Laboratory-Cultured Meat: Home, Home On The Strange?

US - Researchers are dishing up the perfect conundrum for vegetarians - meat grown in a laboratory dish, not on the hoof.

While it may be years before you savor laboratory-raised meat from your backyard barbeque, researchers say the technology exists now to produce processed meats such as burgers and sausages, starting with cells taken from cow, chicken, pig, fish or other animal.

Growing meat without the animal would not only reduce the need for the animals - which often are kept in less than ideal conditions - meat production is also blamed for a variety of environmental ills. Cultured meat could also be tailored to be healthier than farm-raised meat, while satisfying the increasing demand for protein by the world's growing population, proponents say.

Brian J. Ford, a British biologist and the author of "The Future of Food," said the widespread acceptance of meat substitutes such as `quorn,' a cultured fungus, "shows that the time for cultured tissue is near."

Source: The WBAL Channel

12 August 2005