There's a wonderful scifi story by Arthur C Clarke where the meat produced in vats turns out to be one almost everyone today, regardless of religion or lack of it, would be reluctant to eat... :)

The important question, though, is what's in the "nutrient solution"? It may be that vat-grown meat wouldn't reduce the required inputs much. Logically it should reduce the required inputs because you're only supporting the meat, not the bones, brain, blood and guts - but then, it might need more concentrated stuff.

For example, according to The Rapid Growth of Human Populations, one-third of the world's wild fish catch goes to farmed fish. According to this powerpoint presentation, wild fish catch is about 76Mt, and farmed fish are 36Mt. So if 25Mt of wild goes to help produce 36Mt farmed, the net gain is actually 11Mt.

Thus, fish available for human consumption are not 76Mt wild + 36Mt farmed or 112Mt, but 51Mt wild + 36Mt farmed or 87Mt.

Who knows about the inputs to this vat meat? We'd have to see some proper write-ups of it, rather than just enthusiastic news pieces.

We're all supposed to be healthier if we restrict our animal protein to 100 grams a day or somesuch. I'm thinking a plate of stewed turnips topped with a fish eyeball. The way things are going with global meat consumption the Japanese will have a taller basketball team than us.

Dunno about synthetic meat but the global livestock herd should be greatly reduced, with particular emphasis on cutting out grain feeding. OK maybe a few oats for Melbourne Cup runners. Rather than just a source of meat (wool, leather, recreation etc) I think hoofed animals should be moved around a lot. They could reduce the fire hazard of park land near suburbs and turn roadside weeds into manure for the garden. We'd get used to seeing flocks of animals swarming down the street. After all soon there won't be so many cars.

Great exmple of the absolute facile rubbish that certain members of society now have time to waste on thanks to the fossil fuel supported inputs to the rest of their lives. Peak oil is going to make factory farming unviable in pretty short order so I think we will all be forced to reduce the amount of meat we eat anyway. It won't be replaced with this sort of hi tech mush which probably needs a source of animal protein in the nutrient mix.

Truly whoever manages to perfect such a process will have created something new and useful for society. Alas, I may never be around to see it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go prepare my Quorn sandwiches for work tomorrow.

I had a feeling this post (from Peak Energy) was going to make it over to TOD today. Well done Gav.

I pretty much restrict myself to chicken and occasionally ham and fish these days. As I understand it, its red meat that's the real problem. Putting aside the cruelty factor, battery farmed chickens are actually a pretty efficient way of producing protein.

Cattle waste an enormous amount of the energy in the grain they eat through body heat and methane gas emissions in burps and flatulents (the energy in manure is usually recovered as fertilizer). Cattle methane emissions are a major source of green house gases and global warming; this no BS. Same is true of many animals grown for food.

Then a lot of diesel and natural gas is wasted in refrigerating and transporting meat.

"Diet for a Small Planet" of the early 1970s summed it up pretty well. The solution of course is to eat the grain, or sprout it for more vitamins and protein. Sprouting is easy and fun, and sprouts are tasty :).

Then to make the energy waste stuff worse, many "modern" cultures take human "waste" and dump it into rivers. Human urine and feces make good fertilizer, why dump them into the rivers, damage estuaries, and disperse good fertilizer into the ocean? In the old days, in the dark of night, the outhouse hole in the ground was filled with water and the stuff was pumped out onto the fields for fertilizer-- called "night soil."

Uh oh, I see another problem. Peak oil and peak natural gas are here now, and very soon we will not have the diesel and electric power needed to treat sewage effluent. Untreated fecal matter will be dumped directly into the rivers. Those people living down stream will be drinking water that has a very high bacteria count. Most people will get serious intestinal infections, and worse. Without antibiotics, a lot of people will be very sick and many will die. No BS. One wonders, how did we come to waste good fertilizer in a manner that will soon kill millions of us?

