Ethical cuisine

Post by **spot** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 2:45 pm

I have meditated on the matter of food as it relates to exploitation.

Currently, as I understand it, most people regard the inclusion of human flesh in their diet as unethical. And rightly so, who could disagree.

Some go further still and declare all primates to be off the menu. This doesn't apply where primates are readily available for slaughter in the wild, the concept of a free lunch being universal.

Some religious practices abhor this or that on the grounds that God will smite them in the afterlife if they indulge their appetite for bacon or oysters or camels.

None of them go far enough, in my opinion. I offer you my own conclusions: no human should consume any multicellular lifeform, on the grounds of consanguinity. We're too closely related to the pig, the lamprey or the cous-cous to terminate its life just to enjoy its flavour.

Growing any multicellular species for the purpose of eating it should be the subject of an international treaty outlawing it worldwide. I call for the founding of a Food Crimes Tribunal.

I'm not so sure about whether eating something that died a natural death is ethical but I suspect it ought to be. Trees felled by high wind, for example, or accidentally electrocuted swans.

chonsigirl · Post by **chonsigirl** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 3:16 pm

Be a bland wake feast for you, spot...........no meat, no veggies. What about milk and eggs? Or is that cruel punishment to the critters involved?

Post by **spot** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 3:26 pm

All you need do is substitute a human for the animal or plant involved and ask whether it's currently acceptable. If we don't farm humans in order to milk them every day then we shouldn't exploit cows for the purpose, they're related. Slicing the bark of maple trees and bleeding them is pretty gross too.

Bruv · Post by **Bruv** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 4:04 pm

I am baffled, that's easy I know.....but what do you suggest we eat ?

Post by **spot** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 4:24 pm

Bruv;1357340 wrote: I am baffled, that's easy I know.....but what do you suggest we eat ?

Algae seem very suitable. One can grow every requirement for sustenance as algae and (given the research and commercial demand) process them into whatever form of food the public wants. All of it's there, potentially cheaper than any existing farming system and eliminating the ethical quandary I raised.

The primary ingredients required by production systems based on algae are the same as on a farm but without the multicellular victims: light, carbon dioxide and water. The balance of other chemicals is minimal compared to those three. What you end up with on the plate or in the glass is potentially comparable to what you buy in the shops today.

Delorean · Post by **Delorean** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 4:31 pm

Road kill?

Lon · Post by **Lon** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 4:43 pm

Since seeing the film "Soylent Green" with Charlton Heston many years ago I thought what a wonderful and practical idea.

Re-processing the dead into a biscuit or wafer.

Soylent Green (1973) - IMDb

Post by **spot** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 5:02 pm

Lon;1357345 wrote: Re-processing the dead into a biscuit or wafer.Biscuit or wafer might catch on. Stew, on the other hand, seems less likely.

Delorean's roadkill is an interesting one. Anybody driving headlong into a wild bird or herbivore would presumably be pleased to take it home and roast its muscles for lunch and there's certainly no ethical objection I could come up with, nor would I wish to. I do think it says a lot, though, that there's a restrictive range people would apply to what's acceptable roadkill and what isn't. If you list a few species and take a vote, I reckon you'd find the following:

Highly acceptable roast roadkill: peacock cassowary ostrich elk boar giraffe.

Completely unacceptable roast roadkill: vulture (despite Lon's assertion years back!) seagull eagle bear cat koala.

I'm interested that the list would be commonplace. I think it's culture-conditioned - I bet Genghis Khan's Mongol horde would have eaten any and all of those. They were said to kill and eat each other when nothing else could be found. Mind you they had many biased detractors, Genghis was the Gaddafi of his day.

Lon · Post by **Lon** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 5:19 pm

New Zealand does not have any predatory animals or snakes, they do however have zillions of possums which seem to blanket the highways and roadways. New Zealanders have made good use of their fur by combining it with Marino Wool to make very soft and warm scarves and gloves. Eating them though, they don't do. I'll betcha that early day Maori's ate them though.

Post by **LarsMac** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 5:37 pm

Given that most life-forms are busy consuming other life-forms, I must disagree with OP, here.

