Healthy Lab-Grown Petri Dish Meat is the Future

I’m an omnivore, but I appreciate the vegetarian position. Not all animals you eat are treated nicely while they’re alive or at the time of their death. (In fact states like Utah have laws which prohibit journalists from going to slaughterhouses, because they know it’s so gruesome it would rattle public support.) There’s also a lot of data that vegetarians live longer than meat eaters. But technology might make both of these issues moot soon: scientists are growing painless slabs of meat in laboratories. In my mind this takes out the ethical implications of hurting animals, because they’re never attached to a brain or a nervous system and so far Disney has never made us fall in love with a futuristic artificial beef slab. Scientists could add in Omega 3 fatty acids, so you’d basically be eating healthy salmon that tastes like cow. Plus lab-grown beef takes up far less grazing land and water than conventional ranches, and emits less greenhouse gases. The catch is that, presently, a hamburger grown in a lab costs $330,000. That’s almost four times the cost of a hamburger bought in New York City, or roughly half of a semester of tuition at Wesleyan. Fortunately this technology is in its infancy, and prices will probably drop over time.

Learn More: “Healthy Lab-Grown Petri Dish Meat is the Future”