With the the exponential expansion of the word population, providing a food source for the world population will become an increasingly difficult task. The work championed by the World Food Prize have lead to increased crop yields throughout the developing and industrial world. This amazing work has help us support the 6+ billion people on the planet. What i had failed to notice is that the world consumption of meat is drastically increasing. As third world countries become more advanced their consumption of meat also increases. The increased in affluence of a country is directly porportional to its consumption of meat. Eating further up the food chain comes at an ecological cost, as we must raise the grain to feed the cows for us to eat. the scaling of pounds of plant to pounds of beef is something like 10 to 1. whats really cool is that PETA is now sponsoring a great new prize for the first group that can produce commercially viable meat, at competitive prices, to the world by 2012. I personally dont like PETA but i definitely support this project. Too often they support emotional calls to stop animal testing, breeding, consumption, without a viable alternative strategy. They recently started a plether campaign (which i high five em!) and this projects are starting to make me a supporter of at least some of their ideas.
the problem with me is that while i agree its a disaster environmentally, its soooo damn tasty. thats where the PETA plan does sound like a great idea. Its advertising for a alternative that can compete with meat. if you can get me a synthetic meat that can closely resemble meat, id switch. hell, ill even give you the benefit of the doubt. it can taste ALMOST like meat and ill switch. I call it the "McNugget Compromise" namely, if you can make it taste like a mcnugget, which i dont think has even seen a chicken, then im in.
So get cracking! i want my sythetic steak now!
