Thursday, July 21, 2005

Where's the Beef?

Recently eaten: swiss cheese omelette, tater tots
Recent annoyance: summer colds

An alarming trend in cow-loving is really putting a wet blanket on my carnivorous ways. Sure, it would be healthier and more ecologically sound to eat less red meat. So giant piles of livestock poo is causing terrible odor pollution and methane gas fires? And aren't those damned Canadians in bigger danger of contracting mad cow disease then we paranoid neighbors to the south? Professional hockey is dead anyway, so let them have their degenerative brain disorders.

New hamburgers grown in laboratory
"Writing in the journal Tissue Engineering, Matheny said scientists could grow cells from the muscle tissue of cattle, pigs, poultry or fish in large flat sheets on thin membranes. These sheets of cells would be grown and stretched, then removed from the membranes and stacked to increase thickness and resemble meat.

Using another method, scientists could grow muscle cells on small three-dimensional beads that stretch with small changes in temperature. The resulting tissue could be used to make processed meat such as chicken nuggets or hamburgers." Well, I am going to cancel my subscription to Tissue Engineering immediately! And frankly, I think the most shocking revelation from this article is that chicken nuggets are actually made of real meat!

Cattle Wed in 2,000 guest Thai Ceremony
"So Thong Khaow and her new mate, Thong Kham — a pair of rare dwarf Brahman cattle — were married Sunday morning in a traditional Thai ceremony featuring a banquet for more than 2,000 human guests in central Sa Kaew province.

The animals wore silk outfits and jasmine garlands. Other beasts, including goats, also attended the wedding." Pandemonium ensued when the guests were offered the choice of steak or chicken for dinner.

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