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Lab-Grown Long Pig?
The latest episode of The Remnant features Jonah Goldberg answering questions from listeners, including one about Jonah’s views on veganism and animal rights. In the answer to that question, they talk about lab-grown meat. As an aside, they note that scientists are close to growing lab-grown human meat.
Say wha..? Now, I haven’t investigated this at all, but the science of it is utterly irrelevant to what I’m about to ask: How would you react to lab-grown human meat produced for human consumption?
Would you try it?
Would you consider eating it to be cannibalism?
If so, is it the kind of cannibalism that is morally abhorrent? Or, is it an okay kind of cannibalism because no humans were killed?
In all honesty, I have no idea what my own answers to these questions are. This is a problem that I’ve never thought about before. But I figured it would make a great Ricochet discussion topic.
Published in General
Why would we stop killing animals? Because morality changes over time. Because people, myself included have problems with the idea of killing certain animals for meat. Because maybe we don’t need to.
Look, I’m not a vegetarian, but killing certain animals for meat sometimes bothers me. I’m writing this one-handed because I’m literally holding a cat with the other. I know that the reason I see this beautiful orange cat as a beloved companion and not as food yet to be slaughtered is entirely cultural, and not ethical.
I’m not going to stop eating meat over it, but its there in the back of my head.
Yeah, that’s part of the problem with using God to argue that way.
This assumes there is an inherent ethical dilemma with killing animals for food.
The existence of people who believe there is does not prove there is such a dilemma.
In other words, you have no problem condemning possibly hundreds of species to potential extinction to soothe your feelings. That is what will happen if we go to vat-grown meat. There will be no need to maintain domesticated species and they will disappear. Not just domesticated animals, either. Many species are now kept alive due to their value as game animals. Your way sounds like a final solution to me.
To say nothing of the acres of pasture lands that will be converted to meat factories, bare due to the extinction of the herds which previously ranged over them. Less nature, not more.
I will settle for feeding myself through the deaths of individual animals, allowed to survive in relative comfort and protected from disease (because diseased animals reduce the bottom line), rather than advocate the elimination of millions of creatures in the selfish name of “ethics.”
Seawriter
Haha! If you are what you eat, I’m easy, fast, and cheap.
I’m noticed a lot of cartoons, a lot of soylent green references, a lot of cross talk, but very few people who have actually answered the specific questions posed in the OP…
I’ve told you a million times! I don’t exaggerate.
*shaking*
Too… many… jokes.
Far as it goes I don’t think it’s a terribly difficult question for most of us. For eating lab grown human meat to be more moral than consuming animal flesh you have to satisfy two conditions. One, you have to believe there’s an ethical problem in eating cow. Most of us here don’t. Two, you have to believe that the only ethical problems that arise from eating human meat happen because you have to kill a human to get it. At the very least that has yet to be proven.
You just keep doing your thing, man.
No, I’m not going to eat people.
No, I’m not impressed by lab grown meat as an alternative to slaughtering animals, as I have no qualms about the later.
I agree. Humans are meant to be carnivores. We don’t have canines and incisors for chewing tofu.
I don’t think it’s a morality issue.
Assuming we could make laboratory beef that tasted somewhat similar to natural cow meat, you could do the following: take someone to a “meat lab”, which would realistically look like almost any industrial food processing facility (fairly clean and sterile, lots of stainless steel vats, tubing, and a bunch of conveyor belts).
Then take them to a factory farm without giving them any respiratory protection.
Then ask them which beef they’d like to eat. I’m guessing lab meat wouldn’t look so bad after all.
I’m not sure I understand the main question in the OP based on Fred’s other comments: are you asking about laboratory-manufactured meat in general, or human meat in particular?
From a technological standpoint, if we’ve developed the technology to create human meat, we’ll have the technology to make other mammalian meat as well – it shouldn’t be that much different.
Even though creating the meat in the lab takes away the strict “cannibalism” factor, if we have an innate “ick” reaction to human meat, and it’s just as easy to make cattle or pig meat, why bother with human meat?
