Test-tube steak? PETA wants formula

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants to pay $1 million for fake meat — even if it has caused a "near civil war" within the organization.

The organization said it would announce plans today for the cash prize to the "first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012."

The idea of getting the next Chicken McNugget out of a test tube is not new. For several years, scientists have worked to develop technologies to grow tissue cultures that could be consumed like meat without the expense of land or feed and the disease potential of real meat.

New Harvest, a nonprofit organization formed to promote the field, says on its Web site, "Because meat substitutes are produced under controlled conditions impossible to maintain in traditional animal farms, they can be safer, more nutritious, less polluting and more humane than conventional meat."

A founder of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, said she had been hoping to get the organization involved in advancing in-vitro meat technology for at least a decade.

But, Newkirk said, the decision to sponsor a prize caused "a near civil war in our office," since so many PETA members are repulsed by the thought of eating animal tissue, even if no animals are killed.

Lisa Lange, a vice president of the organization, said she was part of the heated exchange. "My main concern is, as the largest animal-rights organization in the world, it's our job to introduce the philosophy and hammer it home that animals are not ours to eat."

Newkirk said her goal was more pragmatic. "We don't mind taking uncomfortable positions if it means that fewer animals suffer." In that way, she said, "in-vitro meat is a godsend."

Henk Haagsman, a professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and a pioneer of in-vitro meat research, said he welcomed the prize competition.

But he said he would not like to see the field dominated by the animal-welfare issue, because environmental and public-health issues are such important "drivers for this research." The Netherlands has put $5 million into in-vitro meat studies.