Soylent Green, the sequel?

Yikes... instead of eliminating or bypassing CAFOs and the associated animal suffering, environmentally-hazardous waste disposal, overuse and misuse of antibiotics, and etc., by raising humanely-raised livestock on small family farms, some people seem to want to go the other way: to growing meat in a laboratory. I can't think of anything more repungnant, except maybe eating Soylent Green (which actually, and scarily, isn't all that different according to what happens in the movie, minus the human element as raw material, of course).

Read these articles and decide for yourself:

Will Lab-Grown Meat Save the Planet?

Tastes Like Chicken: Growing meat without growing animals

WTFFDA?

Yesterday, the United States was totally hosed by one of its own taxpayer-funded bureaucracies. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved cloned animals (and their products, such as milk) to be allowed into America's food chain... and of course, without adequate testing (unless you consider testing partially funded by the same biotech firms that produce cloned animals as adequate or impartial). Plus, the FDA went against the wishes of the U.S. Senate (i.e. Congress), who passed a bill requiring a rigorous and careful review of the human health and economic impacts of allowing cloned food into America's food supply by a vote of 79 to 14. And, they of course went against the will of the American people; according to the Center for Food Safety:

Recent opinion polls show the majority of Americans do not want milk or meat from cloned animals in their food. A December 2006 poll by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology found that nearly two-thirds of U.S. consumers were uncomfortable with animal cloning. A national survey conducted this year by Consumers Union found that 89 percent of Americans want to see cloned foods labeled, while 69 percent said that they have concerns about cloned meat and dairy products in the food supply. A recent Gallup Poll reported that more than 60 percent of Americans believe that it is immoral to clone animals, while the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology found that a similar percentage say that, despite FDA approval, they won't buy milk from cloned animals.

For further information, read Not Ready for Prime Time: FDA's Flawed Approach to Assessing the Safety of Food from Cloned Animals.