Re: Bring me your... cloned???

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 11/1/03 9:24:57 PM Eastern Standard Time,

Idol@... writes:

> You think such meat will actually be nutritious, given that even feeding

> cows grains does so much to destroy the nutritional value of their

> meat? Maybe someday technology will advance sufficiently to generate

> optimal meat without using actual animals, but that possibility is far more

> remote than our lifespans. Any such meat we ever see will be heinous

> beyond belief.

Judging by the record of synthesizing organic chemicals in general I think

we've got a long way to go before we can synthesize meat!

Chris

[Guest guest]

>

> I'm hoping that all this cloning actually progresses to the

> production of Cyborg farm animals. The least we can to is

> completely engineer us some real bad a## animals that could

> impart to us some of their Cyborgishness. ;-P

Actually, _I'm_ looking forward to the eventuality of

directly cloned meat. This will allow humans to consume

flesh foods, guaranteed free of e-coli, etc., without

the brutal necessity of butchering our fellow beings.

[Guest guest]

-

You think such meat will actually be nutritious, given that even feeding

cows grains does so much to destroy the nutritional value of their

meat? Maybe someday technology will advance sufficiently to generate

optimal meat without using actual animals, but that possibility is far more

remote than our lifespans. Any such meat we ever see will be heinous

beyond belief.

>Actually, _I'm_ looking forward to the eventuality of

>directly cloned meat. This will allow humans to consume

>flesh foods, guaranteed free of e-coli, etc., without

>the brutal necessity of butchering our fellow beings.

-

[Guest guest]

-

>Actually, _I'm_ looking forward to the eventuality of

>directly cloned meat.

I neglected to add that all nutrition depends explicitly on soil fertility,

which arises from an enormously complex system of interdependent elements

including but not limited to minerals, organic matter, microbes, insects,

animals, and plants. Direct cloning of meat will yield the flesh

equivalent of hydroponics -- the appearance of a food without much actual

food value to speak of.

-

[Guest guest]

Chris-

Well... yes and no. There's a lot of interesting work being done on

providing biodegradable support frameworks for cloned tissue, and in the

next few decades we'll probably see some amazing progress -- from a

functional perspective. But nutritionally? I have every confidence that

cloned flesh will be garbage for a very long time.

>Judging by the record of synthesizing organic chemicals in general I think

>we've got a long way to go before we can synthesize meat!

-

[Guest guest]

----- Original Message -----

From: <ChrisMasterjohn@...>

> Judging by the record of synthesizing organic chemicals in general

To what are you referring? I wasn't aware that the record was

particularly bad.

> I think

> we've got a long way to go before we can synthesize meat!

Scientists have already been successful in culturing small amounts of

muscle tissue. The main problems are producing an effective

nutrient-delivery system (blood vessels and the like) for larger pieces

of meat and effectively duplicating the texture of natural meat (that

is, having the fibres, rather than just a mass of cells). They're

currently experimenting with ways to...uh...exercise it. I'd give it

five years, tops.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993208

[Guest guest]

--- In , Idol <Idol@c...>

wrote:

> -

>

> You think such meat will actually be nutritious, given that even

> feeding cows grains does so much to destroy the nutritional value

> of their meat?

I'm not really convinced that the nutritional value of

meat from grain-fed animals _is_ all that " destroyed " .

Something may be missing, or something present that may

have a negative effect, at least on some, but I don't

believe such meat is truly without any nutritional value.

I think that that's just the apothecary's " dragon's blood "

for many health-seekers of our ilk.

> Maybe someday technology will advance sufficiently to generate

> optimal meat without using actual animals, but that possibility

> is far more remote than our lifespans.

The logical assumption is that the exact chemical make-up,

down to the last atom, of both ideal dietary meat, as well

as the ideal feed for meat animals, will eventually be

understood. Actually not " ideal feed " in the context of

our discussion, but rather the slurry fed into the cloning

tanks, something that will more resemble the cattle's blood

delivering the necessary nutrients to the muscle tissue

necessary for it to grow.

> Any such meat we ever see will be heinous beyond belief.

I don't see why you're so pessimistic when even the meat of

that one cloned sheep (was her name Dolly?) probably wouldn't

have been distinguishable from that of her mother if you were

to taste it. Something can't resemble another so closely in

appearance, texture and taste without sharing at least some

of the same nutritional value.

[Guest guest]

-

>but I don't

>believe such meat is truly without any nutritional value.

