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Meat Science

A new low in human civilization was achieved with little fanfare recently in the May 2002 Issue of Red Herring, a popular high tech business magazine, when in an article on page 71, it was announced that a company called Metamorphix is developing a way to insert a protein inhibitor into an egg or adolescent animal, whereby "skeletal muscle growth gets inhibited, thereby fostering more actual muscle growth." Ed Quattlebaum, Metamorphix CEO, was quoted as saying that this would "increase the amount of meat by 10 or 20 percent," and "shorten the time it takes to raise these animals, saving food supplies and reducing waste."

The prospect of raising animals with low bone growth to support their increased muscle mass, and the resultant mental image of chickens and cows tottering around like osteoporotic whales is considered such a colossal achievement in human depravity that it has surpassed several previous lows in human civilization, such as Nietzsche's concerned statement "God is dead," followed, famously, by God's offhand remark, somewhat later, that Nietzsche was dead.

The intensity of the new low was measurable by the subsequent resolution of the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the Council on Higher Education (CHE) to disallow the use of the term "human civilization" in classes in colleges and universities in the U.S. The new term for classes on the history of behavior of societies in the western hemisphere henceforth will be "Western Situation." In addition, students will be requested to refer to these classes as "Western Sitch," as in "I'm getting three credits in Western Sitch," rather than the now dated term, "Western Civ."

Steve Niemi, CEO of AniGenics, a startup company out of Chicago that focuses on "mapping and marking the genomes of various livestock animals so that meat producers can get more product from their animals" was quoted at the end of the article, saying, "animals are very far from nature and their ancestors, and if genomics can provide a better product it's something worth pursuing,"

This quote itself set several new records and signaled the true, final, ultimate end of an era, according to Dowling Woods of Osceola, Iowa, self-styled cultural observer and arbiter of taste. Says Woods, in an extensive diatribe on the subject communicated privately to this author:

"The recent Niemi quote is indicative of several facts:

1. The whole hippie thing is now finally dead, since anyone saying something like that in the 1960's would have been dragged kicking and screaming by their lab jacket out to a farm where they would have been tied to a cow and made to moo for several hours while ingesting bales of marijuana until they saw the light.
2. The quote from the 60's 'Don't trust anyone over thirty,' should have been extended to include the phrase 'or under the age of ten.'
3. The building currently labeled 'Meat Science' on the Iowa State University campus should be canonized as the number one icon in the Oxymoron Hall of Fame."

Such unofficial comments aside, several actual records have been broken by the "animals are very far from nature" quote, since scholars of popular magazine writing have announced that the phrase, especially when quoted out of context, achieves such a rich degree of what is technically termed cognitive dissonance that it will take them a while to ponder it and come up with a rating on the International Brainless-Statements In Print Scale (IB-SIPS). As IB-SIPS committee spokesman Harvey Slachter said, "Even though it is clear that animals raised by farmers have selectively been bred for centuries to acquire characteristics that are amenable to their use as food items, it is unclear whether that makes them "far from nature."

Some readers encountering that phrase have found themselves lying on their backs for hours contemplating its immense inaccuracy. Historians of the English language have recently considered ranking it up as high as third on the Intercontinental Archive of Dumb Remarks in English (IADRIE), following of course, the number one ranked comment by Britain's Neville Chamberlain that he had achieved "peace in our time" by appeasing Hitler, and the number two comment, "I didn't know the gun was loaded," attributed to a number of sources.

The final ranking of the comment on the IADRIE is unclear due to heavy competition provided by George W. Bush's pre-election comment that "we should let those other countries sort out their own problems."

In an apparently unrelated development, an organization of young women has been formed called "Just Say No Way" (JSNW) to forgo having sexual relationships with male scientists who work in the genetics field. The slogan of the group, although unprintable in this magazine, is vivid and memorable, and resembles the phrase, "You play with nature, you play with yourself."

Moral leaders, though concerned about the language of the group, are cheered by the new rise in the potential for celibacy among the young. Jenny McCarthy, Adjunct Minister of the Unitarian Church of Waterloo, Iowa, said, "If these girls knew what their boyfriends were really doing in the lab, they would go straight to the nearest convent."

Cultural observers note the great possibility for social change possible in the Just Say No Way movement. Said Cultural Anthropologist March Helm of the University of Iowa, in an address to the first convention of the JSNW, held at the Ironman Inn in Coralville, Iowa, on April 1, 2002, "if women refused to date or marry men who say such dumb things, work for companies that create munitions, do bad things to animals, or destroy the environment, human life would improve considerably."

Upon subsequent consideration of Helm's comments, the Just Say No Way group issued the following formal statement: "Unfortunately it is very difficult to find men who never say dumb things, so only the latter elements of Helm's suggestions were voted into the constitution of our group."

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