It’s the same as why we don’t eat dogs: we could, but we like them and it’s just as easy to breed other animals as food.
Maybe you don’t eat dogs. I can think of an ex-president who would disagree.
I’ve been talking about human meat. A quick survey on my thoughts on vat-produced beef, I’ve got one question:
“Does it taste good?”
I’m figuring the uncanny valley is going to be a heck of a problem for the taste buds.
Why do we need this? What problem are we solving?
If it’s the moral question of whether eating meat is good or not, as demonstrated by several responses, that’s quite a personal matter. If eating meat from slaughtered animals is repugnant, why is it necessary for vegetarians to eat it at all?
No, I wouldn’t knowingly eat the stuff, and I’ve lived in small towns and I’ve delivered auto parts to a rendering plant that occasionally needed them so I’m aware of where the meat comes from.
Why do we need lab techs to build a cow when we have perfectly reliable methods of doing so already?
Unimpressed by arguments that human disgust reflexes are great guiding principles.
There are also practical concerns that this process doesn’t address.
It isn’t merely the protein from meat that we benefit from. The animals’ diets fortify the meat with all sorts of nutrients. No, our understanding of nutrician is not sufficiently advanced that we can predict every issue that will arise switching to lab grown meat.
One day I’m sure you could artificially fortify the meat with everything that it was missing compared to animal meat. That day is not day one.
Stick to the real stuff for a while.
I think that question works for human meat too.
So here’s the thing. IIRC, they did a heart transplant with a pig heart into a human body. If you vat-grow a heart, would you be able to tell the difference between a human heart and a pig heart? If it comes from the vat, I’m not sure there’s that much of a difference.
Although again, the vat-grown nature comes into play. Since that heart hasn’t been doing its job of pumping blood, it won’t be as chewy as a regular heart would be. Also, when eating a vat heart, you don’t gain any courage. Rich, tasty courage.
If this technology actually became viable (and I think that’s still a big if), the real determinant will of course be: price.
If meat could be manufactured in the lab more cheaply than animal husbandry and it still tastes somewhat like real meat, just about everything else in this conversation will be moot points.
And in any case, many of the criticisms can be equally leveled at our current groceries.
Regarding artificial meat lacking certain nutrients: as has been pointed out, some of the nutritional value is based on what the animals eat. Factory animals eat incredibly poor diets, yet we still buy their products gleefully. I imagine science could find a way of making artificial beef which is still healthier than that from grass eaters raised on corn and soy.
Regarding our taste buds rejecting the flavor of artificial meat: the incredible commercial success of artificial flavorings suggests otherwise. If we naturally reacted poorly to non-natural flavorings, the fast food industry wouldn’t exist.
And for the record, I have no qualms with eating meat from factory farms or processed food from other food factories. I eat copious quantities of each every day. Just pointing out that our current food supply already seems to fail many of the tests posed here.
Second that.
I think Hannibal Lector would consider that taking the fun out of dining. I suppose cow gases are driving this movement and I think it’s nonsense, I want the world warmer and greener. I also want to eat cows and pigs and all kinds of fowl and I want them fattened up.
The human disgust reflex as a guiding principle is the main point of this discussion. That’s why nobody wants to eat human meat, even if it didn’t come from a living human.
…If you’re assuming we’re meat robots.
OK, I’ll have a go at the actual questions in the OP.
If on offer, I would try it. I don’t see any ethical issues. It may have a human genome, but vat meat doesn’t have a brain and never had one. I’d be more twitchy about eating dog or whale.
Would I do more than try it? Others have already brought up the relevant issues – taste and price. Trust me that I have no current information about the former. :D
Not knowingly, no, I would not. I could if necessary but would not enjoy it. The closer the cellular source is to sentience, the more qualms I’d have. Rational or irrational though it may be. There are many who eat and even have the capability to crave whale or seal. I’m comfortable with my lack of curiosity in this area. My food is more to me than a battery pack.
Waterloo wasn’t won on the fields of the eaten.