It looks like PETA isn’t entirely a punchline, after all: PETA Offers $1 Million Reward to First to Make In Vitro Meat
PETA is offering a $1 million prize to the contest participant able to make the first in vitro chicken meat and sell it to the public by June 30, 2012. The contestant must do both of the following:
? Produce an in vitro chicken-meat product that has a taste and texture indistinguishable from real chicken flesh to non-meat-eaters and meat-eaters alike.
? Manufacture the approved product in large enough quantities to be sold commercially, and successfully sell it at a competitive price in at least 10 states.Judging of taste and texture will be performed by a panel of 10 PETA judges, who will sample the in vitro chicken prepared using a fried “chicken” recipe from VegCooking.com. The in vitro chicken must get a score of at least 80 when evaluated in order to win the prize.
[homer]
“Mmmmm…vat-bird…”
[/homer]
Wow…PETA actually doing something useful? If this means that we can have steak, chicken, and bacon on a future lunar colony (without having to bring an actual cow), I’m all for it. 🙂
Now, if they can get that to work, all we need to do is make space transportation cheap enough to make said lunar colony feasible…
~Jon
Edgar Rice Burroughs had the idea of vat grown meat in his ‘Mars’ books almost 80 (?) years ago.