It's certainly not without any nutritional value, but grain-fed beef is

largely missing key nutrients like CLA, has an imbalance of n3:n6 PUFA, and

has a much different and higher bacterial count than grass-fed.

I've also noticed that when I run out of grass-fed meat and eat grain-fed

for awhile, my health suffers somewhat. It's a far smaller difference than

that between meat and, say, grains, but it's quite definitely there. I

have pretty poor health, though, so those things are more noticeable to me.

>The logical assumption is that the exact chemical make-up,

>down to the last atom, of both ideal dietary meat, as well

>as the ideal feed for meat animals, will eventually be

>understood.

Eventually, yes, but probably not with our lifetimes, or at least not

widely enough that ideal or even excellent cloned flesh could be generated

except maybe on an experimental scale.

>when even the meat of

>that one cloned sheep (was her name Dolly?) probably wouldn't

>have been distinguishable from that of her mother if you were

>to taste it.

First, flesh formed in a vat is a completely different beast from flesh

taken off an animal, even if the animal was cloned, and second, who's

talking about taste? I thought nutrition was the subject.

-

[Guest guest]

You all sound like you don't have problems with cloning and genetic

engineering. I really do. It disgusts me. If the world gets to a point

where we are forced to clone and genetically modify animals and plants

to feed us all, then we have too many people. Cloning and any sort of

" biotechnology " (nice PR euphemism) scare the manure out of me, and

what's more, once such experiments have been unleashed, no natural

organisms are safe--for all we know the organic whole wheat out there

has traces of animal DNA in it from cross-pollination with commercial

GMO wheat. This really bothers me.

(For the record, I'm pro-choice and mostly pro-stem-cell research.)

And if we did get to the day where we could skip animals and create

artifical meat somehow, I would not want to eat it, even if its

nutriotional content was more " optimal " than a properly raised animal.

I'm shuddering just thinking about it. It's just one more step on the

way to the human race turning into cyborgs or brains in vats. Call me

paranoid if you will.

[Guest guest]

----- Original Message -----

From: " wtsdv " <liberty@...>

> > Any such meat we ever see will be heinous beyond belief.

>

> I don't see why you're so pessimistic when even the meat of

> that one cloned sheep (was her name Dolly?) probably wouldn't

> have been distinguishable from that of her mother if you were

> to taste it. Something can't resemble another so closely in

> appearance, texture and taste without sharing at least some

> of the same nutritional value.

Keep in mind that there are two separate issues in this thread. One is

meat cultured in vitro, and the other is meat from cloned animals. I

share 's objections to the first, although I believe that the

greatest obstacle is not the technological problems inherent in

producing good meat in vitro, but simply the abysmal state of

nutritional science. I think that if everyone could agree upon a good

specification for nutritious meat, then someone could probably come up

with a workable solution for producing it in 10-15 years. As things

stand now, they're probably trying to make lean beef with the lipid

profile of canola oil.

However, I see no problem with meat from cloned animals (other than the

fact that there is no reliable means of cloning mammals yet). I suspect

that most of the opposition to this is just emotion-driven luddism, but

I'm open to any arguments which anyone might have as to why I'm wrong.

[Guest guest]

>You all sound like you don't have problems with cloning and genetic

>engineering.

I don't -- at least not with the technologies themselves. Obviously they

can be used with ill intent or lack of foresight, but IMO that's all.

>If the world gets to a point

>where we are forced to clone and genetically modify animals and plants

>to feed us all, then we have too many people.

Cloning and genetic modification don't actually feed any more

people. Today genetic engineering is just used to boost corporate profits

-- by engineering " Roundup Ready " crops, for example. And direct

generation of flesh would probably be an environmental disaster, just like

hydroponics, because instead of a biodynamic and self-perpetuating farm

system, we'd have to strip mine the planet to harvest the nutrients to put

in the vats to form the flesh.

>no natural

>organisms are safe--for all we know the organic whole wheat out there

>has traces of animal DNA in it from cross-pollination with commercial

>GMO wheat. This really bothers me.

Certainly we need to regulate the heck out of the field. The problem is

that the technology came at a time when the wrong people were in power.

>And if we did get to the day where we could skip animals and create

>artifical meat somehow, I would not want to eat it, even if its

>nutriotional content was more " optimal " than a properly raised animal.

I'd have no squeamishness about it (assuming it tastes good, anyway) but

like I said, it would be an environmental disaster, so I'd want no part of it.

