Beaker Burgers

I work at a TYSON beef plant as a security officer. I find the way we raise up animals for mass production is disgusting. They make them as fat as possible as fast as possible. They do this by giving them cooked ground up beef bones mixed with hay and molasses. The molasses makes them want to eat it non-stop. Every once and a whyle they get clogged because their intestines can't handle it. Then someone puts on a glove that reaches to their shoulder and they go digging. These cows live in fear. Every time I do a useless patrol I go out where the cows are. Everyday it's always all eyes on me immediately and they get up and go to the opposite side of the cage. I also send loaded trailers full of this cooked ground up bones and dried blood to chicken and turkey plants for animal feed. Test tube meat? Seems a lot cleaner to me... And just to give you a better idea of this place, there are 2 large sewage ponds out front just when you pull in and they smell like a combination of rotting death and raw sewage (I like to turn my car heater off as I drive my them). And the smell of rotting beef permeates over a 2 mile radius around this place. The first time I came out to this place I was gagging the smell was so bad. It's a job though...

I was quite disturbed when I read this article for several reasons. First of all, because such iniciative is supported by groups like PETA and VEBU and EVA. This groups to me seemed like conscious iniciatives and right now I realize they are just bought up from the system. The second reason is that humans, we are what we eat, there are endless studies proving the behaivor of humans fluctuates even our perception and mental abilities, depending on what it is that we eat. Therefore, what are we going to become when we eat an engeneered animal from a lab, which we no nothing at all about its energetic quality or place in nature. An animal that has been designed by our scientist, which their acknowledge of genetical engeneering is primitive still. I have studied macrobiotic medicine, currently I follow the macrobiotic guideliness of diet, I am not a vegeterian one , even though I was a vegan for more than four years. I eat fish, eggs and very seldomly good organic quality meat, so I have a perspective from both sides of the scale, the meat eaters and the vegans. I believe veganism is a great way to live, if it fits for the person's lifestyle, but I also believe it can be just as healthy and conscious to have animal product in one's diet as long as it is good quality. In order to be a vegan and be properly feed one must also have of course first quality product. And for the people that eat animal produce, the quality is also incredibly important to prevent deseases like cancer or arthritis. The point I am making is that we will no longer  know what real quality means when we eat something that has grown in lab. Why? Very simple, when we eat a chiken that has been raised in a farm and has eating its natural food from an energetic stand point we know what we are eating. We know the chicken energetic make up, and to some extent when we eat that animal we will inherit some of that energy in our system. That animal has a place on nature and it is part of its cycle. That´s why a good stew with some meat or chicken or fish in the winter warms us up, because animals produce energetically has that quality, and when we eat it we are part of the cycle in nature. However, when an animal is miss treated and poorly feed like today happens in our society more toxins are storaged and released into the flesh which we eat later when we cook it. This is the reason why colon cancer in the US is a major desease. Can anyone imagine what it would be like if we start eating animals that are ingeneered for the mere purpose of growing lean meat and having a better capitalistic economy? what kind of life will that animal have? what kind of genetic trade mark  we will be ingesting? what kind of society we will become since we are what we eat. All the empires in this world have been linked to a cereal, the roman empire was the weat, the Mayan's was the corn, the Chinese was the rice, The English was the weat, and oat meal. The society in which we live right now is the way it is because it has lost total contact with nature. Our genetically engeneered food that looks like the real vegetables that we used to be able to get every where before, is something derooted from nature just like the human race is. The way we torture animals is the way we torture each other in our XXI century so civilized society. The way we destroy the earth is the way in which we destroy ourselves through wars, and a desperate sense of having to beat everyone to get more. Even though we think we live in abundance we don't, we live in scarcity because real abundance is harmony with nature and well being of every one. We are not in harmony with nature and not everyone is well.

All this has come from the way we have statred to deal with food and nature,  the industrialization of food and the crisis or our era have lined up perfectly. To start eating engeneered animals, animals that are raised in a lab will make us into a lab society where we do what we are told, and where we no longer have no conection to the earth not through the food not through our daly lives in society. Because of the way food is grown today not even the normal farmers are connected to nature since they sit on a huge machine harvesting vast portions of land which have been treated chemically. Regular farmers don't even understand nature.

What kind of world are we going to create for our children if instead of looking into real sustainable solutions such organic farming, permaculture, biodynamic farming, we go and put our future in the hads of the same people that have created the crisis in which we live.

None of the solutions that I have given are never considered because they mean a decentralitation of power, they mean that the land will go into the hands of many and not few.  

