PETA Offers $1 Million to First Scientist to Produce Marketable Lab-Grown Meat by 2012
MEAT WITHOUT THE SUFFERING Norfolk, Va. - PETA cofounder and President Ingrid E. Newkirk has posed a challenge to the world's scientific community: The first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices will receive a check for $1 million. The figure was determined by calculating the number of chickens killed every hour in the U.S.--about 1 million. PETA's offer comes just after the first-ever in vitro meat symposium in Norway, in which researchers met to discuss key scientific challenges, formalize an organizational structure, and work to fund their efforts. To qualify for the prize, which was announced today on the group's Web site PETA.org, the quantity of meat produced must be sufficient to market in at least 10 U.S. states at a price that is competitive with then-prevailing chicken prices. PETA points out that although healthy and delicious vegetarian mock meats (made from plant protein and spices) abo...