Meat production is troubling: It’s responsible for almost 20% of our carbon footprint, animals are treated unethically, the food is largely unhealthy and demand for it from a growing world population may make it scarcer and more expensive. Will we eventually be forced to take the “live” out of livestock? From “Future Foods,” Denise Winterman’s new BBC article, a segment about lab-grown meat:

“Earlier this year, Dutch scientists successfully produced in-vitro meat, also known as cultured meat. They grew strips of muscle tissue using stem cells taken from cows, which were said to resemble calamari in appearance. They hope to create the world’s first ‘test-tube burger’ by the end of the year.

The first scientific paper on lab-grown meat was funded by NASA, says social scientist Dr Neil Stephens, based at Cardiff University’s ESRC Cesagen research centre. It investigated in-vitro meat to see if it was a food astronauts could eat in space.Ten years on and scientists in the field are now promoting it as a more efficient and environmentally friendly way of putting meat on our plates.

A recent study by Oxford University found growing meat in a lab rather than slaughtering animals would significantly reduce greenhouse gases, along with energy and water use. Production also requires a fraction of the land needed to raise cattle. In addition it could be customized to cut the fat content and add nutrients.

Prof Mark Post, who led the Dutch team of scientists at Maastricht University, says he wants to make lab meat ‘indistinguishable’ from the real stuff, but it could potentially look very different. Stephens, who is studying the debate over in-vitro meat, says there are on-going discussions in the field about what it should look like.

He says the idea of such a product is hard for people to take on board because nothing like it currently exists.

‘We simply don’t have a category for this type of stuff in our world, we don’t know what to make of it,’ he says. ‘It is radically different in terms of provenance and product.'” (Thanks Browser.)

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“That’s a big chicken”: