Not At My Table

Mad Cow“What if the next burger you ate was created in a warm, nutrient-enriched soup swirling within a bioreactor?”

Does anyone actually want this?

Would a vegetarian eat it on absence-of-animal-cruelty grounds?

Can they really replicate that bacon-sandwich smell?

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Comments

6 responses to “Not At My Table”

  1. Kes, push this further- and cannibalism ceases to remain a taboo.
    Petri-meat could be grown to any genetic archetype, including our own.
    You could even eat yourself!

  2. Is that a good thing? Transubstatation etc? Could we grow the elements? By creating symbolic meat, are we destroying the symbolism?

  3. Have you changed your theology, or have you been at the Da Vinci Code again? Where you going to get Christs DNA?

  4. damnflandrz

    It’s a little tricky this one, I suppose.
    For me it is about authenticity and masquerade. Take Linda MaCartneys “Quorn” type stuff… it did taste like meat but then it ws so genetically modified it wasn’t far off what you are talking about.
    Just this weekend I turned to one of my daughters while we were cutting up steak and asked her where it came from. Having watched the Simpsons she knew that it came from cows being shot, hacked and sluiced. So I asked her if she could shoot a cow and hack a bit off to eat it. She said she didn’t think so. So I asked her why she was eating something she wouldn’tkill herself. She said “cos you bought it daddy”. Fair enough.
    But I promised her we would go out hunting rabbits and I would show her how to cut and skin one to cook in a stew. She was repulsulsedby the idea of eating bunnies, but understood. I worked on farms and so realise hos blood and shit covered our livestock gets before we end up with a neat square or pellet on our plates. And so I feel that if I couldn’t murder the animal in question, I have no right to feast on it.
    Bypassing this murder by letting others or their machines do it is unhealthily “saintising” enough for us without us further reducing the authenticity of our food-chain by growing bits of the animals.
    But then the animals wouldn’t be killed, I suppose. More importantly they wouldbe mistreated and treated like, well,like cattle! But animals aren’t sentient, and perhaps the more we de-animalise our carnivorous nature (while remaining meat-eaters…this isn’t a dig at veggies) the more we dehumanise the food-chain and therefore the planet as a whole. Vat-grown too-neatly bypasses ethical responsibilities to do with how we treat livestock and how we over-produce.
    I just think that we should be living more authenitically. WTF I mean by that may vary according to my every whim, but it makes a nice grand-sounding epiphany.

  5. Could be some DNA on the Turin Shroud… Imagine that.
    Look forward to hearing how your rabbit skinning goes. And if your nipper has any doubts on where rabbit might go then, just ask Nic. He’s asked those questions before 😉
    Jeremie? Is that your mum or your dad?

  6. Seminal text…
    You got to respect a man who puts your pets down with his bear hands!