Test Tube Meat: The End of Vegetarianism?

Test tube meat
Image by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Test tube meat is of interest to people who genuinely like cats. You kill far less animals to produce test tube meat. That should please genuine cat lovers because cat lovers are seriously concerned about animal welfare.

Vegetarians don’t eat “meat” (a euphemism for the flesh of animals). They don’t eat it because producing meat is bad for animals. You have to kill them and treat them like “products” to be commercially viable in a capitalist society. There are other reasons why we should not eat meat. Green-house gases are one reason. Cows produce methane, which, it is said, contributes to global warming.

Also, on a common sense basis, a lot of people like meat but are concerned about the way it is produced. A billion (1,000,000,000) animals are killed in the UK alone (including fish) per year to feed the human flesh eaters of the country. The conditions under which they live are sometimes highly questionable.

In general, people who like cats, don’t like the way “meat” is produced commercially. Business struggles to treat animals well because it costs more to treat animals well. People who like cats like to see animals treated well.

In vitro burger
In vitro burger. Photo by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com. The background has been changed by Michael

The first in vitro burgers have been produced using stem cells from cows. You still need a source of living creatures to create the stem cells from which more are “grown” but the number of animals required are far less than normal. If we can produce burgers in a test tube, it is probably a good thing provided there are no unforeseen problems regarding human health and animal welfare.

I, for one, welcome it. I don’t eat red meat. I eat chicken and fish occasionally. I don’t really like doing it because both chickens and fish suffer at the hands of big business. I have more or less stopped eating fish. I stopped eating red meat years ago.

I am a bit old fashioned in eating “meat” occasionally. If I could eat a burger that was created with an absolute minimum detriment to cows, it would please me.

I have been criticized for eating “meat”. As mentioned my habits have changed a lot. I haven’t eaten red meat for decades. I sometimes eat chicken and occasionally fish and even that causes concern.

If test tube meat gains traction I wonder if it will, eventually, be used for cat food? If it does happen, I believe it will change the operation of cat shelters in the USA. I say that euthanised shelter cats are used in cat food. If in vitro meat becomes cheaper to create it may lead to more true no-kill cat shelters in the USA because there would be no profit in killing shelter cats.

64 thoughts on “Test Tube Meat: The End of Vegetarianism?”

  1. The author of the best comment will receive an Amazon gift of their choice at Christmas! Please comment as they can add to the article and pass on your valuable experience.
  2. One thing that might help is to reintroduce home economics lessons in schools for all children from day one.

    My Mum taught me to cook, but at school, from age 11 all girls had to do home economics lessons weekly. For those who didn’t get taught to cook at home, these lessons were really useful. Of course back then in the stone age, there weren’t so many processed foods or ready meals.

    If children were encouraged to cook economically (meat is very expensive) and to explore making meals without meat substitutes or with, then they might grow up without the need to eat meat.

    Just a thought.

    Reply
  3. Quorn is very good. Now supermarkets stock so many kinds of mushrooms, that’s a big help for variety of taste and the big chewy thing too

    Reply
  4. I think for now, Quorn is about as good as it gets. I think that science has a long way to go in creating something that is truly like meat.

    Maybe if farming welfare standards were raised up very high (and policed) then the cost of meat would rise to a point where people were more willing to try alternatives.

    It’s hard to know which end to tackle this from isn’t it?

    Reply
    • I suppose there never can be anything which tastes exactly like meat because it’s actually flesh from a living being, so there is no kind way to copy it.
      We cook based with Quorn mince, chicken, or steak strips and with veggie gravy with onions we find our meals delicious.

      Reply

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