I had previously covered the PETA $1 million prize for invitro (test tube / factory meat from stem cells) meat. PETA prize for chicken meat that can pass a fried chicken taste test and be sold in ten states commercially
Many people have an initial reaction that invitro meat would be yucky and they do not want it. However, people already eat meat slurry in fairly large quantities.
Meat slurry is mechanically separated meat (MSM), also known as mechanically recovered/reclaimed meat (MRM), is a paste-like meat product produced by forcing beef, pork or chicken bones, with attached edible meat, under high pressure through a sieve or similar device to separate the bone from the edible meat tissue. Then this is mixed with water to make it more easily fed through tubes.
From Wikipedia: Meat slurry is part of chicken nuggets (like at McDonalds) The meat part is mainly reconstituted meat slurry. Then there is chicken skin. Most of a chicken nugget (56%) is corn.
From Wikipedia:
A meat slurry, reconstituted meat, or emulsified meat, is a liquefied meat product that contains fewer fats, pigments and less myoglobin than unprocessed dark meats. Meat slurry also eases the process of meat distribution and is more malleable than dark meats.
UPDATE: Why would invitro meat not be so bad ? I would eat both invitro meat or chicken nuggets in spite of how their production could be viewed negatively. Invitro meat will be the same as regular meat at the cellular level. Producing stem cells and differentiating them is leading to transplantable livers and other organs. Therefore, the meat that it produces for us to eat will be like the real thing. It should be 4-20 times more energy efficient to produce than beef from a cow. It will not be sold until it is more cost efficient to produce for a particular type of meat.
NOTE: I had fairly quickly put this article together and was sloppy in my cut and paste although I had links to all of my multiple references. So the parts with the specific descriptions of meat slurry is not and was not claimed to be original. What was original was pointing out the meat slurry, chicken nugget, and invitro meat yuck factor connection.
Meat slurry is not designed to sell for general consumption; rather, it is used as a meat supplement in food products for humans, such as chicken nuggets, and food for domestic animals. Poultry is the most common meat slurry; however, beef and pork are also used.
Some other Poultry science, turning dark meat into white meat
So people can say yuck - invitro meat.
But deep fry it and call them improved McNuggets and they eat billions.
4.8 Billion Chicken McNuggets are sold annually.
FURTHER INFORMATION
What is in a McDonald's chicken Nugget ?
McDonald’s Chicken McNugget is 56% corn.
NOTE: It was a yahoo answer below that I was particularly sloppy with which had the citation issues as the yahoo anwer was pieced together from .
From Yahoo answers: Chicken nuggets are often made using a high proportion of chicken skin.
This is because without the skin the consistency would not be sticky enough for the nuggets to hold together. Food labeling law dictates that skin used to make the nugget need not be distinguished from the muscle consumers normally think of when they hear the word "meat". The remainder of the nugget is most likely to be made up of mechanically separated meat, with some processing additives such as anti-foaming agents (usually polydimethylsiloxane). The meat of the nugget may also be composed of reconstituted meat slurry.
Other coverage on work towards invitro meat
Test tube meat work
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There is news related to my articles on industry progress towards meat produced by stem cells in factories with a goal of ground meat products for supermarkets within 5 years.
UPDATE: H/T to Onsingularity.com
The PETA prize is meaningless because the winner has to be selling their invitro grown meat in 10 states and it must taste test as indistinguishable from real chicken when cooked into fried chicken.
Chicken is a $50 billion retail revenue a year industry in 2004 in the United States
Average per store sales are $500,000 to 1.2 million (the link is to 1992 sales figures and per store sales have been increasing.)
KFC had $12.2 billion in store sales in 2004
So the $1 million prize is about one hundredth of one percent of the industries profit or one five hundreds of one percent of annual revenues.
KFC alone sells $1 million worth of fried chicken in about 5 minutes. (Assuming stores are open 365 days per year and open for an average of 12 hours every day.)
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has announced a $1 million prize to the “first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012.”
A founder of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, said she had been hoping to get the organization involved in advancing in vitro meat technology for at least a decade.
But, Ms. Newkirk said, the decision to sponsor a prize caused “a near civil war in our office,” since so many PETA members are repulsed by the thought of eating animal tissue, even if no animals are killed. Ms. Newkirk said the disagreement was natural, adding, “We will have members leave us over this.”
The Netherlands has put $5 million into in vitro meat studies.
As seen by the in vitro meat conference there is a lot of work in academia and ni the food industry already for in vitro (aka test tube meat aka meat factories.)
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The Speculist talks about meat factories (making meat from stem cells) and a personal conversion to veganism or vegetarianism.
