A step towards lab grown meat?

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Scientists Soak Meat in Liquid to Make It Grow Thu Mar 21, 8:17 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have managed to make chunks of fish grow bigger by soaking them in a broth of nutrients, suggesting meat could be manufactured, a science magazine said on Wednesday.

Chunks of goldfish muscle grew 14 percent after a week immersed in a nutrient-enriched liquid extracted from the blood of unborn calves, the New York-based scientists found.

"This could save you having to slaughter animals for food," project leader Morris Benjaminson was quoted as saying by the New Scientist magazine.

Benjaminson, who is working on a more varied diet for astronauts, said the enlarged fish chunks had been fried with olive oil, lemon, garlic and pepper.

"We wanted to make sure it'd pass for something you could buy in the supermarket."

But the United States Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) would have to give approval before the enlarged chunks could be eaten.

Benjaminson had also tried but failed to grow meat chunks in liquid mushroom extract, conceding people might be afraid of the transmission of mad cow disease through calf serum.

-- Dave (multiplierx9@hotmail.com), March 21, 2002

Answers

GROSS

-- cody (urbusted@alltel.net), March 21, 2002.

wow, this is enough to take away your appetite...maybe plant some tomatoes. Not much of a gardener/farmer type but we had THE best tomatoes last year that someone from church had grown. Wish I knew what kind they were. They were so delicious you could just eat them by themselves.

-- zeb (wrangler@jridgeranch.com), March 21, 2002.

In my Baker Creek Seed Catalog there is a blurb about scientists have now put genes in a potatoe which they expect will produce human milk. I forget which University is doing this. Nothing is stranger than science.

-- Susan in Northern Mitten Michigan (cobwoman@yahoo.com), March 21, 2002.

I guess I'm just missing something here...what "science" needs to work on imho is making sure the producer's commodity prices are more in line with retail so that the producer can make a living. Commodity prices are so low now what does the world need petri dish (yuck) food for anyway??

I'm just not getting it unless it's like experimentation just for the heck of it.

-- zeb (wrangler@jridgeranch.com), March 21, 2002.


This reminds me of an urban legend I heard, reporting that Kentucky Fried Chicken isn't really chicken. It's chicken bodies without heads on life support systems to make them grow bigger and faster. Can you just imagine the expense of such a thing? It made me giggle to think that when real chicken can be so inexpensively produced, someone would still buy that kind of story!

-- Laura Jensen (lauraj@seedlaw.com), March 21, 2002.


Laura: Ever see what Perdue chickens are fed to get that nice golden color of fat and skin. If you did you would not eat them. Besides eating healthier means tossing out the skin anyway.

This whole thing reminds me of Kobe beef. The pampered meat cows of Japan...massaged every day and at $50/lb too!

-- al (yr2012@hotmail.com), March 21, 2002.


I don't know, it would seem it couldn't be much worse than that stuff they call meat in alot of processed foods. I don't eat that stuff and wouldn't touch this when/if it makes it to market.

-- Dave (multiplierx9@hotmail.com), March 21, 2002.

I read the subject line quickly and I thought it said: Lab Meat. I immediately wanted to protect my sweet and cuddly yellow lab from any fans of lab meat.

But now I've got it all straightened out.

-- Bethany (nospam@nospam.com), March 21, 2002.


Guess you read about the pigs in Japan with the active spinach gene in them, to make healthier pig meat.

-- BC (desertdweller44@yahoo.com), March 21, 2002.

Isaac Asimov wrote a story years ago about manufacturing milk in space. The person just wanted a glass of fresh milk because he missed it and ended up culturing enough tissue that would function to produce milk. It was a funny story: first he cultured udder tissue, then realized he had to have liver function as well and cultured that, and it just continued one organ after another until he had an entire roomful of cultures! But he finally got his milk. Asimov was pretty funny when he wanted to be. :)

-- Jennifer L. (Northern NYS) (jlance@nospammail.com), March 21, 2002.


Hey Zeb,

The chances are good that *they* got a goober-mint grant to shuffle all those petri dishes around........what's next??

-- Jim-mi (hartalteng@voyager.net), March 21, 2002.


Name of this product: Soylent Green. "My God . . . its people. Its made out of people".

And I thought sushi and ceviche was nasty . . . :^)!

-- j.r. guerra in s. tx. (jrguerra@boultinghousesimpson.com), March 22, 2002.


Once ya get past the smell, ya got it licked!

-- al (yr2012@hotmail.com), March 22, 2002.

I was a vegetarian for 8 years, ummmmm maybe it is time to go to being one again--of course I'd have to grow my own vegetables; don't want any "milking potatoes" or anything. Eeegads! :^)

-- Sharon (cheesyemailaddy@notreal.com), March 22, 2002.

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