>It's just one more step on the

>way to the human race turning into cyborgs or brains in vats. Call me

>paranoid if you will.

I don't understand how the progression is supposed to go.

-

[Guest guest]

--- In , Idol <Idol@c...>

wrote:

>

> I neglected to add that all nutrition depends explicitly on soil

> fertility, . . .

I know, you say that quite often, and I agree to a certain

extent. However a muscle cell in a piece of meat, or a

cell in a vegetable, doesn't carry much more nutrients, or

_chemicals_ for the sake of this discussion, in itself than

are actually being used in some process or other. Animals

and plants store excess nutrients seperately in body fat,

starchy tubers, etc. as you already well know. Thus for a

muscle cell to actually _be_ a muscle cell it must contain

a certain minimal number of chemical substances. Any less

and you don't get a muscle cell. That guarantees a certain

minimum number of particular nutrients when you eat any sort

of meat whatsoever. A carrot must have so many cells of

certain chemical make-up to ever even be identifiable as a

carrot, and so on with every other organic food stuff there

is. This means that if there is actually too little of

something in the soil in a given field, rather than the

fodder grown being completely free of any nutritive value,

there will actually just be less total mass of given type

of plant possible. This means that rather than the cattle

fed on that fodder yielding completely non-nutritive meat,

only the total amount of feed possible will be reduced and

thus the possible total amount of beef derivable from that

given piece of land reduced. The main nutrients in meat are

complete protein and fat. Soil quality will limit the total

amount of flesh food derivable from a given piece of land,

but once X amount of flesh is actually " harvested " , then a

fairly fixed proportion of complete protein can safely be

expected from the same. If it came from a dead cow, and

it looks and tastes like meat, then it cannot but contain a

certain amount of protein and fat. There's no way around it.

> which arises from an enormously complex system of

> interdependent elements including but not limited to minerals,

> organic matter, microbes, insects, animals, and plants.

All of these variables eventually result in one thing, or

not. That one thing being the blood in the cow which delivers

all of the proper nutrients to the cow's muscle tissue for

growth, or not. The issue is no more complex than understanding

what a healthy animal's blood stream delivers to its muscle

tissue.

> Direct cloning of meat will yield the flesh equivalent of

> hydroponics -- the appearance of a food without much actual

> food value to speak of.

The complete range of chemicals necessary to grow an ideal

plant are not yet known. The nutrient mixtures fed to

hydroponic plants contain only what is now known or suspected

to be necessary, and little else. When hydroponic plants

are fed on something like anaerobically fermented cow manure,

they produce incredible fruits and vegetables. I used to

live on a ranch and one year tried an experiment. I gathered

enough cow manure to fill a large gas can. I mixed it with

water, tightly sealed it and let it ferment for about 9 months,

if I remember correctly. My mother and I found that anything

we tried to grow with just this substance heavily diluted with

water and without any soil, grew wonderfully. I've always

wanted to make more of that stuff, but I live in the city now.

You may have heard of it before, it's the so-called waste

product of producing methane from manure.

[Guest guest]

>

> Judging by the record of synthesizing organic chemicals in

> general I think we've got a long way to go before we can

> synthesize meat!

Were not talking about _synthesizing_ meat, which implies

building it up at the molecular level from basic elements.

Were talking about producing meat exactly as it is now,

through the reproduction of pre-existing muscle cells, only

removing some of the so-called " natural " steps in between

hay and dinner plate, including the brutal part.

[Guest guest]

----- Original Message -----

From: " lucientj " <cassiusdio@...>

> You all sound like you don't have problems with cloning and genetic

> engineering. I really do. It disgusts me. If the world gets to a point

> where we are forced to clone and genetically modify animals and plants

> to feed us all, then we have too many people. Cloning and any sort of

> " biotechnology " (nice PR euphemism) scare the manure out of me, and

> what's more, once such experiments have been unleashed, no natural

> organisms are safe--for all we know the organic whole wheat out there

> has traces of animal DNA in it from cross-pollination with commercial

> GMO wheat. This really bothers me.

Do you know what cloning is? I'll grant for the sake of argument that

there may be some valid concerns regarding cross-pollination and whatnot

(ironically, or perhaps not, many of the people who are protesting GMOs

on these grounds were the same ones who pressured Monsanto into not

using the Terminator gene, which would have eliminated or greatly

reduced this danger). That said, I have no idea what cloning has to do

with any of the above.

