UNITED KINGDOM, February 2012 (BBC News): The world could get its first lab-grown burger this year, with scientists using stem cells to create strips of beef. Scientists in the Netherlands hoping to create a more efficient alternative to rearing animals have grown small pieces of beef muscle in a laboratory. These strips will be mixed with blood and artificially grown fat to produce a hamburger by the autumn.
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The stem cells in this particular experiment were harvested from by-products of slaughtered animals but in the future, scientists say, they could be taken from a live animal through biopsy.
One usually assumes the main motivation for vegetarianism – aside from those who practise for religious reasons – is about the welfare of animals. The typical vegetarian forswears meat because animals are killed to get it. So if the meat does not come from dead animals would there be an ethical problem in eating it if it one day lands on supermarket shelves?
It’s not as simple an equation as that, says Prof. Andrew Linzey, director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. “Synthetic meat could be a great moral advance. It won’t be suitable for vegetarians because it still originates in meat by-products, but bearing in mind that millions of animals are slaughtered for food every day, it is a step forward to a less violent world,” he says.
But to Justin Kerswell Vegetarians International Voices for Animals (Viva) spokesman, the research seems unnecessary, particularly as many vegetarians believe a diet excluding meat is more healthy.The research on artificial meat has been prompted by concerns that current methods of meat production are unsustainable in the long term. “Why grow it in a Petri dish or eat the meat from a slaughtered animal when plant sources of protein and meat replacements are ever more commonly available and are better for our health?”
More at source above.