Beef Battle: Tissue Engineered Burgers vs. Humanely Raised Cattle

The FDA's decision to approve cloned meat for sale is, while interesting from philosophical or regulatory angles, not much of a food story. You're not going to be eating cloned cow meat anytime soon. Still, the announcement was enough to drive some people, i.e. my girlfriend, to seriously consider a turn to veganism. The peek that the cloning discussion provides into industrial meat production is a bit sickening (See Michael Pollan as linked by Brandon) and begs the question: do you care how your food was produced or do other concerns -- health, taste, or cost, say -- predominate?

There are signs that the backstory, as smart people call it, of your food is gaining increasing economic value. Whole Foods, the retail standard bearer for the organic industry, has doubled revenue in the last five years from $2.8 billion to $5.6 billion. Its stores aggregate niche consumers looking for pesticide-free, hormone-free, free-range, non-GMO, farmer-friendly, and fair trade products. All these issues relate to the way that our food is produced and introduced into the market, not just its cost, taste, or traditional nutritional value.

Most current food movements look back to earlier, generally more "natural" times: heirloom tomatoes, pre-chemical farming methods, free-range animals, etc. But what about technophiles who care about their food production? They might be able to pin their hopes on using tissue engineering to create test tube meat, which doesn't come wrapped in an animal with a brain.

New Harvest is a research funding entity trying to catalyze the development of meat-substitutes. They are drawing on the leading lights in the in-vitro meat field.