[makikomi]

This sounds like a good idea. After all, I think most people would turn vegetarian if they had to raise livestock and then slaughter and butcher it. I know I would, but I love meat too much...

However, there are all sorts of issues to be resolved first. First of all, would it be safe? There could be that many chemicals and processes involved that it would be more like eating a chemical concoction. Having said that, if you read the ingredients on anything these days, you'll often start wondering whether you can purchase food without a prescription.

It could be argued that this would be a huge step forward. You wouldn't need to raise and then slaughter animals. There wouldn't be the need for farms, the moral issue of whether you should kill another sentient being to eat it would not be an issue any longer, and at least you could be sure that the meat in the petri dish hasn't been raised in a por environment, been slaughtered inhumanely, etc.

I can't help but think that at the end of the day, science is getting too involved in the food process. So much of what we eat is subjected to loads of unecesseary crap just to produce the food faster, cheaper and easier. It's easy to see why the organic food move has become so popular, and when you taste organic stuff, you really do notice a difference.