Petri dish supper

An end to battery farming or just science fiction?

"An international research team has proposed new techniques that may lead to the mass production of meat reared not on the farm, but in the laboratory. Developments in tissue engineering mean that cells taken from animals could be grown directly into meat ..."

This is not a totally new concept - burns victims can have a sample of cells taken and a lab can grow them enough skin to cover the burn, and a 3-D "printing" technique has enabled scientists to produce tubes of living tissue.

Whilst I'm not so sure that a lab cultured lump of meat would ever rival a free-range, organic, prime aberdeen angus fillet steak, this could be used to ensure that everyone could have access to a fresh supply of protein not contaminated by disease or growth hormones, whilst avoiding the horrendous battery farming techniques. Clearly there are lots of concerns before this could become a reality but very interesting never-the-less.

One minor point which bugged me, this technique, as far as I understand it, involves taking cells from a living animals (in the the same way as the skin example above) and using those to grow more muscle tissue (i.e. meat).

Why is it, then, the journalist fel it necessary to insert:
"Concerns have been raised about eating meat from cloned animals."
and
"The US Food and Drug Administration has asked companies not to market any products that involve cloned animals until their safety has been evaluated."
when this story has nothing to do with cloning?

This is playing to people's fears and muddying the water surrounding a possibly interesting scientific development.

Apologies to any vegetarians reading this if you found it distasteful.

Happy Journeys.