PRINTABLE BACON

[Jubal]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20972018 

When you buy some beef at the butcher's, you know it comes from cattle that once mooed and chewed.

But imagine if this cut of meat, just perfect for your Sunday dinner, had been made from scratch - without slaughtering any animal.

US start-up Modern Meadow believes it can do just that - by making artificial raw meat using a 3D bioprinter.

Peter Thiel, one of Silicon Valley's most prominent venture capitalists, Paypal co-founder and early Facebook investor, has just backed the company with $350,000 (£218,000).

Would you eat printed bacon? Does the idea bother you?

[Pentagathus]

Probably not and no. It's pretty cool but I'd wait to see what effect it has on people's health before I chowed down on any printed bacon myself. I also can't see it being as good as real meat.
Edit: Just noticed this "So in the future, more cows may be able to roam the fields without having to fear the slaughterhouse." Pretty portugaling stupid idea, if the cows weren't going to be killed and eaten for a commercial profit who the portugal is going to keep them? The real benefit to this idea is that it has the potential to be a very efficient way of producing animal protein.

[Silver Wolf]

I've seen that before, probably on How it's made.
It's a small step forward to improving replacement organs.

And the idea of eating printed food doesn't bother me at all. It probably wouldn't be as good as the real thing, but it's more humane.
On the other hand, this idea bothers me because I don't believe that this is a way to go. Food pills would be much more convenient. But that's just my opinion.

If this actually happens, the only place where you'll be able to see a pig is your local zoo.

[Jubal]

I disagree on food pills, since in my opinion food is ideally for pleasure as much as sustenance. Also food pills wouldn't substitute for some important parts of the diet, like fibre.

It doesn't bother me much, it basically depends what its effects are. Not too worried about health issues (after all, a printer can be made a darn sight more sterile than a pig's innards), I'd mostly be concerned that a) this would centralise meat production more into the hand of larger corporations who can afford the hardware and b) what pollutants etc large scale meat printing might give out.

[Marcus]

If this came about, the gumph about saving animals is irrelevant since nearly all cows, sheep, pigs etc exist purely to be farmed. So with no purpose, they would be killed off. I don't think it would produce as good a quality meat as you get from a real animal, which is already not that great since they're fed to grow fast, leading to fatty and blander meat in my opinion. Nutrition wise, you could squirt as much added nutrients into it as you like, I do wonder if this lab grown meat would have the nutritional value that animal meat would have.

[joek]

On the contrary, I would expect better tasting meat than lots of the mass-produced stuff at the moment: it wouldn't take any more time, and there would be an incentive to make the meat taste as good as possible. How they do that would really be my concern...
And I'm not sure animals would just be killed off: they represent a reasonably substantial investment. Probably not bred to the same levels as they are currently, though, but I could see a niche market of 'real food' consumers emerging, probably from those who care about eating rare-breed beef from their local butcher. The great mass of those who buy factory farmed meat from Tesco wouldn't care, and I imagine that if it were cheaper, fast-food chains would be on that as soon as possible...