MEAT IS GARDENING

Great news if you’re a vegetarian but have cravings for a thick bloody steak every now and then. Scientists are getting very good at growing chunks of meat in petrie dishes using cells from animals who never need to be tortured or killed. Scientists have adapted a medical technique which can multiply a single cell into entire tissues and are using this technology to grow slabs of meat in a laboratory setting. Biotechnology researchers hail this technology as the answer to world hunger, claiming that a single cell from an animal could theoretically provide the entire world’s annual meat supply. They also claim that lab-grown meat would be more environmentally friendly and could be genetically tailored to be more nutritious than animal flesh. Experiments at NASA have already grown pieces of fish which they claim are edible, but researchers admit that the growing meat tasty enough to eat is still a dream for the future. “Right now it would be possible to produce something like spam at an incredibly high cost,” said an agricultural scientist at the University of Maryland. “But the know-how to grow something that has structure, such as a steak, is a long way off.” (The Guardian UK)