Islamic scholars consulted by a leading producer of cultivated meat say that the newfangled protein — which is grown from animal cells and doesn’t require animals to be slaughtered — can be halal, or permissible under Muslim law.
And the Jewish Orthodox Union this month certified a strain of lab-grown chicken as kosher for the first time, “marking a significant step forward for the food technology’s acceptance under Jewish dietary law,” as the Times of Israel put it.
It always amazes me people think this being that created the universe cares what meat they eat.
A lot of food handling instructions in religion are rudimentary sanitation practices. For example, food must be consumed same day, not left out. Don’t eat raw shellfish. Don’t drink blood. Wash your hands.
Pretty much all religious texts at their core are “how to not die,” “how to make more of you,” and “how not to be an asshole,” with an overarching guilt system to enforce it.
Everything else is either people misconstruing things because they can’t make sense of their own existence, either through mental illness, misguidedness, or plain old ignorance.
Hey there’s also hallucinations in there
You’re telling me this enormous being with 6 wings surrounding flaming wheels covered with eyes that God is speaking to me through isn’t real?
Hey sometimes the mushrooms in the desert hit different
I’d never thought of religion as a form of Darwinism before.
Let’s not forget all the absurd shit religions have. Like Killing non-believers, treating women as object, pedophilia and more.
I would maintain that there’s a statistical sprinkling of that stuff mixed in with other arbitrary rules like not mixing textiles and not giving loans.
Cares about the meat you eat and the meat you beat
Always have!
And isn’t it funny how the gods are always concerned with the same things their worshippers are? It would be odd to care deeply about regulating the sexual and dietary habits of the ants in our backyards. If god(s) were real I’d expect their interests to be wild and beyond our understanding, and not about what hats humans can wear and what meat is acceptable.
The in-lore explanation is that we are created by the god(s) in their own image. Much like if you made a toy to play with other toys, you’d probably make something humanoid, or at least anthropomorphic.
Unless you want to talk about Lovecraftian horror gods, but in that lore, humans weren’t created by the gods (as far as I know).
Created in their image perhaps, but generally not in their own capability, understanding, and therefore one would assume, interests. Gods are like us because we imagine them like us, because humans draw from what we know and what we are concerned with when we imagine and dream and hallucinate. Religious writers cannot accurately fathom the interests of those with superhuman knowledge and capability, and so the gods typically want what the people who claim to speak for them also want, and offer solutions to whatever the worshippers are concerned with. Lovecraft was brilliant for acknowledging this limitation in his own way, he was known for not describing the horror because it is far too horrible and beyond our comprehension.
If you read through the stories that define them, it makes a lot more sense. Blood and sacrifice are intertwined with life and righteousness. God is holy and set apart, and can’t be in the presence of less – so their lives and habits are built around remaining in relationship to their God.
So the careful handling of death, food, and blood makes perfect sense from that worldview, whether you personally agree with it or not.
That makes even less sense.
No, no it does not. Like, not at all.
organized religion is and always has been about using laws to control people and take their money through brainwashing backed with death threats where and whenever they can get away with it
Just wait till you find their opinions on the oppsite hole.
Opinions on religion aside, more acceptance of lab grown meat is better for energy efficiency and reducing unneeded animal cruelty.
I once asked a Muslim neighbor over for dinner.
They explained they could never eat anything I have prepared in my kitchen, because I eat pork.
Way to go religion, keep making sure your arbitrary rules keep people apart.
Religion was (and often still is) a way to keep poor people in check.
The whole idea of heaven/hell, reincarnation, karma etc. is so people accept their shitty roles in life.
Don’t worry that the king is living in luxury and you are suffering as it’ll all even out eventually.
As you say preventing them mixing with other groups is also a great way to keep your cult going.
I’m glad to see lab-grown meat clear another hurdle. The better and more common this technology is, the closer we’ll be to finally getting rid of the meat industry and factory farming.
It is a bit weird to think though that the eradication of factory farming is going to lead to a decrease in global cow populations. So based on raw numbers alone this is actually a bad thing for the species.
Not really. We had a similar reduction in the global horse population at the beginning of the 1940s. We used to have basically a couple horses per person there for a few thousand years. We still have plenty of horses, most even have better lives now. Hopefully we can finally make horse racing financially unviable so we stop killing so many horses for no good reason.
There are already people who have pet cows that they won’t eat when the cow dies. Those people will tend the smaller herds.
