The Coming In-Vitro Meat Revolution

Imagine a world where there are virtually no slaughterhouses, anywhere, no animals killed for meat; and yet, a world where you can still eat your hamburgers and hotdogs, experiencing no difference in taste whatsoever. That's the world that in-vitro meat promises to bring about, and the first commercially available products could start to appear in as little as five years from now.

The basic idea behind in-vitro meat is very much like the current artificial organ technology being developed in labs around the world: what you do is you take a small sample of stem cells from a living animal -- a cow, say -- and then you cause those cells to rapidly divide and eventually differentiate into organ (muscle) tissue in a bioreactor. You may need to add adipose (fat) tissue and blood cells for taste, and be mindful how you grow the muscle fibers, for texture; but once all that is done, in a very short time you should have a meat sample that is indistinguishable from a cut from a slaughtered animal.

In principle, this technology could lead not only to guilt-free meat (no animals need be slaughtered), but also:

* Enormous savings in the use of land -- e.g. non-dairy cattle ranches and pig farms could be reverted back to prairie land, or sold as housing tracts.

* Enormous energy and resource savings -- it should, in principle, take far less energy and resources to produce a pound of in-vitro meat compared to a pound of real meat.

* Enormous reductions in the release of methane gas (a potent greenhouse gas) from farm animals.

* A drastic reduction in the release of farm runoff from pig farms, for instance.

* A drastic reduction in the use of corn for animal feed, which would result in further reductions in land use.

* The ability to provide people in the developing world a high-quality diet at a very low price, once the technology has been commercialized and allowed to improve for a few years (to reduce cost).

* The ability to tailor the quality of the meat as one sees fit -- e.g. to make it as low fat as one desires -- almost effortlessly.

I do see, however, the potential that certain industrial interests would be none-too-pleased by the commercialization of in-vitro meat. And, for example, if I were consulted on how to destroy the budding in-vitro meat industry, and if I didn't have a conscience, what I would try is something like the following: first, I would use FEAR; I would run ads on TV and on the internet showing videos of children afflicted with some rare disease like Creutzfeldt–Jakob's -- some hard-to-pronounce, multisyllabic disease to invoke the fear of the unknown -- and then I would display in large, stark letters, ``Are you sure you know the risks?'' Then I would appeal to memes like ``natural is better than artificial''. I would insinuate that in-vitro meat is related to GMO's (even though it isn't), which some people have been up-in-arms about for a long time now. And I would with run a few other memes, like how in-vitro meat is making us inhuman. In parallel to all of this, I'd do some serious lobbying to try to suppress the technology through legislation and regulation.

Eventually, however, none of these efforts will stop the in-vitro meat revolution. It will grow and grow until it completely supplants commercial meat production from slaughtered animals. I am anxiously awaiting that eventuality.

Let me close with some resources for further investigation: see this wikipedia article ; hplusmagazine article ; youtube video .