Hoping to end the suffering of animals who are raised solely for the purpose of killing to feed humans, PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is offering a one million dollar reward for anyone that can grow meat in a test tube. Yahoo is reporting that the group will pay the million dollars to anyone that can figure out a way to grow in-vitro meat by 2012 that tastes just like real meat, is comparable in price to the real thing and can be grown in quantities large enough that it can be sold and consumed in ten states. 
PETA notes that nearly one million chickens are consumed each hour in the United States, this sort of innovation could save countless animals from suffering and allow the land that is used for raising animals to be used for other things.
I find it interesting that PETA is encouraging meat to be created in this fashion since this might involve experimenting on animals and even PETA notes that there was a real conflict inside of PETA when determining whether or not to go through with this since it ultimately involves eating meat. Also, there seems to be something weird going on with the fact that growing animal cells in a tube for consumption would seem to be similar to raising animals for that same reason, but I'm guessing that PETA is reasoning that this is better than the original task since it doesn't involve the horrible conditions these animals are forced to live in, nor would test-tube animals really be alive and moving around. Regardless, it'll be interesting to see if this reward is ever actually given out or if anyone can come up with a resolution that PETA will find acceptable or reject.
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