First step for slaughterhouses to be on the way out

[Raven X Army]

Check this:
www.theguardian.com/science/2013/aug/05/google-sergey-brin-synthetic-beef-hamburger

I don't know how many people in 2013 still give a toss about being vegetarian/vegan but I still do. And I am all for stem cell burgers. I won't eat them but I can see how this has a great potential to bring the animal killing industry to it's knees. I am sure slaughterhouses won't disappear but the reduction in activity I think is now inevitable.

Unless in further research (be it real one or made up one by the meat industry moguls) it will turn out that these burgers give you testies cancer, ebola, extra chromosome or some other craziness and they will pull the plug on the entire venture.

I'm curious on how this will play out.

[paolo]

Good post, that new is weird and scary at the same time, total Frankestein food, they may have found a sick way to give food to an overpopulated planet… next step will be a BigStemMac for only 0.20 cents I guess! But to answer to your first assumption, I think that it’s still cool and prominent to be veggie/vegan in 2013!
This made me think of a top 5 veg hc songs, what yours would be ? mine is:

1 YOT no more
2 GB cats and dogs
3 OUTSPOKEN survival
4 INSTED feel their pain
5 THE FIRST STEP the higher taste

[xfoundxyoux]

Aug 29, 2013 7:07:53 GMT paolo said:

Good post, that new is weird and scary at the same time, total Frankestein food, they may have found a sick way to give food to an overpopulated planet… next step will be a BigStemMac for only 0.20 cents I guess! But to answer to your first assumption, I think that it’s still cool and prominent to be veggie/vegan in 2013!
This made me think of a top 5 veg hc songs, what yours would be ? mine is:

1 YOT no more
2 GB cats and dogs
3 OUTSPOKEN survival
4 INSTED feel their pain
5 THE FIRST STEP the higher taste

+1

jeff
xXx

[chris2far]

the thing is that that burger cost around 300'000.

i'm not veg/vegan but would a veg/vegan eat a burger like that?
and if we can make "fake" meat without the use of real meat, what would happen too all the animals?
i guess if theres no use for having their meat would they bee doomed to exticnt?
and how can you tell then the diffrence between real animal meat and "fake" produced meat.

don't get me wrong. i don't support big slaughterhouses. me as a meat eater want to know where my meat comes from. thats why i just buy from local budgers.
and i know that they don't waste lots from the animals the have there.

[xreganx]

Interesting post Dobek. I for one would not eat lab grown meat, even if I wasn't vegan. Just seems creepy and gross. That said I don't think this technology will help third world starvation in any way or anything like that. (There is already more than enough food grown on this planet to feed everyone cheaply).

Also I think most people, veg, vegan and meat eaters won't be too eager to start eating lab grown meat just because of the wierd factor.

Anyways paolo's list is spot on! But now I'm having trouble trying to think of any other hc veg songs.

[minoratheart]

Aug 29, 2013 9:26:17 GMT chris2far said:

the thing is that that burger cost around 300'000.

i'm not veg/vegan but would a veg/vegan eat a burger like that?
and if we can make "fake" meat without the use of real meat, what would happen too all the animals?
i guess if theres no use for having their meat would they bee doomed to exticnt?
and how can you tell then the diffrence between real animal meat and "fake" produced meat.

don't get me wrong. i don't support big slaughterhouses. me as a meat eater want to know where my meat comes from. thats why i just buy from local budgers.
and i know that they don't waste lots from the animals the have there.

Of course this kind of 'meat' is still expensive because scientists are still doing research, which usually costs a lot of money. Once they're beyond that stage and synthetic meat is produced on an industrial scale, prices will automatically drop most likely.

As for the fate of the animals. Most of the cattle/pigs/chickens/... that are used for meat or dairy are bred and exist only because they serve this very purpose. So what would happen is that people would simply stop breeding those animals on an industrial scale. I don't think they'd become extinct though, simply because people in rural areas and poorer countries will continue to have those animals around for their personal use and consumption. I also figure there are many people around who will still prefer real meat over stem cell meat because the latter is not produced in a 'natural' way. On that note, I'm pretty sure that if this fake meat is ever sold in supermarktes, it will have to say so on the packaging that it is not real meat. But still, even if animals became extinct, that'd still be better than being part of the food chain the way it is today imho.

As Poison X Girls has pointed out it could be a good way to reduce animal suffering. I also think that stem cell meat can be an effective means of dealing with the growing world population and its hunger (for meat). I'm vegan but I'm not sure if I'd eat that to be honest. I'm always a little skeptical when it comes to this kind of sci-fi food. Plus I don't even know if I could deal with the consistency of 'real' meat anymore. But I guess I'd try it at least once.

[nico]

What if meat is grown in something like a green house and get processed in a factory like any other type of food.
I seriously doubt if it will be regarded as weird as buying a loaf of bread.

If it will reduce the suffering, the usage of water and other resources, I think it should be supported.
Probably won't change my eating habits tough.