 Raising meat in a lab can never be sustainable under any point of view, not from the energetic stand point or from the health one or as a food resourse. The truth is the way capitalistic society is structured gives the advantage to coorporations to take as much power away from our hands as possible, that's why F1 seeds exist which are only good for one generation, and why pesticides have come into place.And if this goes forward then our entire living existence will be on the hands of the big companies which on top of having the economical power they will decide what kind of energy and genetics we will be feed with. If this ever happen this will be the beginning of the end as we know our race today.

As a vegetarian for twenty years, I'd never eat this engineered meat. But I definitely see where PETA is coming from on this. It is a sad reality that agri-business rules, and that human beings, particularly Americans, consume an inordinate among of meat that animals have to suffer and die for in inumerable ways. Along with education about the way animals are treated (movies like Food, Inc.), the locavore movement, organic farming, and all the rest of the evolving food culture, bio-engineered food is just another step in the direction we need to go in -- no more killing animals for food. We need to eventually evolve beyond this disgusting, brutal business. But we're not going to get there overnight, and you better believe that most people aren't going to give up their Quarter Pounders and Mcnuggets for the sake of Betsy the Cow. That's up to people who love and have committed their lives to animal welfare. Fake meat may be unpalatable to those of us with taste for good food, but if it will save more animals from suffering, I am all for it. To get a sense of the way animals are currently treated on conventional farms, read some of the literature from farmsanctuary.org.

Firstly, I do agree with most of the points everyone here has said so far. Is this just the latest in a long line of experiments whereby humans are playing god? Yes. Do we know anything about the quality of this proposed beaker meat? No, not yet. Is this the way nature goes about supplying food for any of its plethora of creatures? No, not quite. Does America (and surely many other nations) rely too heavily on a meat-based diet that not only damages the environment but also ourselves, disrespecting and physically/emotionally damaging the animals we consume? Of course.

However, I firmly believe that the timescale we are presented with to correct our globally destructive habits is much too short to believe that enough people will see the error of their ways in time to adjust their lifestyles towards a sustainable, healthy, globally responsible way of living. Given that raising enough livestock to fuel our meatlust is a main component of deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, water contamination etc etc etc I think we can all agree that something needs to be done, and fast.

While the ultimate solution would be to educate and convince individuals to be aware of their choices and make responsible decisions instead of the most convenient ones, there simply are not enough people making enough of an impact to make me think that such a revolution will happen quickly enough. Just like how there is no singular alternative fuel that will suddenly alleviate the so called energy crisis or magically reverse the global warming trends we have set in motion, there is no one approach that will magically fix the food crisis, at least not in the easily foreseeable future.

PETA wants to see less animals living and dying in horrible conditions. I think, while it is slightly terrifying along the lines of Soylent Green or The Matrix baby-recycling, we should be glad that an alternative means of feeding the world is in the works. Not all locations of the world where there are people (most everywhere) are capable of sustaining enough vegetative or animal agriculture. By admitting that fact alone, or any of a million other examples, we see that humanity is already living outside of the natural cycle. I have not done the researched or crunched the numbers, but I dare say that there are already too many of us out there to suddenly and fluidly transition to sustainable, restorative practices without the intervention of several kinds of nature-defying technology.

While the goal should obviously be to eventually work with nature within her boundaries and laws, we have gone too far to think we can get back in harmony so easily. Nature's way of correcting our problems is through predation, disease and starvation as we have OBVIOUSLY outgrown the environments 'natural' carrying capacity for our species. Let us step away from our computers, clear indicators that we are not the ones suffering as drastically from the errors of humanity (the West, Industry, capitalism, whatever you want to blame) and try and imagine how excited someone who lives off a completely inadequate diet would be if they were offered cheap, safe, nutritious lab grown meat.

Thats all im sayin.

... but you can't make them not ignore it and do something bizarre and misguided instead, like grow "meat" in a test-tube.  For those who want to support the sane and intelligent solution:

http://sites.google.com/a/veganmail.com/veganicrevolution/

&

http://www.evolver.net/user/satyagrahi/blog/refining_path_freedom_vegani...

I agree with the point of view that has been maid by most of you about having to step out from the insane slaughter of animals. I realize there is an animal genozide taking place every day, at this very moment,  and it is such a catastrophe that if we dared to open our hearts fully to the thousands of screams we would not be able to bare it. However, being in the delicate position that humanity it is right now we can't settle for the less of the two evils or jump into the first option that is handed to us, "specially when that choice deviates from nature so far."

