Free Republic

Think you can’t live a fulfilling life without eating traditional meat? Richard Branson, billionaire founder of Virgin Group, thinks you can. In fact, he thinks meat as we know it will be completely different in just a few decades. “I believe that in 30 years or so, we will no longer need to kill any animals and that all meat will either be clean or plant-based, taste the same and also be much healthier for everyone,” Branson wrote in a blog post about Virgin’s investment in Memphis Meats, a company that synthesizes meat using real animal cells. “One day we...

Experiments for NASA space missions have shown that small amounts of edible meat can be created in a lab. But the technology that could grow chicken nuggets without the chicken, on a large scale, may not be just a science fiction fantasy. In a recent paper in the Tissue Engineering journal, a team of scientists has proposed two new techniques of tissue engineering that may one day lead to affordable production of in vitro - lab grown - meat for human consumption. It is the first peer-reviewed discussion of the prospects for industrial production of cultured meat.

A U.S. scientist has developed a process to grow cow cells into full-size hamburger overnight but he can't get anyone to invest in the process. Vladimir Mironov, a biology researcher at the Medical University of South Carolina, said the process involves taking immature cells that develop into skeletal muscles from cows -- or pigs, or chickens, or turkeys -- and fusing them to a protein that, with the help of steroids, grows into big hunks of meat, The Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier reported. The newspaper said the process isn't exactly cloning, but more like cattle farming through chemistry. The...

A research team is proposing a new technique that would allow meat to be grown in a laboratory for mass consumption, according to a report. Researchers in the U.S. say the technology now exists now to produce processed meats such as burgers and sausages, starting with cells taken from cows, chickens, pigs, fish or other animals. Growing meat without the animal would not only reduce the need for the animals -- which often are kept in less than ideal conditions -- but may also address a number of environmental ills blamed on meat production. Cultured meat could also be tailored...