Would You Eat Lab Grown Meat?

For over a year, there’s been talk of lab grown meat in the vegetarian and vegan communities as a possible solution to the global food crisis and as a means of substantially cutting the greenhouse gases associated with factory farming. However, a Dutch team from Maastricht University just announced that it plans on having the first in-vitro hamburger ready by October 2012, and even though it’ll take 10-20 years to make it available to the masses, we’ve got to ask: Would you eat in-vitro meat?

Mark Post, the project leader at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, said that an anonymous investor interested in “life-transforming technologies,” is funding their research because he believes it will revolutionize the food industry. After millennia of raising animals for meat in a way that takes 30% of Earth’s land mass and is very energy intensive, this new method would certainly change things. In fact, Post said that it “could reduce the energy expenditure by about 40 percent” and by using stem cells, this technology would people to continue to eat meat without killing animals.

While improvements to the environment, amount of arable land used, and animal cruelty are important, one thing that the news stories aren’t covering yet are whether there would be any health benefits from growing meat in a petri dish to that which has been raised on a farm. Given that they’re using animal DNA to develop this meat, one would assume that the negative aspects of eating a diet high in cholesterol and saturated fat from meat wouldn’t change. Therefore, some people might continue to stay away from it entirely or at least maintain a decreased consumption of it for health reasons. In addition, there are some people who would stay away from lab-grown meat because they think it’s unnatural or because they don’t enjoy the taste or texture of meat. Would any of these reasons dissuade you?

Whether you have the $263,000 to try the second lab-grown hamburger (the first one is already spoken for by an as-of-yet unannounced celebrity) or it’ll be 10-20 years before the possibility of trying it is within reach, we want to know: Would you eat lab grown meat? Whether you’re a vegetarian, vegan, or meat eater now, could you see yourself consuming it when cruelty free meat is a real possibility? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Posted in: Food Talks
Tags: grown meat growing meat in-vitro meat

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