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.

  • Lmaydev@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    It always amazes me people think this being that created the universe cares what meat they eat.

    • SheeEttin@lemmy.world
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      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.

      • Capt. Wolf@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • AdmiralShat@programming.dev
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      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.

    • DarkGamer@kbin.social
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      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.

      • SheeEttin@lemmy.world
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        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).

        • DarkGamer@kbin.social
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          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.

    • kae@lemmy.ca
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      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.

    • Uranium3006@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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

    • Floey@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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.

        • agoseris@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Some of the cows slaughtered for meat are pregnant. Fetal bovine serum comes from the blood extracted from these cow fetuses.

          Since it is used to produce lab grown meat, it is not vegetarian

          • bitsplease@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Pretty sure it’d still be vegetarian, just not Vegan then right? At least how I generally have heard it defined, vegetarians are OK with eating food made from animal byproducts (though it’s preferable to avoid) and only vegans refuse to consume anything with any animal byproducts

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      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.

      • chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        Hello, it is I the pope of vegetables. On behalf of the interests of all plants I do ordain this diet

      • vlad@lemmy.sdf.org
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        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.

        • Spzi@lemm.ee
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          Vegans have more to do with morals than vegetarians. Vegans may refrain from using animal based products like leather, which can be completely unrelated to health. A vegetarian diet is just that, a diet without meat. Can be for health or moral reasons, unspecified.

          Many things are tasty, many of which don’t have the detrimental implications of animal products, especially meat.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          1 year ago

          Vegans are the ones that think it’s immoral. It’s like the joke goes, how can you tell if someone is vegan, because they will tell you.

          Vegetarian is just a dietary preference.

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    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.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      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.

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          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.

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    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.

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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    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.

  • BakedGoods@sh.itjust.works
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    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.

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    1 year ago

    So many rules and hurdles to overcome just to stubbornly avoid eating plant-based foods.

    • nyoooom@lemmy.world
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      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

      • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
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        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 :)

        • Bernie_Sandals@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • kaj@lemmy.world
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            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.