I think this has already been done,guys.

http://www.foodfacts.info/mcrib/

whatever happened to the movement to make meat substitutes out of fungi, like yeast or mushrooms? Or even out of some kinds of algae? It could be flavored in various ways for people's appetites, and besides, I like the taste of mushrooms and yeast myself. Although things like oatmeal make the best soil for mushrooms, they can grow quite well using wood waste (like they do in the woods), so they would be much easier to "farm". A food like that would be a lot simpler to make than trying to cultivate masses of animal cells in an artificial medium, and would be much less susceptible to dangerous bacterial contamination. Bacteria would grow like crazy in a warm solution of animal cells.

http://digg.com/environment/A_protein_possibility_for_oil_we_eat_the_fak...

http://reddit.com/info/6ipb1/comments/

As oil becomes more and more expensive, a portion of the population of the U.S. and Europe will start walking and bicycling much more than before.

They may actually eat _more_ meat than when they were sedentary, especially if they want to build strength for possibly long 5x/week bicycle rides.

It would behoove (no pun intended) those in leadership positions to focus on food for human consumption and _not_ biofuels...and also to consider the possibility of higher levels of exercise and the related caloric consumption.

Veganism? Unless they have a perfect protein balance and abundant calories, a vegan is going to have a hard time with the endurance and recovery to bicycle to and from work 5 times a week on a route of any distance more than maybe 10-12 miles. Some can do it, but the balance is quite hard. Lacto-ovo vegetarians get sufficient protein, however.

The prices of eggs, milk, and whey protein have been rising noticeably.

Leadership is sorely needed to assure a food supply for humans that is not diverted towards biofuels. That leadership needs to be cognizant of possible changes in food consumption patterns as large segments of the population become more active. Demand for things like eggs, chicken, wheat, oats, oils (e.g. olive) will rise, while demand for refined carbohydrate foodstuffs may stay flat or go down slightly.

Personally...I eat lots of chicken, eggs, and fish....and beef/pork only occasionally.

Always some peculiar and interesting stuff at TOD.

Vat-grown meat is certainly a PETA PR strategy in this case... and it worked!

Problem is, well there are a lot of problems, but one that comes to mind is acceptance. I recall a story about some meat company - Hormel? - doing research that showed they could make hotdogs and stuff with a lot less grain if they raised rats instead of other animals. They even ran some wording past their PR folks... "selected rodent meats", etc.... but concluded there was no way they wouldn't wind up referred to as "rat dogs" and avoided like the plague.

Eating bugs is pretty efficient... hell, with termites you can feed 'em cellulose and fry 'em up for high-protein gruel. A little curry powder, a little coconut milk, and presto, you've got something to feed the neighbors while you're in the next room covertly eating your hoarded SPAM.

Then again, we already have "organ donor" cards established. Rather than having cannibalism be an adversarial process, how about a bonus of some kind for leaving your body to the sausage factory? National Lampoon had a nice article - maybe in the early '70's - about product names to be used when selling dogfood made from foreigners. Maybe in the case of "ethical cannibalism" like this, products like "Fogeylinks" or something would be accepted.

There's gonna be plenty of meat in the world, what we have here is a marketing problem.

Of course, humans don't need to eat meat at all—vegetarians are less likely to get heart disease, diabetes, or various types of cancer or become obese than meat-eaters are—and a terrific array of vegetarian mock meats already exist.

On various other threads, especially on Drumbeat, there has been discussion of this point of view as being an obsolete and incorrect paradigm that is in the process of changing because of recent review and analysis of nutritional research. My own view is that meat is generally the primo food and people would be healthier with a larger proportion of meat and fat as opposed to carbs in their diets (sugar is the real baddie). This does pose a dilemma for the 'small planet' diet. The root problem, as always, comes back around to over population. Regardless of one's views on diet, it would be easier to maintain a healthy diet with a lower planetary population.

There are no solutions, only strategies.

