[HN Gopher] The Struggle to Make Lab-Grown Meat
___________________________________________________________________
The Struggle to Make Lab-Grown Meat
Author : lxm
Score : 65 points
Date : 2023-04-27 01:56 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| 64operator wrote:
| [flagged]
| feoren wrote:
| "Nothing humans are doing already is gross"
|
| "Anything gross is not worth doing"
|
| "Humans should not try to make staple goods cheaper to produce,
| because millionaires"
|
| - You, apparently?
| 64operator wrote:
| [flagged]
| ihatepython wrote:
| > Another question I've had for a while - is there any way to
| combine lab-grown meat, cockroach milk, and vertical farming?
|
| I think it makes more sense to use 'plankton' as a food source,
| for making nutritious green wafers. They can be called 'Soylent
| Green'.
|
| This could also help to solve the over-population problem.
| 64operator wrote:
| [flagged]
| bobsmith432 wrote:
| What's worse for the environment
|
| > Massive factories to make fake meat that tastes like nothing
|
| > Some dead cow
| feoren wrote:
| Per pound of meat? That's easy: some dead cow, by far. _Much_
| worse for the environment. Massive factories are the best ways
| humans have found to be efficient and producing massive
| quantities of things. Everything else is less efficient.
| Inefficient means waste. Waste means bad for the environment.
|
| Yes, we're bad at it still. Do you claim that humanity should
| never undertake new efforts? If you don't claim that, then you
| must accept that we're going to be worse at new things than
| things we've been doing for 10,000 years. It will get better.
| rebolek wrote:
| Sorry, but you are wrong. Massive factories means a lot of
| waste. Dead cow means a lot of usable stuff. Meat, bones,
| skin, everything is usable. Even cow's waste can be used as a
| fertilizer. Massive factory? That means massive amount of
| mined ore and wasted energy. What does a cow need? Zero ore
| and some grass.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/25/chinas-2...
|
| I think your underestimating the scale of animal agriculture.
| bobsmith432 wrote:
| Expected Chinese hellscape. If eating animals is so bad for
| the environment shouldn't the Earth be a dry gray smoggy ball
| at this point?
| monetus wrote:
| A lake of shit overflowing and poisoning the water table
| won't make the skies foggy. Granted, I am talking about
| rural things, that 26 story building probably has its own
| unique issues.
| bobsmith432 wrote:
| Shit dude last I heard the water out of my sink was clean
| RC_ITR wrote:
| >If eating animals is so bad for the environment shouldn't
| the Earth be a dry gray smoggy ball at this point?
|
| No. Things happen sequentially and compound. It's like
| saying in 2005, "if Amazon is such an important company,
| why isn't it _already_ worth $1tn. "
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Along the same lines, people here are underestimating the
| scale of lab grown meat production. IIRC it'd have to be
| something like 40,000 factories costing close to $2T to
| build, and even then it would take decades to build them all.
| And the meat would be very expensive.
| urfullofsht wrote:
| [dead]
| monkey_monkey wrote:
| https://archive.is/OkKk4
| rebolek wrote:
| Nature already solved this problem.
| iszomer wrote:
| _You want to go to the Island._
| [deleted]
| narrator wrote:
| Probably just like vertical farming, it uses vastly more energy
| than traditional farming.
|
| Maybe Elon would be interested in this tech for food production
| on Mars where it might make more sense. If it requires a lot of
| equipment maintenance, it might not even be good on Mars since
| spare parts are hard to manufacture there.
| esperent wrote:
| > Probably just like vertical farming, it uses vastly more
| energy than traditional farming.
|
| That's an unfounded assumption - vertical _vegetable_ farming
| uses more energy than traditional vegetable farming (with a
| trade-off of less land).
|
| However, farming animals also uses more energy than farmi9
| vegetables. So it's possible that lab grown meat won't use more
| energy than farm grown meat, and will come with enough other
| benefits - less water and land use, less cruelty, less
| antibiotics, less risk of cross transmission of disease - that
| even if there is an increase in energy use, the trade-off will
| be worth it.
| [deleted]
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Farming animals doesn't use more energy than farming
| vegetables. You use a truly staggering amount of
| petrochemicals making fertiliser, spreading fertiliser,
| cultivating fields, planting seeds, harvesting crops, and all
| the rest of it.
|
| Even if you grow silage crops specifically for feeding
| livestock it's not nearly so much faff and you use a
| relatively small amount of fertiliser and fuel.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| All of your problems with growing crops apply _more_ to
| animals because most crops are grown to feed animals.
|
| 77% of soy worldwide is grown just to feed animals, for
| example. (7% is fed to humans)
|
| I don't know how you square the facts with what you want to
| believe on this issue, though I am curious.
