The main problem I think most vegetarians have with eating meat is that you have to kill something to get it. But what if you didn't? With a little genetic tweaking, I'll bet a cow could be rigged up with an extra, vestigal limb growing off of it's head or something. I'm sure there are some already. With a bit of extra work, it could be set to detach and regrow painlessly, on a monthly cycle for easy collection. It'd be better for farmers also, as they woudn't have to keep breeding so many cows, instead just keeping one until it runs out of Legs.-- Turbolich, Nov 20 2001 Genetic Engineering Idea Moratorium http://www.halfbake...20Idea_20Moratorium [-alx, Nov 20 2001] Sphum! http://www.time.com...uture/digital5.htmlThe future of potted meat. [Guncrazy, Nov 20 2001, last modified Oct 21 2004] http://www.halfbake...a/edible silica gel [snarfyguy, Nov 20 2001] When a celery stalks you, and you pull a knife out and cut it up - is it murder?-- thumbwax, Nov 20 2001 "C'mon Pa! Time to harvest the cow parts!"
The GE Moratorium aside (*I* didn't vote for it) this sounds gross. I envision fields of rotting flesh because the farmer was sick during cow harvest season.-- phoenix, Nov 20 2001 It's this sort of thing that made me go veggie in the first place.-- DrBob, Nov 20 2001 An alternative to an meat that wants to be eaten is meat that doesn't know it's meat. You could grow muscle tissue in artificial environments, and harvest when they've reached the desired thickness--early harvest for jerky, normal harvest for steak, late harvest for roasts.
And think of the possibilities of this technology...(link)-- Guncrazy, Nov 20 2001 I like this idea better than the GE idea of growing animal organs and steak in labratories. We can finally put cloning technology to good, active, living use. We could further inject cows with armordillo skin genes and give the cows impenetrable hides, which would help prevent any unneeded deaths. People say to quit discussing GE because of the improbable. To them, I say, "get off the Internet, crawl in a hole, and write with a stick in the mud, luddites." Galileo proposed some improbable theories about the sun and we're lucky he brought them to the public arena for discussion and exploration.-- 1kester, Nov 20 2001 Just followed the link on Sphum!
*>ERK<*-- phoenix, Nov 20 2001 Yeah - silica gel! (see link)-- snarfyguy, Nov 21 2001 Is water food?-- phoenix, Nov 21 2001 If I cared about the morals of my food, I'd eat only fruit, eggs, and dairy products, as the producing organisms aren't killed, and make them whether you eat them or not.-- Turbolich, Nov 21 2001 Didn't the pythagoreans eat only beans and pulses for this very reason (or possibly to provide sufficient fuel for their fart-powered pencil sharpeners)?-- pottedstu, Nov 21 2001 You'd think all the wind passing would disturb their sand diagrams.-- Turbolich, Nov 22 2001 In A Planet called Treason by Orson Scott Card, this is done with humans. The organs are sold to another planet in exchange for iron. I think they used them the way we use organs from organ donars, but I'm not sure and I don't want to think about it too hard...-- Galileo, Jan 05 2002 The planet was a prison planet, and the extra parts were sold to other humans as transplants to get the only metal available on the planet.-- StarChaser, Jan 05 2002 Stu --- the Pythagoreans were vegetarians, but they refused to eat beans. The usual explanation I see is that they thought that people came from beans, which makes little sense; one less-prudish source claimed that they thought beans looked too much like testicles, a statement that I can see being bowdlerized into the previous non-explanation. Anyway, they didn't eat beans. Apparently, they were frequently mocked about the whole bean thing.-- wiml, Jan 06 2002 random, halfbakery