Having been a vegetarian for ten years, I am always excited when large restaurant chains announce the release of vegetarian meal options. For example when Burger-Fi introduced their beyond burger I couldn’t wait to go try it out. Part of the reason that I am a vegetarian is that I really don’t agree with the ethics of factory farming. I hate how animals are pumped full of hormones and forced to live in deplorable often unsanitary conditions, often living in pens so crowded that they can hardly move around. However, those ethical drawbacks to eating meat could be avoided with the rise of lab grown meat.
I was recently reading a Canadian news article (linked below), that delved further into the process of producing and the ethics of eating lab grown meat. Essentially, stem cells from the animal are put in a lab and grown into muscle, thus creating meat without having to raise (and then murder) an animal. Not only would this address the ethical gray area of current factory farming practices, it would also be a cheaper and more environmentally friendly way to get meat.
While this method of producing meat will probably be met with a certain level of scrutiny and backlash (similar groups to non GMO supporters), I am very excited to see how lab grown meat will hit the market—if it ever gets there—and how it will compete with the traditional form of meat production.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/what-on-earth-newsletter-lab-grown-meat-green-energy-1.5281252