Shmeat safe to eat, says FDA

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Originally published at: Shmeat safe to eat, says FDA | Boing Boing

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But does it count as processed food?

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animal welfare groups such as PETA have widely promoted lab meat as an alternative to farming

I’m pleasantly surprised that PETA is taking such a reasonable and non-virtue-signalling position on this matter.

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Shake Lab GIF by eppendorf

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The Blob GIF by The Colonial Theatre

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PETA is probably only being reasonable because they got cornered into it by a reporter, and the only alternative was to go on record as claiming that “Shmeat is Shmurder!”, and some things are too dumb even for them.

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Do not taunt Happy Fun PETA.

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Being a feckless fan of etymologies i wanted to know the origin of “shmeat”; obviously that comes down to where the “sh…” comes from. Discounting some dubious and obvious suggestions, the dominant suggestion is “sheet”, as in the cells are grown on a sheet (as opposed to on the hoof?). That typed, there are those (there are always those. gawdbless the those) who doubt this origin. Endless tedious links to references abound (yes, i know: yawn)
ref1 most authoritative
ref2 most literary
ref3 most amusing
ref4 urban dictionary avoid this one

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First thing I did too! :rofl:

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I suppose if lab-grown fake meat is safe then it’s not surprising that lab-grown “real” meat is safe.

But what do we really mean by “safe”?

In other words, try telling that to my cholesterol levels.

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I assumed it came from the stereotypical Yiddish dismissal: “Meat, shmeat”.

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Oblig: Space Meat!

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PETA have widely promoted lab meat

Dear god, if you want this concept to catch on, keep PETA the hell away from any promotion of it.

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“Safe”, though, is only one of the issues. It needs to not be worse for the environment than current animal food production (admittedly an easy bar to reach), and while I’m happy to pay a bit of a premium as I do now for either meat-analogues or ethically-raised products, none of that helps the rest of the planet who cannot afford such indulgences.

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What do we mean by ‘real’?
For that matter, what do we mean by meat? Whatever it is, shmeat ain’t it!

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I think it’s closer to a foodified process.

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Can’t wait to try it.

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Among the touted benefits, the reduction of animal cruelty is nearly undeniable, then environmental benefits have to be a “wait and see” equation to see the just how much of a benefit, given that we’re most likely talking about a pretty resource-intensive process.

The “feed a starving world” claims that some of the articles like to tack on are the most dubious. This isn’t guaranteed to be cheaper or easier than live cattle beef, but more to the point, the price of beef isn’t at all what’s causing world hunger. If we distributed the healthier and more cheaply produced protein sources we already have, we could solve that problem now, no cows or lab-sheets needed…

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  • Citation Needed
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Citation unavailable, that particular speculation is pure hearsay and random BSing.

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