> (For the record, I'm pro-choice and mostly pro-stem-cell research.)

Mostly?

> And if we did get to the day where we could skip animals and create

> artifical meat somehow, I would not want to eat it, even if its

> nutriotional content was more " optimal " than a properly raised animal.

From the way things look now, it's probably possible to accomplish this

without genetic engineering or cloning.

> I'm shuddering just thinking about it. It's just one more step on the

> way to the human race turning into cyborgs or brains in vats.

What's wrong with that? I can't wait to be a cyborg, the brain-in-a-vat

gig might have its advantages, too.

[Guest guest]

-

>I believe that the

>greatest obstacle is not the technological problems inherent in

>producing good meat in vitro, but simply the abysmal state of

>nutritional science.

That's a very large part of the problem, but I don't see institutional

nutrition performing an about face and learning everything that would need

to be learned all that quickly.

>I think that if everyone could agree upon a good

>specification for nutritious meat, then someone could probably come up

>with a workable solution for producing it in 10-15 years.

It would take a long time to reach that specification, though, even if

everyone abruptly changed course and headed in the right direction today

and nobody acted in bad faith anymore.

>I suspect

>that most of the opposition to this is just emotion-driven luddism, but

>I'm open to any arguments which anyone might have as to why I'm wrong.

Yeah, I don't see any reason it should be a problem either, except to

whatever degree cloning techniques impair the health of the cloned animal,

and presumably that's just a technical problem that can be ironed out over

time.

-

[Guest guest]

--- In , Idol <Idol@c...>

wrote:

>

> It's certainly not without any nutritional value, but grain-fed

beef is

> largely missing key nutrients like CLA, has an imbalance of n3:n6

PUFA, and

> has a much different and higher bacterial count than grass-fed.

Not only are there other sources of CLA and PUFA, but more

importantly, since we _know_ about this, we will add them,

or whatever substrate is needed by cattle to produce them,

to the nutrient mixture delivered to the tissue cultures.

> I've also noticed that when I run out of grass-fed meat and eat

grain-fed

> for awhile, my health suffers somewhat. It's a far smaller

difference than

> that between meat and, say, grains, but it's quite definitely

there. I

> have pretty poor health, though, so those things are more

noticeable to me.

Such small differences can easily be placebic or nocebic.

That's why I mentioned " dragon's blood " .

> Eventually, yes, but probably not with our lifetimes, or at least

not

> widely enough that ideal or even excellent cloned flesh could be

generated

> except maybe on an experimental scale.

Well, like I said, I'm not convinced that it hasn't already

been done. Did anybody taste Dolly?

> First, flesh formed in a vat is a completely different beast from

flesh

> taken off an animal, even if the animal was cloned, and second,

who's

> talking about taste? I thought nutrition was the subject.

If it tastes 90% the same, then it _is_ 90% the same

nutritionally. Nutrients are not invisible ghosts

that dwell in steaks, carrots or whatever, and that

can disappear leaving a completely intact mortal coil.

They're the various substances necessary, and in the

amounts necessary, for those things to _be_ the very

things that they are, in appearance, in taste, and in

all else.

[Guest guest]

Yeah, IF it were strictly regulated and thoroughly researched

beforehand (as in years or decades of careful study), then I'd be much

more open to the idea. But that's far from being the case now, and I

don't expect it to be anytime soon, with the power and greed of

agribusiness these days.

The progression goes like this, in my mind: we start eating artificial

meat and soon our diet is all artificial and " optimized " . Then some

people decide they don't want to bother taking time to eat---yeah it

tastes good but I'd rather be doing something else fun---so an

all-liquid diet is created, and then IV feeds, and then we're all

strapped into virtual reality machines where all we do is think to

advance science and philosophy. We won't have to waste time with pesky

real-world things like brushing our teeth or going places.

It's a long way off, I hope, but don't you see that something like

this is probably going to obtain eventually? I think it's a logical

" conclusion " , but of course it's really only the next big step. Who

knows what would be beyond that. Maybe I should join the Amish....

I understand that technology has constantly been improving

agriculture, which has been a good thing until recently. But GMOs are

where I draw the line. Maybe it's stubborn of me, but I think things

are progressing much too quickly. Again, I'm not opposed to GMOs on

principle, but even with all the right conditions I'd have a hard time

overcoming my squeamishness on this issue. It's just a " feeling " that

I have. Maybe it's irrational, or maybe it's a semiconscious moral

sense that we've messed with nature enough and now we can stop and be

satisfied.

