Interesting effort in Holland, where they're looking to create lab-grown hamburger by growing synthetic muscle using cow stem cells. A PETA grant is behind it, with the idea that some meat could be made without killing animals in the process down the line.
The process is far from market-ready, as the first faux-burger will have about $300K of development behind it; not exactly cost-effective. Also, the process tends to create small bits of meat that lends itself more to minced applications like hamburger or meat sauces than steaks and roasts. However, if they can scale up the process where fauxflesh might become cheaper than traditional meats, pressure will be on folks to give up the traditional slaughterhouse, so that meat doesn't have to be "tasty, tasty murder" anymore.
Such a critter would have some interesting implications. Would a fauxbeef cheeseburger be kosher? Would folks who are vegan on anti-cruelty grounds be open to fauxbeef? Would we see the left split into pro-organic, anti-genmod folks fearful of lab-grown muscle fighting with the PETA crowd? We're a few years off from that, but I recall one sci-fi millieu where fauxflesh was the norm by 2100 and traditional meat-production had the moral standing of cockfighting today.
It will have to get past the "yuck" factor, but meat production has a bit of that already. I recall a scene in Douglas Adams' The Restaurant at the End of the Universe where sentient cattle happily show off their body parts to the patrons before going out back to be freshly slaughtered, prompting a "that's just not right" feeling in the reader as they meet the meat. Contrasting that with lab-grown frankenfood might not be as hard as it seems.
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