As I was continuing the cleaning out of my e-mail files, I found the
following thread on Fri, 22 Mar 2002 :
>Subject: paint the lovely cattle on the hangar walls: hanfar steaks?
>In a message dated 3/22/02 4:00:35 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>> So this article on space food improvements is something that scares me
and I can see the future where it would be acceptable to the public.
Paranoid? Nah, realistic
>I just think that is incredibly negativistic..all of the points made seem
like an automatic response to anything other than what is within your
belief system. We have cows and vegetables here and children that know
about them. While you make this planet more wonderful why not let some
others do their own thing and pursue their own interests.
>From:    "C. ten Broeke"
>Stephen, I live in a small very densily populated country. Nature seems to
vanish overnight and houses are built on every available spot. The last
pieces of nature we have are gated and you can't even walk your dog off the
lead there because they want cows to graze as a sight-seeing thing.
Children hardly play in the streets here because of the traffic. Farms are
disappearing one after another because they go bankrupt.  At the same time
we import meat from the rest of the EU at great expense and discomfort for
the animals. It's not a matter of me being negative to anything that does
not suit me.  It's the reality in the crowded overpopulated parts of Europe.

   All this brought to my mind the axolotl tanks (you don't want to know
what these were - really!) of the Tleilaxu of Ix where they created a
wonderful hybrid that was the culinary staple of the Bene Gesserit Chapter
House - slig, a cross breed of slugs and pigs. (Of course, I am referring
to the deeper novels of the Dune series by Herbert)
   If that freaks you out, we could go the direction of Soylent Green,
where nobody got too old and the protein source was derived from recycled
humans.
   Maybe that's what the "mad cow" plot is all about.

Mary Anne Unger
Chatfield, Texas