Is fish to be considered as meat? If not, why not? Why do Catholics permit fish but not chicken or red meat during Lent?
(As a Bengali friend,who is a piscivorous vegetarian, explained to me, “Cows, chicken and lamb, you need to kill. Fish, you don’t kill. Take it out of the water and it will die by itself !)
Now comes a report that it might be possible to produce meat without any livestock. Technology will soon advance to the point where it will be possible to grow meat inside labs, without the need for the actual living things that wear it for some time before being killed for it, say scientists. ( Source).
So, tell me, can vegetarians be convinced to eat this form of grown meat? After all there is no killing involved.
(As a Bengali friend,who is a piscivorous vegetarian, explained to me, “Cows, chicken and lamb, you need to kill. Fish, you don’t kill. Take it out of the water and it will die by itself !)
Now comes a report that it might be possible to produce meat without any livestock. Technology will soon advance to the point where it will be possible to grow meat inside labs, without the need for the actual living things that wear it for some time before being killed for it, say scientists. ( Source).
So, tell me, can vegetarians be convinced to eat this form of grown meat? After all there is no killing involved.
5 comments:
Wow. That is something highly debatable. If it is grown like a plant, then they are just cells like plants and not part of a dead animal. Hmmm
Raj - Doubtful. Even now, if "vegetarians" want to eat meat, they can. After all - the killing / cooking is not done in front of your eyes. It only calls for a mental preparedness on the part of a veggie to switch to non veg even now. Is there a strong mental connection between the process of preparation and eating ? I do not know - after all when veggies eat their stuff, does our mind sub-consciously process the plucking, cleaning, boiling etc of the vegetables - I think not...Balaji..
When we find something difficult to follow, we find our own convincing, convenient substitution and a supportive argument in favour of this substitution. Arguments of veg and non veg seem to exist forever. Cow's milk comes from blood and it is non veg and plants have life and it is also non veg. And now this meat..:)) Veg or non veg, those who wish to eat do eat, simple:)
Mambalam Mani : Hmmm, a philosopher muses.....
Balaji: In a dinner in Manila once, a cooked pigeon was brought to the table, and its feathers plucked in our presence. Apparently it is a delicacy there. But the sight revolted my colleague from India who prides himself on being able to eat anythin that moves. So long as we are not involved in the process of killing, I guess we won't think about it when eating.
Priya: A strict vegetarian will not consume cow's milk, unless it is from dead cows!
There are numerous reasons why vegetarians still won't eat this synthetic meat. The article that you sourced does not mention it, but the scientists involved in this reasearch have commented that this is similar to taking the meat of one animal and converting it into the meat of a million animals. The original cells still comes from a live animal. The analogy is if we had a magic magnifier, that magnifies things by a million times, and we put a tiny piece of real meat in it to magnify it to a reasonable size, would vegetarians eat it? I think not. Yes maybe a few of them who are vegetarian solely because they support PETA might convert, but most vegs will still stay veg.
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