Have you ever wondered how Kanye West or Ellen DeGeneres eat? Well, a lab meat company out there is as intrigued as you are by the banned meat (celebrities). “BiteLabs manufactures superb artisanal salami from celebrity tissue samples developed in the lab,” the company boasts on its website. “Today, in-vitro meat production is on the verge of becoming a reality, allowing for highly regulated meat production without the animal cruelty, waste, or environmental problems associated with industrial farming. However, this method can provide so much more than just beef and pork replicas “According to BiteLabs.
They mean, “We’d like to collect myosatellite cells from celebrities and make them into salami” when they say “so much more.” The company also has social share buttons so you may send a (vaguely threatening) request to the celebrity you want to sausage. Yes, we thought this was a prank or a spoof of digital start-ups, but if the company is sincere interviews with VICE and Slate are any indication, they are serious about carrying it out.
“We’re collaborating with a crew of bio-engineers and food designers to make Celebrity Meat,” Kevin from BiteLabs told Slate. “The majority of them have requested anonymity due to the contentious nature of the product.” “We’ve had a few responses from folks providing biopsies, but none of them have been on the level of our major four. The majority of the replies have been quite positive, but we understand that some people are wary of the idea of BiteLabs – we believe that’s to be anticipated when we’re talking about pushing the frontiers of technology and society.”
Should the celebrities agree to their cells grown and converted into mass-produced sausages, the firm has planned a potential recipe. “A blend of rabbit and pork will enhance the JLaw salami,” BiteLab suggests. “The JLaw salami has a delightful and confident flavor profile, coarsely ground in a rustic style, sweetened with honey overtones, and seasoned with orange zest and ginger. This salami is always surprising and never fails to amuse.”
Meanwhile, “Hungarian paprika and Worcestershire [sauce] give Kanye an underlying smokiness, spiced up with undertones of jalapeno,” according to the meat’s description. The concept has elicited a range of reactions on social media, from those who are repulsed by it to those who are cannibals.
People are generally freaked out by the prospect of eating lab-cultured meat from conventionally consumed animals, according to new research, so it’s no wonder that eating celebrities, even if they’re named Jon Hamm, has an ick factor. While it may be better for the environment, expect to ask if you offer it at a buffet “Are you all right, babes? You’ve only scraped the surface of your Alec Baldwin salami.” The company boasts the environmental benefits of eating celebrities like Downton Abbey’s ensemble, saying, “celebrity meat production takes less than 1% of the area required for traditional farming.”
While this laudable ambition is far more compassionate than raising Alec Baldwins on a farm, it looks that they have yet to secure star support for the initiative. Would it be possible if they could get someone to sign up? Yes, in a word. In addition, it has already been done.
A group of American scientists created bite-sized pieces of human meat for the Design Museum in London in 2020. The researchers also recommended a home-use kit in which you swab your own cheek for a sample and then put it to pre-grown scaffolds made from mushroom mycelium. You can then eat yourself after roughly three months of incubation. “We are not promoting eating ourselves’ as a viable solution to humans’ protein demands,” the researchers stressed at the time.
“Rather, we pose the question: what compromises would we have to make in order to continue eating meat at our current rate? Who will be able to purchase animal meat in the future, and who may have no choice but to raise meat from their own bodies?” Therefore, the procedure is the simple part. The tricky part is finding celebrities who are willing to have their cells turned into sausages.
