The Meat Sheet [was: rebranding]

[Garson O'Toole]

Joel Berson wrote:
>> With what does one feed the meat sheet?  And does that feed cost less
>> than the feed fed to an equivalent supply of feed animals?

Eric Nielsen wrote:
>> I'll let the Bio-thermodynamicists pick that bone.

This idea has a long history and is sometimes referred to as: cultured
meat, in vitro meat, or tank grown meat. Winston Churchill wrote an
article speculating on future technological developments in the Strand
Magazine of December 1931 titled "Fifty Years Hence", and he discussed
the concept. The article was reprinted in the March 1932 issue of
Popular Mechanics which is fully visible in Google Books. Here is an
except:

With a greater knowledge of what are called hormones, i.e., the
chemical messengers in our blood, it will be possible to control
growth. We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in
order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately
under a suitable medium.

http://books.google.com/books?id=8-EDAAAAMBAJ&q=absurdity#v=snippet&

The Wikipedia entry on the topic is "In vitro meat". NASA conducted
research motivated by the requirements of long-duration space
journeys.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro_meat

(Note, I have not directly verified the Strand reference on paper. It
is based on information given in Churchill by Himself: The Definitive
Collection of Quotations (2008) by Richard Langworth.)

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org