Wired has a lengthy piece on the increasing trend of cloned livestock – livestock that go on to produce the milk you drink, or the choice cuts you eat. Little more than a decade since the birth of Dolly the sheep, cloning is becoming accepted by the agricultural industry, if not the average consumer.
Whether Joe Average’s reaction to cloning (and similar technologies like GM foods) is a natural knee-jerk or a media-fueled disgust (or a combination of the two) is unknown to me, but it’s certainly not based on rational facts – animals are animals are animals, no matter how their birth was brought about. But if cloned livestock can freak people out, the reactions we’ll see when vat-grown meat becomes available should be pretty spectacular … [Image by FiskFisk]
I pretty don’t much care if my meat is genetically identical to another animal, it’s still protein. Vat-grown stuff, on the other hand, might take some getting used to. I can do duck embryo, so as long as the vat stuff looks normal, I can down it.
I wonder if vegetarians/vegans would eat vat-grown meat. “… nothing with a face.” VatMeat ™ would certainly qualify.