Lab Grown Meat: PETA’s Contest is Lame, Pointless
April 28, 2008 · Print This Article
PETA is at it again, and if you didn’t groan at least internally when you heard that, perhaps they’ve pushed you past your give-a-shit limit. They put out a press release announcing that they’d give a $1 million reward to the first person who can successfully ‘grow’ chicken in a lab without harming animals. From PETA.org:
In vitro meat production would use animal stem cells that would be placed in a medium to grow and reproduce. The result would mimic flesh and could be cooked and eaten. Some promising steps have been made toward this technology, but we’re still several years away from having in vitro meat be available to the general public.
At first when I heard this, I thought it was just another one of PETA’s publicity stunts: putting out something shocking to draw attention to an issue. As a vegetarian since the age of 12 and someone who cares deeply about animal rights, I’ve never been a fan of PETA and this sort of thing is exactly why. PETA frustrates me because they have a noble goal but they’re turning the entire animal rights issue into a freak show replete with naked celebrities, buckets of blood and gross-out tactics that turn off the general public rather than achieving anything real.
Unfortunately, they’re serious. They really want someone to make this work. So, why is this lab-grown chicken contest a bad thing? You may wonder why a vegetarian would be anything less than thrilled about the idea of fewer animals being harmed on a daily basis (and, after all, livestock farms are certainly not good for the planet).
Basically, this contest isn’t going to accomplish anything. First of all, $1 million wouldn’t even cover the expenses required to pull this off. Not only would researchers have to spend literally years working on this project, the contest requires them to do near-impossible sales and marketing tasks beyond the scope of science. Daniel Engber of Slate describes it well:
…they need to move 2,000 pounds of the stuff at supermarkets and chain restaurants spread out across 10 states during a period of three months. And the Franken-meat can’t cost more than regular chicken…
To make matters worse, PETA’s commercial requirements saddle researchers with demands that have nothing to do with science. Any company that wants to sell artificial chicken for public consumption will probably face a lengthy government-review process.
In short, PETA is asking for the impossible. Any researcher who puts a serious amount of thought into this contest will most likely realize that they simply don’t have the time or funds to accomplish the lab-meat feat.
This ‘lab grown meat’ stunt is just another example of PETA making vegetarians look bad, in my opinion. I can’t imagine that ‘Franken-meat’ would be all that appetizing to meat-eaters anyway, but you tell me: would you eat it?
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons & Flickr user karindalziel
Related Posts:
KFC to Offer Vegan Chicken in CanadaEva Mendes Wants to Get Naked with Morrissey for PETA
Fox News Belittles Animal Rights, Slams Kids Trying to Go Green
Jessica Simpson Gets PETA Smackdown for ‘Real Girls Eat Meat’ T-Shirt
Another Day, Another Weird PETA Story
I agree, it’s hard enough being a vegetarian without being lumped into the same category as the “loons” over at PETA. Then should stick with issues that mainstream people can get behind…. real cruelty to animals…and that could go a long way to helping their overall cause
Sometimes I think these PETA pr team is just sitting around smoking crack. It’s like some stoner kid is their top consultant. I wonder what would happen if they put all that useless propaganda into some real policy work. Imagine that..
Btw, I accidentally ran over a squirrel the other day.
Nasty! It is just nasty. The whole idea.
I’m a vegetarian, and I HATE PETA. What are they on?
And surely taking stem-cells from animals counts as animal research, which they are against. Hypocritical or what!?
I may be a vegetarian, but I’m not against animal testing if it’s going to help the human race. I’m CERTAINLY no-where near the same as those hypocritical SOBs at PETA!
The bottom line is that the majority of obese, lazy, hypnotized, prescription pill-fed Americans are going to continue to be in denial and refuse to give up their meat. The actual truth about factory farms and the emotional lives of animals along with showing too much empathy for other species scares them.
They prefer to remain ignorant and glued to their Home Entertainment Plasma Systems watching American Idol and Burger King commercials.
The article-writer and commenters are also clueless. Some of you might be vegetarians but you are miles away from the mindset that goes along with being a vegan. Otherwise you would comprehend just how much PETA has done for the animals rights movement since they began in the early ’80s.
As all the other animal welfarists have gone soft and want to make safe little compromises (don’t torture the animals too much before you slaughter them, etc.), PETA has never sold out.
Anything that will get the animals out of the factory farms and slaughterhouses and off the butcher blocks is a GOOD THING. Fruits and vegetables are already genetically engineered, why not meat? I don’t give a crap if you eat it, no one’s forcing you to. There’s plenty of beans and non-GMO soy meat to go around.
It’s about the animals and their RIGHT to a LIFE without humans torturing and killing them. Get it?
What a great idea!! But as usual, no surprise here, there will always the ones who oppose any great ideas.
PETA can absolutely be the voice for animals AND promote at the same time, lab grown meat. Sure, it will take some time to achieve the perfect in-vitro meat, just as it took some time to go from the old dial-up telephones, to the wireless cell phones. But nothing will ever be accomplished in any domain of science, if we simply listen to the negative opposition who reject any idea, from the get-go.
I rest assure that the powerful Big Corp Meat Industry will try everything to derail this promising project … even “pretend to be vegetarians speaking against it” … just like Big Drugs & Big Insurances have done everything for years, to derail “Universal Health Care” for all Americans.
Corporate Greed will always try to stop a project if it cuts on their profit, even if it greatly benefits the American public. Let’s not buy into their negative & false campaign.
GO FOR IT PETA !! Speaking as a “true” vegetarian and an animal lover, I can assure you, that you have the entire vegetarian / vegan community supporting this project.
Try to look at this idea in a new light. Too many people are quick to judge. I think this is a HUGE advancement for our world. Perhaps the medical community will pick up on this technology and US can catch up with other nations. Also, there have been huge problems in the meat industry keeping their product safe for our consumption. Okay, last but not least, Science has actually come out with the official work that cows are depleting out Ozone layer with the “gases” they release. These gases are caused by the corn they are being fed; cows should be fed a diet of hay or grass. So I will hope this technology also reproduces beef. SO, I THINK INSTEAD OF HATING PETA, YOU SHOULD ALL BE GRATEFUL.