The move towards artificially engineered foods has taken a step forward after scientists grew a form of meat in a laboratory for the first time.
By Nick Britten
Published: 3:18PM GMT 29 Nov 2009 Telegraph.co.uk
Researchers in the Netherlands have created what was described as soggy pork and are now investigating ways to improve the muscle tissue in the hope that people will one day want to eat it.
No one has yet tasted the product, but it is believed the artificial meat could be on sale within five years.
Vegetarian groups welcomed the news, saying there was “no ethical objection” if meat was not a piece of a dead animal.
Mark Post, professor of physiology at Eindhoven University, said: “What we have at the moment is rather like wasted muscle tissue. We need to find ways of improving it by training it and stretching it, but we will get there.
“This product will be good for the environment and will reduce animal suffering. If it feels and tastes like meat, people will buy it.
“You could take the meat from one animal and create the volume of meat previously provided by a million animals.”
The scientists extracted cells from the muscle of a live pig and then put them in a broth of other animal products. The cells then multiplied and created muscle tissue. They believe that it can be turned into something like steak if they can find a way to artificially “exercise” the muscle.
The project is backed by the Dutch government and a sausage maker and comes following the creation of artificial fish fillets from goldfish muscle cells.
Meat produced in a laboratory could reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with real animals.
Meat and dairy consumption is predicted to double by 2050 and methane from livestock is said to currently produce about 18 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases.
It was supported by animal rights campaigners. A spokesman for Peta said: “As far as we’re concerned, if meat is no longer a piece of a dead animal there’s no ethical objection.”
However the Vegetarian Society said: “The big question is how could you guarantee you were eating artificial flesh rather than flesh from an animal that had been slaughtered.
“It would be very difficult to label and identify in a way that people would trust.”
The advent of meat grown for consumers could reduce the billions of tons of greenhouse gases emitted each year by farm animals and help meet the United Nation’s predictions that meat and dairy consumption will double by 2050.
However, the latest breakthrough is certain to cause concern amongst the anti-GM lobby.
Last week Prince Charles, a fierce opponent of GM food, warned that people were creating problems by “treating food as an easy commodity rather than a precious gift from nature”.
His comments came as the results of a survey commissioned by the Food Standards Agency revealed concerns about long-term health and environmental impacts of genetically modified products.
It showed shoppers want to be told when meat and milk from cows is genetically modified through clear labelling.
GM supporters say they are aware of risks associated with “engineered” food but believe it benefits the Third World.
NEW DELHI November 13, 2009 (AP)
All elephants living in Indian zoos and circuses will be moved to wildlife parks and game sanctuaries where the animals can graze more freely, officials said Friday.
The decision affects around 140 elephants in 26 zoos and 16 circuses in the country, said B.K. Gupta, an officer at India’s Central Zoo Authority.
The order followed complaints from animal rights activists about elephants that are kept in captivity and often chained for long hours, Gupta said.
The elephants currently living in zoos or circuses are to be moved to “elephant camps” run by the government’s forest department and located near protected areas and national parks. There they would be able to roam and graze freely, but “mahouts,” or traditional elephant trainers, would still keep an eye on them.
Some elephant experts, however, were skeptical about moving the elephants to wildlife preserves, many of which are under pressure from encroaching human habitation.
“Special facilities have to be created, perhaps outside the wildlife sanctuaries. It may add to the pressures faced by natural habitats,” said Raman Sukumar, a professor of ecology at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
Increasingly, research shows that elephants in the wild have longer life spans and better health and reproductive records than those in captivity, Sukumar said.
Zoo elephants often die prematurely and contract diseases or suffer obesity and arthritis more frequently than in their natural habitats, he said.
India has an estimated 28,000 wild elephants living in forest reserves and national parks, mainly in the southern and northeastern parts of the country. Another 3,500 elephants live in captivity, many of them in temples, or working in logging camps where they are used to lift timber. No decision has been made about them.
from NY Times, November 21, 2009
By Gary Steiner
LATELY more people have begun to express an interest in where the meat they eat comes from and how it was raised. Were the animals humanely treated? Did they have a good quality of life before the death that turned them into someone’s dinner?
Some of these questions, which reach a fever pitch in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, pertain to the ways in which animals are treated. (Did your turkey get to live outdoors?) Others focus on the question of how eating the animals in question will affect the consumer’s health and well-being. (Was it given hormones and antibiotics?)
