PETA Offers $1M for Faux Chicken

April 24, 2008

LOS ANGELES, Calif. –- About the last ones you’d expect to promote poultry production are People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, but there’s a twist: PETA is offering $1 million to the developer of the best laboratory-made chicken substitute.

“People are surprised to learn that PETA is interested in lab-grown meat, but we have overcome our own revulsion at flesh-eating to champion a breakthrough that will mean a far kinder world for animals,” PETA President Igrid Newkirk said.

PETA is holding a contest to find the best in vitro meat, which would place stem cells in a medium to grow and reproduce, creating flesh to be cooked and eaten.

Aside from animal welfare issues surrounding them, poultry farms have been the subject of environmental concerns. Recent community debates concerning chicken slaughter houses occurred in the Delmarva Peninsula in Maryland, headquarters of Purdue Farms, a leading poultry supplier.

Residents voiced concerns about the runoff of manure, the noise associated with sprawling chicken houses, and the resulting vulnerability to rampant infectious diseases, such as the Avian Bird Flu.

As usual, PETA’s main object is saving animals’ lives.

“We see this as just a pragmatic step,” said Nicole Matthews, PETA spokesperson. “We don’t expect the whole world to go vegan overnight, and in vitro meat can provide a way to eat ethically while still getting a meat fix.”

The $1 million reward would go to the first scientist to develop a method for producing enough meat to be marketed in 10 U.S. states at a price competitive with prevailing chicken prices. The chicken substitute must be indistinguishable from regular chicken in taste and texture, according to a taste-test panel.

The deadline for the lab meat to go on sale to the public is June 30, 2012. Scientists must prove that consumers bought at least 100 pounds of lab meat in each state it’s sold in.

“It has a potential to save billions of animals every year from the horrific abuse at the hands of the meat industry,” Matthews said of the venture. “Chickens are the most abused animals in the meat industry. They’re crammed into filthy sheds by the tens of thousands.

“They’re pumped full of drugs that cause them to grow so big and quick, they actually cripple under their own weight and are in chronic pain in their legs.

“At the slaughtering house, millions of them are scalded alive in de-feathering tanks, and we want that to end.”

The head of the Soyfoods Association of North America in Washington, D.C., however, says products made with soy bean already provide chicken lovers with a viable substitute.

“There are a tremendous number of fantastic new products that are meat alternatives on the market, that look and taste very similar to chicken or beef, or some other meat,” said SANA executive director Nancy Chapman.

The soy food industry has seen a 10 to 15-percent growth in the U.S. in the last 20 years, according to Chapman. Since the 1980s, she says its revenues have increased from $250 million to $4 billion annually.

“I think it’s totally unnecessary,” Chapman said of PETA’s contest. “Not when you’ve got products that taste and look very similar to meat and dairy products, it doesn’t seem that we need to go out and create new products. Especially when the protein quality of soy equals that of meat and dairy.”

PETA spokesperson Matthews says there’s room in the market for both soy and stem cell based chicken substitutes.

“There are fantastic alternatives to meat already, and the best way to help is to go vegan,” she said. “But for people addicted from childhood to the cholesterol, and saturated fat and flesh, we’re just rooting for science to provide an eco-friendly Methadone for their Heroine.”

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