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Meat grown in a lab may be one of the creepier sci-fi themes about to come to life. Although the environmental advantages are undeniable, it’s just too conceptually revolting – reanimating (in a way) something dead that mimics something once alive? And to eat, no less? Even if I wasn't already vegetarian, this would be enough to convert me.
But what about growing leather in the lab? From wax cloth to Naugahyde to pleather to leatherette, we’ve been making ersatz leather textiles for ages. Engineering actual tissue looks to be the next oddly logical step; real(ish) leather without harm to animals and less environmental impact during the tanning process. Why not just skip making leather at all. Nowadays, there are so many other upholstering/clothing etc. options I doubt that leather would be missed by anyone other than those with misguided values - snobs, if you will.
Modern Meadow cofounder and CEO, Andras Forgacs, spoke to Txchnologist, about what’s on the agenda for the company. First off, the laboratory leather – which will use a similar process as in-vitro meat, but will need less regulatory approval and has less of a PR problem. Forgacs says, “Our emphasis first is not on meat, it’s on leather. The main reason is that, technically, skin is a simpler structure than meat, making it easier to produce.” He also notes that, “There’s much less controversy around using leather that doesn’t involve killing animals.”
Most simply described, the process begins with harvesting livestock cells and multiplying them in a bioreactor before purifying and fusing them together, possibly using 3-D bioprinting. The cells will then be allowed to mature to stimulate collagen production. (For a more detailed description, see here.)
Forgacs says that a full-scale leather facility could be pumping out hides in a mere five years. They will also be working on growing in-vitro meat, but they expect that the regulatory approval hoops could keep Modern Meadow flesh out of the meat market until 2022 or so. I would rather that meat grown in a laboratory never see the light of a refrigerated meat counter.
My sympathies go out to Dr. Frank N. Stein's horse. The poor thing must be completely knackered constantly transporting the doctor's genetically-modified experiments from one country to another, one government to another.
This time Dr. Stein and his horse are in the United Arab Emirates to clone (of all things) camels.
Pretty scary stuff here (on a number of levels): SciDec.net reports that researchers in Dubai are working on developing genetically-modified camels. The project aims to slash the prices of life-saving drugs — including insulin, and clotting factors for treating haemophilia — in the Middle East and North Africa, according to Nisar Wani, head of the Reproductive Biology Laboratory at Dubai's Camel Reproduction Center, in the United Arab Emirates.
"We are establishing camel cells modified with exogenous [foreign] DNA, for use in producing transgenic cloned animals, or GM camels," Wani told SciDev.Net. "Hopefully we will transfer camel transgenic embryos to surrogate mothers for the first time later this year."
Wani went on to say he was unable to pinpoint when the first transgenic animal would be born, as the calving rate for cloned embryos was only 5%, and "this rate gets even smaller when transgenic cells are used".
Why camels? Cows would be a better option from the standpoint of milk production; but, camels have been chosen for this research as they are better suited for the arid environment of the United Arab Emirates and surrounding nations where the work will actually take place.
The Reproductive Biology Laboratory was established in Dubai in 2003, to study the reproductive techniques in species from the region, particularly camels.
"[Previously] there was little or no literature available on assisted reproductive techniques in camels, so we had to standardise all the basic techniques one by one," explained Wani. "Finally, in 2009, we produced the first cloned camel calf — named Injaz — and thereafter produced many more."
The lab's researchers have established a cell bank from 'elite' camels, which excel in milk production and adapting to drought and hot weather, and now plan to clone these animals.
Once again, the question of ethics rears its head. What right do we, as humans, have to alter the genetics of a species without even knowing what the long-term effects could be to the animals forced to participate; especially when any benefits reaped are solely for the good of humans not the species altered.
When I read this article, I had to reprint it in memory of a truly great pet that was killed by an unleashed neighbour's dog - Henny Penny.
While the holiday season, marked by festive family gatherings and belt-testingly bountiful meals, just might be the most joyful time of the year, for the millions of factory chickens who end up on our tables, the air is decidedly less merry. But amid the season's great fowl-feed has come a bit of good news for a fortunate two-thousand former battery hens in Coventry, England. Thanks to local chicken advocates and heaps of hen-loving residents, a sizable flock of birds once slated for the slaughterhouse now have real homes following the largest chicken adoption drives ever conducted in the UK.
On New Year's Day a new chicken-welfare law will begin to require farmers to provide more humane conditions for their battery hens -- by making modest upgrades to the size of their cages, along with providing nesting boxes and perches for them to rest on. For some farmers, complying with the new ordinance means they'd have to reduce the number of chickens they keep. But instead of sitting by and watching the birds be killed for the sake of the bottom-line, animal advocates in England's West Midlands County pushed to find the surplus hens new homes throughout the community.
With the help of the British Hens Welfare Trust and bird devotee Ian Farrar, two-thousand would-be chicken dinners were gifted a new lease on life as part of one of the largest re-homing efforts of its kind. From across the region, hundreds of locals volunteered to become caregivers to the formerly unloved battery chickens.
“These are the last hens and they’re going to die otherwise because any hens remaining after New Year’s Eve will have to be killed. The response has been amazing," Ian Farrar tells the Coventry Telegraph. “We always knew that people in the Midlands love their hens.”
This isn't the first time Farrar has gotten involved in such a chicken-friendly adoption program. In the last few years, he's helped find over 30 thousand unwanted hens new homes across the UK -- though this is recent effort, conducted in just the last few weeks of the year, is his biggest undertaking yet, thanks in part to an air-conditioned bus he's using to transport the birds from factory farms to loving homes.
“It’s the biggest hen re-homing event the country has ever seen. We’ve gone from hoping we could save a few hundred to having homes ready and waiting for all 2,200 girls the farmer has left, so not a single hen will be left behind. It’s really very heart-warming,” says Farrar.
Although for many this time of year might seem empty without a bird on the table, perhaps the true spirit of the season is better paired with a full heart and home rather than a full belly.
In what scientists and environmentalists are calling an environmental disaster, thousands of dead octopods have washed up on the shore on northern Portugal. The bodies litter a 5-mile stretch of the Vila Nova de Gaia beach.
There is not much information about this disaster at this time. Scientists have no idea what has caused the octopods to die; but, Portuguese authorities are issuing a warning to the public not to eat the animals.
This short video shows the beach where the dead octopods were found.
I'm fortunate to have several passions in my life. I am absolutely an eco-nut. I am always trying to find new ways to reduce, reuse, recycle. We, as a species, have done more harm to this planet in the short time we have been here, than any other catastrophe or happening ever has. It's up to us to fix it.
I care about the environment whether it is as small as a single cell or as large as the universe.
I adore creativity and think we can all do more with much less. This earth has enough resources for us all to live comfortably if we all learn to share. Wasn't that a lesson we were supposed to learn in kindergarten?
I also love the bizarre, unusual, the weird and the strange. Be prepared for the odd "different" blog.
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