In Vitro Meat

Everyone’s talking about in vitro meat, otherwise known as cultured meat, test tube meat, lab meat, or Franken-meat (I think I made that last one up all by myself, but it's probably been done)...

So what is it? Put simply, in vitro meat is meat that’s been grown on a rack, not on a living animal. Nicola Jones’ article for Nature, entitled A Taste of Things to Come ?, has a diagram which sums it up as follows. A small biopsy is taken from a live animal (let’s say, a pig). From this biopsy, cells called mysosatellite cells can be extracted. A growth serum is then added to the cells, which are applied to a rack or scaffold, where byofibres bind them together to form muscle. The rack is repeatedly stretched to build the muscle tissue and boost protein, and the resulting meat is ground into strips which can then be formed into, for example, a sausage.

Advocates of in vitro meat say that it will reduce the suffering of factory-farmed animals (one small biopsy can theoretically generate a billion pounds of meat), reduce deforestation and global warming (no need for grazing space, and less cows equals less methane), and feed the world’s poor. Critics of in vitro meat say that meat that doesn’t come from an animal is unnatural (of course, compared to what comes out of a battery farm this argument is shonky at best), that the taste of ‘real’ meat can never be replicated, and that there are already meat substitutes out there for the anaemic little vegetarians to feast upon. Interestingly, certain animal activists are also critical of in vitro meat, because of the initial process of extracting cells from a living animal, and the fact that some (but not all) of the current growth serums being used also contain animal extracts.

This puts animal advocates in a tricky position. Can saving the pain of thousands, possibly millions of farmed animals be worth the pain of hundreds, possibly thousands of farmed animals? Activist Jeff Perz has written a lengthy ‘Case Against Test Tube Meat’ centred around the premise that causing the suffering of even a single animal is unethical, and it therefore follows that the legacy of in vitro meat will be suffering and sorrow, and true animal advocates should have nothing to do with it. I’m not a utilitarian, but in this case, I would say that more suffering will be saved than will be caused, and dude, that’s about as good as we’re going to get. Plus, the biopsy is allegedly painless, and there are serums available that have no animal content whatsoever, utilising mushroom extracts instead.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have a competition running for the first person who can bring in vitro chicken to market by June 30^th 2012. The prize, a million dollars, is probably peanuts to the cost of actually achieving this in the first place, but it shows that by and large the activist establishment is on board.

So is this actually going to come off? There’s a minor glitch in that, due to lab regulations, none of the scientists so far have been able to taste the fruits of their labours. If they can get past that (and personally I would be happy to volunteer my taste buds, and gag reflexes, in the name of science) and get the taste right, it could be marketable. Above all, though, like everything else, this will come down to the bottom line – money. Dirty, dirty money. If they can make it cheaper than the factory farm alternative – and that’s going to take some doing – there will be a market for it.

Here, then, are my suggestions for the first products of surreptitious replacement: spam, corned beef, fish fingers, sausage rolls, chicken nuggets, chicken dippers, chicken swizzlers, ground beef pizza topping, and of course, you’ve got to have your Franken-meat frankfurters. Yum.

Pet Photography

I’ve recently started teaching myself photography. I’ve had a DSLR for a few years now, but never managed to get off the automatic set up buttons – you know, ‘portrait’, ‘landscape’ etc. Now, I’m planning to go the full kahoney.

Why? As I mentioned before, I volunteer on Sundays at Battersea Dogs Home. A few weeks back we were told to look out for an article in the Sunday Times by a journalist who had borrowed a BDH resident Staffordshire Bull Terrier for a test day out, to find out whether the Staff would be true to media stereotype, and savage his wife and children. Anyway, like an idiot, I forgot to look out for it, and missed out.  That is, until last Friday, when I found a copy in my local Chinese takeaway (sweet and sour bean curd and steamed rice. Heaven). The lady at the takeaway said I could keep the magazine, and it’s been next to my computer every since.