 

Decades ago the farmers in Europe, "I'm speaking about Europe because is where I am from and what I know for a fact" were told that they should start using less compost and manure and they should begin employing the chemical fertilizers. This was promoted in order to increase production and meet the demand of the competitive global economy of our times. In the beginning it seemed to work, there was about 20% more production at the expense of that magical treatment. Today the south of Spain, the region that produced during hundreds of years frist quality vegetables up to 30 years ago, and had enjoyed a great wealth from the land as well as a rich biodiversity is devastated. Due to the employment of fertilizers and pestizides, which ended up substituting completely manure and compost, the levels of nitrification in the underground water reserves are so high that are poisoned for human and animal comsumption. This is just one example of how deviating from nature and the acknowledge roots from our fathers leads us to.

You have to imagine the area of Flint Michigan US, but in Valencia Spain in order to understand how thousands of farmers have lost their jobs, and on top of that the land has been ravaged. This has taken place from the hand of our institutions that promoted a "more advanced way of living and dealing with the land" when in reality they were making business at the expense of nature. Do you think the goverment of the United States or any corporation is coming to the solution of engineering meat from a stand point of stopping animal slaughter? ..... my guess is no. They promote this because it means business to the corporations, of course at the expense of anything like always. We must realize that even though our society, Western society, is addicted to eating way too much meat, the solution does not rely in creating an animal that we feel consciously okay to kill, or an lab enegineered steack. Because we don't know the after math of what that experiment and all of its outcomes might be and what is the real price we will pay for that product, health wise, energetically wise, and its effect on the planet. 

Humanity, society, WE can't settle anymore for the quick solution, we have to learn how to say NO, and demand our rights. We have the right to demand the stop cruel animal slaughter, and to demand a campain that informs the masses of what it does in every sigle level. We have the right to sensivitize society about our conection to nature and how we are living and how those animals are living.  We have the right to live in a planet that is humane, in a society that is in harmony with nature, and we have the right to an existence where real values and life is put before money. Things are so far fucked up that we are loosing our capacity for hope and fight, but that is exactly what we can´t do. 

When we think about profits it should be the wellfare of every sigle being, no the economic growth at the expense of life.

Therefore, we can't settle for a lab engeneered animal which is trying to be a quick solution when in reality is more business for the same hands that are slaughtering the animals now. We can´t settle for that waiting to step out of the patterns we have, such as eating insane amounts of meat,  by creating far worst alternative. I personaly belive that as a race we are in a critical point and we cannot afford plan B solutions. We must demand what's right and think of what has happened when we've tried to play God, and think what can happen if we go farther with it.

 

We can't go for the quick solution because that will lead us into a far worst future.  We have to hope and fight for the turth. 

Human beings are omnivores. I don't see a problem with people eating animals; but I do see a big problem with the institutionalized cruelty to animals. Some day, that may be seen with the same horror that we feel when we hear about human tragedies like the holocaust. I don't see anything wrong with test-tube meat. It feels strange and Onyx-and-Crake-ish but still I can't come up with a reason not go there. http://www.beyond-karma.com

this meat in test tube thing might not be such a bad idea...... I mean slaughter houses don't treat animals in a humane way, they are dirty, they release toxics into the air we breathe and so much more stuff....So why not give this try.... I mean if this does not work we can always go back to real meat, and just try treating the animals better!

Im sorry to be so forward here & please forgive the caps BUT.... All I mostly hear on this post is complaining and judgement and putting down meat eaters & O yeah the outrageous comment that being vegetarian and vegan is necessary for higher consciousness (listen to how egotistical that sounds) Personally I have made a commitment to only eat local happy meat be it cow or chicken or pig. HOWEVER! Everything is energy yes and by the way we are all GODS. EVERYTHING comes from GOD (the vacuum of space) Even plants display energy waves of fear and stress when even just threatened with a thought, so how about all of those fruits and vegies we go plucking right off of the vine with no regard to how the plant is feeling taking something that it has put love and energy into from it. I know this sounds bizar but my point is that it is all in the intention of the individual. This world is changing rapidly as we travel through space to the galactic center of our galaxy. Along with consciousness rising there is also going to be so much technology around us doing things to prove theories and create a different life completely, things which most will say "They think they are playing GOD" Well let me remind you again divine people we are all GOD. We must learn to tolerate and NOT JUDGE what happens around us. So to all of my sentient brothers and sisters that have an opinion on this site... I agree with you all and yet I disagree to some level as well. I believe we should all chose to do what resonates with us on a personal level and that it is all going to be right. THE POOL OF POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS! En Lakech "We are the Divine Light that shines infinitely." Brandy Sarasvati