Lab grown meat is nothing new; there have been edible “test tube” bits of meat for years. But mostly those have been terrible tasting (or terribly bland) and terribly expensive. This is of course not surprising to anyone who knows anything about how challenging new technologies and products are developed… the first one out are almost always extremely expensive. But it’s starting to look like the technology is finding its place:

Lab-grown burgers and chicken nuggets ‘could be on sale by the end of this year’

On one hand, if they can truly pull this off, there will be all kinds of advantages to this sort of thing. Tasty, nutritious and safe artificial meat will allow for:

1: Meat could be “grown” anywhere, including within major metropolitan areas. This would eliminate many of the issues of transport. If the meat can be grown from recycled sewage, even better. Poop-to-plate for the foodies of tomorrow!

2: The need to fish the oceans empty will fade as tuna and whatnot could be created artificially.

3: The scourge of cows can finally be dealt with. Without the need to grow them for food or for leather (since it seems that a perfectly cromulent leather can be grown from fungus), they won’t need to be kept on farms anymore, and they can be allowed to go extinct. Then sheep and pigs and turkeys and chickens can soon follow them onto the endangered species list. Soon, these boring animals will be interesting again as the only place to see them will be in zoos.

4: Without the need for grazing lands. ranches, feed lots and the like can be returned to a state of nature, grasslands or forests or just plain desert.

Of course, all these advantages will be downsides for many people. If your livelihood depends on food critters, directly or indirectly, you might be kinda up Hillary Creek. Ranchers, slaughter house workers, truck drivers, farmers growing feed… these will all be hit hard. Fortunately, it seems likely that the rise of synthetic meat will be relatively slow, taking at least a generation to truly come to prominence. Even if burgers and nuggets become dirt cheap and nutritionally better, people are still going to want their steaks and *actual* Thanksgiving turkduckens. And if the technology becomes very quickly standardized and industrially produced, there’s one group we can count on to put the brakes on full adoption of the technology: screeching SJW harpies. The same people who freaked the hell out about GMOs and “pink slime,” all perfectly good and safe foodstuffs, can be counted on to absolutely loose their beady little minds over lab grown food.

But if the tech works, I can foresee a few interesting possibilities:

1: A new “microbrew” industry. If the equipment can be reduced in size and cost so that a reasonably well funded enthusiast can do this at home, you’ll see people working on their own “specialty blends” of synth-meat. Hoo boy, just imagine the regulatory environment that’ll grow up around *that.*

2: One hell of a philosophical argument when someone inevitably starts growing *human* meat. Is it cannibalism? Will it be legal to consume? If it turns out to be tasty and safe, will a consumer of such be seen as a freak?

3: Dachsund weenies. Black Lab burgers. Beagle nuggets. Poodle salami.

4: Will Jews and Muslims be allowed to consume synthetic bacon?