Glad the OU certified this as kosher. This has been a big question in Jewish communities.
How could it not be? It’s not real meat.
But it is. It just didn’t come from slaughtering anything.
From the outside it seems to fit well with religious laws that intend to reduce the suffering of the animal being slaughtered. If there is no animal that needs to suffer at all in the slaughter it seems like a win if it can be understood but the believers.
If GMOs aren’t “organic”, this isn’t real meat.
There’s no Jewish or Islamic pope so what a lab-grown meat producer has to do is simply find a Imam or a Rabbi that will agree to say it’s halal or kosher. They can pay them nice consulting fee for that. I’ve seen kosher light switches and cell phones before. Other Rabbis will say it’s not actually kosher but everyone can choose which rabbi to follow.
There are a handful of organizations that will certify your product as kosher. Some people trust one organization or another, some trust any of em, some use their best judgement in general. A large organization of Rabbim agreeing on its kashrut status could hold a lot of sway, though, and be a catalyst to start a conversation over many tables of “Should we eat this?”
Now, what I’m curious of is what the meat qualifies as.
Is it milchig, fleichig or pareve?
Still most muslims just follow what scholoars agree on, this is pretty good
Yes, but which scholars? For some things there’s a consensus - pork is haram - but for others there’s not, and different scholars will contradict each other. I’m guessing this is still in the early stages where there’s no consensus.
That being said, I hope they decide cultured versions of halal meats are halal because there’s no good reason not to.
Muslim scholars, try to keep up
Can’t tell if serious. They’re no more a monolith than Christians, complete with a history of bloody sectarian wars.
I always think that lab grown meat is a weird idea why don’t they just do something interesting why don’t they do lab grown velociraptor. I want to eat a velociraptor please.
Or better yet go through the fossil record and find the tastiest animal, and then grow that.
They already did a big wooly mammoth meatball, so you’re not alone there.
Sort of. It wasn’t very authentic, so it was mostly a publicity stunt.
Yeah I wanna try some Dodo bird, must have been good if it was hunted to extinction.
I think the Galapagos tortoise was also almost hunted to extinction for being so delicious.
Probably just easy to catch.
Ooh - i would love to do that!
There was once a thought experiment about whether a hypothetical potato containing a pig gene (to make it tastily fatty) would be halal and/or kosher. IIRC, because of the different philosophical bases of the two taboos, it would have been one but not the other, though I can’t remember which.
IMO never thought too see science and religion in one sentence.
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The problem I have with artificial environment is that humans (and all life on Earth) evolved in natural environment trough many many years. Can we be so certain that artificial environment (food, cosmetics, …) are not triggering undesired response, body trying to adopt to synthetic materials, what would be the outcome? I’m thinking about cancer, auto immune disease and similar.
We only observe consequences and for some it might take a lot of time to show, but then it might be too late to fix, or, fix in a hurry could make it even worse.
I always ask myself, for example, how long it took giraffe to develop long neck, why, and so on. It didn’t happened in 100 years, 3 - 4 generations.
How many food is now labeled “unhealthy” that was “healthy” few years back, or even medicine, this recent anti congestion in Sudafed (I think). There are examples everywhere.
We should be more humble and less arrogant when trying to understand complexity of nature and its processes.
We evolved in an environment without heating, plumbing, electricity, and modern medicine. Are you suggesting that we get rid of all that too or just manufactured meat?
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So many rules and hurdles to overcome just to stubbornly avoid eating plant-based foods.
To be fair, plant based food can be good, but it’s a different food, not an alternative. I’ve tried a few and none of them got close to tasting of feeling like meat.
If we can manage to produce lab grown meat at a large industrial scale, it could solve the animal suffering, pollution and water consumption problems caused by current production
Also to be fair, it only tastes “different” when you know it’s different. I remember seeing a blind taste test with a panel of trained chefs and none could tell they were eating plant-based meat.
Of course, meat doesn’t taste like meat once you’ve seasoned it, salted it, put sauce and other condiments on it, and otherwise made it taste anything like meat. LOL
So, we can eliminate a great amount of the “it’s not the same” factor simply by not marketing plant-based food as “gross” and “different”. Let the taste, texture, versatility, and cost speak for itself.
Second, yes, on an industrial scale lab grown meat is better than factory farms. They likely come with the same detriments to human health as real meat, but that aside, I think lab grown meat would make a fantastic alternative to farmed meat used in pet food.
