PETA jurors judging for texture and flavor of chicken? ROFLMAO!

“In-vitro meat production would use animal stem cells that would be placed in a medium to grow and reproduce. The result would mimic flesh and could be cooked and eaten,” People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said in a statement.

The reward will go to the participant who manages by 2012 to put test-tube chicken into commercial production and successful sell it in at least 10 US states at a competitive price.

Teams of researchers around the world are already working on producing meat in a laboratory, but it will be several years yet before in-vitro meat makes it onto the dinner table.

A team of 10 PETA jurors will taste the entries to make sure they match the texture and flavor of chicken, and they must score at least 80 out of 100 points to win the prize.

The New York Times revealed that the scheme almost triggered a civil war within the headquarters of the organization dedicated to fighting for animal rights. But PETA argued the move would help avoid unnecessary suffering.

“More than 40 billion chickens, fish, pigs, and cows are killed every year for food in the United States in horrific ways,” it said in its statement.

“In-vitro meat would spare animals from this suffering. In addition, in vitro meat would dramatically reduce the devastating effects the meat industry has on the environment.”

And it added that while “humans don’t need to eat meat at all” since many people continued “to refuse to kick their meat addictions, PETA is willing to help them gain access to flesh that doesn’t cause suffering and death.”

We all know people that have overt reactions, like allergies, to modern foods like soya, grains and dairy. As we didn’t evolve on this I don’t consider that a surprise.

Perhaps Quorn would make a good substance to combat the starvation of the poor in famine stricken regions? I would only eat it if I was starving and had no other choice.

Dr Briffa is not saying Quorn is unhealthy purely because it is low fat - he is saying the marketing tactics to sell a product is to say its low fat which really sells especially to the fat-phobiac market. Quorn is unhealthy because its a fake food product.

Unless one is opposed to eating meat, it isn’t really that difficult to obtain adequate protein. Humanely raised, pastured and grass-fed beef can be very quick to prepare and rarely causes sensitivity/allergic reactions.

Tofu and other soy products, on the other hand, are highly allergenic for many people, as well as goitrogenic (harmful to the thyroid gland). And if one is watching/controlling blood glucose with diet, steak doesn’t spike blood sugar the way starchy lower quality plant-based proteins can.

The CSPI, observing that while a mushroom is a fungus, fusarium is not a mushroom, and they quipped, “Quorn’s fungus is as closely related to mushrooms as humans are to jellyfish.”

Karen and Sue
Quorn’s manufacturers have, I think, attempted to give their product a natural ‘flavour’ by likening it to mushrooms and truffles. However, according to Professor David Geiser of the Fusarium Research Center at Pennsylvania State University in the USA, drawing parallels between the organism used to make Quorn and mushrooms is like: “calling a rat a chicken because both are animals”

http://www.cspinet.org/new/200208121.html

I regularly cook with quorn, and my family haven’t had any of the side effects mentioned by others. However, I am not sure how often I’ll use it in the future now that I have more knowledge of how it’s made - like Sue, I thought it was something to do with mushrooms.

Reading the correspondence between you & Tim, he seems reasonable, and much less challenging than you!