Synthetic meat

The Dalmer, in their attempts to become fully independent from outside resources have a strong cellular agriculture. From this development, synthetic meat became a staple of their diet. 
== Overview ==
Synthetic meat, is an animal-flesh product that has never been part of a living animal. 
There remain difficulties to be overcome before in vitro meat becomes commercially available without heavy government subsidies. Synthetic meat is prohibitively expensive, but it is expected that the cost could be reduced to compete with that of conventionally obtained meat as technology improves. Synthetic meat is also a cultural issue. Some disagree with eating meat that has not developed naturally.
=== Production ===
Synthetic meat, also called cultured meat, is meat grown in cell culture instead of inside animals.
Synthetic meat is produced using many of the same tissue engineering techniques observed under the effects of Fountainwater. While the cost to produce synthetic meat is extremely high when compared to regular cattle raising, it is so heavily funded by the empire in its efforts to become agriculturally independent that it is a competitive alternative to cattle raising.
The process of developing synthetic meat involves taking muscle cells and applying a protein that promotes tissue growth. Once this process has been started, it would be theoretically possible to continue producing meat indefinitely without introducing new cells from a living organism. In ideal conditions, two months of in vitro meat production could deliver up to 50, tons of meat from ten muscle cells.
=== Origins ===
The theoretical possibility of growing meat in an industrial setting has long captured the public imagination. When a patent for synthetic meat was filed and secured for the production of tissue engineered meat for consumption, wherein muscle and fat cells would be grown in an integrated fashion to create food products such as beef, poultry and fish.
== Production issues ==
Flesh farming has a number of issues that increase its production costs.
=== Viscera spawn ===
One particularity of flesh farming is that pure muscle stem cells are difficult to obtain, as such there is always a chance that other organs will develop alongside the meat. This forces companies to have filtering services where employees must extract eyes, teeth and other body parts, out of the meat and package them separately. These body parts are then sold at a profit, and are considered a delicacy. 
=== Spoilage ===
In vitro meat production requires a preservative, such as silver powder, to protect the growing meat from yeast possession and spoilage. Silver powder is used in different ways during the process to prevent infection.
=== Costs ===
The price of in vitro meat at retail outlets like grocery stores and supermarkets may decrease prices to levels that middle-class consumers consider to be "inexpensive" due to technological advancements.
== New products ==
The technology led to new foodstuffs and technologies being developed. For example a "legsteak" is a meat slab a few centimetres wide, grown from frog stem cells, was a result of this experimentation.
=== Bioreactors ===
In the process, a matrix of collagen is seeded with muscle cells, which are then bathed in a nutritious solution composed in part of diluted Fountainwater and induced to divide. This causes the proliferation of muscle cells. At first the meat continued to grow even after consumption and was instrumental in the research of perpetual bioreactors.
=== In vitro meat ===
In Vitro meats, or Vitromeat are artificial meats produced at a Tissue Synthesizer in a Lab. There are three types of Vitromeat: chicken, beef and pork. They are used in Meal Makers in Canteens to produce Meals. More variety meals, the better. Players are advised to build a tissue synthesizer and the lab once the base of the colony has been established.
=== Shmeat ===
Shmeat is a nickname given to Sheet Meat, lab-created meat grown from a cell culture of animal tissue. Sheet Meat is simply meat that is grown in unusual shapes and forms, for example, Buffalo wings are a form of sheet meat. 
=== Tissue engineering ===
Tissue Engineering is also a field of science that developed as a result of Synthetic meat, but with very limited results when compared to the actual medical system in place by the Dalmer. 
===Lab grown organs===
With this method, the dalmer would build and birth dalmer that were already several years old. This was done to try and discover what created the demonic babies.
====Pet Cloning also exists, made in pet cloning clinics, the newborns are birthed in a lake.====
== Synthetic Meat Consortium ==
The Synthetic Meat Consortium, is a group formed by Imperial researchers interested in the technology, to discuss commercial possibilities. As a result, the SMC declared in Synthetic Meat production and development to be a breakthrough idea that should be protected from proliferation to the other races.
== Benefits of Synthetic meat ==
The first effect of mass production of synthetic meat was its cheapening empire wide. It also caused the reduction of the global herd a millionfold. Estimates it will probably take at least a decade before the process becomes commercially viable without imperial funding.
=== Sanitary benefits ===
Due to the strictly controlled and predictable environments of both in vitro meat farming and vertical farming, it is predicted that there will be reduced exposure to dangerous chemicals like pesticides and fungicides, severe injuries, and wildlife.
=== Environmental benefits ===
Environmental impacts of synthetic meat are significantly lower than normally slaughtered beef. For every hectare that is used for vertical farming and/or in vitro meat manufacturing, anywhere between  and hectares of land may be converted from conventional agriculture usage back into its natural state. 
=== Vertical farming benefits ===
Vertical farms (in addition to in vitro meat facilities) exploit methane digesters to generate a small portion of their own electrical needs. Methane digesters could be built on site to transform the organic waste generated at the facility into biogas which is generally composed of methane along with other gasses. This biogas could then be burned to generate electricity for the greenhouse or a series of bioreactors.
Vertical farming completely eliminated the need to create extra farmland in rural areas along with in vitro meat. Their combined role created a sustainable solution for reducing dalmer presence all across Welt.
=== Urban farming benefits ===
Both vertical farming in urban areas and the activity of in vitro meat facilities will cause very little harm to the species of wildlife that live around the facilities. As such, many natural resources are spared from depletion due to the conservation efforts made by both vertical farming and in vitro meat, making them ideal technologies for an isolationist population like the Dalmer. 
=== Feeding the undead ===
Main article: Feeding the undead
In order to feed the undead populations that are dependent on cannibalism to maintain muscle mass, flesh drives are frequently organized by the Department of missing limbs. 
A biotech startup called Tubemeat ran a campaign to generate popular support for artisanal salami made with meat synthetic in vitro from celebrity tissue samples. The company is now a leader in commercial synthesized dalmer meats for the undead.
=== Military applications ===
Ship crews are provided synthetic and/or in vitro meats as a food source for the crew, although crews generally use replicators.
== Inconveniences of synthetic meat ==
Synthetic meats are not without controversies in the Empire and its benefits are not universally recognized. While synthetic meat is a staple of the Dalmer diet and eliminated the use for cattle farms, Dalmer craving the “real thing” still operate cattle farms, hunting ranges and other such facilities at a local level. 
=== The hazards of genetic modification ===
While techniques of genetic engineering, such as insertion, deletion, silencing, activation, or mutation of a gene, are not researched by the Dalmer, this is not the case for the other races. This is why the Dalmer keep Synthetic meat a secret, as its proliferation would give the other races knowledge of body modification and genetic engineering. 
=== Economic limits of synthetic meat ===
The production of in vitro meat is very expensive and it still takes considerable investment to become affordable in large scale productions. However, the In Synthetic Meat Consortium has estimated that with improvements to current technology there could be considerable reductions in the cost of in vitro meat. 
Category:Food
Category:Dalmer Technology