Tom

>

> >You all sound like you don't have problems with cloning and genetic

> >engineering.

>

> I don't -- at least not with the technologies themselves. Obviously

they

> can be used with ill intent or lack of foresight, but IMO that's all.

>

> >If the world gets to a point

> >where we are forced to clone and genetically modify animals and plants

> >to feed us all, then we have too many people.

>

> Cloning and genetic modification don't actually feed any more

> people. Today genetic engineering is just used to boost corporate

profits

> -- by engineering " Roundup Ready " crops, for example. And direct

> generation of flesh would probably be an environmental disaster,

just like

> hydroponics, because instead of a biodynamic and self-perpetuating farm

> system, we'd have to strip mine the planet to harvest the nutrients

to put

> in the vats to form the flesh.

>

> >no natural

> >organisms are safe--for all we know the organic whole wheat out there

> >has traces of animal DNA in it from cross-pollination with commercial

> >GMO wheat. This really bothers me.

>

> Certainly we need to regulate the heck out of the field. The

problem is

> that the technology came at a time when the wrong people were in power.

>

> >And if we did get to the day where we could skip animals and create

> >artifical meat somehow, I would not want to eat it, even if its

> >nutriotional content was more " optimal " than a properly raised animal.

>

> I'd have no squeamishness about it (assuming it tastes good, anyway)

but

> like I said, it would be an environmental disaster, so I'd want no

part of it.

>

> >It's just one more step on the

> >way to the human race turning into cyborgs or brains in vats. Call me

> >paranoid if you will.

>

> I don't understand how the progression is supposed to go.

>

>

>

> -

[Guest guest]

>>>>>>However a muscle cell in a piece of meat, or a

cell in a vegetable, doesn't carry much more nutrients, or

_chemicals_ for the sake of this discussion, in itself than

are actually being used in some process or other. Animals

and plants store excess nutrients seperately in body fat,

starchy tubers, etc. as you already well know. Thus for a

muscle cell to actually _be_ a muscle cell it must contain

a certain minimal number of chemical substances. Any less

and you don't get a muscle cell. That guarantees a certain

minimum number of particular nutrients when you eat any sort

of meat whatsoever.

------>sure, but is it the specific milieu of nutrients that promote

*health* for the creature that eats the meat, be it human or animal?

clearly, we know this is not the case with grain-fed meat vs. grass-fed.

just because grain-fed meat may contain an equal amount of fatty acids as

grass-fed, doesn't mean they are the health-promoting combination of fatty

acids that our bodies have evolved to thrive on. case in point is the EFA

ratio, just because arachidonic acid replaces other fatty acids in grain-fed

meat (due to grain feeding), is it of equal nutritional value to grass-fed

meat with a healthy EFA profile? no. that's well established, so i think

that could easily be extrapolated to other nutrients in fabricated meat.

also don't' forget there could be many as yet unidentified important

nutritional components in grass-fed meat that cannot be replicated in the

lab if they are not yet known.

Suze Fisher

Lapdog Design, Inc.

Web Design & Development

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3shjg

Weston A. Price Foundation Chapter Leader, Mid Coast Maine

http://www.westonaprice.org

----------------------------

“The diet-heart idea (the idea that saturated fats and cholesterol cause

heart disease) is the greatest scientific deception of our times.” --

Mann, MD, former Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry at Vanderbilt

University, Tennessee; heart disease researcher.

The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics

<http://www.thincs.org>

----------------------------

[Guest guest]

----- Original Message -----

From: " Idol " <Idol@...>

> And direct

> generation of flesh would probably be an environmental disaster, just

like

> hydroponics, because instead of a biodynamic and self-perpetuating

farm

> system, we'd have to strip mine the planet to harvest the nutrients to

put

> in the vats to form the flesh.

I'm not following. It seems reasonable to assume that no nutrients would

be wasted in the production of hydroponic meat. Either it gets

assimilated into the meat, or it stays in the vat. So for each pound of

meat, there's a certain amount of nutrients that have to be dug up

somewhere else. With a cow, you have the same problem. All the nutrients

in the meat at the time of slaughter are taken off the farm and out of

the soil forever. Sooner or later, you're going to have to dig the

nutrients up from somewhere else in order to replenish the farm's soil.

What's the difference?

