Scale.

The basic idea is that it's theoretically possible to grow individual muscle cells in a lab, in mass-marketeable quantaties, thus eliminating the need to raise and slaughter livestocks.

Theoretically, this "cultured meat" could be grow to be much healthier than than livestock meat - less cholesterol, for example, and no need for antibiotics.

In principal, I thinks it's a great idea. I'd much rather eat meat that didn't involve all the pollution, chemicals and suffering of livestock meat.

But in practice, you have to keep a close eye on these things. Manufacturers coud just as easily overdose cultured meat with hormones as they do livestock, for example.

And I don't know that the general public would take to it. Gourmets would dismiss it as "factory meat", the general public would get creeped out by it, and the greenies would demonize it along with GM foods.

Which is probably why organisations like New Harvest have been set up - not just for research, but for advance PR.