Test-tube hamburger - a taste of things to come

CALLING all fast-food addicts - a human guinea pig is wanted to become the first person in the world to eat a test-tube hamburger.

The burger, made with beef mince grown from stem cells, is less than a year away from being produced, Dutch scientists say. And they believe it could pave the way for eating meat without the need for animals being slaughtered.

The scientists predict that over the next few decades the world's population will increase so quickly that there will not be enough livestock to feed everyone.

As a result, they say, laboratory-grown beef, chicken and lamb could become normal. The scientists are currently developing a burger which will be grown from 10,000 stem cells extracted from cattle, which are then left in the lab to multiply more than a billion times to produce muscle tissue similar to beef. The product is called in vitro meat.

Mark Post, professor of physiology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, who is behind the project, said: "I don't see any way you could rely on old-fashioned livestock in the coming decades. In vitro meat will be the only choice left.

"We are trying to prove to the world we can make a product out of this, and we need a courageous person who is willing to be the first to taste it.

"If no one comes forward, then it might be me."

Professor Post told Scientific American magazine that he thought the first test-tube burger could be made within 12 months. In 2009, scientists from the same university grew strips of pork using the same method. They admitted it was not particularly appetising, being grey with a similar texture to calamari.

Fish fillets have been grown in a New York laboratory using cells taken from goldfish muscle tissue.

Even if the initial results do not taste quite the same as proper meat, scientists are convinced the public will soon get used to it.

The world's meat consumption is expected to double by 2050. The scientists believe that the test-tube burger is only the first stage in a food revolution that might solve the problem.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/test-tube-hamburger-a-taste-of-things-to-come/story-e6freuy9-1226083075037

Beef from offspring of clone eaten

3 August 2010 08:45pm

Meat from the offspring of a cloned cow entered the food chain last year and was eaten, the Food Standards Agency has revealed.

And experts have admitted they do not know how many embryos from cloned animals have been imported into Britain.

FSA chief executive Tim Smith stressed that there were no health risks associated with eating meat or drinking milk from the descendants of cloned cows.

Two bulls born in the UK from embryos harvested from a cloned cow have been slaughtered, one of which "will have been eaten" while the other was stopped from entering the food chain.

The revelation came amid an FSA probe into whether any matter from cows born of a clone have been used in food production.

Under European law, foodstuffs, including milk, produced from cloned animals must pass a safety evaluation and gain authorisation before they are marketed. But the FSA said it had neither made any authorisations nor been asked to do so.

An investigation was launched in the wake of claims that a British farmer had admitted using milk in his daily production without labelling it as from the offspring of a cloned cow.The FSA said on Tuesday that it had traced a single animal, Dundee Paradise, believed to be part of a dairy herd, but could not confirm that its milk had entered the food chain.

Mr Smith told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "There's a live investigation going on at the moment and, whilst we have got a first-class cattle tracing scheme, what we don't know is precisely how many embryos have been imported into the country."

He said such a situation was "inevitable", adding: "It's a bit like the police being there and us expecting no crime. However good the system is, it relies on the honesty of those people participating.

"It's impossible for us to stand by each animal and watch it through each phase of its life cycle."

http://latestnews.virginmedia.com/news/uk/2010/08/03/cloned_cow_offspring_in_food_chain

Conflicted meat-eaters deny that meat-animals have the capacity to suffer

Conflicted meat-eaters deny that meat-animals have the capacity to suffer
15 July 2010 Kent, University of


A new study from the University of Kent has provided direct evidence that people who wish to escape the ‘meat paradox’ i.e. simultaneously disliking hurting animals and enjoying eating meat, may do so by denying that the animal they ate had the capacity to suffer. By engaging in denial, those participating in the study also reported a reduced range of animals to which they felt obligated to show moral concern. These ranged from dogs and chimps to snails and fish.

The study, the results of which are published in the August issue of Appetite, was conducted by Dr Steve Loughnan, Research Associate at the University’s School of Psychology, and colleagues in Australia. Prior to their study, it was generally assumed that the only solutions to the meat paradox are for people to simply stop eating meat, a decision taken by many vegetarians, or the ongoing failure to recognise that animals are killed to produce meat (although few people live in true ignorance, some meat-eaters may live in a state of tacit denial, failing to equate beef with cow, pork with pig, or even chicken with chicken).

Dr Loughnan explained: ‘Some people do choose to stop eating meat when they learn that animals suffer for its production. An overwhelming majority do not. Our research shows that one way people are able to keep eating meat is by dampening their moral consideration of animals when sitting at the dinner table.’ Dr Loughnan also explained that, broadly speaking, their study has shown that when there is a conflict between their preferred way of thinking and their preferred way of acting, it is their thoughts and moral standards that people abandon first – rather than changing their behaviour. ‘Rather than change their beliefs about the animals’ moral rights, people could change their behaviour,’ he said. ‘However, we suspect that most people are unwilling to deny themselves the enjoyment of eating meat, and denying animals moral rights lets them keep eating with a clear conscience’.

‘The role of meat consumption in the denial of moral status and mind to meat animals’ (Stephen Loughnan, University of Kent; Nick Haslam, University of Melbourne; Brock Bastian, University of Queensland) is published in the August issue of Appetite (www.elsevier.com/locate/appet).

http://www.kent.ac.uk/news/stories/meat-eaters-study/2010