Part of this was initiated by an article that posited that meat eaters are bad people. [I do not agree with this position, are wolves bad?, but I feel that if achieving a goal of reduced animal harm does not harm humans or reduce human progress then the goal of reduced animal harm is not an unreasonable objective.]
People are growing meat now
In five to 10 years, supermarkets might have some new products in the meat counter: packs of vat-grown meat that are cheaper to produce than livestock and have less impact on the environment.
According to a new economic analysis presented at the In Vitro Meat Symposium in Ås, Norway, meat grown in giant tanks known as bioreactors would cost between $5,200-$5,500 a ton (3,300 to 3,500 euros), which the analysis claims is cost competitive with European beef prices.
To produce the meat we eat now, 75 to 95 percent of what we feed an animal is lost because of metabolism and inedible structures like skeleton or neurological tissue. So invitro meat could be 4 to 20 times more efficient.
There has been other food substitutions:
Egg substitute - from egg whites
Margerine, a blend of vegetable oils or meat fats (or a combination of both) mixed with milk and salt, in place of butter.
Soy meat and soy protein products.
A lot of processed food:
Yoghurt, twinkies (and other chemical and corn syrup concoctions), whey protein products and bars, spam, meat slurry
Reasons for invitro meat.
Global production of meat is projected to more than double from 229 million tons/year in 1999/2000 to 465 million tons/year in 2050 (Steinfeld et al. 2006, FAO document). [Growing at abuot 4.7 million tons per year]
The total area occupied by livestock grazing is around 36 million square km, which is equivalent to 26 % of the land surface area of the planet (Steinfeld et al. 2006). The total area used for feedcrop production is about 4.7 million square km, equivalent to 33 % of all cropland. Most of this cropland is located in OECD countries, but some developing countries are rapidly expanding their feedcrop production, notably maize and soybean in South America, in particular Brazil. The total remaining area suitable for rain-fed production is estimated to be about 28 million square km, of which 45 % is forest area (12.6 million square km) (Steinfeld et al. 2006). Livestock contribute about 9 % of total carbon dioxide emissions, 37 % of methane and 65 % of nitrous oxide. In terms of CO2 equivalents the gaseous emissions from livestock production amounts to about 18 % of the global warming effects. This is more than the contribution from the total transportation sector. Concerning polluting gaseous emissions not linked to climate change, livestock waste contributes 68 % of total emissions of ammonia (30 million tons/year) (Steinfeld et al. 2006). About 0.13 million square km of forest is lost per year and the majority is converted to agricultural land (Steinfeld et al. 2006).
Invitro meat technology:
An environmentally friendly cultured meat technology rests on four basic premises: (1) the culturing of muscle progenitor cells from farm animals of choice that are able to proliferate at a high rate, (2) the application of a growth medium that does not contain animal products, (3) the efficient differentiation of the progenitor cells into muscle cells that contain all nutrients present in conventional meat, and (4) the organisation of the muscle cells into 3-dimensional muscle structures.
Pre-major substitution, I do not see how animals are saved.
In fact, I think it would take a major exodus of humans from earth or the creation of wild biospheres or people moving out of rural areas and into self sufficient cities with high rise farms and meat factories to allow animal habitats. Thus the human condition must be vastly altered (and human suffering and lives so greatly disconnected from the natural environment and thus almost no environmental footprint then it would enable humans to not need animals for food)
Say 1% reduction (a hugely successful vegan campaign) in demand for beef. Every cow raised on farms for meat is still slaughtered and processed. Over a few years 1% less cows raised on ranches, but there is still the same slaughter ratio.
Substitution will not be advanced in the US with government help but just as the soy industry and soy burgers etc... were developed as a substitute to take market share so would meat factories. It would be a lower cost and possibly healthier alternative, niche market business plan that eventually would win more market share. I think that taste and appearance issues can be solved. The product would be far more natural than a protein bar or shake or many other popular food products.
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DC-based research and consulting firm Social Technologies released a series of 12 briefs on their top 12 areas for high impact technology innovation through 2025.
1. Personalized medicine [I agree and have covered personal genomics ]
2. Distributed energy (DE) [Here I think nuclear energy has more potential]
3. Pervasive computing [Fully realizing smart phone and wireless device potential]
4. Nanomaterials [I have written about new carbon nanotube factories and a lot on "active nanosystems", all of the advanced nanotechnology for which my site is named]
5. Biomarkers for health [I have been writing about my proposals for widespread biomarker tracking and part 2 of the biomarker proposal]
6. Biofuels [A bridging technology where electrification of transportation is delayed or less suitable]
7. Advanced manufacturing [rapid prototyping, rapid manufacturing, reel to reel systems, nanofactories]
8. Universal water [I have been covering desalination]
9. Carbon management [Shifting to lower carbon technology like nuclear power and wind power would be better than sequestering]
10. Engineered agriculture [I have been covering aquaculture, genetic engineering for crops, stem cell meat factories, and high rise green houses]
11. Security and tracking [I have tracked advancing imaging technology, surveillance technology, gigapixels, terapixels, sensors, spectrum analysis, lidar, persistent monitoring, RFIDs etc...]
