Posted on 01/31/2011 3:46:07 AM PST by chessplayer
A developmental biologist and tissue engineer, Dr. Mironov, 56, is one of only a few scientists worldwide involved in bioengineering "cultured" meat.
It's a product he believes could help solve future global food crises resulting from shrinking amounts of land available for growing meat the old-fashioned way ... on the hoof.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Our ‘’gov’t’’ owns millions upon millions of acres of land which they are studiously removeing from any use for food production. Time to wake up, I’d say.
Robert Heinlein had this idea in one of his sci-fi books. Developed on a space station; it was cultured prime rib.
If there are 6 Billon people on the planet, and approx 168 Millon acres in the State of Texas, that would mean you have about 36 people per acre, if you put everyone on Earth in the State of Texas.
A crowded city for sure, but that would leave the entire rest of the planet to raise crops and cattle. We are hardly running out of space.
Didn't read the article, but can't help but hope that includes "Pork?"
Bacon....and LOT's of it...it's what's for breakfast...in about 30 minutes!
There’s plenty of land for the people. The population is not skyrocketing.
My buddy applied for a permit to drain the swamp that was 1/3 of his property so that he could grow more crops. The Department of Environmental Communism refused the permit stating that he couldn’t disturb the wetlands.
Actually the population in many places has reached a negative growth rate. Russia, Japan and many parts of Europe.
Let me guess: he grows the meat in a culture of high fructose corn syrup—right??
Dr. Mironov, 56, is one of only a few scientists worldwide involved in bioengineering "cultured" meat.
"I believe we can do it without genes. But there is no evidence that if you add genes the quality of food will somehow suffer. Genetically modified food is already normal practice and nobody dies."
Grow a biological organism without genes? How does one do that? Since life has existed, genes have been a part of it, providing both blueprint and operating instructions.
Dr. Mironov has taken myoblasts ... and bathed them in a nutrient bath of bovine serum ...
Bovine serum... typically harvested from cows at the time of slaughter? That bovine serum? Or does he mean fetal bovine serum, taken from fetuses 3-9 months old removed from cows at slaughter?
Cultured meat could eventually become cheaper than what Genovese called the heavily subsidized production of farm meat, he said, and if the public accepts cultured meat, the future holds benefits.
I doubt that. One half liter of bovine serum, if I order it today, is $40. But since most cells in culture won't grow on bovine serum, I'd order, instead, heat-inactivated fetal bovine serum from the US (I don't want imported serum) which, today, is going for the low price of $318 for half a liter. Prices are highly subject to market forces--if the price of beef goes up, the price of serum skyrockets. Serum is only one component of cell culture media. The basic medium may cost $20-30 per half liter bottle, not to mention the cost of hormones and antibiotics if I need to add those. Add in the cost of skilled labor and sterile facilities--meat culturing looks like it's going to be VERY expensive.
"Thirty percent of the earth's land surface area is associated with producing animal protein on farms," Genovese said.
And still will be, even with cultured meat. How else are the animal products needed to culture the meat going to be obtained?
And one last consideration not mentioned anywhere in the article: in order to get cells to grow in culture, they must be "immortalized." That means that they have had the normal growth controls removed so that they will continue to grow. Lack of normal growth controls is a hallmark of cancer cells. I don't know how most people would accept eating "meat" grown from cells that have been given a big head start towards being cancer tissue--but it's not very appetizing to me.
“This beef burger contains 30% immortalized bovine cancer”
Yeah, I can see the problem for Taco Bell’s marketing department.
Of course if we stopped burning our food in the service of the Global Warming I’m still shoveling out of my driveway, we wouldn’t have this problem. Even Algore admits the whole Ethanol thing was a big mistake, and just a political sop to an early primary state.
And yet, it goes on. And on. And on.
Bull***t. I hate it.
"Finally the truth about what they served us in the late 80's at the Clemson University cafeteria is revealed!"
Exactly. We are not managing the space we have very well. Africa, for instance, is grossly mismanaged (see documentary movie "Mugabe and the White African"). There is plenty of farmland that is not yet being utilized.
Ok...this story got me thinking about a comic I saw my nephew reading a couple months back. Basic premise, in near-future, due to huge populations, food was getting scarce and trash was piling up. As a solution, scientists designed a bio-engineered animal called BM (acronym for BioMeat), which could basically eat anything but metal and glass. The BM would eat all the trash, and when they were fat enough, they would be slaughtered to provide meat to the population. They grew and multiplied extremely fast and had to be kept under tight control. One of the little buggers got loose and ate a person and began explosively reproducing, leading ultimately to these things overwhelming and consuming most the human population.
what ‘meats’ would be good targets?
beef
tuna
lobster
anything else?
“A crowded city for sure, but that would leave the entire rest of the planet to raise crops and cattle. We are hardly running out of space.”
Yup,,,and kill off everything else on the planet. What a wonderful place to live in. sarc/
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