Green Daily

Where do the stem cells come from?
These people are hypocrites. They think its cruel to raise animals for food. Yet their willing to play god(even if at the smallest level) to satisfy their own insecurities about todays agriculture. Do the vegetarians eat GM produce and grains? How do they expect us to eat food grown from a petree dish? Does peta feel bad about the hundreds of thousands of acres of natural habitat that are destroyed every year to grow new crops(especially now with the expansion of bio-fuel crops and the dwindling food supply in poverty stricken countries) I may be wrong but it seems like Horticulture is doing far more damage to our environment than the meat industry. While I definitely don't approve of industrial farming and prefer to know where the food I eat comes from, meat grown in a lab is not my idea of an alternative. What the hell is wrong with these peoples heads?

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As a human of the herbivorous variety I have no interest in eating lab grown meat. My cats, however, are devout carnivores and they think it's a good idea, though by no means a new one. The only thing new about it is that PETA have finally voiced an opinion/publicity stunt on the issue, thereby making it headline news all over the internets.

In fact, scientists have been developing the idea for the past decade and using our tax dollars to experiment in producing in vitro meat since 2003. According to them, in vitro meat would be cheaper to produce and ship than today's factory farmed variety, healthier in that trans fats could be replaced with something like omega-3 acids, better for the environment by reducing methane and freeing up valuable crop space, the vast majority of which is used to feed food-animals, and - it's selling point to PETA and "the vegetarians" (sounds ominous, like "the Branch Dividians" or "the Scientologists") - would reduce or eliminate food-animal suffering.

To those opposed to the idea, including militant vegan "abolitionists" and middle class health conscious omnivores who demand organic, non-GMO, free-range, cruelty free, grass-fed, acupunctured, homone-free, antibiotic-free, "humanely slaughtered happy meat" this is a very bad thing indeed. Stem cells still have to be harvested from an animal, and, well, it's just weird, unnatural (as if the mutant freak animals we eat and get our milk from are in any way "natural"), and, well, it's icky. Besides, by playing around with food at a genetic level, scientists are "playing god". It's a slippery slope. Next thing you know, they'll be coming up with some abomination like seedless watermelons. Scary stuff...

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