Stem Cell Burger, anyone?

"Food can be grown in test tube, from stem cells of endless source: animal, plant, monera, protist – and human - stem cell burger, anyone?" -avr

Dr Abe V Rotor

Burger made from stem cells in the laboratory,

it could be beef, pork, chicken, fish,

and in many different combinations no single

recipe can define, menus in array.

Stem cells are universal to all living things,

plants the simplest, animals complex,

human ultimate, ethico-moral notwithstanding,

but who can stop science, progress?

Simple as seed germinating into stem and root,

as zygote differentiating into tissues,

to organs, to systems, on to a complete being;

from organelles to uni-celled protists.

Analogy from simple to complex shows Nature

at work, transferring life in patterns,

key to evolution's continuity and diversity -

needless of human intervention.

Disobedience from the tree of knowledge persists,

discovery by invention or serendipity;

man saw how a seed grows, an embryo forms,

in vivo, in vitro, Eureka!

If in test tube life grows, and tissue culture

replicates the mother, henceforth grow

stem cells harvested from the bone marrow,

adipose, amniotic, umbilical -

Would a mold make a bone, a heart, an eye,

kidney? Or simpler, in situ - pronto!

it's bio-automation, two centuries after Ford;

burgers in millions, nay in billions.

Who cares about laboratory grown burgers

to a hungry world, to teeming cities,

to slum dwellers, to affluence and fancy?

to defect from the bandwagon?

Pavlov after all makes no exception, more so

in consumerism, and Darwin’s

survival in fitness, and on the expense of others -

true from ancient to postmodern.

For why should man eat the bacteria in BT corn?

the arctic flounder in tomato?

daffodil in rice, human hormone in cow’s milk?

bio-pharmed plants, Frankenfood?

Because he has accepted coffeeless coffee,

sugarless sugar, fatless fat;

sulfite, chromate, monosodium glutamate,

irradiation, moieties and clones.

And now stem cell burgers, and other products

from lab meat - today’s Green Revolution –

so why farm the land, raise cattle on the ranch,