Daniel Engber makes sense about the PETA prize $$; the "franken-meat" has to be wildly successful in sales Before the prize-dough is granted, which is not likely to happen. So, what kind of true incentive is that?

I have a question that goes a step further: let's say the franken-meat Is not only created, but also wildly successful. People are buying it up in droves and restaurants can't keep enough of it in stock. The demand is so great that McDonalds is finding that its McFrankenBurger is outselling anything else they offer.

Great.

Meanwhile....what happens to all those 40 billion pigs, cows, fish and chickens? If the demand for them goes Way down as the demand for franken-meat goes Way up, what's going to happen to all the animals currently being readied for us to eat?

Does PETA think humans are going to keep these animals alive (let alone alive And *kindly* treated) in the absence of any profit generated from them?

I think the way animals are processed is bad for them And for us. It's cruel and unhealthy for both animal and human. Profit seems to be the sole motive for these practices, so I would definitely like to see animals treated in a much better fashion before they are killed, both for humane and heath reasons.

However, if the animals are saved...then what? Who's going to take care of them (do you even Know how annoying chickens can be? I don't, but I can just Guess).

So, aside from the fact that the franken-meat probably Won't eradicate people's love of meat, maybe just lower it (which is pretty good, actually), even if the franken-meat Does replace meat completely, that would leave ALOT of pigs, cows, fish and chickens to, most likely, completely die out.

Unless PETA's gonna care for them all. Yeah, okay, but, somehow I kind of doubt it.

Certainly the numbers of these animals will decrease, and this raises a philosophical question: If the number of living cows drops by 90% (the other 10% remaining for milk production) and the same for chickens (the other 10% remaining for egg production) then is it better for all those extra cows and chickens to have never lived than to have had lives that ended in slaughter?

PETA seems to think it is better. Their members clearly believe that it degrades us as a self-assumed intelligent species to force "lesser" animals into such miserable existences and subsequent grim termination. They believe that it is better for an individual animal not to exist at all than to have a miserable and hopeless existence (sound familiar?). They believe that these species should exist with more natural "free-range" lives, albeit in lesser numbers than today, but without humans as cruel mass-consuming predators.

As for the "transition animals" that die off as the move is made to synthetic meats: Come on! Can you imagine the massively lucrative auctions that will take place when people, especially wealthy people, realize how rare meat from once-live animals is about to become? Just look at what has happened to bluefin tuna prices in recent years.

Congratulation, you have managed to post the dumbest thing I've read on the fray in several weeks. And that's including the Hillary suporters in the political threads. It's so dumb I'm having a hard time believing that I'm actually responding to it, but here goes.

Even in the most absurdly optimistic scenario, demand for "natural" meat is not going to disappear overnight, brainiac. As demand slowly dropped, farmers would simply breed fewer animals.

Even in the fantasy world where you live, and where demand for natural meat went instantaneously to zero, the worst case is that farmers would slaughter all their animals. Which of course was going to happen anyway. At least they won't be breeding generation after generation more.

Of course it's better, you nitwit, unless you're prepared to believe that animals that don't exist are capable of being disappointed that that they were never born into a factory farm.

Christ, how do you dress youself in the morning with the intellectual firepower you have at your disposal?

Zoos.

"Mom, what's that?"

"It says here it's a cow."

"Ugh. They actually ate those?"

The lifespan of cattle is only around 25 years or so, so when (and if) lab-stock becomes cheaper than livestock, farmers will quit wasting money breeding them and the last ones will sold off to whatever slaughterhouses are still open, or end up on the farmer's own dinner table, or just chill out and graze until they die of old age. But since they're all being bred to be slaughtered anyway, what's the difference?

Livestock will become so rare (because they're economically useless and cannot survive in the wild) that to prevent extinction, the remaining few will be relegated to zoos, or nature preserves.

Poor maroci,

You seem to suffer from the point/shoot/aim form of communication that dooms so many of your type's causes to ridicule.

A more intelligent person might understand that asking a question with a logical conclusion is a much more effective way of convincing people than "intellectual" gems such as "Christ, how do you dress yourself in the morning..."

Perhaps you need better meds, or maybe just some more protein in your diet? They do say that it is "brain food." You have me starting to believe that an all vegetable diet results in an all vegetable mind.

It's people like you than keep more reasonable people from paying serious attention to valid efforts and organizations that are only hurt by your kind of advocacy. So, not for my sake or your own - but for the sake of the hardworking hardthinking people at PETA, please take a chill pill before your next post.

step 1) Relabel "farm animals" as "pets". I am sure that **someone** out there will want them. I don't care how annoying, someone will think they're cute. Just think of all the annoying people you know in real life. Most have gf / bf / spouses, right. Apparently **someone** thinks their companionship / sex / etc outweighs their annoyance.

step 2) As that guy from the Price is Right used to say "spray and neuter your pets".

step 3) Wait a few decades and see where the chips fall.

