Before human beings wrote books or did math or composed music, we
made leather. There is evidence hunter-gatherers were wearing clothes
crafted from animal skins hundreds of thousands of years ago, while in
2010 archaeologists digging in Armenia found what they believed to be
the world’s oldest leather shoe, dating back to 3,500 B.C. (It was about
a women’s size 7.) For a species sadly bereft of protective fur, being
able to turn the skin of cows or sheep or pigs into clothing with the
help of curing and tanning would have been a lifesaving advance, just
like other vital discoveries Homo sapiens made over the course of
history: the development of grain crops like wheat, the domestication of
food animals like chickens, even the all-important art of fermentation.
In each case, human beings took something raw from the natural world—a
plant, an animal, a microbe—and with the ingenuity that has enabled us
to dominate this planet, turned it into a product.
The natural world has its limits, though. Tanned animal skin may
make for stylish boots, motorcycle jackets and handbags—supporting an
industry worth about $200 billion a year—but it’s still animal skin.
That would seem to be an insurmountable problem if you’re one of the
hundreds of millions of vegetarians around the world, or even just
someone who worries about the environmental impact of raising tens of
billions of animals for clothing and food. But it’s not the animal skin
that makes leather leather—it’s collagen, a tough, fibrous protein that
is a major biological component of animal connective tissue, including
skin. If there was a way to manufacture collagen alone, it might be
possible to produce leather that even the most dedicated animal-rights
activist could love.
And that’s exactly what’s happening on the eighth floor of the
cavernous Brooklyn Army Terminal on New York’s waterfront, where Modern
Meadow has its labs and offices.
A wingnut senator has asked that maternity care not be cut from
the Obamacare repeal effort because both men and women are affected by
pregnancy.
Police report
that a 44-year-old disabled LGBT man was attacked by a man shouting
anti-gay slurs at him in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City
Monday. 
To Foraging Bees, That’s the Question
