Looking the gift horse in the mouth

I won't chatter a lot about the horse meat palaver that has been going on. It's been done to death and anyway I've never been massively squeamish about that sort of thing - I figure that if I'm going to eat one sort of quadrupedal, hoofed mammal, I can't get on my high horse (ahem) about the ethics of eating another. I'm also pretty sure that turkey has been sold to me labeled as chicken in the past, so I'm not greatly surprised. All the same, it does make you wonder about how interested British supermarkets are in the origin of meat and the level of humanity shown towards the animals being farmed...

Oddly, something that has made me think a bit more about the ethics behind carnivorousness is the revelation to me by a colleague that there is such a thing as a meat printer.

I was vaguely aware and impressed by an invention a while back that could be used for re-growing body parts for people who have lost them through injury. It seemed pretty cool and futuristic.

Apparently another potential use for 3D printing is the production of meat. That is, using the chemical bits and pieces that make up animals' flesh to print out, layer by layer, slabs of edible meat.  It would be unfeasibly expensive for most people at the present time, but the fact is that it is possible (in theory) to print meat.

Now, I have no idea (as someone who has never had a problem with eating meat) why I found this idea so unsettling.

I can see the benefits - land previously used for farming freed up for green things and, of course, removing the need to slaughter animals. Also, I'm told synthetic meat could be made lean which would be good news for cholesterol levels. 

But doesn't it get you thinking about whether, for example, a vegetarian would really want to eat this i-meat-ation (sorry)? Do all vegetarians object only to the killing of animals, or does it go deeper into the idea of what meat really is? Printed or slaughtered, it's still meat.

As an aside, it might be interesting to see whether the carbon footprint of printing meat is a lot lower than farming, especially if it does convert a lot of vegetarians to omnivores, thereby increasing demand.

Either way, the effect of all of this reflection is that my meat intake has gone down pretty drastically over the past couple of weeks, which is probably no bad thing even if it is completely illogical.