President Hoover Inspires PETA’s New $1M ‘Test-Tube Chicken’ Contest Extension
Animal- and Eco-Friendly Lab-Grown Beef Is Almost Here; In Vitro ‘Chicken in Every Pot’ May Be Next
For Immediate Release:
June 18, 2013
Contact:
Shakira Croce 202-483-7382
Norfolk, Va. —Five years after PETA first announced a $1 million prize for the first laboratory to use chicken cells to create commercially viable in vitro (test tube) meat, researchers—including teams at the University of Missouri and the Netherlands’ Maastricht University—have made enormous headway in the test-tube meat game, with a test-tube hamburger taste test just weeks away. Because PETA believes that in vitro chicken developers may still catch up and snag PETA’s $1 million prize, the group is extending its contest’s deadline until March 4, 2014—85 years to the day after President Herbert Hoover took office with the promise to put a “chicken in every pot.”
“Many hurdles in the production of a 100 percent humane, clean, and environmentally responsible meat have already been overcome,” says PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. “It’s been 85 years since Herbert Hoover’s presidential campaign pledged a ‘chicken in every pot,’ and now science is close to delivering an in vitrochicken in every pot! That will be a happy day for the thousands of birds slaughtered every hour for cheap meat.”
While PETA recognizes that vegan meals are totally animal-friendly, currently available, and ideal for human health—as vegans are less prone to heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and obesity than meat-eaters are—test-tube meat will spare billions of animals extreme suffering on factory farms, in slaughterhouses, and on the decks of fishing boats. Lab-grown meat will also dramatically reduce the devastating effects that the meat industry has on the environment, such as greenhouse-gas emissions, water pollution, and land degradation, and will be free from such dangers as E. coli, salmonella, and bird flu.
