These creatures you have seen are animals carven and wrought into new shapes. To that, to the study of the plasticity of living forms, my life has been devoted. I have studied for years, gaining in knowledge as I go. I see you look horrified, and yet I am telling you nothing new. It all lay in the surface of practical anatomy years ago, but no one had the temerity to touch it.
The Island of Dr. Moreau
H.G. Wells, 1896
It started early this week with Scientists grow pork meat in a laboratory, published in the TimesOnline from The Sunday Times. Initially I assumed that it was just part of the ‘win a prize if you create meat without killing animals’ contest sponsored by some vegetarian or animal rights organization. After scanning it briefly, I was amused at first, especially by the fact that most of the important details had yet to be worked out, - such as not using tissue from dead animals, and oh, yes the taste and texture - and that it would take five years to get the “in-vitro” meat to the stage where it would be acceptable to use in sausage! I thought about putting my amusing two cents in, but then John Stewart beat me to the punchline, and so I decided to let it pass when After Delays, Vaccine to Counter Bad Beef Is Being Tested was published in yesterday’s in the New York Times Business Section. This was one article I wasn’t going to pass on, and it caused me to go back and for a closer look at the Sunday Times.
The tone of the NYT’s article seemed positive; after years of a bureaucratic shell game industrial feed lot owners were going to be able to conduct large-scale tests on the effectiveness of a vaccine intended to make cattle immune to E. Coli. This of course would lead to a dramatic reduction in food poisoning from meat tainted with the bacteria. As I read to the end of the article, I reached the punchline,
The large-scale study that includes Mr. Timmerman’s calves is being coordinated and paid for by Cargill, the food giant that is the biggest producer of ground beef in the country.
Going back to The Sunday Times article, it wasn’t for the sake of the vegetarians and animal activists that the Dutch researchers were attempting to make ‘meat’ without killing animals, it was for a far greater benefit of reducing “the billions of tons of greenhouse gases emitted each year by farm animals.” Additionally, while the beginning of the article indicated that it was a project ‘funded by’ the Dutch government, the end of the article indicated that the project “is backed by a sausage manufacturer and has received £2m from the Dutch government”.
What we have here in both cases is Big Ag trying to mold animals to suite their needs, while carefully trying to convince us that they are really our needs. Their immediate requirements are to find quick, cheap solutions to the problems they have created with their industrial methods, their mega-feedlots, which have no regard for the animals and from what I can see little more regard for the end users of their products - heaven forbid they address the true causes of the problems that they've unleashed. What’s next, genetically engineered cattle with immunity to all diseases and the ability to drop dead within minutes of reaching its market weight, and maybe, hydroponically grown pork chops complete with a gene that produces its own marinade! And of course, why worry about unintended consequences.
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