None of these questions, however, make any consideration of whether it is wrong to kill animals for human consumption. And even when people ask this question, they almost always find a variety of resourceful answers that purport to justify the killing and consumption of animals in the name of human welfare. Strict ethical vegans, of which I am one, are customarily excoriated for equating our society’s treatment of animals with mass murder. Can anyone seriously consider animal suffering even remotely comparable to human suffering? Those who answer with a resounding no typically argue in one of two ways.
Some suggest that human beings but not animals are made in God’s image and hence stand in much closer proximity to the divine than any non-human animal; according to this line of thought, animals were made expressly for the sake of humans and may be used without scruple to satisfy their needs and desires. There is ample support in the Bible and in the writings of Christian thinkers like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas for this pointedly anthropocentric way of devaluing animals.
Others argue that the human capacity for abstract thought makes us capable of suffering that both qualitatively and quantitatively exceeds the suffering of any non-human animal. Philosophers like Jeremy Bentham, who is famous for having based moral status not on linguistic or rational capacities but rather on the capacity to suffer, argue that because animals are incapable of abstract thought, they are imprisoned in an eternal present, have no sense of the extended future and hence cannot be said to have an interest in continued existence.
The most penetrating and iconoclastic response to this sort of reasoning came from the writer Isaac Bashevis Singer in his story “The Letter Writer,” in which he called the slaughter of animals the “eternal Treblinka.”
The story depicts an encounter between a man and a mouse. The man, Herman Gombiner, contemplates his place in the cosmic scheme of things and concludes that there is an essential connection between his own existence as “a child of God” and the “holy creature” scuffling about on the floor in front of him.
Surely, he reflects, the mouse has some capacity for thought; Gombiner even thinks that the mouse has the capacity to share love and gratitude with him. Not merely a means for the satisfaction of human desires, nor a mere nuisance to be exterminated, this tiny creature possesses the same dignity that any conscious being possesses. In the face of that inherent dignity, Gombiner concludes, the human practice of delivering animals to the table in the form of food is abhorrent and inexcusable.
Many of the people who denounce the ways in which we treat animals in the course of raising them for human consumption never stop to think about this profound contradiction. Instead, they make impassioned calls for more “humanely” raised meat. Many people soothe their consciences by purchasing only free-range fowl and eggs, blissfully ignorant that “free range” has very little if any practical significance. Chickens may be labeled free-range even if they’ve never been outside or seen a speck of daylight in their entire lives. And that Thanksgiving turkey? Even if it is raised “free range,” it still lives a life of pain and confinement that ends with the butcher’s knife.
How can intelligent people who purport to be deeply concerned with animal welfare and respectful of life turn a blind eye to such practices? And how can people continue to eat meat when they become aware that nearly 53 billion land animals are slaughtered every year for human consumption? The simple answer is that most people just don’t care about the lives or fortunes of animals. If they did care, they would learn as much as possible about the ways in which our society systematically abuses animals, and they would make what is at once a very simple and a very difficult choice: to forswear the consumption of animal products of all kinds.
The easy part of this consists in seeing clearly what ethics requires and then just plain doing it. The difficult part: You just haven’t lived until you’ve tried to function as a strict vegan in a meat-crazed society.
What were once the most straightforward activities become a constant ordeal. You might think that it’s as simple as just removing meat, eggs and dairy products from your diet, but it goes a lot deeper than that.
To be a really strict vegan is to strive to avoid all animal products, and this includes materials like leather, silk and wool, as well as a panoply of cosmetics and medications. The more you dig, the more you learn about products you would never stop to think might contain or involve animal products in their production — like wine and beer (isinglass, a kind of gelatin derived from fish bladders, is often used to “fine,” or purify, these beverages), refined sugar (bone char is sometimes used to bleach it) or Band-Aids (animal products in the adhesive). Just last week I was told that those little comfort strips on most razor blades contain animal fat.
To go down this road is to stare headlong into an abyss that, to paraphrase Nietzsche, will ultimately stare back at you.
The challenges faced by a vegan don’t end with the nuts and bolts of material existence. You face quite a few social difficulties as well, perhaps the chief one being how one should feel about spending time with people who are not vegans.
Is it O.K. to eat dinner with people who are eating meat? What do you say when a dining companion says, “I’m really a vegetarian — I don’t eat red meat at home.” (I’ve heard it lots of times, always without any prompting from me.) What do you do when someone starts to grill you (so to speak) about your vegan ethics during dinner? (Wise vegans always defer until food isn’t around.) Or when someone starts to lodge accusations to the effect that you consider yourself morally superior to others, or that it is ridiculous to worry so much about animals when there is so much human suffering in the world? (Smile politely and ask them to pass the seitan.)
