I'm thinking about laboratory meat, cell-cultured and vat grown.
I read an article yesterday in The New Yorker ("Test-Tube Burgers") that's got me interested, if only because I get to exercise my imagination a bit. I posted last week in The Anniversary Post links to old posts from 2009 where I recounted my experiences with chicken killing and a slaughterhouse visit, both adventures spurred by my interest in where my food comes from and the easy, complacent disconnect our privileged culture indulges at great physical, mental, and spiritual expense. I wonder how test-tube manufactured meat might fit into this equation.
I don't believe laboratory raised "meat" will find it's way to a cost effective, common option in my lifetime, maybe not even as an elitist delicacy, but for the sake of curiosity, I've envisioned what my trip to the carnery, in the spirit of my former excursions, might have entailed.
I had to petition for entrance into the carnery. For seven months and eighteen days I waited for my "pass" to arrive. Finally, after pulling a few strings, I approached the windowless building, the "factory", with mixed emotions.
I've tasted the high-priced boeuf, in vitro at two Manhattan haute eateries where the selections out priced Kobe and Wagyu steaks by a few hundred dollars per ounce. (On both occasions I was a guest)
The flavor is fairly indistinguishable from USDA Grade A ground beef, at least I think it is. One has to forget she is eating what could arguably be considered 'unnatural' in order to asses it's culinary appropriateness, and genius, with serious open mindedness. It's like eating tripe or brains for the first time, or perhaps more aptly, innovative Chef Wylie Dufrense's "meat glue", which I encountered sometime back in the early millennium.
Inside the carnery lobby I was greeted by a young woman in stilettos and pencil skirt, white lab coat and retro large framed eyeglasses evocative of the 1980's. She was very friendly and spoke with a slight British accent, running quickly through the bullet points of the release form I was to sign before the tour could begin. I was asked to leave all my belongings with a guard - mobile computer devices not allowed - and step into a sanitizing shower - something like a scene from that old classic, E.T. when the scientists arrive to inspect the extra terrestrial. I was given a white lab coat, a hair net and matching footies to slip over my shoes and told to keep my hands off the glass. We stepped onto a moving platform where I could just see, 20 feet away and separated by floor to ceiling glass, the scientists working singly in a stark white, almost glowing, atmosphere.
Bacteria, my guide explained, multiplies so quickly in this environment, much more quickly than the meat proteins, that every aspect of the process must be extremely sterile. She pointed out the harvesting of bovine stem cells where the process begins, their careful placement in a nutrient bath, and how they are transplanted into larger terrariums where the thin cell sheets can spread out and multiply. "It's much like raising a plant from seed, maybe a ground cover" she said. "Or strawberry."
The next compartment of production involved the folding of many thin cell meat sheets on top of one another to form what started to look like ground meat, though the color was something awful and dark, like burnt car oil. "This is pure protein," she explained. "They add a paste made primarily from soy beans and soy oil to give the meat a very small amount of fat, for cooking purposes."
I'm sure my tour was simplified, for the following step demonstrated fresh, pink ground beef formed in perfect, lovely loaves riding a conveyor belt headed for packaging. My stomach growled.
The tour took less than an hour and I was shivering by the time my guide said goodbye. The temperature stayed at a constant 48 degrees, I was told, and I had forgotten to bring a sweater. My things were returned along with a gift bag that included a promotional pamphlet, three recipes - one for classic American hamburgers, one for a light meal of mostly vegetables, and one with a Tex-Mex twist, and a keychain boasting the industry's slogan, "Say Hello In Vitro!"
I was disappointed not to receive a product sample, and frankly, there was little excitement in the end, no hands-on, no greater connection to the larger world. I feel a little empty.
If I were going to pass up this opportunity to have fun I'd say this project will never come to fruition on any significant scale. Despite Willem van Eelen's hold on a US and international patents for the Industrial Production of Meat Using Cell Culture Methods, I'll argue the US cattle rancher lobbyists, backed by the Christian Right, won't allow it. Unless they can figure how to be the first to make money, and most of it. But the research is largely supported by environmentalists, animal-rights activists, tissue engineers, and stem-cell biologists, with a dollop of NASA interest. Of course that's just my uneducated opinion.
Dan Barber, sustainable farm to table icon and Blue Hill chef at the nonprofit Stone Barns farm just north of NYC, said of the petri dish meat in the referenced article, "I would rather eat a test-tube hamburger than a Perdue chicken. At least with the burger you are going to know the ingredients."
I wonder if the label might look something like this:
Well, it's food for thought, anyway.
A foot note on carnery: I did not make up this word. I've taken it from Michael Specter's article, "Test-Tube Burgers" in the May 23, 2011 issue of The New Yorker. Specter reported this name, "carnery", was suggested by PETA-supported postdoctoral researcher, Nicholas Genovese.
A foot note on the blockquote portion of this post: This is a fictional account of something I've never experienced, save for the part about meat glue. Also, the beouf, in vitro and "Say Hello In Vitro" are my brainchildren.








