Hot juicy burgers from a bioreactor. Yummy.

I ate a for dinner last night, because I am a vegetarian and those are the types of things we eat (carnivores often wonder). A field roast sort of tastes like meat and sort of looks like meat--but it's made of three vegetables and a grain, so not really. Still, no bunnies died in its making, except maybe when the underpaid field worker harvested all the carrots to make my roast.

I thought the field roast was the ultimate in meat technology (note: fakin' bacon? Not good technology), until I came across this Wired News story about a professor of meat sciences, naturally, working to grow pork meat from pig stem cells. Mmmmmmh, stem cells. Next on the test tube menu are burgers, sausages and pizza toppings.

The anti stem-cell contingent seems to have overlooked this massive infringement on unborn piglet rights, but the rest of the blogsphere does have a few things to say. Most seem in favor of this potential protein-rich alternative, but some are just a little weirded out. It's interesting that one cause of anxiety is the fact that the food comes from a lab. Splenda and Yellow No. 5, anyone?

This is just plain odd. Scientists are close to mass producing meat--yes, meat--in a bioreactor. (Hold it! My bulls--- science-term senses are tingling) from stem cells. There are obvious benefits to this: no need to kill live creatures, potentially wipe out world hunger, etc. But...it's just...odd. I can't say for sure why it bothers me, but I can't imagine eating a burger I know has been grown in a lab. Which is stupid because animals grow themselves and I eat that. And people couldn't imagine a world that wasn't flat either, but still--it's odd.
--Suitably Vague

Hey! You got your burger in my science fiction! Nice to see the real world catching up so soon, because that means alien space travel is not far behind! Whoo hoo! Yes, if it tasted as good as the real thing, I'd eat meat grown in a lab, because then I wouldn't have to kill some dumb animal for my burger.
--By The Way

It's going to be a challenge to create just the right mixture of muscle and fat to give burgers that juicy, yummy taste. If this test tube meat can be mass produced, it will be a great boon to our nonsustainable meat-eating culture. Oh yeah, and they also will need to convince people to eat it.
--Gizmodo