Consider the Cheeseburger

Despite our differences, there are more things that tie Americans together than threaten to tear us apart. We all live on the same piece of land and (presumably) under the same laws. We band together in times of crisis, and mourn together in times of loss. We drink the same water, breathe the same air and, despite race, creed, gender, or income, need to eat. In this country, we eat burgers.

Freedom tastes even better with bacon

Now, I can already hear the muted roar of critical readers, but before you scroll down to the comment section to give me hell, hear me out. I know that certain religions have their qualms about this iconic sandwich, and there are lots of US citizens who foreswear meat altogether, but the great beauty of the burger is that there is a patty for everyone. Veggie burgers, Boca burgers, chicken, turkey, tofu, or plain old beef; if you care to look, you can find a grillable ground-up disk that’s right for you. There are expensive burgers, cheap burgers, exotic burgers, and burgers that aren’t even burgers at all.

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In addition to sheer majesty of the meal itself is the communal act of making burgers. The neighborhood barbeque is one of the most quintessentially American activities I can think of. There’s something about standing around a grill with friends, watching the fat sizzle and feeling the heat of the coals that just feels right. But there’s a dark side to the burger, and despite my love of cow and country, I’d be remiss to not point it out.

Those are lookin' real good, Oog

As a proviso to this next section I’ll remind my readers that I grew up on an organic beef farm. We raised our stock from udder to plate and drove them to the slaughterhouse ourselves. The life of a cow is hardly a romantic affair, but we did our best for them. Our animals were grass fed, had room to run around, and were free to seek what bovine pleasures they could find on the ample hills of southern Maine. Then and now, I eat beef with a clear conscience, but looking at the state of mass farming today, I can tell you that all is not right in Burgerville.

The great American sandwich has a problem. It boils down to the inescapable truth of demographic expansion, there are more of us in this country, and in this world then there ever have been. There’s simply not enough open land or ranchers to do things the right way and so we’ve fallen into some very dangerous shortcuts. Crowded conditions, an all-corn diet, growth hormones, and huge doses of antibiotics to keep open sores from festering, that is the grim reality of our current agricultural detente. However you may feel about animal rights, there are some things that are just wrong and there ain’t a religious text anywhere that won’t bear me out.

It turns out they have good reason to be mad

Worse than the gross practice of corrupting our national lunch, are the policies being enacted to defend that corruption. So called “ag-gag”laws prevent people from reporting abuses at factory farms and companies like Monsanto are insulating themselves against any oversight whatsoever. They have gone so far as to employ mercenaries, genuine hired killers, to handle their security. It’s one thing to ignore the suffering of a cow you’ll never lay eyes on, but when someone comes after the Bill of Rights and the free flow of information, they’re going to have a fight on their hands. That’s at least as American as the cheeseburger.

With Congress stuck in a rut, this may all seem like yet another hopeless 21^st century issue, but technological innovations are solving problems all around us, even between the buns. Behold the Burger 2.0:

In a society hungry for new ideas, one of the visionaries behind Google is helping to serve up an entirely new approach to the way we look at meat. Is it beef? Not exactly. Is it a vegetable? Not even close. Burger 2.0 is a fundamentally new foodstuff, a lab-grown synthetic biomass mixed with breadcrumbs and dyed with beet juice. It’s the beta version of the type of food made by the replicators on Star Trek.

Synthetic Biomass. Hot.

Now, I will admit that the idea of generating detached genetic tissue from a bovine cadaver could, at first, seem a little unappealing. The imagination reels at the prospect of splicing together different species to form new and exciting burger variations like the Rat-Mammoth Whopper™ or the Chimpanzee-Cat Mac™. Why, who knows what forbidden delights this technology will give us access to…

The future is going to be sort of gross

If this all seems like too much, if you can’t stomach the thought of carving off a slice of fleshy abomination, ask yourself this: do you know what’s in your burger now? How many animals in what types of conditions went into the grinder? Most people would probably rather not think about it, but silent ignorance isn’t going to solve the problems before us.

No doubt, it will take us a while to perfect this technology and it will probably take even longer to get over our squeamishness. Ultimately though, the burger has to change and we will have to change with it. When considered on the grounds of sustainability, widespread availability, and basic ethics, technologies like the burger 2.0 seem very appealing.