The cover depicts a very middle glass gentleman, presumably the journalist, Matt Rudd, sitting neatly on a park bench, with a chunky black Staffie seating equally neatly beside him. While the man looks away into the distance, the Staff gazes straight down the lense of the camera. The picture is completely incongruous and utterly charming… without cutesy-fying the dog in question. The article that follows is even handed and sweet, with Rudd falling slowly for the soft charms of Dixie, the dog in question. But the cover picture is what stays with you long after the words have all drifted away. And this is what makes me want to be a photographer.

The Staffordshire Bull Terrier is in dire need of re-branding. Battersea and the RSPCA have tried in recent years to launch the Staffordshire into the main stream, by talking about all the wonderful qualities that Staffs have. By nature, they are loyal, warm, loving dogs. They adore people. It’s part of their problem – a Staff will do anything, anything, to please its owner… which means that there’s a lot riding on the owner’s intentions. Anyway, all the lovely qualities have been written about, spoken about. But nothing really changes. I was down walking on the meads the other day with Eggbert, and a family of four stopped to coo over him until the mum asked what breed he was (they had a toy poodle with them. The kids were dressed in identical macs. I should have known really…). When I replied that Eggie is a Staff Cross, it was literally as if I’d slapped the woman across her face. She yanked the arms of her children away from Eggie and pulled her brood from us, calling back over her shoulder ‘I don’t approve of them’.

Aside from the possible philosophical and existential interpretations of what she could have meant by not approving of a species (I don’t approve of sharks, occasionally they eat people’s arms. I don’t approve of giraffes, their necks are too long for my liking) the gist of it was that the woman had clearly not been touched by the message that the shelters are trying to put out.

A recent study conducted in the U.S (James Serpell was one of the researchers), looked at levels of aggression in particular breeds, and named the top ten most aggressive breeds, starting with the highest levels, as 1. Dachsund, 2. Chihuahua, 3. Jack Russell, 4. Australian Cattle Dog, 4. Cocker Spaniel, 6. Beagle, 7. Border Collie, 8. Pit Bull Terrier, 9. Great Dane, 10. English Springer Spaniel. If the gangsters are paying attention we should shortly see sausage dogs being paraded through the ghetto on chain leads. The point is, I don’t doubt that every different study will come out with a different top ten, but come on, Staffordshires don’t even feature. Their lookey-likey cousin the PBT comes in a meagre eighth. That’s going to be an embarrassing conversation down the dog pit next week…

I read somewhere recently that the best marketing happens when people don’t realise they are being marketed to…they just suddenly find their opinions changing, without quite knowing why. The best way to re-brand the Staffie is not to plead with people for greater understanding, it is to infiltrate society at large with counter-images to the snarling, slavering pictures that we are fed by the red top tabloids and other media outlets. Staffies have been branded as aggressive beasts, and only an intelligent, pervasive, almost insidious scheme of counter-branding is going to level the playing field. And, as much as I like words, the most powerful way to do this is through images.

Am I really advocating a snowstorm of neotenised, anthropomorphised Staffie-baby pictures? To an extent perhaps. However, I don’t think Staffies as a breed would benefit from being stuffed into Louis Vuitton handbags and fed cupcakes. We need to depict, not just the dog, but the owner too. All types of people have Staffie companions. I see them around all the time. Families with young children (in happier times the Staffie was known as the Nanny Dog), single women, pensioners, people with other breeds of dog too. Those are the pictures we need. Somebody needs to do an exhibition of Staffie and their Human photos, so that people who do not see the real Staffies trotting down their street, are still privy to another point of view. This would also have the knock-on benefit of making the Staffie not such a desirable dog for the yobs. After all, what self-respecting rude boy is going to want to man-up with a chunky Staff if he knows that the granny down the street has one.

I love Staffies. I’ve walked hundreds of them. My little old man Maxwell has a strong dose of Staffordshire in him, amongst other things. And so, to phase one of the re-branding of the Staffordshire Bull Terrier…find out what the buttons on my camera actually do.

Week 1 - Max is going to get sick of me practicing on him...