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Would you eat laboratory grown meat? (Gotta be better than soylent green?)

 
 
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Fri 4 Dec, 2009 09:21 am
@patiodog,
This is interesting. It is also worth noting that England long ago abandoned the effort to produce most of their own foodstuffs. The point about agricultural machinery is well taken, though. The last time that England came close to feeding itself was during the Second World War when they made a serious drive to grow their own grain once again. It took several years, but they largely succeeded. They still, of course, relied heavily on imports, and with the submarine menace, that made it an anxious situation for them. Due largely to the efforts of the Royal Canadian Navy, which escorted more convoys that the United States Navy and the Royal Navy combined, and which convoyed food stuffs grown in Canada, the English never truly faced starvation--but they had to do without a lot of things, and that situation continued until long after the war.

Both Japan and France have been fanatical about producing enough food to feed themselves within their own territory. In both France and Japan, farmers remain a political force with power out of all proportion to their mere numbers. For the Japanese, the equation of rice-production to population has been a critical issue for more than a thousand years. Documents from the Tokugawa shogunate at the beginning of the 17th century show that average annual rice production was about 25,000,000 koku. There is argument about exactly how much rice is in a koku, but it is generally thought to have been 170 litres. The definition of the koku for the purposes of the Japanese was the rice required to feed an adult male for one year. At the time in the Tokugawa shogunate when the country could expect a harvest of 25,000,000 koku, the population of Japan was 30,000,000. That's cutting it pretty damned close. Even considering that women, children and the elderly probably didn't need a koku to meet their rice needs for a year, it's obvious that there was no surplus. By 1900, Japan could no longer rely on producing enough rice to feed its population, and the seizure of Taiwan in 1895 and Korea in 1911 were prompted in large measure by the need to secure agricultural supplies. Today, they don't even come close. They still protect the home industry with very high tariffs on the importation of grain rice, but prepared rice products come almost exclusively from outside the country. In the case of sushi, the rice cakes upon which sashimi is served, the largest producer of the rice used is California.
0 Replies
 
farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Fri 4 Dec, 2009 09:24 am
@Ionus,
Obviously youve never been in the "megalopolis" area. There is waaay more farmland and actually more woodland today than there was in the celebrated agrarian years of the mid 1800's>.
Most really intensively farmed areas in China and taiwan account ofr these areas being net EXPORTERS of foods. The 100 mile diet, while sounding novel, is actually easily doable because most of the farmland available is either idle or held by the states in forested cover.
Course we cant grow oranges outside , but we can grow KIWIS (theyve engineered kiwis into frost hardy bushes).

Delalwaer alone supplies over 70% of the poultry consumed in the megalopolis. And it still has enough room to be a dairy beef anmd equestrian state.

0 Replies
 
ossobuco
 
  1  
Reply Fri 4 Dec, 2009 11:32 am
@Thomas,
Thomas, I don't think these are mutually exclusive - I think conditions in factory farms are creepy, and I'm not fully chary about all genetically engineered animals, but petri dish meat production does bother me on first, second, and third read.

Sstainba, I'm not anti science, quite the contrary, but I have a gut check on "laboratory grown meat", or petri dish grown sausages.
0 Replies
 
ossobuco
 
  1  
Reply Fri 4 Dec, 2009 11:35 am
@patiodog,
I saw that article too, and also don't remember the source.
0 Replies
 
tsarstepan
 
  1  
Reply Fri 4 Dec, 2009 11:41 am
@Tai Chi,
Tai Chi wrote:

tsarstepan wrote:

It could bring on a Utopian future for the global food market. There is a lot of potential here in terms of bringing this product to the third world where too many people suffer from diets that are protein deficient.

But this future shouldn't be dictated by the powerful, unreliable, greedy, and untrustworthy hands of the conglomerate food system we have today.


That bears repeating.

Or do you actually mean the literal interpretation of ...
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/assets_c/2008/05/polar%20bears%20small-thumb-425x506.jpg
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/assets_c/2008/05/polar%20bears%20small-thumb-425x506.jpg
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/assets_c/2008/05/polar%20bears%20small-thumb-425x506.jpg


0 Replies
 
tsarstepan
 
  1  
Reply Fri 4 Dec, 2009 11:43 am
@Tai Chi,
Margaret Atwood and Oryx and Crake: A great read into all too possible dysutopic future.
0 Replies
 
Ionus
 
  1  
Reply Fri 4 Dec, 2009 04:03 pm
@Setanta,
Quote:
Anyone who thinks you can't provide most of New York's food requirements by agriculture within one hundred miles of the city is an idiot who knows nothing about the United States, and the agricultural production there which already serves the city.
Anyone who thinks you CAN provide most of New York's food requirements by agriculture within one hundred miles of the city is an idiot who knows nothing about the United States, and the agricultural production there which already serves the city. Perhaps fuit in the middle of the severest winter? Grain in abundance? Starvation during crop failures. A diet based not on health but on locality. Support local industries at the cost of industries eslewhere in the same country or in third world countires. The planet is growing short of food and this is the dumbest idea since Global Warming. Anyone who thinks you can provide most of the World's food requirements by agriculture within one hundred miles of the locale is an dangerous idiot who knows nothing about the world's food supply, and the agricultural production which already serves the world.