In fact it would seem to me that pretty much anything alive is fair game.

chonsigirl · Post by **chonsigirl** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 5:44 pm

Lon;1357345 wrote: Since seeing the film "Soylent Green" with Charlton Heston many years ago I thought what a wonderful and practical idea.

Re-processing the dead into a biscuit or wafer.

Soylent Green (1973) - IMDb

*yikes*

I thought of that movie too with the OP.

Post by **LarsMac** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 6:07 pm

Lon;1357345 wrote: Since seeing the film "Soylent Green" with Charlton Heston many years ago I thought what a wonderful and practical idea.

Re-processing the dead into a biscuit or wafer.

Soylent Green (1973) - IMDb

Recycling as a way of life?

Post by **spot** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 6:27 pm

LarsMac;1357354 wrote: Given that most life-forms are busy consuming other life-forms, I must disagree with OP, here. Most life-forms lack the ability to reason. Though not, I hasten to add, those which post their inestimable reflections on Forumgarden.

Delorean · Post by **Delorean** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 9:42 pm

spot;1357346 wrote:

Highly acceptable roast roadkill: peacock cassowary ostrich elk boar giraffe.

Completely unacceptable roast roadkill: vulture (despite Lon's assertion years back!) seagull eagle bear cat koala.

Koala....mmmmm....tastes like chicken! :yh_drool

Post by **LarsMac** » Wed Apr 13, 2011 4:07 pm

spot;1357361 wrote: Most life-forms lack the ability to reason. Though not, I hasten to add, those which post their inestimable reflections on Forumgarden.

So, I take it your suggesting, because we reason, we should extract ourselves from the food chain, entirey?

That does have some merit.

On the other hand, That means that I would be required to give up sushi and Barbeque.

Hmmm, reason vs. BBQ?

I am far too comfortable with my place in the food chain, thank you.

Post by **spot** » Wed Apr 13, 2011 7:15 pm

Future generations will regard you as barbaric, as shall I from this moment on. So there.

Delorean · Post by **Delorean** » Wed Apr 13, 2011 7:46 pm

If we are only to eat things that are already dead or have fallen to the ground, how are we to eat potatoes and other vegetables? Things that can fall would mostly be fruits, not an altogether complete diet :-2

Delorean · Post by **Delorean** » Wed Apr 13, 2011 7:47 pm

...and is chocolate still ok?:-2

If not, you can forget your ethics! :wah:

Post by **spot** » Wed Apr 13, 2011 8:05 pm

The experience of chocolate is your body's reaction to vigorous chemical probing, every aspect of which can be generated from synthetic materials. If the feedstock is amoebic you can still consider it grown as opposed to manufactured. Given the degree of processing in your current multicellular diet there won't be much done that you don't already put up with.

The potato is your distant cousin, you should have more respect than to treat it as a consumable commodity. The potato should have rights appropriate to its nature.

Delorean · Post by **Delorean** » Wed Apr 13, 2011 8:07 pm

spot;1357625 wrote: The experience of chocolate it your body's reaction to vigorous chemical probing, every aspect of which can be generated from synthetic materials. If the feedstock is amoebic you can still consider it grown as opposed to manufactured. Given the degree of processing in your current multicellular diet there won't be much done that you don't already put up with.

The potato is your distant cousin, you should have more respect than to treat it as a consumable commodity. The potato should have rights appropriate to its nature.

If you met my family, you wouldn't think it was so distant! :wah:

Post by **spot** » Wed Apr 13, 2011 8:17 pm

Delorean;1357627 wrote: If you met my family, you wouldn't think it was so distant! :wah:

I speak not of the plump pampered potato. ringed with herbicides and insecticides, made obese by the overapplication of nitrates and phosphates, plucked in its prime for presentation to pallid purchasers. I speak of the potato which is yet to come, returned to its wild and dangerous ways, fighting fearlessly across glaciated ravines to achieve its destiny upon the mountain tops of its native ranges. The potato is the quintessential Irish Rover.

Delorean · Post by **Delorean** » Wed Apr 13, 2011 9:36 pm

Post by **spot** » Wed Apr 13, 2011 9:55 pm

Delorean;1357635 wrote: :-2I had in mind, I think, an American poem of great renown by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, part of which went"Beware the pine-tree's withered branch!

