Investor pulls out of Facebook, pumps cash into pork-printing joint News that maverick venture capitalist Peter Thiel dumped 20 million Facebook shares – about $400m worth – last week was accompanied by an announcement about a small investment he made around the same time: in a printable meat company. Looks like biotech company Modern Meadow's ambition to print out a "pork sheet" is more …
as an expat living stateside, whilst I share your mistrust, the idea of being able to print some real bacon is attractive. Over 300 million people and virtually no decent bacon. It is a crime! You actually have to make your own which takes a while.
Now if they can make one print a decent curry and a gallon of scrumpy as well I may just get over my reservations.
I bet the replacement cartridges will cost a fortune!
Yes often, although perhaps I experience it in a less commercial setting. I can imagine in mass slaughter houses it is probably done with no care and a focus on speed. I have no problems personally killing my dinner, some of my dinners killed other things along the way, such is life right? We just happened to luck out to the top of the chain. It might disgust you, and I assume you are a vegan and applaud you for having the courage to stand by your convictions, but bambi tastes nice. It's not something I get enjoyment from, it is just part of life.
There is a vast difference between personally butchering an animal you have killed and a slaughter house.
I've butchered plenty of animals, both hunted and on the farm, myself, it's not too bad, a bit bleeeck but honestly not that bad. In fact I think everyone who eats meat should kill, butcher, and dress at least one animal in their life to gain an understanding of it.
Slaughter house? Would turn the stomach for a combat veteran. Disgusting places. Remembering the smell alone makes me retch.
Yes I have thank you. There is nothing I find disgusting about the process actually. Some of the factory framing methods are however pretty sick, but good quality meet, no nothing about it turns my stomach at all. I am well aware where meet comes from thank you. I am not sure why all the downvotes - clearly you lot are happy to eat man made meat - I'm not. It's totally gross like I said. On the other hand, dead animals, blood, guts, organs - yum yum!
Give me tough chunk of offal over printed bacon anyday.
@LinkOfHyrule - You have seen the meat butchering and processing system they use in the USA? And you don't find it disgusting? You prefer the animals to suffer, for the carcasses to be cross-infected, for massive amount of chemicals to be used to deal with aforementioned infection vectors? And for the end product to be some over-sized, tasteless pap?
And you think the factory farming is somehow separate to the factory butchering?
Really?
That's why all the downvotes!
"Manmade meat" FFS. You think a broiler is natural? You need an education.
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Clearly you cannot understand English mate..................
I said I do not find the process involved in making good quality meat to be disgusting. Good quality meat is never made in factory conditions and the animals have a decent life - makes their meat much much more yummier if they aint all stressed out. I actually clearly stated that some of the factory farming process are sick did I not?
Man made meat - what the heck is wrong with you - yes, synthetic, non natural meat however you want to call it. I don't want to eat that shit. Give me some man made replacement organs if I need them but I am not eating that fucking lame shit! You can if you want, I am sure your printed out roast beef will be lovely and full of flavour.............. I'll stick to brutally killing cows and eating their flesh. I am obviously the most evil person in the world for that arnt I!
Fucking most epic fail I ever seen here.. You suck mate.
It's an intriguing tech - and should considerably less damaging than the disgusting state of the US pork industry... whole rivers and eco-systems destroyed by the toxic run off from the "farms" (hard to really call them farms).
It also shows that a vacuum of real return when it comes to facebook, compared the the possibility of real, tangible returns, from a business that actually produces something. Getting in at the start of something like this artificial meat product, while possibly risky (partly due to the inevitable lobbying from established players and just risk of technical failure), could pay off very well.
On an aside - how would vegetarians feel about this meat? Some are veggies because of their dislike of farming and killing animals, with this aspect removed would they eat artificially grown meat?
Personally, I am a vegetarian but I am hardly fussed about not eating meat. Some people do miss it though, so it is very likely they would eat that.
Another great outcome would be that the use of halal and kosher meet, which is creeping up even in the western world, can be banned without getting the eaters too upset. It could already be banned now really...
The structure is synthetic, but the components are anything but. They are genuine animal derived cells.
This system might do the job for people who are veggies because they disagree with the farming and slaughter of animals for meat. People who don't eat meat for slightly more nebulous reasons (religionm primarily) will no doubt engage in ethical debates for many, many years to come. Printed bacon slabs were descended from bits of actual pig, after all; seems like they'd still count as treyf.
My two vegetarian sons, well one is actually vegan, both hunt.
I think there is a distinction between killing something and what you put in your mouth. Some meat eaters like to eat meat but could not kill it. Some vegetarians don't mind killing animals, but don't want to put dead animal in their mouth.
But how would anyone feel about this stuff? Surely it is not any worse than http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime
I can't see this being a cheap option.
Although if they DO make a food printer (isn't that an early form of Star Trek food replicator?), I could see it being useful for printing out a sandwich or something - except what do you do about the error messages? JAM in output tray for example?
This will work alot better if we can get the makers of bacon printers to talk to bakers and agree on a standard size so that the bacon fits the bread properly. However I'm not hopeful since there still isn't agreement between bakers and toaster manufacturers about the correct size for a piece of bread.
Hopefully the scientists behind this will claim the $1million off PETA:
http://www.peta.org/features/In-Vitro-Meat-Contest.aspx
Anything that takes money out of the pockets of those nut-nuts gets my thumbs up. Maybe they could even take the million dollars and give it to a real animal charity. Like, you know, one that doesn't keep hundreds of dead dogs in a meat locker then throw some of them in a neighbor's bin when that gets full...
As far as manufacturing things goes, people do not question how their quorn or tofu is made, nor question the chemicals involved. Why should a meat printing factory be any different?
I am quite happy to have printed meat of a certain quality, likely beats out the pink slime that McDonalds were using.
If this sort of protein uses less resources than growing a pig or a cow then all is good.
Sorry farmers!
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