I am not sure how you all feel about genetically engineered foods but this is awful. Right now I try to avoid GMO produce as much as possible, I dont know what Id do if this were the next thing on the shelves to dodge. Granted livestock raising methods need to be changed and I dont believe in cruelty to animals but this is just disgusting. I am sure Monsanto will be all over this... meh ...

Million-Dollar Meat

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Published: April 23, 2008

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is offering a million-dollar prize for the “first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012.” “In vitro” and “test-tube grown” are not ideas one usually associates with meat. The meat-substitute niche is currently occupied largely by soy in all its miraculous if slightly disappointing forms.

The announcement has apparently caused strife in PETA’s offices, where workers are debating whether they might ever eat animal tissue that has never been part of an autonomous animal. They’ll have some time to decide. So far, only a small amount of meat tissue has been grown in petri dishes — and it remains to be seen whether consumers will ever like the idea.

We are disgusted by the conventional meat industry in this country, which raises animals — especially chicken and pigs — in inhumane confinement systems that cause significant environmental damage. There is every reason to change the way meat is produced, to make it more ethical, more humane. But the result of the technology that PETA hopes to reward could be the end of domesticated farm animals. This has often seemed as if it were the logical conclusion of some radical animal-rights activists: better for animals not to exist at all if there is a chance that they would suffer.

We prefer a more measured approach. Ensure the least possible cruelty to animals, by all means, and raise them in ways that are both ethical and environmentally sound. But also treasure the cultural and historical bond between humans and domesticated animals. Historically speaking, they exist only because of the uses we have found for them, and preserving their existence means, in most cases, preserving the uses we have made for them. It will be a barren world if the herds and flocks disappear in favor of meat grown in a laboratory tank.