Fake Meat

[moki_blog]

Friend sent me a link to the Colbert Report, focusing on a report he did on 'Fake Meat', or as he called it 'Shmeat'. The idea is simple in concept, to grow the cells that become meat in a petri dish, instead of harvesting it from an animal. PETA is behind this concept, arguing that it spares animals suffering. However, I can't help but ask, aren't

Comments

[teriden]

Well, at least this shmeat doesn't have a central nervous system that can feel pain in the traditional sense. It's still alive, but maybe is more akin to something like a bacterial plaque-- and I'm pretty sure Peta is down with brushing your teeth. The moral: killing stuff is fine, so long as you can't empathize with it.

This reminds me of a recent slideshow in Seed Magazine on tissue engineering in modern art. Weird stuff.

[saetherion]

But plants are living organisms too.

It's a fallacy to assume that peta is concerned with animals... (they're just a crazy weirdo organization)

It is internally consistent to be Vegan and still eat shmeat. Shmeat isn't sentient, cannot feel pain or emotion, and isn't self aware.

The moral isn't "killing stuff is fine, so long as you can't empathize with it", but it's "taking a life that won't suffer or even be aware of its life being ended is preferable to taking one that will." Additionally, cultured meat won't have endured the suffering that many commercially raised animals are subjected to. (A good example is Smithfield Ham). In that sense, I support it fully. If we could actually eliminate the part where animals have to suffer terrible conditions so that we can meet the nation's demand and still turn a tidy profit, that would be fantastic.