The exact same philosophical argument was used with human beings. Third world countries as you might know have / had an overpopulation problem, hunger problem, etc. The debate was: would it be better off if these people had less kids or not, after all its better to be born into squalor than to not exist at all. We've already answered that question: answer being--- less is better.

Off course these were God damn human beings we're talking about. Extending that logic from there to animal isn't too difficult.

PETA has always advocated euthanasia of farm animals and unwanted pets, and actively practices it as well. So this isn't a problem for them in the least. Their position is entirely consistent, as far as I can see; the best way to end the suffering of farm animals is to put them calmly and kindly out of existence (not saying I agree with it).

Did you really say Chips Fall?

-----Even in the most absurdly optimistic scenario, demand for "natural" meat is not going to disappear overnight, brainiac. As demand slowly dropped, farmers would simply breed fewer animals.

So, to hell with biodiversity. We are going to be kind to these animals by making them extinct???

Yes, there will be fewer of the animals we now "eat." Fewer, to none, to make use of fodder that isn't fit to feed to humans. What happens to the farmers who now grow fodder for catlle? Fodder that can't be eaten by humans.

The biodiversity problem, alone, is enough of a reason not to exclusively embrace "cultivated" meat...

To Doc-

On biodiversity: There will be plenty of cows and chickens left alive for milk and egg production, and they will (or should) be treated much more ethically. Pigs? Well, they are screwed. There will still be a lot of them for a while, but they will be growing organs for humans until those can be grown in a dish too, and then the pigs are doomed. They were better off when they were wild anyway.

On fodder: An interesting fact is that there are already bacteria being designed (based on the bacteria that work in your friendly cows' stomachs) that turn fodder directly into biofuels! That way we can get back to using corn to feed people instead of driving its price up by attaching it to the energy craze.

> There will be plenty of cows and chickens left alive for milk and egg production, and they will (or should) be treated much more ethically.

Having been to an egg farm and having worked in a dairy, I cannot see any difference, ethically, between the husbandry methods used to raise eggs and harvest milk and those used in the husbandry of animals to be used for food. Both can be pretty gruesome. There is no practical way of doing "free range" laying hens or dairy cattle.

> Pigs? Well, they are screwed. There will still be a lot of them for a while, but they will be growing organs for humans until those can be grown in a dish too, and then the pigs are doomed.

I have a porcine aortic valve in my heart. It has an expected lifespan of around 15 years. Before choosing between a porcine or mechanical valve, I did extensive research on the possibility of "cultured" heart valves in the future. Both my research and my cardiac surgeon, (who works in a major heart valve research facility), seem to indicate that "cultured" replacements for failed heart valves are not possible within the next 20-30 years. Organs for transplantation is only one of the many non-food uses of pork. I doubt that pigs will cease to be useful to humans any time in the foreseeable future.

When you say "...then the pigs are doomed," are you saying they will become completely redundant and/or extinct? This discussion seems to focus exclusively on the food uses for livestock. The non-food uses for livestock are legion. Eliminate the animals and new sources must be found for these products. [The solutions would probably involve petroleum based hydrocarbons, which would just make our situation worse.] If we cannot replace the animal sources for these products, then we must continue to raise and slaughter these animals - probably using the same methods PETA thinks of as unethical.

When one removes livestock from the ecosystem - changes the "predator/prey" relationship - in a massive way, one cannot help but have a massive effect on the rest of the ecosystem. I doubt such "change" would bode well for human kind.

> They were better off when they were wild anyway.

I am not sure what you base this on. The domestic pig has existed for almost as long as man. Modern day pigs are not the same as the pigs that existed before they was domesticated. The wild pigs of today, like most wild animals, are suffering from loss of habitat. They will, eventually, become extinct, simply so someone can build their McMansion in their former habitat. There is no way to compare which are "better off," (which is a completely human construct, anyway), domesticated pigs or "wild pigs" that lived somewhere in the distant pre-history of man.


> An interesting fact is that there are already bacteria being designed (based on the bacteria that work in your friendly cows' stomachs) that turn fodder directly into biofuels!

Biofuels encourage a reliance on an outdated paradigm - internal combustion and fossil fuels. They simply substitute vegetation for petroleum. Biofuels are not a long term solution to our ongoing energy problems. [Coal gasification would be a much easier solution than producing biofuels, but, for some reason, no one wants to implement it on a commercial basis. Alas, it, too, would function within the same outdated paradigm we are now using.] A long term solution to our energy needs will come outside of the internal combustion/fossil fuel paradigm. Probably hydrogen or fusion. This is still decades, if not a century, away.

In the meantime, the production and acceptance of adequate sources of biofuels is a long ways off. I, for one, am not going to put bio-jet fuel in the Bell 406 I fly. Not until the technology for producing biofuels advances quite a bit. It may happen, eventually, but we are not there yet.

