PETA’s Latest Tactic: $1 Million for Fake Meat [View All]

Source: NYT

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals....

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...said it would announce plans on Monday for 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.”

The idea of getting the next Chicken McNugget out of a test tube is not new. For several years, scientists have worked to develop technologies to grow tissue cultures that could be consumed like meat without the expense of land or feed and the disease potential of real meat. An international symposium on the topic was held this month in Norway. The tissue, once grown, could be shaped and given texture with the kinds of additives and structural agents that are now used to give products like soy burgers a more meaty texture.

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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.

Lisa Lange, a vice president of the organization, said she was part of the heated exchange. “My main concern is, as the largest animal rights organization in the world, it’s our job to introduce the philosophy and hammer it home that animals are not ours to eat.” Ms. Lange added, “I remember saying I would be much more comfortable promoting eating roadkill.”

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Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/us/21meat.html

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An interesting story. I'm not much of a fan of PETA, but I think it's interesting that this decision so thoroughly challenges the morals of some of its membership. In vitro meat would go a LONG way toward eliminating factory farming if it was economically viable. It's GUARANTEED to be genetically modified, of course!

Remember the cow or whatever it was in the restaurant at the end of the universe?