Is it meat that you eat?

Though it sounds abhorrent to us, there have been multiple times in Israel’s history where, out of desperation, they have resorted to cannibalism. In Ezekiel 5:10 we read of a devastating period of Israel’s history in which, “Therefore fathers shall eat their sons in your midst, and sons shall eat their fathers; and I will execute judgements among you, and all of you who remain I will scatter to all the winds.” The verse is not allegorical, it is literal – some Jews did resort to cannibalism during the siege and subsequent fall to Babylon in 588-586BC.

God also prophesies a curse in Leviticus 26:29: “You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters.” This curse was fulfilled when the Syrian King Ben-Hadad besieged Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel. 2 Kings 6:24 and following reads this: “And it happened after this that Ben-Hadad king of Syria gathered all his army, and went up and besieged Samaria. And there was a great famine in Samaria; and indeed they besieged it until a donkey’s head was sold for eighty shekels of silver, and one-fourth of a kab of dove droppings for five shekels of silver. Then, as the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him, saying, ‘Help, my lord, O king!’ And he said, ‘If the lord does not help you, where can I find help for you? From the threshing floor or from the winepress?’ Then the king said to her, ‘What is troubling you?’ And she answered, ‘This woman said to me, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’ So we boiled my son, and ate him. And I said to her on the next day, “Give your son, that we may eat him”; but she has hidden her son.”

In 1931, Winston Churchill predicted that in the future, people would eat laboratory-grown meat. Sounds disgusting right? Well, what if I told you there was an organisation dedicated to growing meat in a laboratory that was taken from human tissue – celebrity human tissue no less? Bite Labs says this: Bite Labs produces fine artisanal salami from meat that has been lab-grown from celebrity tissue samples. Today, In-Vitro meat production is close to becoming a reality, offering highly controllable meat production without the animal cruelty, waste and environmental impacts of industrial farming. But this process can offer so much more than replicas of beef and pork.

Bizarrely, Bite Labs promotes itself as some healthy alternative to real meat: Bite Labs’ meats are not affected by the growth hormones administered to farm animals, nor are they in contact with pesticides or other chemicals associated with industrial farming. The nutritional content of our products can be rigorously controlled. Farms are dirty and animals prone to infection. Bite Labs is a clean space where we can grow safer, healthier products.

Never mind the pesticides Bite Labs, have you forgotten you are using human tissue! According to one report, the final product will contain about 30% celebrity meat and 40% lab-grown animal meats along with fat and spices.

In November last year, it was also reported that a group of American scientist and designers had developed a concept for a “grow-your-own” steak kit using human cells and blood. Ouroboros Steak claims that you can grow meat using your own cells, harvested from the inside of your cheek which is then fed serum derived from expired, donated blood (not your blood – somebody else’s!). For around three months, the specimens are stored in a warm environment such as a low-temperature oven and fed with human serum until the steak is fully grown.

My response is: NO THANKS!