PETA’s $1M ‘In Vitro’ Chicken Contest Deadline Expires as Pig and Cow Cells Steal the Research Limelight

For Immediate Release:
March 4, 2014

Contact:
Shakira Croce 202-483-7382

Update regarding PETA’s $1 million prize for the first scientist to create commercially viable in vitro—that is, test tube—chicken:

Although the March 4, 2014, deadline for the prize has now expired, PETA’s in vitro chicken contest was a success: Since we announced the prize, laboratory work on in vitro meat has come a long way, and a commercially viable in vitro beef hamburger or pork sausage is certain to be created. Also encouraging, the science used in the development of in vitro pork and beef will eventually be used to create in vitro chicken, sparing chickens—the most abused animals used for food by virtue of their sheer number, a million slaughtered in the U.S. alone each hour—mass suffering and death.

PETA’s prize offer has served a purpose, and we’ll now be entertaining ideas for putting that $1 million to good use in combating cruelty in food production. Our first focus may be in legal challenges to “ag-gag” legislation that makes it a crime to record atrocities on factory farms and in slaughterhouses, thereby keeping the consumer in the dark.

“PETA is happy that our contest sparked debate, created a research fellowship, prompted interest and investment from the food industry and dot.com millionaires, and has seen patents pending for breakthroughs in developing the process, from tissue scaffolding to muscle development,” says PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. “Herbert Hoover’s ‘chicken in every pot’ was the impetus for us to extend our prize—and with an in vitro chicken in every pot on the horizon, we’re eager to move on to more innovative new ways to combat cruelty to animals in the meat industry.”

More information about PETA’s contest is available here.