Artificial Meat

Today the first artificial meat was eaten by humans. The project was paid for by Sergei Brin of Google fame. The idea is to find an alternative to 'naturally' produced meat that avoids the cruelty of factory farming. This seems like a long distance and expense to go when greater strides can be made by reducing the amount of meat that most people consume. This video I think is right on the money. Find ways for most people to eat less meat. This involves teaching people how to cook better vegetarian food - leaving the meat off a plate of meat, veg and starch does not do the job. I also think it is a lot easier to ask people to have a few meat free days per week rather than convince a few to give up meat altogether. Ideology aside the goal should be to reduce the total amount of meat produced and consumed in the world. Doing that by culturing stem cells from a cow seems to way overshoot into the realms of technology rather than plain old home economics.
I have been trying to eat less meat over the last few years and it has gone pretty well. As you can see from these blog entries though I do still eat meat. Quite a bit of it, but a lot less than most Irish people. I think I will stick with this path for now rather than try to 'go veg' completely.