One of the great sadnesses I have in my life is my inability to stop supporting the meat industry. While I'm vegan and don't eat meat myself, for the health of my cats, I have to buy meat. I don't agree with some people's assertion that cats can eat a specially balanced vegetarian diet and be fine. They are natural carnivores, and unlike humans, have to eat meat. This is why I was excited when I heard about "shmeat" a few years ago.
Back in 2009 or so, there was a segment on the Colbert Report about PETA funding the development of lab-made "meat" that was never a part of a living creature. It's basically muscle tissue grown in a petri dish. Medical science has been working on developing lab-made tissue types for testing medicines and treatment of injuries for some time. Nobody had been thinking about people eating it, though. I love the Colbert Report, but the segment focused on how gross lab-made meat would be (as if killing an animal and cutting the flesh off its bones and eating THAT isn't gross), and makes that joke that the nickname "shmeat" comes from "shit"+ "meat".
Actually "shmeat" comes from the fact that it's created in "sheets" of tissue in the lab. While I have no interest in eating it myself, I hope that someday soon I can feed it to my cats, and other people can feed it to their cats, and people who just can't face becoming vegetarian or vegan (even though they agree with it logically) because meat is "so damn tasty" will choose shmeat instead of flesh hacked off of cow, pig, chicken, turkey, and lamb corpses. Maybe our eating habits can stop making massive contributions to global warming and general environmental degradation as well. Merry X-mas!
No comments:
Post a Comment