Dinner's Ready! USDA Approves Lab-Grown Meat
Cultivated meat soon for sale near you, plus news from the Hot Pants Farming Club
The useless USDA gives the green light to two food technology companies looking to sell their lab-grown chicken flesh to consumers. The two companies, Upside Foods and Good Meat, made it through the agency’s rigorous (totally not compromised by cash) regulatory approval process, making them the first in the US to do so. And rest assured, the FDA (also totally independent and not corrupt) declares this meat-like product “a food revolution,” giddily blessing it safe for human consumption. And that was way back in 2022.
According to this jaunty little CBS News article, Upside’s own VP of Regulation and Public Policy, Eric Schulze, Ph.D., ensured “…the lab grown meat was not subject to extra regulatory hurdles beyond that of any other regular meat product.”
Schulze used to work at the FDA regulating the biotech industry. Let that sink in a minute.
Is that somehow supposed to be comforting? Because that’s about as comforting as sleeping with a cactus blanket on an oppressively humid Texas summer night.
Just How Safe IS Lab-Grown Meat
An article from the Center for Food Safety discusses concerns around the safety of these franken-food products. One of the problems brought up by the center’s Policy Dierctor, Jaydee Hanson is, “…the genetic engineering of cells and their potential cancer-promoting properties.” He goes on to state that we need more information about how they engineer these cell cultures and keep them growing. But the companies developing these products claim this information is proprietary and a closely held business secret. You know, like the recipe for Coca-Cola back in the day — only one copy kept in a safe and all that. At least, that’s what people say.
Proponents of these ‘meats’ claim the process is completely cruelty-free and better for the environment than growing actual animals for meat. That’s two big whopper lies in one sentence.
Lie #1: According to Hanson, lab-cultured meat often causes pain to real live animals, saying that producers must extract cells from live animals. This requires a painful and uncomfortable biopsy, employing very large needles and this must occur innumerable times during the culturing process.
Lie #2: A recent study conducted by researchers at University of California, Davis, found, “…lab-grown or ‘cultivated’ meat’s environmental impact is likely to be ‘orders of magnitude’ higher than retail beef based on current and near-term production methods.” Read the study here.
Pushing Hard for Lab Cultivated Meat
People like Bill Gates, Richard Branson, that guy who owns Amazon, and government agencies worldwide, including the USDA are backing these food technology companies with billions of dollars in investments. Even large meat industry companies, such as Cargill, Tyson, JBS, and more have jumped in the game. It’s all about money, power, and control, with some sprinkles of plain ol’ evil, in my opinion.
With over 100 companies currently working on these ‘designer foods,’ there’s a lot of potential for making big money. And don’t lose sight of the ongoing push for insects as food. The usual suspects, including that evil buffoon Klaus Schwab, are still bound and determined that we’ll eat bugs, use insect flour for baking, slather gobs of insect-derived butter on our bread, and eat insect ice cream for dessert. Nasty.
Like dragons hoard gold, the Gates, Bezos, Branson, King Charles, and others absolutely want to become even wealthier. But that’s not the whole picture. They want us to die. It’s like our very own hunger games, but with a twist. They’ll eat their grass-fed dry-aged Kobe steak, steaming baked potato with organic creamery butter, and enjoy the most decadent drinks and desserts imaginable. We’re the entertainment.
I say let’s entertain them then. But some shows unfold with a sharp plot twist and end in shocking and surprising ways. It’s almost showtime!
Enough of that.
Time For Some Hot Pants Farming Club News!
We’re harvesting daily, sometimes twice in a day, so this has been a fantastic growing season for us. The DS and I have made so many cases of pickles, cucumber poblano relish, pickle relish, peach jam, pasta sauce, and mint jelly that we need to buy more shelving for storage.
We’ve also made over 10 batches of sweet basil pesto, spinach pesto, and pepper pesto. I’ve been making my medicinal salves, tinctures, syrups, and dried herb mixes for cooking.
When making comfrey salve, I have to get the dried comfrey leaves pulverized so that it’s literally a fine powder. I tried using my mortar and pestle, but that wasn’t doing the job. Finally, I shoved it all in our industrial hand grinder. That’s step one. After that, I put it through my flour sifter twice and got my fine comfrey powder. I’ll be selling jars of my salve and other products online at some point, but currently I’m just offering them at our local farmer’s market.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned that we’re growing luffa this year. Yes, luffa as in those scrubby sponges people use in the shower. The vine is blooming, but not bearing fruits yet. Fingers crossed.
I’m planning to sell these too in gift baskets and by themselves. I plan to insert homemade soap into them and attach a colorful rope to each for hanging in the shower after use. We decided we’ll call the biggest luffas “The O’Reilly”. Haven’t decided what we’ll name the medium and small ones.
Happy Feast Day of St. John the Baptist!
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It is hard to fathom that we are heading full speed down this route.
If it doesn't taste like chicken, like all other random meat, then we know we have a serious problem (: