New Statesman -- artificial meat winners
No 4243
Set by Helen Cox
According to the Guardian, “the race to make fake meat just got interesting. Two scientists on opposite sides of the world both claim to be on the verge of serving up the first lab-grown hamburger – and saving the planet in the process.” We asked you to think about how the meat industry would fight back – with promotional material or ad copy rubbishing the idea.
This week’s winners
As someone emailed in: “Well, this was a weird one!” Indeed. Still, quite a few of you rose magnificently to the challenge. Even those who weren’t quite so successful managed a few good lines. We mention here “At the end of the day, do you want to turn into a mutant with three eyes?” (Mike Berry); “Would you knowingly fly in an aircraft piloted by someone who is regularly polluting their stomach with synthetic food?” (Michael Birt); “You’ve fought the flab. Now it’s time to fight the lab” (Bill Greenwell). £25 each to the four winners below, with the Tesco vouchers going, in addition, to Adrian Fry.
Say No to surreal meat!
You want real meat, mate, not surreal meat; pork that tells no porkies, steaks flame grilled not Bunsen burnt, chicken that’s been corn fed not drip fed, flesh that’s been out standing in a field, not outstanding in the field of bioengineering. You want flavours and textures produced by the marriage of evolution and animal husbandry, not copyright to a biotech conglomerate on some Dusseldorf industrial estate where burghers fake burgers. Real meat may have lived and died, but ersatz liver never lived. You want meat from animals you can pet, not processes you can patent, sausages that taste more of pig than pipette. Butchery, not alchemy, that’s what you’re after: off the bone, not the shelf. It’s time you decided whether you’re real man or laboratory mouse. And who wouldn’t rather meat that’s lived on verdant green than fake steak sold as Soylent Green?
Adrian Fry
Meat is murder
Meat is murder. And a good thing, too! Cows are intelligent creatures. When led to slaughter, they sense peril and their bodies release hormones associated with fear and anxiety. It is these, say many scientists whom we have paid to say so, that give beef its flavour. You can’t make that taste in the lab. It is the taste of terror. And it’s yummy. In France, a delicacy is the ortolan, kept in a dark box and force-fed before being killed and cooked to create an exquisite dining experience – but only for the rich and connected. In Britain, we are democrats and do it with chicken for ordinary families to enjoy. Suffering and time are what refine the taste. The boffins will never be able to replicate that in a Petri dish. Buy real meat. Because dead things make the best eatin’.
Daniel Kitto
Connect with nature
As you bite into a rare steak and sample the seductive texture of its muscular fibre, or run your tongue round the oozing fat in a juicy hamburger, you probably feel a deep-seated connection with nature, and conjure the romantic image of verdant pastures with cattle grazing contentedly. Surely this is part of the sensuous pleasure of eating meat? How could your taste buds experience the same satisfaction from a chemical substance produced in a laboratory? Picture the scene in a restaurant in the not-too-distant future. Maître d’: “Good evening, sir. Can I recommend the Petri dish of the day? Boeuf Braisé à Blumenthal: selected stem cells, slow-cooked in a warm broth of chemically-produced nutrients, blended with serum from cow foetuses, tossed in synthetic fat . . .” Say No to the Cultured Beef Project before it’s too late!
Sylvia Fairley
The soil and the source
From time immemorial, man has fed and tended his flock, be it cattle, sheep, goat or swine. Through his industrious endeavour, the farmer has maintained the spiritual connection between the soil at man’s feet and the fare on his plate. It is our nature. We are men of the soil. The soil is our source, our destination – earth to earth. Do YOU want to be the one who breaks this connection. Is imitation flesh good enough for YOU? There is a tide in the affairs of men. It behoves you to acknowledge that. You must recognise the symbiosis between man and beast. What history and time have established, let no man put asunder.
Helen Hogan
Adrian Fry can stock up on chops and roasts with this week’s Tesco vouchers, and Bill Greenwell sinks his teeth into an hon mensh.
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