Quote Originally Posted by Xei View Post
Your post inspired me... I suddenly wondered why nobody had done that, it should be possible...

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

Apparently the only thing holding it back is financial considerations.

I wonder what the hell the moral implications of this'd be...

Which has the moral high ground; eating meat which didn't come from a conscious animal, or eating meat from an animal which had a life?

I bet it's largely moral taboo holding this back at the moment... and I bet it'll be waived when mass starvation sets in in the Westernised world.

Edit: This is bizarre... personally if there's no particular incentive either way I'd go for real animals, because you're creating conscious beings; as long as they're not in poor conditions.

PETA however is providing a $1,000,000 prize to the lab which firsts produces in vitro chicken... I think that's ridiculous, that's just... deleting animals. Billions of animals which would have lived will never have existed.

This really goes straight to the crux of moral philosophy. It's confusing stuff.
My body is "alive". My body and all forces acting of it are a direct result of innumerable cells, each of which satisfy the conditions for life on their own. My sperm cells, even when separated from my body, still move around and carry out an actual task beyond 'sit there and metabolize'. If cells are removed from me unharmed, they can be put into a petri dish in a laboratory and grown in culture while still performing the functions of life on their own. If my cells are anything like the cells in a chicken or cow, then how is in-vitro meat any less alive than a chicken or cow raised the regular way?