This issue of economist has an article on synthetic meat, which is growing animal muscle in the lab. When this technology is commercialize, it will give the term meat factory a new meaning. I think this would be the biggest revolution in argiculture since the introduction of genetic modified crops. I can envision synthetic meat would be a hugh bussiness and become the main source of meat supply in the future. First, it will develope a niche market amount vegaterians. Since growing meat in test tube or in meat tree doesn’t involve killing of animals, they will make those animal right hypocrits ease the guilt of enjoying tasty meat products. Then the syntheic meat will move down to main stream market, not only compete with traditional meat on the cost front, but also on variaty. As the technology mature, syntheic meat not only getting cheaper, it will have additional vitamin and nuituition or the food scientist can energy different meat textture. The holy grail would be syntheic meat of endanger animals, so we can have a taste of them without causing extingishing the species. Just like any disruptive technology, it will face heavy resistance from the incumbents. We gota watch out for the FUD attacks from the traditional meat farms. They may even pull political strings, influcence the science of food safty to protect their fat profit. I wonder what side of the fence will the animal right activities and the green movement will stand. Synthetic meats seems the perfect solution to the world’s food problem. It may even solve the problem of meat supply in deep space mission. The astronauts can grow their meat supply inside their spaceship.
I don’t like this idea.
What if it taste better than real meat?