Meat

MEAT

Meat, good tasty meat. I tried going vegetarian once or twice but seriously meat is awesome. There's nothing quite like biting into a half-pound beef/buffalo bacon burger with pepper jack cheese and maybe a slice of ham for good measure. Heck, throw in a side of hot wings too.

But there's a problem with meat. Not only is meat getting expensive, but it's also energy inefficient. A grown cow will eat 2 percent its weight in grain per day. That doesn't seem like much until you realize this is almost 30 pounds of grain a day. That could make 35 loaves of bread. Over a week you spend 245 loaves of bread to keep that cow alive.

In the course of one cow's life, 31,937 loaves of bread could have been made.
If you got 31,937 pieces of steak off the cow that'd be great, but unfortunately, you only end up with about 700 pounds. If you're lucky.

Then you start dealing with being humane... everyone knows that's a can of worms.

More evidence is surfacing that animals are smarter than we think. Many birds are self-aware, elephants mourn for their dead, and many animals are emotional. Many scientists agree that animals are capable of feeling depressed, angry, or happy.

So what does a cow or a pig feel on an animal farm on its way to the slaughterhouse? Is it scared? Is it suffering? It's almost a chilling concept. I really don't want to think about my half-pound bacon burger as once a living creature crying and reflecting on it's life. How horrifying humans must seem to the animals we consume.

There are even more problems. Animal farms contribute to CO2 emissions, they're prone to spreading disease, and they take up a lot of space.

Soon we will have to address these problems.
But how? Compulsory Vegetarianism?
That might work... but only if a World Government made it illegal to raise animals for meat. Which means there would be an underground and black market for meat. Which would lower the standards for sanitation.
And then there's the fact that it could destabilize the food chain. Humans may be screwing the planet but we're a very important piece in the food chain. We're the most widespread predator on the planet, and arguably the most efficient predator in history.

You can't remove the biggest predator on the planet and not expect widespread consequences. We would have to use population control as non-native herbivores ravage the world. Then what do we do with the carcasses?

Compulsory Vegetarianism won't work. What we have to do is create a new supply of meat that is cheap, efficient, eco-friendly, and doesn't suffer.

Luckily, scientists are way ahead of us.

First on the menu of the future is Vat Grown Meat. Scientists are working on a way to grow animal muscle tissue in petri dishes. Once they perfect it, they can work on producing it in a larger scale.

Unfortunately, as it turns out, meat isn't just muscle cells. It's nerves, blood vessels, fat, and stringy gristle things that you spit out in horror. Plus, muscles cells don't just kind of float around in a soup, they're connected to each other in bundles of tissue.

So far, all attempts at growing meat in a petri dish have resulted in a slime of muscle cells that look nothing like a hamburger. One scientist tried adding an artificial network for the cells to grow on, but when he cooked the meat he found out the network didn't dissolve. So he basically ate slimey cheesecloth. Yum.

So far it's really expensive too. Larger models are only bound to get more expensive. They will be bacterial cesspools if they aren't sanitized, and we'll have to figure out a way to exercise the tissue, and as it grows to bigger sizes we'll need to circulate nutrients, oxygen, process toxins, and before you know it we've created a Vat Grown Organism.

So if vat grow meat will eventually just create a tank filled with slabs of muscle and organs, why not just use slabs of muscle and organs in the first place?

The second dish on the menu of the future will be Animal 57. Scientists have been working on genetically altering animals to produce more meat for awhile now. Most of the meat we eat [and even our vegetables] have been altered in some way or another.

There was a rumor awhile back that KFC had invested money in researching a way to create chickens with four legs. It turned out to just be an urban legend... but just the KFC part. Scientists have indeed figured out how to grow legs in the place of wings. Don't believe me?

Not a digitally altered photo. This is real.

There's your chicken for you, KFC. Notice how deformed the back legs are? I'm guessing those are the 'fake' ones. They don't really look functional so I wonder how much meat could really be scraped off one of those.

And how would you market that part of the chicken? It couldn't look like your typical 'drumstick'.

That's not all, check out this article. Animals getting depressed at the prospect of slaughter? Maybe a little to unruly? That's okay, soon they'll be emotionless anyway. We're one step closer to creating an animal brain that's sole purpose is to keep the animal alive.

Plus scientists want to make it so cows start producing human breastmilk instead of that pesky cow milk. They say it will be better for us, but I'm sure they're overlooking the fact that you can't make cheese out of human breastmilk. Sure drinking chocolate milk will finally be really good for me, but at what cost? Healthy Chocolate milk or Chedder Cheese? That's tough.

I imagine in the future they could just continue down the same path. We'll be left with some beast unnatural to earth. It will have no eyes or ears so it can't see or hear what's going on around it. Of course it won't care because it mentally can't.

It won't have teeth, just a cone shaped head with a mouth on the end to suck nutrients through a straw into its belly. It can't scream because it's been altered not to have a voicebox. It's hairless skin is tight with rippling muscles, thick pulsating veins distribute nutrition throughout the body in a perfect symetrical pattern.

As it's led to the slaughter with a leash, it has no tail to tuck between its legs. The beast has only used its overdeveloped legs a few times in its life... shortly after birth, and now on its way to death. A quick cut across the neck drains the blood. After a few cuts in the muscle around the neck and a good tug the head comes off, pulling the entire spine and most of the organs with it.

Then it's off to be chopped up and distributed.

It's like this. But no eyes and no teeth.
Also, get rid of that pathetic excuse for a tail and snip off those ear things.
Great, now make it 50 times bigger and stronger.