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Are you salivating yet?

Sure, that's a printer. But think of it as the new Pavlov's bell for eco-conscious types.

That sound you just heard is a 3D printer building meat, a beef steak, to be exact.

Our colleague Alessandro Ford, Politico's agriculture reporter, went to a university lab in Rome to check this printer out for himself and explore the intriguing world of lab-grown meat.

You know the story. Livestock farming, as we know it, is not good for the planet.

It's very energy-intensive and ethically questionable, as vegetarians and

vegans would say. Not to mention how much methane cows burp out. That's a lot. So could this

lab-grown meat be a technology-fueled fix to all these problems? Our burgers and chicken wings would taste just like the real thing, all without the methane

and without the animal slaughter.

Well, it turns out this isn't really about animal welfare.

It's about the people.

And some of them are pretty upset about the idea of seeing their livelihoods or even their culture go extinct.

That means like so many political discussions about climate change, it's putting geeky greens against angry farmers.

Some politicians, especially but not exclusively on the right, are sounding the alarm, going so far as

to warn that lab-grown meat is a serious threat to European civilization. They're on a mission to

butcher any future European regulations that would allow the so-called novel foods market to grow.

So can economics and political resistance curtail technological trends and consumer preferences?

At what cost? And for how long? I'm Sarah Wheaton, host of EU Confidential. It's summer. That means

barbecue seasons. Maybe you're even listening on your way to one right now.

And what better thing to talk about at a barbecue than what's sizzling on the grill?

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