http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell

Hmm, it’s been a while since I caught up on the whole stem cell controversy.

Not that I fully understand it all, but Adult stem cells don’t seem to have the propeties to create something out of nothing.

red_dragon_girl_69 - 22 April 2008 12:37 PM

Also, why dont they use that $1 million to HELP existing animals? Oh, yeah, peta doesnt care about the animals that are alive.

PETA, save animals? You must be thinking about an organisation that actually cares about animals, not the one that rakes in $30million a year to spend on bizarre PR campaigns and lawyers to protect their fire bombing, puppy killing members.

There are many sites that talk about how many animals actually survive with PETA, here’s just one link.

http://sev.prnewswire.com/publishing-information-services/20080111/DC1129510012008-1.html

Not counting animals PETA held only temporarily in its spay-neuter program, the organization took in 3,061 “companion animals” in 2006, of which it killed 2,981. According to Virginia’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS), the average euthanasia rate for humane societies in the state was just 34.7 percent in 2006. PETA killed 97.4 percent of the animals it took in. The organization filed its 2006 report this month, nine months after the VDACS deadline of March 31, 2007.

“In-vitro meat production would use animal stem cells that would be placed in a medium to grow and reproduce. The result would mimic flesh and could be cooked and eaten,’’ PETA ( People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) said.

Wouldn’t it be flesh, rather than “mimic flesh”?

“In-vitro meat would spare animals from this suffering. In addition, in vitro meat would dramatically reduce the devastating effects the meat industry has on the environment.’‘

Eh?  How would setting up giant chicken-vat factories be better for the environment than are chicken farms and slaughterhouses?

If chickens were grown organically instead of the stick-as-many-chickens-in-cages-in-a-barn method the is currently used, wouldn’t that be cheaper and more animal, environmently friendly?

I’m not sure of the process involved but wouldn’t they still grow into chickens???  Or is it possible to just grow chicken breasts for instance??  So in the end they would still be harvesting chickens..    I think my igorance of stem cell research is showing.

Sometimes “Tastes Like Chicken” just isn’t enough….

gray - 23 April 2008 01:56 PM

I’m not sure of the process involved but wouldn’t they still grow into chickens???  Or is it possible to just grow chicken breasts for instance??  So in the end they would still be harvesting chickens..    I think my igorance of stem cell research is showing.

The idea’s actually not a new one.  Instead of having the cells of the chicken get all that differentiated and turn into head, feet, wings, bones, et cetera, you instead get the cells to just grow into a big lump of chicken flesh.  There would (ideally) never be any brain, or bones, or feathers, or whatever.  Sort of like raising Spam instead of chickens.

Appetizing…
Perhaps McDonalds and KFC could use this technology.
I literally dissect my chicken McNuggets, piece by piece… you always find those hideous bruised chunks, and I’ll never have a chicken bugger from KFC again when I took a nice big bite into a vine in my chicken burger.
*is going to have nightmares tonight*

DJ_Canada - 23 April 2008 11:59 PM

. . .when I took a nice big bite into a vine in my chicken burger.

A vine?  Perhaps it was a new program by KFC to get people to eat more greens?

In the book Oryx and Crake, they had genetically engineered chicken breasts to grow on the arms of a anemone or hydra like creature.  It had no central nervous system and you just stuck food down into the middle of it… harvested it when it was mature…
They called them chicki-ops or something like that… the fast food made from them were chicki-nobs, sold in a “bucket of nubbins”

Growing test tube chicken just reminded me of that stuff… mmmm nubbiny!

Anywho… after seeing the Penn and Teller Bullshit episode on PETA… Ive come to see them as more of a terrorist organization than a charity… which is a shame because they do have many valid gripes when it comes to the care of livestock… they just go about it all wrong…

I have to agree hat cloning meat would solve a LOT of problems.. Meat farming is an *expensive* process, resource-wise. Just pmping nutrients directly to a wad of tissue would solve a lot of time and money.

Of course, there’s a few ‘slippery slope’ issues to consider. The technology could easily be adapted to provide tissue grafts for humans.. and at the same time allow for juicy cutlets of human in the stores. Nom nom.

Still, I like it a lot as an idea, but it’s still a few years off.