Stem cell research has recently headed in innovative directions. Earlier this month scientists announced they had grown rabbit replacement penile erectile tissue. Now the idea of growing meat in the laboratory without animals is being proposed.
According to
LiveScience.com writer Charles Q Choi, "scientists have figured out how to grow tiny nuggets of lab meat and say it will one day be possible to produce steaks in vats, sans any livestock." Not surprisingly, this possibility raises a host of complicated ethical issues.
It also offers a host of potential benefits to be balanced against the ethical dilemmas. According to Choi there are at least four significant advantages to lab grown meat as opposed to meat grown 'on the hoof.'
The ethical concerns associated with the treatment of animals in an industrial-farming operation would be eliminated.
Problems associated with
contamination and disease from salmonella to mad cow disease could be significantly reduced by laboratory production of meats.
Livestock occupy 70 percent of all agricultural land amounting to 30 percent of the land surface of the earth. Laboratory production of meat would free up much of this land for other uses such as crops. The result would be an overall increase in global food production.
Livestock produce gas, methane gas. According to
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations livestock generate 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, more than all of the vehicles on Earth. According to
Earth Save International, "animal agriculture produces more than 100 million tons of methane a year."
The FAO concluded in 2006, "livestock production is one of the major causes of the world's most pressing environmental problems, including global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity."
Clearly, there are significant potential benefits to laboratory production of meat. However, there is also, potentially, an ethical downside to animal-less meat.
Biomedical engineer Mark Post at Maastricht University in the Netherlands a leader in the field of animal-less meat is remarkably blase about the potential ethical issue:
In principle, we could harvest the meat progenitor cells from fresh human cadavers and grow meat from them. Once taken out of its disease and animalistic, cannibalistic context - you are not killing fellow citizens for it, they are already dead - there is no reason why not.
Theoretically, with laboratory production of meat we could 'eat one another.' If one were willing to give up 'a pound of flesh' one could subsequently dine on oneself even.
In related meat news, on Friday, November 13,
Reuters reported on cloned cattle. Cloning the beefiest cattle and the most productive dairy cows offers the possibility of increasing productivity per head. This would mean more meat and milk with less methane produced, less feed consumed and increased overall efficiency.
