Saturday, August 13, 2005

Vat-grown meat

Scientists are proposing that current techniques could be extended to enable meat to be grown in a lab.

"In the long term, this is a very feasible idea," said Jason Matheny of the University of Maryland, part of the team whose research has been published in the Tissue Engineering journal.

Some possible advantages:

  • cruelty-free meat
  • mercury-free fish
  • meat from endangered species could be cultured for sale
  • beef tissue free from BSE
  • a reduction in methane, a greenhouse gas, from animal farming
  • a reduction in cattle ranching, leading to less pressure on the Amazon rainforest

Given global overfishing, perhaps laboratory-grown fish will be inevitable.

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