1y ago

Lab-grown meat can be halal and kosher

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.

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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.
  
  Then drinking milk should be a sin, the unholy comes out of my butt.
- The reason these practices are in place are historical
  Think about a time before modern sanitation. You eat THIS meat, you fucking die. So obviously God doesn't want us to eat it because otherwise he wouldn't have made it a dirty, deadly meat. Even today, these meats kill people occasionally.
  I'm an atheist, but I think it's still worthwhile to understand the perspectives.
  
  Bad chicken will kill you dead too. Apologists of these religions advance these hypotheses but they're not really supported by anything scientific or in the historical records.
  Food taboos of all kinds are a common cultural feature (for example, modern Westerners don't like insects), and the Judaism-derived religions incorporated the food taboos of the Jews sometimes.
  
  People didn't have modern sanitation elsewhere as well. That's not the reason, the reason is that these religions were followed by people who lived "like pigs". And since the pigs live like their owners, they were dirty and nasty as well. This religious ban is a mirror of people who followed these religions.
- 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).
  
  Yes, but when communicating to these minions, it makes sense to translate your intentions into what they can relate to.
  If I want a way to control my ants so that they stay away from some places but go to others, I might teach them to avoid soap and seek sugar.
  They might not understand what my bed is because it's too big and alien for them, but if I put some soap around it, they will avoid going there. They might not understand what I mean by "go to my neighbor's garden", but they will be able to follow a trail of sugar to that place.
  So especially if the interests of the gods are wild and beyond our understanding, I'd expect them to give us some relatable proxies instead.
- 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.

It's also Vegetarian.
- Arguably. I think a lot of lab meat currently uses massive amounts of FBS instead of alternatives. Though I guess many vegetarians don't have a problem with renet.
  
  What do these three glyphs signify in this particular sequence
- There isn't really a central authority for deciding if it's vegetarian or not though.
  Technically is not an animal product so I guess it is vegetarian but also at the same time it's still meat so it isn't.
  I guess it depends on what your objection to meat is. If your objection is based on animal cruelty then I guess it's probably vegetarian but if your objection is based on dietary restrictions (religious or otherwise) then obviously it's not.
  
  Hello, it is I the pope of vegetables. On behalf of the interests of all plants I do ordain this diet
  
  The vegans I know seem to be split on the issue. Most of them agree that it's technically vegan, but about half of them worry that they have been plant based so long that it still might wreck their digestive systems.
  
  I think as long as the meat was slaughtered by a combine vegetarians can eat it
  
  I think vegans are completely against any meat because they think it's unhealthy, and vegetarians think it's immoral.
  I just think it's tasty.
- Ethically it's dubiously vegetarian, culinarily it's meat. Mostly depends on how they harvested the cells tbh.
  
  From what I have read it seems that these cultures are started with a small biopsy. Probably nothing worse than what we do at the doctor or the veterinarian. Lemmy knows I've had to have a ton of lumps on dogs checked out.
  
  Why dubiously? Not all recipes use the calf serum anymore.
- I would argue given it is still animal tissue - not cellulose etc - it remains not vegetarian because it is not in any way made of plants. It is, however, not made via animals in any way and thus most people who currently consider themselves vegetarians would probably eat it as most vegetarians are so on moral grounds.

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.
  
  We should at least factor in how natural or pleasant their existence is. Or else a maliciously engineerd creature which spreads like crazy but is genetically bound to suffer immensely all their life is somehow preferrable over a local population of happy birds.
  The species we use to harvest their products and body parts are often unable to survive naturally, some suffering from accumulated genetic defects, like being unable to support their artificially increased body weight.
  If we don't need to reserve pastures for human-cows, there might be a chance for natural species to grow their numbers again.
  
  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.
  
  i dont care about the species, i care about individuals

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.

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.

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.
  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-massive-meatball-was-made-with-woolly-mammoth-dna-180981908/
  
  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.

Applying religious ideology to scientific advancement is idiotic

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?

religious people are deranged
- Okay but this isn't an example of zealots being weird, and food taboos in general are usually based on cultural hygiene. For example, poorly run pig pens are typically filthy disease vectors so it's not strange that a society would ban them as meat animals.
  
  Basic food safety has nothing to do with religion

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 :)

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.
- 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
- 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)...

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.

130 comments