test tube cows?

Keep in mind, we annually consume 50 pounds more meat per-capita than Americans did in the 1950s. This produces a lot of waste, methane, environmental problems, and obviously high cholesterol. According to an article written a couple months ago by the Green Lantern (illuminating answers to environmental questions), "Raising and slaughtering livestock on a large scale doesn't just result in massive methane emissions... it also creates waste-disposal nightmares, squanders valuable land, and guzzles an alarming amount of fossil fuel. " An alternative, though not completely carbon-neutral, provides an interesting theory: Lab-Grown Meat. Don't get me wrong-- I love steak and burgers and everything else, but did you know:

"According to a study, creating a pound's worth of beef releases the same amount of greenhouses gases—the equivalent of 36.4 pounds of carbon dioxide—as driving a car 155 miles at 50 miles per hour. And that's an underestimate of the industry's total impact, since the study didn't account for emissions from farm equipment or the fuel expended on transporting product from killing floor to supermarket."

Also consider the amount of land needed to produce the massive amounts of feed for cattle. "A cow must consume 7 calories of grain in order to produce a single calorie of beef. And once you factor in the petroleum required to raise that grain—a process that involves the use of synthetic fertilizers...—the ratio of input calories to output zooms to 35 to 1."

How would this work?

"Tomorrow's beef would be grown in bioreactors, filled with a solution consisting primarily of water and glucose. Animal stem cells would be placed in these bioreactors, where their proliferation would be abetted by the presence of growth factors." Not gonna lie, I have no idea what that means, BUT this would save SO much on energy costs compared to the 'raising for slaughterhouses' way we do things now. You won't have to worry about waste management- what do with bones and leftovers you can't use. You won't have to worry about manure contaminating water supplies. Unfortunately, we're still probably decades away from being able to buy lab grown burgers, but it's something to work towards! However, I have to wonder, all of these claims sound familiar. Too much waste, too much energy... oh wait, that's HUMANS! Let's just put everyone in a test tube like ant-farm and then humans will stop ruining the Earth! And then cows can just "rooooaam free.... as free as the wind blows.... as free as the grass grows.... something something...."