Why are we bothering with this science-type stuff? The easiest answer would be to take all death-row interns and commit their bodies to consumption by other humans. It's about time we recognised that cannibalism is a great solution to all our problems. Too many criminals, not enough for poor to eat. What great symmetry! Except of course that it would be the poor eating their own families, of course. and of course it doesnt help vegetarians. Unless we could force feed those criminals on veges! Lets face it. If eating other animals is simply wrong, then why does Nature make bush meat? Huh? And I dare any comedian to take that to the stage, comedy notwithstanding. I said it first. Because I beieve in freedom from copyright, now you can too!

As if intensive broadacre cropping is so much better for the environment than having animals grazing otherwise unarable land. (Of course, I still have a bit of a problem with feedlots...)

I imagine the Real Meat brigade probably emerge in response.

Still, Why Bother's idea isn't such a great leap removed from the present practice of globalised feudalism.

Meat is inefficient to produce. It takes a lot of feed required to produce a quantity of meat; much more so than to constitute a vegetarian equivalent of said meat. This is because an entire animal has to be raised and kept up throughout its life (which, while shortened with growth supplements, is still inconveniently long), and a lot of food is wasted (i.e., not converted directly to the finished product). It's like running a server on Windows NT; you waste resources on all those extra functions (moving a cursor around and doing legacy DOS crud in one case, walking around and mooing in the other).

Perhaps you should put a Real Meat Brigade in the next draft of Highway Gothic?

You don't get out of the city much, do you?

Sorry about that. I might say more on my own blog.