By : Surinder Jain.
Hindus are vegetarians primarily because of cruelty involved in producing meat which is done by killing a live animal. Inflicting pain on a living beings binds negative karma and continues our cycle of death and rebirth.
Pain inflicted on a being in killing it increases with the number of senses possessed by the being. Plants can only feel touch and have one sense and thus feel less pain than a being like a cow with five (touch, taste, hearing, vision and smell) senses. To reduce the cruelty for their taste, many devout vegetarians shun all life forms but plants. Others shun plant food which requires the plant to be killed in order to obtain the food, like root plants potatoes. They limit their diet to fruits and pulses etc which can be obtained without killing the plant.
As technology advances, meat (or what looks and tastes like meat) is being produced from plant based sources.
Also, some labs are doing genetic engineering to grow particualr type of meat in a laboratory dish from cells of an animal.
How would you as a Hindu respond to such food, is it OK or should it be avoided?
Here is an article about meat produced from plants :
Meat of the future: from lab to plate