I Suppose This Was Inevitable...

...not content with lab-grown 'meat', now we can look forward to lab-grown fur:

Luxury fashion house Fendi, part of LVMH, wants a sustainable alternative to fur. Researchers from Imperial and Central Saint Martins are on the case. Finding an integrative alternative to fur in the fashion industry means replicating the luxury qualities of the original material. If it feels fake, then it is a failure. Professor Tom Ellis in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial thinks he has part of the answer: use genes from fur-producing animals such as fox and mink to grow substitute hair fibres in the laboratory.

I'm all for the appliance of science, but this is as crazy an idea as the idea of lab-grown 'meat'; we have a natural, sustainable source of both, and we are throwing that overboard to satisfy the squeamish. 

Is it me, or..? 

Together with LVMH and Fendi, Professor Collet will look into the market-fit of a new kind of fur such as this, what designers would make of it, and how the public might react. The expectation is that it will be more luxurious than fake furs made from plastics, with better environmental credentials. This will be explored with a thorough life-cycle analysis of the new product.

We already have a process to grow meat and fur - they are called 'farmed animals'. This is a waste of science.