Like so many other Americans, I keep up with current events by watching satirical news shows such as The Colbert Report. On last night's program, in a new segment called "Stephen Colbert's World of Nahlej," the popular parodic pundit explored the topic of lab-grown meat with predictably comic effect:
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| World of Nahlej - Shmeat | ||||
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After marveling that South Korean researchers have actually invented glow-in-the-dark fluorescent cats, Colbert hailed "commie" scientist Dr. Vladimir Mironov as a pioneer in the emerging technology of creating edible meat from animal tissue cultures. According to Mironov, cultured meat "Is inescapable future of humanity," and when it will hit the marketplace is primarily a matter of "when if you have all necessary money." That's where PETA president (and "total drama queen") Ingrid Newkirk comes in: the animal rights group is famously offering a $1 million reward "to the first team of scientists that can develop a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro (lab-grown) chicken meat."
One new factoid I learned tonight: some people now refer to lab-grown meat as "shmeat" — which, as Dr. Mironov explained, stands for "combination of shit and meat." Ironically, in meatro is grown in sterile environments and therefore contains no feces, whereas the same certainly cannot be said for meat from animals raised on factory farms and butchered in slaughterhouses!
Learn more by reading my feature article iMeat: How Lab-Grown Meat Could Revolutionize Vegetarianism and the World from the May 2007 issue of VegNews magazine.
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