Editor's Blog Feb 21st 2012
BEWARE FRANKENMEAT
It’s Pancake Day, with the ingredients to make the best pancake being pretty innocuous stuff, flour, salt, eggs, milk, water, and butter.
But behind closed doors, in state of the art science labs, men and women in white coats are creating something sinister. Something, which if they are able to iron out some of the problems they are encountering, could even be on our plates sooner than we can say “Lemon for your Pancake”.
I am talking about Laboratory grown beef. Many of the broadsheets have been writing about this since 17th June when Prof Mitsuyuki Ikeda announced to the scientific world his Faecal Burger. Bull shit! I hear you all shout in unison, No Human, I retort.
Over the weekend another announcement came, this time from our cousins across the pond, Prof Mark Post declared at the aptly acronymed AAAS, the American Academy for the Advancement of Science stated, "In October we are going to provide a proof of concept, showing out of stem cells we can make a product that looks, feels and hopefully tastes like meat."
My take on food has always been to try everything once, twice if I like it, but I am not too keen on eating something derived from something that has already been eaten once.
Many are touting this breakthrough as a cure for world hunger, I personally would happily turn vegetarian.
Pancake anyone?
Ed.