[Guest guest]

>>>Not only are there other sources of CLA and PUFA, but more

importantly, since we _know_ about this, we will add them,

or whatever substrate is needed by cattle to produce them,

to the nutrient mixture delivered to the tissue cultures.

----->you are WAY more trusting of the small group of human beings

controlling such a project and their funder$ than i am.

Suze Fisher

Lapdog Design, Inc.

Web Design & Development

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3shjg

Weston A. Price Foundation Chapter Leader, Mid Coast Maine

http://www.westonaprice.org

----------------------------

“The diet-heart idea (the idea that saturated fats and cholesterol cause

heart disease) is the greatest scientific deception of our times.” --

Mann, MD, former Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry at Vanderbilt

University, Tennessee; heart disease researcher.

The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics

<http://www.thincs.org>

----------------------------

[Guest guest]

--- In , " lucientj " <cassiusdio@g...>

wrote:

>

> You all sound like you don't have problems with cloning and

> genetic engineering. I really do. It disgusts me.

No, I have no problem whatsoever with cloning and genetic

engineering in principle. That is not to say that I would

approve of each and every use to which these might be put.

Keep in mind that by some definitions of " natural " , anything

done by a human being is unnatural. Actually the term is

so meaningless as to be useless in almost any discussion.

> If the world gets to a point where we are forced to clone and

> genetically modify animals and plants to feed us all, . . .

I wasn't advocating cloning animal flesh for the sake of

feeding more people. _That_ whole issue involves a complex

formula involving available energy, land area, and available

substrate materials, and is one that I don't think will be

helped any in the long run by cloning.

> . . . then we have too many people.

I think we already have far too many people in the world

to provide everybody an optimal diet.

> Cloning and any sort of " biotechnology " (nice PR euphemism)

> scare the manure out of me, . . .

Everything we don't understand scares us initially, but

we don't have the right to hold back the rest of the world

because of our personal fears.

> and what's more, once such experiments have been unleashed, no

> natural organisms are safe--

That's a slippery-slope argument, and a sort of thing

born out of fear, and one appealing to others' fear.

Few good decisions are ever made from a position of fear.

> for all we know the organic whole wheat out there has traces of

> animal DNA in it from cross-pollination with commercial GMO wheat.

> This really bothers me.

It bothers me too, but alot of things in our world bother

me, many of which involve no advanced technology at all,

and many of which have been around for millions of years. )-:

> And if we did get to the day where we could skip animals and

> create artifical meat somehow, I would not want to eat it, even

> if its nutriotional content was more " optimal " than a properly

> raised animal.

Yes, there's an aversion to even the idea of artificiality.

Though if you think it about it, most of the foods you do

happily consume now were brought to you by human artifice.

Even your beef cows are the result of millenia of human-

manipulated breeding. Why is artificial eating disturbing,

but not artificial conversation or learning (you're reading

a computer screen!)?

> I'm shuddering just thinking about it. It's just one more step on

> the way to the human race turning into cyborgs or brains in vats.

You've been watching too many episodes of the 'Twilight

Zone':-), and again, that is a slippery-slope argument.

A thing is only bad if it _itself_ is bad, not merely

because we can imagine a way in which it can eventually

_lead_ to something bad. If we allow any other definition,

then we really do step onto a slippery slope to the

eventual loss of all freedom. Furthermore, though I

don't like the idea of being a brain in a vat either,

aren't we all already exactly just that, brains in bone

" vats " ? I also augment my natural memory with my

computer drive, the natural reach of my voice with the

telephone, my eyesight with glasses, and my feet with

a car, so we're already well on our way to cyborg-hood.

My point is that you're stand is based entirely on how

you choose to look at things, rather than on the actual

reality.

> Call me paranoid if you will.

No, I won't call you paranoid, and I do understand your

feelings, but now is where we see if _you_ are willing

to understand others' feelings and viewpoint as well.

Because you see, I have every bit as big of a problem,

and as much disgust, with the slaughter of animals as

you do with cloning. In fact personally, I really have

a hard time understanding how someone can have a problem

with cloned meat, but none with the bashing in of a fellow

creature's head, then spilling its guts onto the ground,

hacking up the whole mess and eating it. What or whom

won't we kill if they have something that we really need?

I'm sure you draw a line somewhere, but wouldn't it be

nice if that line could be redrawn someday to an even

better distance from the ideal? The recent discussions

of sheeps heads and other such have really nauseated me.