Let me be candid: By and large, meat-eaters are a self-righteous bunch. The number of vegans I know personally is … five. And I have been a vegan for almost 15 years, having been a vegetarian for almost 15 before that.
Five. I have lost more friends than this over arguments about animal ethics. One lapidary conclusion to be drawn here is that people take deadly seriously the prerogative to use animals as sources of satisfaction. Not only for food, but as beasts of burden, as raw materials and as sources of captive entertainment — which is the way animals are used in zoos, circuses and the like.
These uses of animals are so institutionalized, so normalized, in our society that it is difficult to find the critical distance needed to see them as the horrors that they are: so many forms of subjection, servitude and — in the case of killing animals for human consumption and other purposes — outright murder.
People who are ethical vegans believe that differences in intelligence between human and non-human animals have no moral significance whatsoever. The fact that my cat can’t appreciate Schubert’s late symphonies and can’t perform syllogistic logic does not mean that I am entitled to use him as an organic toy, as if I were somehow not only morally superior to him but virtually entitled to treat him as a commodity with minuscule market value.
We have been trained by a history of thinking of which we are scarcely aware to view non-human animals as resources we are entitled to employ in whatever ways we see fit in order to satisfy our needs and desires. Yes, there are animal welfare laws. But these laws have been formulated by, and are enforced by, people who proceed from the proposition that animals are fundamentally inferior to human beings. At best, these laws make living conditions for animals marginally better than they would be otherwise — right up to the point when we send them to the slaughterhouse.
Think about that when you’re picking out your free-range turkey, which has absolutely nothing to be thankful for on Thanksgiving. All it ever had was a short and miserable life, thanks to us intelligent, compassionate humans.
Gary Steiner, a professor of philosophy at Bucknell University, is the author of “Animals and the Moral Community: Mental Life, Moral Status and Kinship.”
Brian Clancy
June 29, 2009
CONCERN for animal welfare is a direct result of higher living standards and personal wealth, according to animal welfare specialist Dr Andrew Fisher.
“As food security and immediate personal needs are no longer a daily challenge for many, society’s circle of moral concern has expanded,” Dr Fisher said.
He told the BestWool-BestLamb conference in Bendigo in Victoria last week that the wool industry was feeling those community concerns with the mulesing debate.
He said these concerns in highly developed communities were reflected in a recent Europe survey that asked respondents how they rated animal welfare.
Sixty-seven per cent of Swedish respondents said it was a major concern while Eastern European countries were at the other end of scale.
The Czech Republic gave a 21 per cent response, with Britain falling in the middle at 47 per cent.
Dr Fisher, who is an associate professor at Melbourne University’s facility of veterinary science, said the need for farmers to address animal welfare concerns in their production systems would grow.
He put farming practices that prompted welfare concerns into four categories:
* Restriction of animal movement.
* Surgical practices that cause pain.
* Long-distance transport for higher profits.
* Diseases or problems induced by the production environment.
He said the best strategy for farmers was to take the time to understand consumer concerns.
Where Australian practices differed from farming industries elsewhere, they were likely to face greater scrutiny or appear more of a problem to outside observers.
Dr Fisher said mulesing and the need to truck animals long distances were examples of major issues for Australia.
He said farmer reaction to an animal welfare issue often followed three stages.
The first was denial – “don’t mention the war” – and the second was “yes, we are looking at the problem”.
The third was “we have identified the problem and this is how we are dealing with it”.
Dr Fisher hoped the establishment of the government-sponsored Australia Animal Welfare Strategy and the development of Australian standards and guidelines for each livestock species would go much of the way to addressing community concerns.
He said the new standards and guidelines would replace the existing Model Codes of Practice.
Animals played an important role in Michael Jackson’s life, abruptly cut short yesterday. One of Jackson’s earliest hits, and a personal favorite song of his, was “Ben,” a loving tribute to a pet rat. Jackson was just 14 years old when he recorded the song, becoming the youngest ever performer at the time to top the U.S. charts while still being a member of a group, The Jacksons.
“Ben” was written for a 1972 film of the same name. A young boy befriends Ben the rat in the movie, which was echoed in Jackson’s own life since he owned a rat as well.
From Discovery News, June 26
From OIPA:
Animal Liberation Victoria was contacted in early 2007 by distressed students from Monash University’s third year undergraduate science course.