> That way we can get back to using corn to feed people instead of driving its price up by attaching it to the energy craze.

The problem with corn is that there are too many competing uses. We could remove one of the competing uses from the equation by not feeding corn to cattle. That we feed corn to cattle is a human decision, it is not necessary. "Corn-fed" cattle are perceived as being of a higher quality and more palatable. Consumers would, conceivably, suffer from a drop in the quality of beef not "corn-fed." In the end, though, cattle can live without being fed corn.

This removes one competing use. Leaves more corn for human food and ethanol production.

I doubt this will ever happen. Unfortunately, humans seem to want to have their corn and eat it, too.

> There will be plenty of cows and chickens left alive for milk and egg production, and they will (or should) be treated much more ethically.

Having been to an egg farm and having worked in a dairy, I cannot see any difference, ethically, between the husbandry methods used to raise eggs and harvest milk and those used in the husbandry of animals to be used for food. Both can be pretty gruesome. There is no practical way of doing "free range" laying hens or dairy cattle.

> Pigs? Well, they are screwed. There will still be a lot of them for a while, but they will be growing organs for humans until those can be grown in a dish too, and then the pigs are doomed.

I have a porcine aortic valve in my heart. It has an expected lifespan of around 15 years. Before choosing between a porcine or mechanical valve, I did extensive research on the possibility of "cultured" heart valves in the future. Both my research and my cardiac surgeon, (who works in a major heart valve research facility), seem to indicate that "cultured" replacements for failed heart valves are not possible within the next 20-30 years. Organs for transplantation is only one of the many non-food uses of pork. I doubt that pigs will cease to be useful to humans any time in the foreseeable future.

When you say "...then the pigs are doomed," are you saying they will become completely redundant and/or extinct? This discussion seems to focus exclusively on the food uses for livestock. The non-food uses for livestock are legion. Eliminate the animals and new sources must be found for these products. [The solutions would probably involve petroleum based hydrocarbons, which would just make our situation worse.] If we cannot replace the animal sources for these products, then we must continue to raise and slaughter these animals - probably using the same methods PETA thinks of as unethical.

When one removes livestock from the ecosystem - changes the "predator/prey" relationship - in a massive way, one cannot help but have a massive effect on the rest of the ecosystem. I doubt such "change" would bode well for human kind.

> They were better off when they were wild anyway.

I am not sure what you base this on. The domestic pig has existed for almost as long as man. Modern day pigs are not the same as the pigs that existed before they was domesticated. The wild pigs of today, like most wild animals, are suffering from loss of habitat. They will, eventually, become extinct, simply so someone can build their McMansion in their former habitat. There is no way to compare which are "better off," (which is a completely human construct, anyway), domesticated pigs or "wild pigs" that lived somewhere in the distant pre-history of man.


> An interesting fact is that there are already bacteria being designed (based on the bacteria that work in your friendly cows' stomachs) that turn fodder directly into biofuels!

Biofuels encourage a reliance on an outdated paradigm - internal combustion and fossil fuels. They simply substitute vegetation for petroleum. Biofuels are not a long term solution to our ongoing energy problems. [Coal gasification would be a much easier solution than producing biofuels, but, for some reason, no one wants to implement it on a commercial basis. Alas, it, too, would function within the same outdated paradigm we are now using.] A long term solution to our energy needs will come outside of the internal combustion/fossil fuel paradigm. Probably hydrogen or fusion. This is still decades, if not a century, away.

In the meantime, the production and acceptance of adequate sources of biofuels is a long ways off. I, for one, am not going to put bio-jet fuel in the Bell 406 I fly. Not until the technology for producing biofuels advances quite a bit. It may happen, eventually, but we are not there yet.

> That way we can get back to using corn to feed people instead of driving its price up by attaching it to the energy craze.

The problem with corn is that there are too many competing uses. We could remove one of the competing uses from the equation by not feeding corn to cattle. That we feed corn to cattle is a human decision, it is not necessary. "Corn-fed" cattle are perceived as being of a higher quality and more palatable. Consumers would, conceivably, suffer from a drop in the quality of beef not "corn-fed." In the end, though, cattle can live without being fed corn.

This removes one competing use. Leaves more corn for human food and ethanol production.

I doubt this will ever happen. Unfortunately, humans seem to want to have their corn and eat it, too.

Doc Holliday writes: The domestic pig has existed for almost as long as man.

LeRoy: Sorry, but no. Domesticated pigs first appear in the archaeological record ca. 7000 B.C.E. in the Middle East and perhaps a thousand years later in China. Modern humans have been in existence for something on the order of 230,000 years.

Doc Holliday:

Modern day pigs are not the same as the pigs that existed before they was domesticated.

LeRoy: Well, yes. That's the point. Domestication, by definition, involves genetic changes from the wild ancestor.