On the climate front, lab grown meat might not be better than beef. It would honestly be a shame if the world all went to lab grown meat, only to find out decades later that it caused more harm than good.
But, in the meantime, we have plants :)
I agree with almost everything you’ve said, but God I wish there was a way vegans could come across as anything other than preachy and annoying.
At least it comes from a place in the heart, and not a rub it in your face, “I’ll eat two cows because you aren’t having any!”, ignorance.
It’s tough changing minds in general, especially when the topic entails labeling your past and likely present self a serial animal abuser. Something most vegans went through already and had to overcome.
These “experts” are crazy. How can it be kosher when it’s not a naturally occurring meat?
This would be what the Bible calls an abomination. I’m not touching that stuff, it’s gross!
It is naturally occurring though; it’s just cultivated artificially.
“cultivated artificially” - you just said it. If it’s artificial it’s not natural.
I choose to obey God. You need to make your own decision but be aware that hell is a real place. You don’t want to go there, trust me.
Well it’s like saying a house plant grown from a cutting isn’t naturally occurring. It is naturally occurring, it just wouldn’t naturally occur that a clipping is put in its own pot and cultivated. So, sorry, but I didn’t just say that.
You’re not as knowledgeable as you think you are.
Who said I thought I was knowledgeable? I’m telling you that according to God, this is wrong. Don’t eat it
Who do you think you are to decide what God wants or doesn’t want?
It’s very clear in scripture. It’s written in black and white.
Yeah, last I checked, God hadn’t made an official statement on lab-grown meat. I must’ve missed that press release.
Yes it does. There are very specific commands for what food you can and cannot eat.
Also there are many commands that tell you not to mess with creation:
- Do not mix seed in your field
- Do not mix linen clothes with cotton clothes
- Do not shave/destroy your beard: because it is natural and was given to you by God. Do not destroy it
- A man shall not wear women’s clothing or a woman man’s clothing. Again, the principle is: respect the natural order. A man is a man, a woman is a woman
In all these commands the principle is to not mess with the naturally created order of things.
Therefore GM food if is an abomination. As is lab grown meat because this is not the naturally created order. Meat is only to be obtained from killing a clean animal who was naturally born and raised (no clones or lab grown animals)…
Do you also object to corn? Bananas? Because we engineered those as well and they look nothing like the plants “God” made.
I’m half-convinced you can’t be for real and are trolling for attention. But I’m also from the Bible Belt and know you could be dead serious.
Lab meat is genetically indistinguishable from “naturally occurring” meat.
I don’t care. God never created it that way. He made animals. You kill a clean animal which was naturally born by its parents and that you can eat.
Not this fake meat.
The Bible isn’t an ad for health food, at no point does it say “natural is good”.
Yes it does. There are very specific commands for what food you can and cannot eat.
Also there are many commands that tell you not to mess with creation:
- Do not mix seed in your field
- Do not mix linen clothes with cotton clothes
- Do not shave/destroy your beard: because it is natural and was given to you by God. Do not destroy it
- A man shall not wear women’s clothing or a woman man’s clothing. Again, the principle is: respect the natural order. A man is a man, a woman is a woman
In all these commands the principle is to not mess with the naturally created order of things.
Therefore GM food if is an abomination. As is lab grown meat because this is not the naturally created order. Meat is only to be obtained from killing a clean animal who was naturally born and raised (no clones or lab grown animals)…
Humanity is of nature therefore our deeds are of nature
In all these commands the principle is to not mess with the naturally created order of things.
Is it, or did you just cherry pick a few of the hundreds or thousands of rules in the priestly books that support your point? And honestly I don’t see how mixing textiles or seeds is unnatural in any way. Have you ever seen a big block of monoculture in the wild?
The natural order is changing all the time though. Gender is a hot topic these days where people feel they should be able to be anything they want. I don’t agree with that, and usually gets downvoted, because it’s not an allowed opinion to have. Some people think it’s even hateful to prefer limiting genders to man and female.
So what is the natural order of things… If we go by these books, nothing will ever change. Is that a good thing?
About a beard, you can also argue that the natural smell of the human body should not be hidden by perfume because the smell is just natural.
So it’s interesting to think about these things.
Any meat can be halal and kosher as long as the person eating believes it is. The difference between halal meat and non-halal meat is nothing. It’s all in the deranged persons mind.
