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On June 30th, 2012, there will be a bio-engineer, or laboratory, or someone richer by 1 Million dollars if they can produce chicken meat without producing a chicken. PETA, People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, has offered this amount for the purpose of spurring research into development of a source of in-vitro meat protein that is indistinguishable from that which comes from the slaughter of an animal. This should not be mistaken for a vegetarian meat substitute. This is actual animal muscle tissue that has been grown under laboratory conditions, but never been part of a living animal.

This may sound like the realm of a bad science fiction movie where things are about to horribly wrong and the meat experiment escapes to wreak havoc on a space station, or small rural town but in fact it goes on even today. I am curious what it is going to accomplish if someone succeeds. In the first place what is one million going to buy in another four years? A full gas tank for your RV if you are lucky. What is the future of these animals we are replacing should they be replaced with a lab cultured substitute?

Lets look at the price of success in this venture. Assume that by 2020 in vitro meat has become completely safe and indistinguishable from its furry or feathered counterpart. Not that it will need to be, because it will only be a matter of years before there is no one left alive who has ever eaten anything with which to make a comparison. But it is 2020 and there is no longer a need for beef cattle, chickens, or farm bred meat animals. Where will they go? These are animals that have no other purpose than to be bred for meat, and other by-products for which we already have acceptable substitutes. We have totally removed them from a natural environment and selectively bred them for thousands of years to serve one purpose, and now we are erasing that purpose. Are we inducing their extinction?

Or, can we turn these animals back out to the wild? Will we create nature preserves for chickens? Pigs? What is the natural environment of the domestic sheep or cow? Species that are given regimens of drugs to protect them from disease which comes naturally wherever overpopulation is a problem will not have developed immune systems to protect them in the wild from disease they have never come in contact with. Will there be mass die-offs of herds and flocks in the wild?

That will not be the case, because there will always be a need for these animals. A very few of them, just enough to keep the breeds alive. We have learned from cloning that cells taken from an animal will reproduce, but are not perfect reproductions. As with a xerox machine, little errors creep in to the process and make the reproductions less and less accurate, making the protein that derives from those lines less and less palatable. There will always be a need for new lines of cells, so we will keep just enough of them alive to breed new lines. And those we keep will have to be very closely protected because they now represent the entire source of meat protein for the human race. They will have to be kept safe from disease and natural disaster. Even more selectively bred than they are today.

How vulnerable does that make our food supply? Will we have eradicated terrorism in the next decade? Two? Will there be a movement to remove meat protein from the diet all together for the sake of freeing these animals kept under tightly controlled living conditions? Where will they go then? Zoos?

What of the person, or people who succeed? Will they be granted a patent on the process? Or the product? It happens today that GMO’s, Genetically Modified Organisms, are patententable. Crops that are altered become property even though they may be carried in seed form by wildlife or the wind and propagate far away. Where ever they might choose to randomly grow, those plants belong to those who hold the patent. With success and a patent, will those who succeed in growing this meat own the genetics of the animals from which it comes? Will all those animals and all their offspring now be the sole property of a laboratory and whoever may have those animals in custody be forced to give them up? Have charges pressed against them? It happens now with GMOs.

These exaggerations are not outrageous, in fact they are well within the bounds of solutions we adopt in the present. Though I don’t intend them seriously. In fact what they are really about is questions. Not even necessarily the questions I am asking, because those I thought up simply to pursue a certain logical, if exaggerated conclusion. But what will be the fate of animals who no longer have a purpose? Likely they will still be bred for food for the very wealthy who can afford it, while everyone else eats the stuff that is not only bought off the shelf, but grown on the shelf.

If we are lucky they will find a way to put a single cell in a can, load the mainly empty cans onto trucks, and by the time it reaches your grocery store, the can will be full. Think of the savings in energy.

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