No joke: Eat your shmeat

Before I ruin your appetite, a notice to those few-but-loyal fans of Mrs. Language Person: She's on extended vacation, word-weary and drearily wondering how a notion to write a handful turned into a 14-month assignment. Perhaps she'll write us from a remote Greek island someday.

Meanwhile we venture into the unknown, or at least the not-so-widely known world of tidbits and factoids (no joke, MLP, that's a real word of imagination's origin) which may leave readers' faces scrunched up or heads scratched before the hands shift the Local section to the birdcage.

Synthetic meat. It's real. No kidding.

Also called in-vitro meat (IVM), cultured meat, cruelty-free meat, shmeat and test-tube meat, this edible fat-free food was born of a challenge. A few years ago groups of animal lovers began to beg its development.

Don't believe everything you read in Wikipedia; PETA didn't start it, but they did put a challenge out there in 2008. Four years earlier a nonprofit called New Harvest formed for the same purpose and has helped fund the research. CNN reported lab meat's inventor is a Dutch scientist named Mark Post.

Whoever started it, cultured meat (or the same by other name) is in essence lab-grown animal flesh that has never been a living animal. Unless you count fetal calf serum taken from a cow. Yup; we're talking stem-cells.

Americans consume an average 270 pounds of meat each year, far more than our bodies require. Vegetarian movements aren't convincing most of us to give it up, but this idea may catch on with health nuts, even if being kinder to animals (think huge, crowded corporate cattleyards, not small and organic farmers whose cows seem happier) and gentler on the environment doesn't motivate. It's still in development and predicted to be ready for store shelves in a decade or two.

On the up side, shmeaty meat is fat-free, disease-free, has less cholesterol, and according to at least one burger taste-test, tastes pretty good (another group called it a little dry, but hey, they're still working on it). Proponents say it's also good because less grazing land and water would be needed and IVM-eaters don't have to worry about ill-treated cows or their experiences at slaughter time. Bigger perhaps is the notion that this could be a partial and cheaper answer to the world's food shortage and starving populations.

Then again there is the psychological factor. Can we get over the ick-factor of cow-less beef and chicken-less chicken for the sake of health? Maybe. Another down side is the fact that lab meat is considered neither kosher nor vegan (it's still animal-based even if it isn't an animal). Will former grazing lands give way to the concrete jungle? What will this do to the few remaining farmers and shrinking agricultural sector?

No magic answers or easy yes or no, but like with any invention, questions of ethics and societal effects should develop alongside. Somewhere there is balance.

"The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge." - Thomas Berger

Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Contact her at [email protected].