In-vitro Meat Production Facility

Who Killed Bambi?

"Cities are constantly changing, ecology will just have to cope with the changes or they disapear" (1)

The City. Vernon is an industrial heavy city that showcases the daily life of blue collar working society layer in the greater Los Angeles, everything in the city is designed to fit the life style and the demands of people occupying it during working hours. Today, the city is a daytime drive through, it feels almost post-apocalyptic-humans are scarce, ensconced as they are behind the walls of factories, adult toy outlets, or warehouses. Around 50,000 people work in Vernon every day, but fewer than 500 live there. It is almost unbelievable for the modern visitor to Vernon to believe, but a little over 00 years ago, this area southeast of Downtown Los Angeles was an idyllically agrarian stretch of land, known as "the garden spot" of Los Angeles County and "sweet Vernon, loveliest village of the plain."

The Landscape. Vernon is no mystery, just like thousands of cities around the globe, it has changed drastically and it'll continue to evolve as long as the few hundreds occupying it control the show. From a development standpoint, the city thrives on the businesses on it's land. So why take that away? The city lost it's "Garden Spot" title long time ago and there is no turning back.

The Roof. The roof isn't a prominent element in Vernon, the sheds and warehouses are designed to be as efficient as possible, however, looking deeper into the city there are three buildings that stand out. The water tower, the bridge and the power plant presenting the most industrial building around the city, all three have a distinct roof datum and different functions associated with them. Alejandro Zaera Polo considers the building envelope "materializes the separation of the inside and outside, natural and articial"().

The Datum. Vernon has almost one single datum running through the city defining its height and visual quality. The datum is a distinction between what happens on the ground from manufacturing, production, storage, and reclamation of goods and the roof that isn't usually recognized however assumed ().

"I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we've got to do it right. We've got to give those animals a decent life and we've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect." -Temple Grandin

The Big Picture. Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Globally, the cattle industry is responsible for nearly % of the total carbon emissions, the environmental impact of meat production varies because of the wide variety of agricultural practices employed around the world. All agricultural practices have been found to have a variety of effects on the environment. Some of the environmental effects that have been associated with meat production are pollution through fossil fuel usage, animal methane, effluent waste, and water and land consumption.

A Hard Sell. Cultured meat, also called clean meat, lab-grown meat, test tube meat, tube steak, or in vitro meat, is meat grown in cell culture instead of inside animals.() It is a form of cellular agriculture. Cultured meat is produced using many of the same tissue engineering techniques traditionally used in regenerative medicine.(5) The first cultured beef burger patty, created by Dr. Mark Post at Maastricht University, was eaten at a demonstration for the press in London in August 0. It's no stretch to say that what Post is doing is revolutionary, given that it offers some answers to these seemingly impossible questions. Through his process, just a few cells from a single cow could generate up to 75 million quarter-pound hamburgers, or roughly what McDonald's sells worldwide each month (by contrast, it takes 0,000 cattle to produce the same number at present). Cultured beef would require 0 percent less land and 70 percent less energy to implement than conventional cattle farming measures, and do away with many of the associated pollutants and waste. It could also help eliminate variability in meat quality and incidents of food-borne illness.

The Different Components. Designing a distribution center for cultured beef would require a micro farm with few grass fed cows and grown in perfect conditions. It'll require a community-based center to educate people with the new technology, a market and a cafe for retail purposes, a lab for production, coolers for the Petri dishes, processing rooms that deal with raw and cooked meats. flash-freezing, packaging room, freezers and a shipping center.

Bibliography

(1) Paul Rudolph, The Evolving City

(2) Alejandro Zaera Polo, The Politics of the Envelope, web, pp. 77

(3) Rem Koolhaas, Junkspace, 2011

() Wim Verbeke, "Challenges and prospects for consumer acceptance of cultured meat". Journal of Integrative Agriculture.

(5) Mark Post, "Medical technology to Produce Food". Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.