PETA’s Latest Tactic: $1 Million for Fake Meat
By NunoXEI • Apr 23rd, 2008 • Category: Blog
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants to pay a million dollars for fake meat — even if it has caused a “near civil war” within the organization.
The organization said it would announce plans on Monday for a $1 million prize to the “first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012.”
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NunoXEI is Co-Founder of TheGreenRocket.com and self proclaimed internet-surfing-guru. You can find his personal blog at NunoXEI.com, the home of his podcast, The Lowdown, his comic-related properties and his webcomic, Republic Domain.
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PETA seems to have a certain stigma attached to it that isn’t exactly friendly that I’ve come across a number of times. This leads me to question how many people would be up for buying test-tube meat (a freaky idea already) launched by PETA…
But then again… considering some of the fast food out there… with the right flavouring & marketing you can probably put crap in a test tube and sell it.
Okay the more I think about it…
This becomes a philosophical debate in a sense. Would/Could vegetarians eat test tube meat?
Compared to today’s fast food ingredients, I doubt test tube meat would be any worse..
I’d be down with trying it, especially since at the end of the day its probably less harmful on the environment and animals and we would have more space to do other agricultural stuff.
Would be interesting to ponder if, hypothetically 25 years down the road ‘test tube meat’ becomes a huge success, what would happen to the animals we use now for meat.
Wow good question… the article doesn’t really talk about that. At least animals being killed are for food…imagine if the cattle industry became such that they had to kill the animals because there were too many of them, like they do in other agricultural industries where there is an overabundance of product.
Also that made me wonder about other things – if GreenPeace’s contest rules have any regulations about how the test-tube meat is created and/or tested – do they take measures to ensure competitors are performing in sustainable ways?
Yeah I was just thinking about those cows…half we slaughter and half we use for dairy products, but if we didnt kill cows for meat in 25 years then do we just kill them for the sake of reducing their numbers (an atrocious act on itself) or do we just regulate the breeding cycles so that they are not in an overabundance.
I would imagine that their would be industry-wide standards on how to create ‘test tube meat’ that would be monitored and regulated etc. but who knows.
I would not only support In Vitro meats, I would even consider turning completely invitrarian. My support for the sciences has never been higher. I’m a lover of animals–but I am also a lover of the taste of a good piece of animal flesh–and an enthusiast of even exotic treats.
So, imagine a day when things like tiger meat and hell white rhino meat can be available at your locat grocery store? I’d start a club dedicated to fans of both food tasting and scientific developments. Ya, I’ve got no qualms at all over whether it was born out of a womb or a test tube. BRING ON THE MEAT!
I’d be curious to know more about what qualities test tube meat could have – ie: would they have the same nutritional value as meat? Because I’d be hesitant to eat it anyway – as a vegetarian for 11 years I really don’t have a desire to taste meat – but if it gave me the full nutritional value that I seek in lentils & other alternatives, I may be tempted.
Also, I wonder how they would know the taste of tiger meat and white rhino meat without tasting the animals (killing) them first…
By the way, I decided to contact PETA with some of the questions that came up here – here’s the article with their response and additional information:
http://www.thegreenrocket.com/2008/05/02/peta-elaborates-on-the-in-vitro-project/