While cloned meat may soon be hitting the grocery shelves, Edmontonians are still skeptical of the idea.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe get meat daily. We get chicken two to three times a week. We get beef in just about every day,\u201d said David Van Leeuwen, owner of Ben\u2019s Meat and Deli, a West Edmonton store \u00a0which has sold products from Alberta farms for more than 70 years.<\/p>\n
The deli won\u2019t be selling something you might find at other butchers \u2014 cloned meat produced in a lab.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just don\u2019t personally understand why they want to do it,\u201d Van Leeuwen said. \u201cI guess they want to maybe perfect meat to make it better, make it healthier.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cBut in my eyes, I don\u2019t like to mess with what\u2019s like \u2013 don\u2019t fix what\u2019s not broke,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Right now, the sale of lab-produced meat is not happening in Canada while feedback from the industry and consumers is being gathered.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cDo people want to be eating cloned meat? Is this something that we should be moving forward with, and then the second piece is that labelling piece, as you\u2019ve identified,\u201d said Angela Lee, law professor at University of Alberta.<\/p>\n
Edmontonians are divided on whether cloned meat will be part of their diet.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cPersonally, I wouldn\u2019t do it. I don\u2019t really agree with that kind of stuff. I think you should know natural meat, natural vegetables,\u201d said Liam Farbrother.<\/p>\n
\u00a0But Darcy Watsham is more open to the idea, \u201cI suppose I just don\u2019t see an issue with it \u2026 at the end of the day. It\u2019s just food.\u201d<\/p>\n
Experts say there are some benefits in going the hi-tech route for meat.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cA couple of reasons why you know you just want to make more of one animal that has a really high genetic value,\u201d said University of Alberta food scientist Carolyn Fitzsimmons. \u201cIt would also improve the number of offspring of a gene-edited animal by.\u201d<\/p>\n
Costs may be one more reason you won\u2019t see it in your local food shop soon as lab-grown meat can cost up to $15,000 to $20,000 compared to naturally bred meat.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s a need for it, and I think customers trust that I\u2019m buying local, that I\u2019m buying good quality, that there\u2019s no need for it,\u201d Van Leeuwen said.<\/p>\n
Edmontonian Jacq Lakusta agreed with Van Leeuwen, \u201cIt\u2019s a really wild novel concept to me, so I don\u2019t think I could get on board with that just yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is still a wait-and-see stage on what Health Canada\u2019s decision on selling cloned meat will be.<\/p>\n
But Lee is looking to see more transparency in the food industry, like labelled packages and proper safety review from the agency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While cloned meat may soon be hitting the grocery shelves, Edmontonians are still skeptical of the idea. \u201cWe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":{"0":"post-504294","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-edmonton"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}