One more reason to become a vegetarian

Honestly - this is so gross. It has turned my stomach this morning.

Fries with your synthetic burger?

Corpses hanging around at the local butcher could be a thing of the past.

The world's first hamburger made with a synthetic meat protein derived from bovine stem cells will be publicly consumed this October after being prepared by a celebrity chef, according to the inventor of the artificial mince.

Heston Blumenthal is the favourite to be asked to cook the €250,000 ($393,000) hamburger, which will be made from 3000 strips of synthetic meat protein grown in fermentation vats.

I don't know what is worse - the thought of eating real meat after looking at that photo - or the thought of eating man made meat produced in some laboratory out of stem cells.

The case for and against lab meat

Pros

* Billions of animals would be spared from factory farms and slaughterhouses.
* Would reduce environmental impacts of livestock production, which the UN estimates accounts for 18 per cent of greenhouse-gas emissions.
* Could reduce by 90 per cent the land- and water-use footprint of production.
* A more sustainable way to meet growing demand from China and India; expected to double global consumption by 2040.
* Free of hormones, antibiotics, bacteria and engineered to contain less fat.
* Would reduce the threat of swine and avian flu outbreaks.

Cons

* Consumers may find the notion of lab-grown meat creepy or unnatural.
* For some vegetarians, it perpetuates "meat addiction" rather than promoting non-meat alternatives.
* Risks of eating red meat, such as an increased threat of bowel cancer, remain.
* Animals will still have to be slaughtered to provide the bovine stem cells.
* Could have unforeseen health consequences
* Step in the wrong direction for those who believe problems in our food system have origins in distance between production and consumer.

I am not a big red meat eater anyway. The thought of gnawing away on a steak makes me feel sick. Even watching someone else eat a steak grosses me out. I sit there picturing their arteries hardening and their colon becoming clogged right before my eyes.  The last time i ate a sausage i think my stomach took about 5 days to digest it. That could have something to do with my stomach being a sensitive wee thing - or it could have to do with the fact that as i ate it i was picturing leftover fat being scooped up off of a butcher's floor - and turned into sausage.

In the same way that i will not eat fish - if i have seen it with it's head still attached and dead eyes looking at me - i will not eat meat if i can picture in my head that it was once an animal. Therefor my meat consumption is pretty much limited to the mince that is required to make lasagna or spaghetti bolognese.

Now - thanks to this article - even mince has been ruined for me.