PETA offers $1 million for fake meat

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the animal rights group based in Virginia, is offering a $1 million prize for meat produced in a laboratory.

   

• OmegaRed - Apr 22, 2008
  • Rank: 3 / 5 (2)
  If you invented that product today would it even be possible to have it on the market by 2012? Wouldn't that have to go through the FDA and various trials first?
  
  Seems like PETA's lame attempt to make themselves seem like they are NOT a terrorist organization.
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• Corban - Apr 22, 2008
  • Rank: 3 / 5 (3)
  It's a niche product with a strong substitute (real meat). In order to be economically viable, lab space would have to be cheaper than farmland.
  
  ...That isn't happening in the next 40 years.
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• CaptSpaulding - Apr 22, 2008
  • Rank: 1.5 / 5 (2)
  Corban, most meat in the US isn't farmed anymore, at least not in the traditional sense. However, the likely hood that it can pass USFDA regulations by 2012 is a joke. However, the inventor might be able to make it for animal feed, I don't know what the regulations are for that. It may actually end up being cheaper if you can optimize the process to eliminate organs/bones that are not generally consumed and more or less grow the muscle in a cube, cyclinder, or whatever. You could probably make the entire process more space and resource efficient, and likely contaminate free (no more madcow, lame animal, high antibiotic loads, etc.). Also, it might allow for a commercially viable, non-human, stem cell research sector.
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