This PETA initiative is a good effort, but a tough sell. Over at KC's Rib Shack in Manchester, NH http://ribshack.net/ they sell T-shirts that say "PETA -- People Eating Tasty Animals," and their advertising says stuff like: "Horrifying vegetarians since 1998;" "We decided to have a healthier joint, so we offer CPR;" and "We made a deal with the other restaurants around here, they don't offer anything that tastes good, and we don't offer anything that's healthy." This is American culture and it will be hard to change. Peak oil, however, will soon mean that meat will be very expensive, so the effort is timely and can ride the wave of reality.

I have some favorite non-meat, non-dairy, very healthy foods: Westsoy Unsweetened Soy Milk and Westsoy's Unsweetened Chocolate Soy Milk is delicious; pasta primavera made with Ronzoni whole wheat fussiloni (spiral shaped) extra virgin first press olive oil, fresh veggies and shrimp and chopped clams on the side; soy burgers or soy hot dogs with bread and butter pickles, lettuce and tomato, salsa, and mustard. Got any good ones to share?

Forgetting about whether a person feels it's ethical to eat animals, it is important to remember that meat animals were historically raised because it was the best (and often only) use of the land or resources to produce high quality food. Massive confinement of animals is a really recent invention.

For example in the mountainous area of northern California where I live, row crops aren't possible but there is a great deal of range that is suitable for cattle. It could be argued that the land should be allowed to remain open for just the critters but that's another ethical issue.

Todd

I think the argument that it is immoral to cause needless suffering of animals is valid. So I basically will only eat organic meats (I know that the standards need significant changes). But I am not against eating meat per se, just as long as the animals' suffering is minimized and their death is relatively painless. This has left me a de facto vegetarian since it is not easy to get organic meats here. I still eat eggs and milk (organic), and eat that Yves cold cuts for lunch (veggie ham, veggie salami, veggie baloney tastes fine to me). Between milk, eggs, beans and veggie protein I don't miss cutting down on meat at all and I figure I'm getting plenty of protein. If the standards for humane meat production were made law I'd probably eat more. It's unconscienable that the laws for humane treatment for animals that you and I have to follow with our pets is waived in the case of big business factory farms.

The PETA prize is not that motivating to the companies pursuing this.

$1 million is how much chicken the KFC franchise sells in about 5-10 minutes. It is about how much chicken one chicken restaurant sells in a year. The PETA prize is only for chicken that can pass a fried chicken taste test and be selling in ten states commercially. If a company could pass the PETA tests then $1 million in chump change.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/04/1-million-prize-for-commercial-in-vitro...

Most companies and researchers are targeting the easier goal of ground meat and sausage filler, luncheon meat etc....

In terms of the yuck factor. People eat many things that are less like food like twinkies or things based on chemicals. There is also meat slurry.

There are plenty of points of meat substitution can occur where there would not be a yuck factor. You do not have to target the pure steak market until you are really good at it.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/04/meat-factories-food-substitution-and.html

For energy (like this site and readers care about.) in vitro meat can be 4-20 times more energy efficient than cow meat the old fashioned way. Plus with gene therapy of the stem cells in vitro meat hold the possibility of being healthier for the eater.

So those who care about their energy footprint should look at this in 4, 5 or 10 years when they are expected to be selling.

Soylent Green anyone ?? or maybe ethanol ???

http://tinyurl.com/6qgvyo

I read a book on the Irish potatoe famine circa 1850 a few years ago. Irish peasants back then subsisted on avg 8 pounds of potatoes per man per day and apparently thrived having families of 8 or 10 children and performing hard labor all day in the fields. When the potatoes rot came they were forced to live on turnips and blackberries. That's when the famine began. Recently I read a newspaper article that claimed they ate potatoes AND milk. My question to anybody out there, maybe of Irish descent, did the Irish peasants back then subsist solely on potatoes (which are adequate human nutrition in sufficient quantities when eaten WITH THE SKIN) or did they have some animal protein/fat in their diet also?