Covid Journal, May 9, 2020
Failed Coup
If the US has been good at one thing, it’s ruining other countries by pretty much any means possible, be it economic, political, military, social or by just funding plain old coups.
In the last 100 years, the US government has been behind 100 or so suspected ‘actions’ (coups, regime changes, etc) against other governments and countries.
Of course, under the Trump Administration, they can’t even stage a coup properly and have royally fucked up the situation in Venezuela, a country in South America that has long had oil companies, right wingers and anti-Socialists drooling at the prospect of shutting it down and harvesting all of their oil profits.
Another day, another Trump-driven disaster.
More About the Future of Food
Every once in a while, another story or documentary percolates concerning ‘the future of food’.
The CBC documentary channel recently posted ‘Meat the Future‘, a story about cultured meat.
The burger of tomorrow will probably look not unlike the burger of today, but if Dr. Uma Valeti has anything to say about it, the story behind that burger will be radically different. Valeti is a cardiologist-turned-entrepreneur, and the CEO and co-founder of Memphis Meats, a leader in the emerging cultured meat industry. “Cultured meat,” “cultivated meat,” “clean meat” and “cell-based meat” are some of the terms used to describe meat grown in a lab from cell cultures, as opposed to coming from a slaughtered animal.
Straight out of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake:
ChickieNobs are the new, scientifically produced alternative to regular chicken meat. In a feat of genetic alterations, researchers at the Watson-Crick NeoAgriculturals department developed a way to grow chickens that produce large amounts of specific parts for consumption. One specific breed of these genetically altered chickens consist of a meaty, bulb-like object sprouting out into other bulbs of chicken breasts. As an organism, all functions excluding those involving digestion, assimilation, and growth, were removed, and the new chicken can feel no pain, as opposed to the millions of chickens raised unethically on poultry farms
Why?
Why are we trying to create meat when we get all of the proteins we need from vegetables, beans, legumes, soy, nuts, seeds and other plant-based foods?
Why are we obsessed with turning all of these types of foods into ‘products’ and ‘industries’?
Maybe it’s time we stopped thinking this way and started returning to basics like growing our own foods from our homes and changing municipal codes to allow for a broader use of our properties for planting what we eat.
‘Manufactured food’ consistently feels like an oxymoronic phrase.