I don't say anything because I do believe that eating

flesh is natural for homo-sapiens and probably necessary

for optimal health for most, if not all human-beings.

However that said, there is in no way, other than

coincidental, any congruity between what is natural and

what is moral or even just ideal.

[Guest guest]

> >>>Not only are there other sources of CLA and PUFA, but more

> importantly, since we _know_ about this, we will add them,

> or whatever substrate is needed by cattle to produce them,

> to the nutrient mixture delivered to the tissue cultures.

>

> ----->you are WAY more trusting of the small group of human

> beings controlling such a project and their funder$ than i am.

I'm not trusting of anybody, including the back-to-nature crowd,

and the " funders " of such projects are ultimately you and i and

anyone else who buys food. We're discussing the feasability of

producing nutritious meat in culture mediums, not what choices

some commercial food producer might make in the future when using

such technology. That's out of our control, and _should_ be out

of our control. We don't have the right to tell others what to

sell, only to choose what we ourselves _buy_.

[Guest guest]

-

>It seems reasonable to assume that no nutrients would

>be wasted in the production of hydroponic meat. Either it gets

>assimilated into the meat, or it stays in the vat.

I expect that the hydroponic medium (for lack of a better term) would

become polluted by the growth of the meat and would need to be discarded or

at least processed after each batch (perhaps even many times during the

generation of a batch) but even if that didn't prove to be true, there'd be

many vectors of waste.

First, consider that a cow's waste nourishes the earth. Second, consider

that in a truly biodynamic system, human waste wouldn't be discarded

either. Third, remember that there's substantial inefficiency in mining

raw materials and converting them to nutrients as compared to letting the

biosphere do the work for us.

-

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 11/1/03 10:36:07 PM Eastern Standard Time,

bberg@... writes:

> >Judging by the record of synthesizing organic chemicals in general

>

> To what are you referring? I wasn't aware that the record was

> particularly bad.

>

That statement was a result of a combination of a) bad phrasing and poor

understanding of what was being discussed.

For some reason I was thinking of meat being " copied " if you will rather than

" grown, " in which case every chemical in the meat would have to be copied

rather than synthesized by the tissue, which I quickly realized was not the

case (further posts plus a dose of common sense). Also, I was referring (in my

mind) not to the " meat " framework, but to, like , all the nutrition etc.

As to the " record " of synthesis, we're still pretty bad at synthesizing

chemicals (though we haven't been doing it long) e.g. say we want to synthesize

some vitamin E we end up 7 out of 8 unusable stereoisomers whereas say grass

that

a cow is eating wants to synthesize vitamin E it makes the one usable isomer.

Which I now realize is irrelevant.

Chris

[Guest guest]

----- Original Message -----

From: " Idol " <Idol@...>

> >It seems reasonable to assume that no nutrients would

> >be wasted in the production of hydroponic meat. Either it gets

> >assimilated into the meat, or it stays in the vat.

>

> I expect that the hydroponic medium (for lack of a better term) would

> become polluted by the growth of the meat and would need to be

discarded or

> at least processed after each batch (perhaps even many times during

the

> generation of a batch) but even if that didn't prove to be true,

there'd be

> many vectors of waste.

It's possible that they could, say, add symbiotic microorganisms to keep

everything clean, but we'll say for the sake of argument that there's

some processing involved. On the other hand, animals have to be tended.

TANSTAAFL.

> First, consider that a cow's waste nourishes the earth.

Right. As I said, only the nutrients in the animal at the time of

slaughter would be permanently removed from the soil.

> Second, consider that in a truly biodynamic system, human waste

wouldn't be

> discarded either.

Fair enough, but you could also process human waste to recover

nutrients.

> Third, remember that there's substantial inefficiency in mining

> raw materials and converting them to nutrients as compared to letting

the

> biosphere do the work for us.

Sure, but how substantial? Most of the minerals necessary for human

nutrition are abundant and inexpensive. You can get a kilogram of

supplement-grade calcium or magnesium salts for under $10 retail, and

sodium and potassium, iron, and copper are dirt-cheap. Besides,

biodynamic farming has its own set of inefficiencies. Food producers

haven't switched to factory farming just because they like making us

sick. Which is more efficient is a question that will be answered by

market forces.

Anyway, there's already an industry which artificially isolates

nutrients found in nature. The supplement industry hasn't been an

unprecedented environmental disaster--what makes you think that the

hydroponic meat industry will be?