Hey there DK, your trusty utilitarian blogger here, doing my part to increase quality of life on Earth as much as I can.
One of the most fascinating topics (there are several) I've been introduced to from my involvement in the utilitarianism community is "lab-grown meat" aka "in vitro meat" aka "cultured meat". It's exactly that: meat grown in cultures in which cell mitosis occurs. At first I was totally weirded out by this, but then I learned that the process is exactly the same as regular cell mitosis, except that there's no living animal involved. This technology may produce meat that's healthier, safer, tastier, less expensive and less polluting. It also consumes less energy and of course avoids the horrendous suffering of our factory farm livestock, since there's no animal to suffer. This could put factory farms out of business, but not food companies, since they'll step in to produce and distribute it once it's commercially viable. These days, it's in research phase.
Just how big of a deal is this?
- According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, "the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent – 18 percent – than transport". Lab-grown meat may never beat plant food in energy efficiency, but it should beat animal meat convincingly.
- If you don't know about the horrendous suffering of our livestock animals, just see PETA. I'm no militant animal activist, but more the somber scientist-type that recognizes that experiencing pleasure and pain is not restricted to our species, and that what's done to livestock animals in factory farms is not good, not good at all.
Lab-grown meat has an interesting history. Nobel laureate Alexis Carrel "kept part of a chicken embryo's heart muscle growing in a bowl of nutrients from 1912 until his death 32 years later." Winston Churchill, then a journalist, wrote in 1932, "Fifty years hence we will escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium." link
The current work was kick started in 2004 by Jason Matheny. Inspired by "NASA-funded research on growing fish explants in vitro to feed astronauts on long space missions", he put together a group of researchers, currently based in Holland (which has big livestock pollution problems). A US organization, New Harvest, was set up as "a private, non-profit funding source". link
What you can do:
- Learn more. Understand the technology. This is not cloning animals. It's "cloning" cells, i.e. via mitosis, which how cells duplicate in our bodies.
- Spread word.
- Donate to New Harvest to help advance the research and make this technology a reality.
- For anything beyond personal donations (e.g. grants, government funding), drop me an email and we'll figure it out.
- Consider making a career in tissue engineering, if you're a student in or around the biology area.
To learn more:
Finally, if I can't answer your questions, I can put you in touch with people who can.