[xreganx]

Oh also in regard to Dobek's original comment, in my local scene, veg/veganism is way less common than it was about 6 years ago when it seemed about 80% of the kids were at least veg. Now majority of my friends who were veg are proud meat eaters

[jeff]

If it would reduce animal killing I’m all for it, but I’m doubtful that this kind of “food” will catch on in the US. People are unfortunately too lazy and don’t care enough to look past the weird factor on something like this.

Where I live in NY, local food is all the rage and when it comes to meat that means grass-fed beef and supposed humane slaughter (what an oxymoron!). In some ways the local/more plants in your diet movement has been good because people are eating better, healthier food, but it’s also largely pushed animal rights to the side because idiotic terms like “humane slaughter” get tossed around and people suddenly think that makes everything ok.

[lifelongtony]

I guess my question regarding this topic is: is it vegan? 

It's produced using stem cells from a cow, but it's artificially produced and grown and never living. 
If you asked me I would say it is, but I'm neither vegan nor vegetarian so I don't know if my opinion is valid.  

[Raven X Army]

Aug 29, 2013 18:15:41 GMT lifelongtony said:

I guess my question regarding this topic is: is it vegan?

It depends on your standpoint.
Some people are probably vegan due to the animal suffering aspect etc. In this case the lab grown meat could be passed off as sort of "vegan". I can see that happening.

Some people however, like me for example, add another factor to the equation, which is, meat is simply NOT food. At least in my opinion it isn't. I consider food pretty much anything that doesn't make me wanna puke my guts out. When I see strawberries, nuts, bananas, I don't know... fucking tomatoes, the look, smell, everything about this shite says "food" to me. When I see a pig or a cow being chopped to bits the look and smell says everything BUT food.

I think as we evolved as the species for a number of reasons we got programmed to be repulsed by the sight of guts, flesh and blood (with few exceptions we have in the modern society like some psychopaths, extreme sadists etc who indulge in that stuff, but then again in most cases it's based on "misplaced" sexual drive rather than culinary aspects of the whole affair) and we trick our brains into thinking that meat is food by changing its look, smell and general presentation to make it look and smell edible. Meat eating animals are generally into gut ripping and bloodshed. See wolves, cats, hyenas, sharks and all that. Them creatures are well excited at the nearest sight of gut spill while we generally try to not find out "where it comes from" and "how it got on my plate" due to our inability to... well... stomach it, if you pardon the pun.

Then again, we are constantly evolving, each new generation is slightly different from the last. These differences are minute but are present so we may just as well be adjusting our bodies to the meat diet even if our psyche is still definitely not into it and we have to constantly fool ourselves by creating the food matrix in our heads. Similar thing happened to us with milk. You know how some people are lactose intolerant? Originally ALL early humans were lactose intolerant. We used to stop producing lactase (which is the enzyme that's responsible for breaking down lactose into simple elements) at the age of around 5. Due to our changing food habits and thanks to natural selection right now most people can consume diary products but it's interesting how it works out if you look at the geographical distribution. For example in Europe, where milk is consumed everyday by just about everyone on a large scale only 5% of all people are now lactose intolerant. In Africa and some parts of Asia however where milk is like.. whatever, about 90% of all people are still lactose intolerant because evolution didn't butt in and never altered what worked for, let's say out Ergaster ancestors/cousins

But I'm digressing. In a nutshell I don't think I'd even think of eating the lab meat but I am all for it because as I said it does have the potential to greatly reduce the size of the animal breeding/killing industry.

[Raven X Army]

Aug 29, 2013 10:38:20 GMT xreganx said:

Oh also in regard to Dobek's original comment, in my local scene, veg/veganism is way less common than it was about 6 years ago when it seemed about 80% of the kids were at least veg. Now majority of my friends who were veg are proud meat eaters

Vegetarians/Vegans in the scenes that I managed to roll through in random places I lived over the years:

mid 1980s
The place where I'm originally from everyone was on the 1977 trip and no one was veg. 0%

late 80s to mid 90s
Some people started taking Conflict seriously (that included me) and went veg, I was one of the first (if not the first) vegetarian in my scene that at the time was still full of Exploited circa 1982 type punx.
I'd say from 10% in the late 80s the number of veg scenesters went up to like 50-60% by 1992

mid to late 90s
Thanks to ExC we now have an almost 100% vegan/vegetarian scene. I literally can't think of a single person I knew around that time that wasn't vegetarian or vegan.
The most popular phrase in straight edge zines from that time frame:
"Why are you vegan?"
"Because Karl told me"

00s
From around the time B9 became popular releasing the 1st AN 7" the number of dudes who dropped out from veg diet slowly and steadily started to increase. That trend continued throughout the 2000s and into the recent years

10s
I really don't know what the situation is in Europe right now with being veg because I lived in Japan for the past 8 years or so so I can only comment on the scene here.
I know like two... maybe three people who are vegan/vegetarian. The rest of the scene doesn't know the definition of the word.
99% of HC/Punk in Tokyo eats meat. It's like this concept never really existed here.