I repeat my repetition : " Have you even seen a map of the world ? Can New York grow enough food within a hundred mile limit ? What about high intensity areas where you can only see the same food type for 200 miles ? Perhaps Iceland should farm whales. Japan cant grow enough food. Who is going to break the news to them ? This "good idea", who will implement it ? A world government ? "
0 Replies
 
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Fri 4 Dec, 2009 10:59 pm
Enough food is already produced within one hundred miles of New York, Twit.
Ionus
 
  0  
Reply Fri 4 Dec, 2009 11:24 pm
@Setanta,
Having convinced yourself there will never be a problem with food in New York, old fool, perhaps you would like to move on to the rest of the problem ? The world ?
0 Replies
 
tsarstepan
 
  1  
Reply Tue 5 Jan, 2010 04:26 am
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/food-drink/frightful-frankenfoods-straight-from-a-lab-onto-your-plate-1997636.html
An excellent survey article on the history of man manipulating food with food science.
Quote:
By Darragh McManus
Monday January 04 2010
It sounds as disgusting as it no doubt tastes, and 'artificial meat' is unlikely to assume pride of place of any restaurant menus in the near future. But that's exactly what scientists in the Netherlands have invented.

Or rather, 'grown': the researchers at Eindhoven University put cells from the muscle of a live pig in a broth created from the blood of animal foetuses. The cells then multiplied and created muscle tissue. It's described as being like 'soggy pork' and 'wasted muscle tissue'. Pass the ketchup.

We jest, but this is a serious project in a very serious time. Backed by the Dutch government, the scientists have also created artificial fish fillets and hope their ersatz pork will be on sale within five years.

You should read the rest of the article for the a basic history of food.
dlowan
 
  1  
Reply Tue 5 Jan, 2010 10:58 pm
@tsarstepan,
So....you'd try laboratory grown meat, too?
tsarstepan
 
  1  
Reply Tue 5 Jan, 2010 11:02 pm
@dlowan,
If it were proven relatively safe, healthy, and inexpensive.
dlowan
 
  2  
Reply Wed 6 Jan, 2010 12:05 am
@tsarstepan,
I'd go with 1 and 2.

If it were environmentally helpful, I'd be less concerned re 3.
0 Replies
 
maporsche
 
  1  
Reply Wed 6 Jan, 2010 07:03 am
@dlowan,
I'd eat it too.

People don't have a problem with scientiests growing medicine in labs and taking those pills. They don't have a problem with artificial joints being developed in labs and putting those inside their bodies.

I understand, and am also concerned about what I eat being different than what humans evoloved on. But to be consistent, you also need to question everything you put in your mouth or body. You can't logically be ok with taking medicine and not ok with eating lab-meat.
dlowan
 
  1  
Reply Wed 6 Jan, 2010 08:16 am
@maporsche,
True.

0 Replies
 
DrewDad
 
  2  
Reply Wed 6 Jan, 2010 08:23 am
@maporsche,
maporsche wrote:
I... am also concerned about what I eat being different than what humans evoloved on.

No canned foods for you, then. No refrigeration. Only the spices locally available. Only seasonal vegetables and fruits.

And the original instructions for rabbit stew started, "first, catch a rabbit...."
dlowan
 
  1  
Reply Wed 6 Jan, 2010 08:55 am
@DrewDad,
Oy!!!
maporsche
 
  1  
Reply Wed 6 Jan, 2010 09:49 am
@DrewDad,
DrewDad wrote:

No canned foods for you, then. No refrigeration. Only the spices locally available. Only seasonal vegetables and fruits.


I'm mildly concerned. Not enough to change much.
DrewDad
 
  1  
Reply Wed 6 Jan, 2010 10:10 am
@maporsche,
This lab-grown meat can't be any worse than what already goes into sausages....
0 Replies
 
DrewDad
 
  1  
Reply Wed 6 Jan, 2010 10:11 am
@dlowan,
Vey?
0 Replies
 
 

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