Beware the awful avalanche!"

This was the peasant's last Good-night,

A voice replied, far up the height,

Excelsior!It was for many years considered a great, if hard to visualize, poem, until it was parodied into oblivion and immortalized all in one blow by Marriott Edgar.

Anyway, if I ever see a potato variety called Excelsior! I will certainly recall this thread.

Post by **spot** » Thu Apr 14, 2011 3:02 am

Good chap, Longfellow.

This is him on the topic of God's Acre:Into its furrows shall we all be cast,

In the sure faith, that we shall rise again

At the great harvest, when the archangel's blast

Shall winnow, like a fan, the chaff and grain. It's deceptively simple. Everything he wrote is in the same vein.

He's even got his own website and not many people born in 1807 can boast one.

Post by **LarsMac** » Thu Apr 14, 2011 2:04 pm

spot;1357618 wrote: Future generations will regard you as barbaric, as shall I from this moment on. So there.

Actually, I believe the real ethical problem is (and this brings back the mention of Soylent Green) that we have made enormous strides in extracting ourselves from the food chain, while at the same time endulging in the benefits of our current place in it.

We should be willing to return, in our entirety to the chain of life, if we wish to continue to consume same.

I believe all that are unwilling to return to the chain of life, should follow your advice and look outside the food chain for sustenance.

Post by **spot** » Thu Apr 14, 2011 2:38 pm

LarsMac;1357683 wrote: I believe all that are unwilling to return to the chain of life, should follow your advice and look outside the food chain for sustenance.On a point of information, algae are currently the predominant food on the planet by weight. Along with plankton they are the sole root of the food chain at sea, they support the entire biomass in that environment if you exclude the occasional mafia victim dropped off the back of a New Jersey launch. More tons of algae are produced and consumed naturally each year than all the cows, sheep, rolled oats and eggs put together.

Post by **LarsMac** » Fri Apr 15, 2011 3:10 pm

spot;1357684 wrote: On a point of information, algae are currently the predominant food on the planet by weight. Along with plankton they are the sole root of the food chain at sea, they support the entire biomass in that environment if you exclude the occasional mafia victim dropped off the back of a New Jersey launch. More tons of algae are produced and consumed naturally each year than all the cows, sheep, rolled oats and eggs put together.

So now we not only extricate ourselves from the food chain, we become competition with the entire food chain for sustenance?

Next we will GM the algae and won't need all them other critters. (Which will be a good thing because now that we don't need them for food, we will just dispose of the competition altogether.)

We can then start terraforming. Tear down all the high mountains, dump the debris in the sea, flatten out the planet a bit, so we have more open shallow water in which to grow our GM algae.

I think this is about as close as I want to get to living off algae:

Recipe

Post by **spot** » Fri Apr 15, 2011 7:07 pm

LarsMac;1357761 wrote: So now we not only extricate ourselves from the food chain, we become competition with the entire food chain for sustenance?I think I started the thread with the premise that this stuff was to be grown in vats, not that we'd go out with superfine mesh nets and trawl the oceans.

As far as the natural environment's concerned I'd be pleased if it and those living in it had absolutely no contact whatever either with humans or with the consequence of any human activity, and that it occupied as close to the entire surface of the planet as possible while still allowing us a way on and off now and then.

Nobody else is using the inside, we're technologically capable of living in there, we'd not be taking up anything else's space, it's an ideal way forward. I estimate we could increase human numbers on the planet to ten thousand billion by building downward just within a two-mile belt and each of us end up with apartments ten times our current size, while leaving the surface entirely to the other life-forms.

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Fri Apr 15, 2011 7:18 pm

spot;1357765 wrote: I think I started the thread with the premise that this stuff was to be grown in vats, not that we'd go out with superfine mesh nets and trawl the oceans.

As far as the natural environment's concerned I'd be pleased if it and those living in it had absolutely no contact whatever either with humans or with the consequence of any human activity, and that it occupied as close to the entire surface of the planet as possible while still allowing us a way on and off now and then.

