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Reluctant vegetarians may soon be eating steak again, if three Dutch
inventors—Willem Van Eelen, Willem Van Kooten and Wiete
Westerhof—have their way. The team has cooked up a method to mass produce
meat without causing suffering to animals, through industrial-scale cell
cultures (WO 99/31222/3). Small samples of cells are taken from an animal and
cultivated in nutrients on a spongy matrix of collagen. The process is said to
work with cells from cows, sheep, chickens and even shellfish such as oysters,
crabs and shrimps. The inventors say their experiments show that “enormous
quantities of cells can be obtained in a very short time”.