12. Advanced transportation [I have covered electric bikes and scooters, platooning of vehicles, dual mode transportation, electric cars, high efficiency vehicles, advanced truck and diesel systems, transitioning from oil etc...]
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An updated version of Engines of Creation is onlineThe Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN), has an article that points out that the term "molecular nanotechnology" has been associated almost invariably with fantastic notions like bloodstream nanobots, true universal assemblers (“meat machines”), and theoretically ubiquitous “utility fog.” Such concepts admittedly are fascinating to consider and someday may become reality, but they seem to be further in the future than are the middle-period developments that concern CRN.
I believe those who think of those things as fantastic notions are not aware of developments using current technology that are bringing them about.
From New Scientist, diodes could power bloodstream microbots A new form of propulsion that could allow microrobots to explore human bodies has been discovered. Velev's diodes are millimetre-sized but any robot designed to work within the human body would have to be an order of magnitude smaller. In the past, attempts to shrink propulsive mechanisms have run up against a fundamental barrier in fluid dynamics: fluids become progressively more viscous on smaller scales. "It's like moving through honey," says Velev. But extrapolations of the team's measurements indicate the propulsive force will work just as well at smaller scales. "The propulsive force scales in exactly the same way as the drag. That's quite significant," says McKinley.
The first surgical microbot could be ready by 2009
A capsule insertable robot has been made in Japan
Nanoparticles have been used as drug delivery systems. They are more crude than the nanobot vision but they can be remotely guided to the tumor and then triggered from the outside to release material. So they are simple machines.
Similarly mini-bacteria cells are performing similar functionsCellular repair is becoming possible as well.
Magnetically assembled nanotube tips are being added to devices that can inject or remove organelles from cellsThese things are not as capable as the Chromallocyte recently designed by Robert Freitas but it shows that such things are clearly not fanciful.Meat Factories can be made using stem cells. There is existing work with test tube meat.
Step towards utility fog are being made by Intel with work on claytronics
Current claytronics components which are planned to be shrunk to about one millimeter
Projecting rapid manufacturing capabilities from current
rapid prototyping, rapid manufacturing and
fabbing could be not that far from the Engines of creation view of universal assemblers.
Combining the ovonic quantum control device with PRAM and other polymer components could enable more fabbable all flat (reel to reel) printing of computers and solar power cells.
Lasers, combined with metamaterials, nanoparticles and superlens could enable additive rapid manufacturing with 2 nanometer precision.
Non-molecular nanotechnology (microelectronics), pre-molecular nanotechnology (nanoparticles, nanomaterials), DNA nanotechnology, synthetic biology, graphene, fullerene nanotechnology, advanced chemistry, robotics, rapid manufacturing are making possible what was believed would require molecular nanotechnology. When full-blown diamondoid arrives what will actually be possible will be confounding to those who have not been paying attention or who are in denial.
We only will need molecular nanotechnology because we are not being creative enough with what we can already do or on the way to doing very soon. If we were not flushing money on the Shuttle and the Iraq War we could have
mastery of space. If we were not confused about
nuclear power we could have clean energy.
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Work is progressing to determine the factors that will enable large quantities of meat to be grown in a bioreactor. Scientists routinely grow small quantities of muscle cells in petri dishes for experiments. Currently the cost of producing one pound of in vitro meat runs anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000. The cost could be brought down to about $1 per pound by using nutrients from plant or fungal sources and scaling processes to an industrial level.
If successful, artificially grown meat could be tailored to be far healthier than any type of farm-grown meat. It's possible to stuff if full of heart-friendly omega-3 fatty acids, adjust the protein or texture to suit individual taste preferences and screen it for food-borne diseases.
Doctoral student Jason Matheny notes "Cultured meat isn't natural, but neither is yogurt"
A real life approximation of CHON food factories is about 5-10 years away. In the science fiction book, Beyond the Blue Event Horizon by Frederick Pohl, there are efficient space based factories for turning carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen into food.
NOTE: Progress is being made differenting stem cells into blood vessels. This would allow for test tube that is closer to the real thing by adding in blood vessels and other tissue
Success here would bring item five on the list of five inventions that we still need far closer to reality. The ability to convert raw material directly into food. Factories for meat, plants (hydroponics), yogurt etc...
Other transitional future food technology:
Ocean fish farming
NOTE: all different kinds of meat should be produceable in the bioreactors including fish meat. Different stem cells would need to be used.
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