In vitro meat
The news goes back to last April: the PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), one of the most well-known international organizations for animal rights since this is bare actresses and models against fur, has a prize of one million dollars will go to those who fail first, by June 12 2012, to produce animal tissues in the laboratory of taste and texture indistinguishable from the chicken and which may be brought to market at a competitive price.
Although fillets and steaks are not essential to human nutrition, and even if you sell a certain amount of vegetarian more or less successful imitations of the flesh, there is a considerable number of people who, although not completely insensitive to the suffering animals, they can not give up steaks, scallops and beef shanks. So PETA has chosen pragmatically, to reach out to this carnivorous humanity no longer expect to redeem in the belief that allowing unrepentant eaters of pork chops, sausages and paillard to continue to satisfy their carnal desires, while avoiding the daily slaughter of cattle, pigs, chickens, turkeys, sheep, lamb and quail, not to mention fish and shellfish that end up on our tables every day, not a strategy "uncomfortable "uncomfortable, as expressed Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder and president of the organization.
Despite the optimism of the Newkirk thought aroused by the deep concerns of many animals: in the same PETA reportedly would break out something like a "civil war". Indeed for many purists
animal rights initiative is seen as a resa morale, perché riduce o elimina le giustificazioni etiche (la sofferenza arrecata a esseri viventi) e ambientali (la smisurata impronta ecologica degli allevamenti) a favore del vegetarismo, rendendo il mangiare carne una decisione accettabile.
Le tecnologie attuali consentono di produrre al più un sottile strato di cellule, un “foglio” da cui si può a fatica, e a costi elevatissimi, ottenere una poltiglia adatta, forse, a fare salsicce e hamburger. Ma fra non molto sarà possibile irrorare il tessuto in coltura con vasi sanguigni di modo che anche le cellule che non vengono a contatto con il liquido nutriente potranno essere alimentate a dovere, permettendo così alla carne di aumentare adeguatamente di spessore. And you can also see that in the flesh there is a bit 'fat and bones to finally get a real steak. If you want even a Florentine simply stem from Chianina.
At that point, the process will be developed to make it economically viable, perhaps the most difficult aspect of the affair: now the cost of cultured meat is estimated at around $ 4 million per kg., Against a cost in industrialized countries, extremely low as it ever was in history, thanks to genetic selection, all'irrisorio cost of energy and transport, food supplements and "rationalization" of the plants: the suffering of animals in fact do not generate costs, as long as they do not die before slaughter. Can you imagine
mileage chicken breasts on conveyor belts that move toward the cutting el'impacchettamento? Would be very healthy, "because the meat substitutes are produced under controlled conditions impossible to maintain in traditional farms and this will be safer, more nutritious, less polluting and more humane than conventional meat" as stated on the website of the New Harvest ( http://www.new-harvest.org ), a company founded in 2004 with the aim of "supporting the development of meat substitutes, with the aim to long term to create economically competitive alternatives to conventional meat. "
fillets, future, certainly much healthier than those derived from chickens in battery cages crammed to capacity, obese and full of ulcers caused by the excrement in which they are forced to sit for weeks, dosed with antibiotics and kept awake to catch everything which has a straw color for all 35 days of their short existence and hallucinated. Fortunately, there is not much in those pale and tasteless slices and placed on a Styrofoam tray and wrapped in DOMOPACK, with a nice reassuring label to return the weight and price and expiration date and provenance, to remind us that once were part of a living being.
So why not consider producing organs, limbs, quarters ready for slaughter without victims? Bones and cuts and broken fragments will not give pain. And how will we feel guilty eating meat never born and therefore will never die even when ingested and digested? We also cultivate
leather tanning, as well, without guilt we might avoid giving up belts, shoes, jackets and wallets. We can get along with ermine skin rugs and mink or fox fur silver and clear. And what about pigs made of sun thighs? We could even think of making culture stem cells from ourselves. It would be cannibalism? And if we imagine to produce whole animals with no brain, so use what we need most?
In these fantasies the absence of the brain seems to be the ethical limit unsurpassed: we must give up their capuzzi with potatoes.
Who knows, maybe the destiny of man as a species is just to give nightmares to their materiality.
