Lab-Made Meat; Ethical or Not?

Reading Journal Entry

• I read the article How long will it be before you can eat meat that was made in a lab? by Michael Spector
• The article is about how ever since the discovery of stem cells in mice, scientists are able to make meat in a test tube. The article questions the boundaries humans will have to be willing to cross once we start to realize how dangerous our consumption of meat really is the ourselves and the planet.
• One thing that came to my attention was the amount of energy and resources the meat industry uses. According to the article, "The global livestock industry is responsible for nearly twenty per cent of humanity’s greenhouse-gas emissions. Cattle consume nearly ten per cent of the world’s freshwater resources, and eighty per cent of all farmland is devoted to the production of meat." I never stopped to think that as each week passes, there are millions of people eating meat every single day; it doesn't stop, just like anything else really. So when you think about it, the idea of science-produced meat is economically genius, although the thought of it does make me feel a bit queasy. There will come a day where the world will have to consider this idea, and it's all our fault.
  
• Before reading this article, I didn't know that these were actual experiments that were going on. In the article, the author described how the scientists would go about creating this meat. " In-vitro meat can be made by placing a few cells in a nutrient mixture that helps them proliferate. As the cells begin to grow together, forming muscle tissue, they are attached to a biodegradable scaffold. There the tissue can be stretched and molded into food, which could, in theory, be sold, cooked, and consumed like any processed meat." It then goes to say that nowadays there's a good percentage of food that we consume that is either over-processed or completely made in a lab, so what's wrong with making meat in a lab? But as I said before, the thought of my piece of steak or the bacon I eat in the morning was made in a test tube of cells and nutrients.. Makes me want to gag.
• I would definitely recommend everyone read this article because it's a look into what we should expect to happen in the future if we don't stop having such a bad effect on the enviornment.