Nobody else is using the inside, we're technologically capable of living in there, we'd not be taking up anything else's space, it's an ideal way forward. I estimate we could increase human numbers on the planet to ten thousand billion by building downward just within a two-mile belt and each of us end up with apartments ten times our current size, while leaving the surface entirely to the other life-forms.

What's the temperature like two miles down?

Post by **LarsMac** » Fri Apr 15, 2011 7:36 pm

Bryn Mawr;1357767 wrote: What's the temperature like two miles down?

Rather warm, I hear

Post by **spot** » Fri Apr 15, 2011 9:29 pm

Bryn Mawr;1357767 wrote: What's the temperature like two miles down?

It's all coming up from below, right? So what's in the first quarter mile of the basement? Generators, that's what. And the power generated is expended further up, thereby allowing the heat to get where it was going while being useful in the process. Anywhere you have a temperature gradient you have the potential to run a civilization.

Post by **LarsMac** » Sat Apr 16, 2011 6:47 am

spot;1357765 wrote: I think I started the thread with the premise that this stuff was to be grown in vats, not that we'd go out with superfine mesh nets and trawl the oceans.

As far as the natural environment's concerned I'd be pleased if it and those living in it had absolutely no contact whatever either with humans or with the consequence of any human activity, and that it occupied as close to the entire surface of the planet as possible while still allowing us a way on and off now and then.

Nobody else is using the inside, we're technologically capable of living in there, we'd not be taking up anything else's space, it's an ideal way forward. I estimate we could increase human numbers on the planet to ten thousand billion by building downward just within a two-mile belt and each of us end up with apartments ten times our current size, while leaving the surface entirely to the other life-forms.

All great ideas start out with a simple plan and humans manage to screw them up.

Yours is pretty good for humans when they begin to actually venture out from Home Planet. A long term project like the ram scoop transports that guys like Niven dreamed up with artificially lit algae vats to produce food stuff would be great for colonial trips.

As for Mother Earth, A troglodite society, living underground, and eating algae would be fine, as long as I get to be one of the "Barbarians" that roam the surface, feasting upon the vast array of life forms Mother Nature has provide, perfectly willing to return to the mud from which we were extracted when our life form is no longer functional.

Lon · Post by **Lon** » Fri Apr 22, 2011 4:52 pm

Interesting Pizza.

Attached files

Post by **spot** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 9:48 am

LarsMac;1357776 wrote: As for Mother Earth, A troglodite society, living underground, and eating algae would be fine, as long as I get to be one of the "Barbarians" that roam the surface, feasting upon the vast array of life forms Mother Nature has provide, perfectly willing to return to the mud from which we were extracted when our life form is no longer functional.

I'm trying to remember what film that's from - I have a horrid suspicion it had either Michael York or Sean Connery in it. Neither were on their best form.

Michael York, on reflection, never had a best form.

Post by **spot** » Sun May 05, 2019 6:15 pm

The wheels turn slowly but they finally start to grind...

"A Singapore-based company aiming to make seafood by growing them from cells rather than animals secures $4.6m (Â£3.53m) in funding".

magentaflame · Post by **magentaflame** » Sun May 12, 2019 3:07 pm

I don't eat any seafood from Asia. So that's me out

Post by **spot** » Sun May 12, 2019 3:20 pm

magentaflame;1523062 wrote: I don't eat any seafood from Asia. So that's me out

I'm not sure you entirely followed the "growing them from cells rather than animals" bit. The product being developed will never have seen the sea and will never have been seafood, it will have been brainless single-celled organisms with no nervous system, it will have been grown in large industrial vats the size of oil tankers. The investors are hoping to pass this off as seafood when it appears in restaurants, that's all.

magentaflame · Post by **magentaflame** » Sun May 12, 2019 3:46 pm

No, I got that bit . It's like the "bovine" patties made in a lab. I still wouldn't eat it because it comes from Asia.

Post by **Betty Boop** » Wed Nov 16, 2022 1:33 pm

spot wrote: ↑Sun Apr 10, 2011 4:24 pm Bruv;1357340 wrote: I am baffled, that's easy I know.....but what do you suggest we eat ?