Students were being instructed to perform experiments on live unconscious rabbits which included:
* Restraining the rabbits on a work table, with their paws and teeth tied to anchor points
* Cutting open the rabbits’ throats with unsterilised instruments and inserting a tube into their wind pipe
* Administering various chemicals into their blood stream to observe the effect on the rabbits’ heart rate
At the end of the class, the rabbits were given a lethal overdose and discarded in a rubbish bin.
Undercover footage was then recorded from inside the classroom using a hidden camera.
We are happy to update you about the action alert we supported. We are overjoyed to announce that Monash University have confirmed that the live rabbit dissections are not taking place this year. The classes have been replaced with a humane non animal alternative.
Thank you so much to everyone who sent in objections, took part in protests, or contributed to the campaign in any way. This huge victory for the rabbits could not have been achieved without you!
For more info please visit: http://www.monashkills.org
On the bouncy play platform outside Ghent’s 15th century slaughterhouse, the banana was thumping the beefsteak.
The two boys battled in the drizzle yesterday, the one in the fruity yellow costume serving up another veggie victory over his rival in bloody scarlet.
The parent onlookers laughed and munched another soya fritter. Mmm, yummy, said the man with a heart condition. They queued five-deep in the rain to dip their organic, wholegrain bread in the aubergine caviar, to smear their lips with eggless mayo. Another pure fruit vitamin cocktail under the marquee?
“This is pretty special, pretty unique,” said Tobias Leenaert, an anti-meat campaigner. “An entire city proclaiming one day a week a veggie day.”
Ghent embarks on a radical experiment today, seeking to make every Thursday a day free of meat and of the fish and shellfish for which the city is renowned.
On the eve of what is being touted as an unprecedented exercise, the biggest queue in the Flemish university town of 200,000 yesterday was for signatures – to collect a bag of wholefood goodies and sign up for “Donderdag – Veggie Dag”, turning the burghers of Ghent into pioneers in the fight against obesity, global warming, cruelty to animals and against the myth that meat-free eating amounts to a diet of soggy lettuce, a slice of tomato, and a foul-tasting bean burger.
The city council says it is the first town in Europe and probably the western world to try to make the entire place vegetarian for a day every week. Tom Balthazar, the Labour party councillor pushing the scheme, said: “There’s nothing compulsory. We just want to be a city that promotes sustainable and healthy living.”
Every restaurant in the city is to guarantee a vegetarian dish on the menu, with some going fully vegetarian every Thursday. From September, the city’s schools are to make a meat-free meal the “default” option every Thursday, although parents can insist on meat for their children. At least one hospital wants to join in.
A small, dreamy city of spires, bicycles, and canals, prospering since the Middle Ages, Ghent may be on to something. It appears to be tapping into a zeitgeist awareness of the cost to human health and the environment of intensive meat and dairy farming. Other towns in Belgium and the Netherlands are making inquiries; there has even been one from Canada.
“We hope that the university, other institutions, enterprises and other towns will jump on the train,” said Leenaert, director of the local branch of Flanders’ Ethical Vegetarian Association (EVA).
The organisers cite UN data arguing that meat production and consumption are to blame for 18% of greenhouse gases – more than cars. “If everyone in Flanders does not eat meat one day a week, we will save as much CO2 in a year as taking half a million cars off the road,” said the EVA.
“I never touch meat, unless I’m at my grandmother’s and I need to be polite,” said Karien De Temmermann, a young EVA member.
“This is not a plan for everyone to be forced into vegetarianism,” said Wim Coenen, a vegan who works as an importer of vegetarian pet food from Italy. “But it will reduce our carbon footprint. The basic premise is to introduce a way of lessening our meat consumption.”
The revolution starts today with a foodie festival at the vegetable market. Ninety thousand town maps listing the best eateries for the meat-shy are being handed out. Recipe booklets and food samples are being distributed, with fair trade wine to wash down the nibbles. A nearby restaurant is serving a four-course veggie lunch for €12. The kebab house on the market is eschewing the doner for broadbean falafel and haloumi cheese.
Ghent boasts a string of outstanding restaurants and is well-known for gourmet vegetarian cuisine. The council reckons it has more veggie eateries per capita than London, Paris or Berlin.
The Lib-Lab coalition running the city was persuaded to back the idea when Philippe van den Bulck, an outstanding culinary talent, served up a veggie gastronomic tour de force at the town hall. He is one of Flanders’s top chefs and food writers, doing time at El Bulli in Spain, to many the best restaurant in the world. He is also a vegetarian.
