Bringing Home the Bacon

With Christmas approaching many of us will share some turkey, deer or pork with their family and loved ones. There are some that cringe at the thought of our furry and feathery friends ending up on your candle-lit diner plate.

We call these people ‘vegetarians.’ Despite popular opinion these are not just a bunch of softhearted do-gooders. Vegetarians are generally intelligent and rational beings.

They’ve got some pretty good reasons to go veg. A vegetarian diet is healthier, it requires less use of land, water and other resources. Less rain-forests need to destroyed and less CO2 is produced. To top it off: vegetarianism even helps alleviate world hunger!

Reasonable? Sure.
Convincing? Not quite.

People like eating meat. And the alternatives presently on the table just don’t cut it. A tofu-burger might trick my two year old into eating some vegetables, but it won’t convert a red blooded carnivore into a lean green eating machine. So when I heard the following news muy initial response was: YES! They’ve finally done it. The clever people at Eindhoven niversity created real pork that doesn’t grow on pigs but in a test tube instead.

In time this innovation will help us make perfect pork-sausages without the need of killing pigs. As far as I know this machine doesn’t require tons of food. It doesn’t produce methane or CO2. It doesn’t even squeal or roll around in its own excrement. Scientists, pigs and even the veggies should all be very happy with this prospect.

Except me. I love bacon. Everybody loves bacon. When it comes to sheer eating pleasure nothing beats a few greasy, salty and crispy slices of bacon with my eggs. Whatever its merits, machine processed pork-goo won’t bring home the bacon any time soon.

Oink, oink!