Algae seem very suitable. One can grow every requirement for sustenance as algae and (given the research and commercial demand) process them into whatever form of food the public wants. All of it's there, potentially cheaper than any existing farming system and eliminating the ethical quandary I raised.

The primary ingredients required by production systems based on algae are the same as on a farm but without the multicellular victims: light, carbon dioxide and water. The balance of other chemicals is minimal compared to those three. What you end up with on the plate or in the glass is potentially comparable to what you buy in the shops today.

Or something like this..

Enough protein to feed the entire world could be produced on an area of land smaller than London if we replace animal farming with factories producing micro-organisms, a campaign has said.
The Reboot Food manifesto argues that three-quarters of the world’s farmland should be rewilded instead.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -emissions

Post by **spot** » Fri Nov 18, 2022 4:36 am

Betty Boop wrote: ↑Wed Nov 16, 2022 1:33 pmOr something like this..

Enough protein to feed the entire world could be produced on an area of land smaller than London if we replace animal farming with factories producing micro-organisms, a campaign has said.
The Reboot Food manifesto argues that three-quarters of the world’s farmland should be rewilded instead.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -emissions

This seems to be the week for articles about factory-grown food. I have reservations about the proposals.

If, hypothetically, a person were grown from a single cell in a lab, it wouldn't be called "lab-grown meat", it would be called a person. If the process were competent then the person would think, talk, reason and be as human as a naturally-created person. It wouldn't be "lab-grown meat". Well, similarly with fish or cows or parsley.

A lab can focus on growing just a single component or organ instead of the fully expressed species, human or salmon or what have you. You can get a production line churning out fillets or kidneys or eyeballs. Or brains, come to that. The end product is still multi-cellular life and you still have to kill it before it's eaten and digested from a plate.

The advantage to life on Earth is that the production takes minimal land usage compared with farming, and I agree my primary target is returning land (and sea) availability to wild species.

There may or may not be an ethical or moral dimension to what some might regard as an abuse of living tissue. I would hope future generations would regard the consumption of any and all multicellular life as abhorrent and bestial behaviour, farming on a par with slavery, and the attribution of higher rights to humans than to any other wild multicellular species a form of intolerable bigotry.

I take exception to the present default term "lab-grown food", or references to Petri dishes. The experimental development of techniques uses labs and dishes but the manufacturing facilities for commercial operation are best called factories. Neither do I foresee any of this happening in a box resembling a Star Trek replicator at the side of someone's kitchen, I think any such replicator would need a power station to operate and a warehouse to hold the immense range of feed-stock, I think it's a dead end as proposed technology goes.

I think growing a specific form of consumable from differentiated DNA carrying the template is just as much a dead end, it's immensely slow and expensive compared with forming an edible desirable product from a single feed. As I wrote earlier, I think the feed material for the forming of an end product should be created by a continuous (rather than batch) production of single-celled algae grown from photons and inorganic minerals like carbon dioxide and salts. That, too, is a factory process using minimal land space if any. I would see it as ideally performed underground. Photons are easily generated with LEDs and we have a superfluity of carbon dioxide to dispose of from the existing atmosphere.

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Wed Nov 30, 2022 2:38 pm

spot wrote: ↑Fri Nov 18, 2022 4:36 am

If, hypothetically, a person were grown from a single cell in a lab, it wouldn't be called "lab-grown meat", it would be called a person. If the process were competent then the person would think, talk, reason and be as human as a naturally-created person. It wouldn't be "lab-grown meat". Well, similarly with fish or cows or parsley.

<big snip>

Nowhere in the proposal does it suggest creating a complete living, breathing, animal - it would generate lab grown meat, just as your hypothetical person would be a lab grown person.

Post by **spot** » Wed Nov 30, 2022 3:49 pm

Bryn Mawr wrote: ↑Wed Nov 30, 2022 2:38 pmNowhere in the proposal does it suggest creating a complete living, breathing, animal - it would generate lab grown meat, just as your hypothetical person would be a lab grown person.

I agree entirely. I would bring a subsequent clause forward though - "The end product is still multi-cellular life and you still have to kill it before it's eaten and digested from a plate"