Grow your own meat!

How sick does this sound?
-b


Scientists forecast meat grown on kitchen counter
Last Updated Mon, 27 Mar 2006 14:06:12 EST
CBC News

Scientists are trying to develop an industrial process that grows meat tissue from a few cells in a lab – or even at home, in a device like a bread maker.

Instead of being cut from a farm animal, the beef, pork or chicken would be grown in incubators from a few starter cells, a growth medium and some hormones to get the cells to divide.
The first attempts by scientists who grow animal muscle tissue in the lab have been small in scale. But researchers are looking forward to the day when meat could be cultivated in industrial bioreactors or even in a device sitting on a kitchen counter.

"Right now, the scale that's being used in the research is about one-half of a litre for ... the incubator the muscle is grown in," said University of Maryland researcher Jason Matheny.

Lab-grown meat could have less fat, diseases
He said a device similar to a bread maker could one day be used to manufacture meat in the home.

Matheny said muscle produced in an incubator could have reduced fat content, and the process would do away with problems such as bacterial contamination and mad cow disease.

While he hasn't tasted engineered meat himself, Matheny said others have.

"It has the taste and texture resembling the ground meat products that are already available," such as hamburger or chicken nuggets, he said.

"Producing a steak or ... a whole chicken breast is a much more difficult task, technically," said Matheny.

Grown frog muscle tasted like jelly, scientists say.

Researchers in the Netherlands have grown mouse meat and are now working on pork. Australian scientists served grown frog muscle tissue with apple brandy sauce at an exhibition in France in 2003. They said the meat tasted like jelly on cloth.

American researchers, funded by NASA, grew goldfish meat in 2001 as part of an experiment to see if fish could be grown to feed astronauts on long space missions.

While the idea of growing meat for space travel is fairly common in science fiction novels, NASA has since pulled funding for lab-grown meat.

Vladimir Mironov, a tissue engineer at the Medical University of South Carolina, said NASA's decision cut off an important source of funding for his work.

Mironov said producing cultivated meat could be difficult to achieve and expensive in the short term. People would have to pay more for cultured meat than for the genuine article.

Finger-Licking Disturbing

Weird news from the U.K., and disturbing on so many levels. How entrepreneurial of him to write a cookbook! Will definitely be on the lookout for it at my local bookstore.


It's Finger-Licking Good!
Sky News
Tuesday January 31, 2006


Hedgehog carbonara, badger sandwiches and even labrador are meat and drink for Arthur Boyt.

The retired civil servant from Cornwall has spent a lifetime eating roadkill animals.

He is so keen to share his enthusiam for the delights of weasel, fox, sparrow and - more conventionally - pigeon and deer, that he has written a cookbook.

Mr Boyt, 66, says his recipes are perfectly safe as long as the creatures are skinned and cooked properly and he has never been ill.

"It's good meat for free and I know nobody has been messing with it and feeding it hormones," he insists.

"It adds to the pleasure of a meal to know I haven't paid for it."

Mr Boyt says he can use virtually all of any whole animal he finds in the countryside near his Davidstow home.

Most go into casseroles which cook for a long time and tenderises the meat.

As for the labrador - it was said to taste like lamb.

The dog had no collar or identification so Mr Boyt could not trace the owners.

So he ate it.