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| It definitely uses more energy per calorie produced by a
| factor of 3 to 10. (Otherwise meat and cheese would cost
| roughly as much as rice or maize or bread or pasta.)
| Pxtl wrote:
| Food that eats food isn't ever going to be efficient.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Let me know when you figure out how to eat grass.
| mvdl wrote:
| "They come to snuff the rooster. You know he ain't gonna die" -
| Alice in Chains
| lm28469 wrote:
| Seeing all these sterile rooms, inox pipings, reactors, tanks
| make me feel weird. I'm vegetarian but I'd eat a local farm
| animal over this if I had to chose.
|
| edit: to clarify, food for me is equal to traditions, know-hows,
| local, &c. not three dudes in hazmat suits populating a 60000
| gallon tank of chicken soup. If you want cheap as fuck meat and
| have the choice between modern animal farming and that then by
| all means go for that. It just doesn't sit right with me.
|
| It's so disconnected to everything I associate with good food,
| there already are alternatives, as nutritious, getting cheaper by
| the day, made from real thing we can grow with minimal post
| processing.
| Maken wrote:
| Unlike, let's say, tofu with is crafted with love in factories
| that look nothing like that.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2efPWpSKgVE&t=85s
| lm28469 wrote:
| All you need is soy beans, water and some acid... you can do
| that at home with a pot a fork and an old tshirt, good luck
| making chicken meat like that
| Maken wrote:
| Of course you can make your own chicken meat in your house,
| with just a knife and a chicken. But this is about not
| needing, you know, the chicken.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Yes you're making my point, you either need to abuse live
| animals or make it in industrial scale factories.
|
| Whereas alternatives can be made at home from raw
| ingredients and minimum processing, today, cheaper than
| meat, just as nutritious, without the need of anything
| more technological than a stove
| ecshafer wrote:
| Slaughtering an animal for food isn't abuse.
| cute_boi wrote:
| It is an abuse. Animal abuse is rampant in the practice
| of factory farming, and a visit to such facilities would
| make it clear just how much these animals suffer.
| Therefore, it is important for consumers to avoid being
| misled by labels such as "happy cows" on meat products
| and to be mindful of the ethical implications of their
| choices.
| bcassedy wrote:
| Great grandparent comment said roughly "You can make
| chicken meat at home with just a chicken and a knife."
| While factory farming may be abusive, that is not what
| this discussion thread is about.
| tashoecraft wrote:
| Sure, but we can't meet everyone's nutritional needs by
| cooking raw ingredients at home. We need these solutions,
| if you can afford alternatives then go for it. But we
| should be promoting all solutions .
| morsch wrote:
| Are you saying you eat tofu made this way? Or are saying
| you are eating commercially made tofu, but feel better
| about it because the tofu could also be made in a rustic
| manner?
| horstmeyer wrote:
| I really prefer such factories over the way a lot of tofu is
| produced (by burning plastic):
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/world/asia/indonesia-
| tofu...
| pflenker wrote:
| Lab Grown Meat has a marketing problem above all. The lab that
| grows meat is not drastically different from the facilities
| that produce modern milk, cheese or other products, but the
| marketing of these respective products suggest that medieval
| farmers are hand-milking happy cows to produce them.
|
| This is due to the fact that at this stage, this meat is
| academia-driven and not marketing-driven.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| And due in part to laws in many states prohibiting
| photographing inside meat production facilities (the so-
| called Ag-Gag laws.) I think a side by side comparison with
| photos/videos would be highly favorable to the lab grown meat
| folks.
| mock-possum wrote:
| It doesn't look like three dudes in hazmats suits once it's
| sitting on the table in front of you.
|
| It just looks like steak.
| caycep wrote:
| Agree...I have 2 thoughts re lab meat
|
| 1) If you're going through so much time and expense to simulate
| meat, why not just change your diet to something more akin to
| "primary sources" - i.e. vegetables, or other food that is
| better than meat in your desired criteria (land use, water use,
| etc)? That is more naturally grown and more appealing?
|
| 2) By the time you spend so much money/energy/biochemical
| processes to simulate the real meat, is what you get just as
| energy intensive/unhealthy as the original?
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Probably because they enjoy eating meat?
|
| I'm not sure I see what's more appealing about how animals
| are raised and slaughtered and processed for consumption.
| It's top to bottom an inhumane industrialized process replete
| with torture, filth, antibiotics, radiation, disease, and
| people in hazmat suits and steel vats (which strangely people
| find disturbing). It's not like some sort of pastoral
| children's story where sally the pig has a grand life and at
| the end of it is gently, if undescribed way, becomes a
| wonderful pork chop for family dinner.
|
| I'd rather eat scientifically produced animal matter (SPAM)
| because :
|
| 1) I know the meat isn't capable of suffering
|
| 2) I know the meat is grown in highly controlled
| circumstances
|
| 3) by having a centralized lab regulators can easily inspect
| end to end food quality and handling
|
| 4) by being sterile end to end I know when I get it I won't
| contract salmonella, ecoli, trichinoses, etc
|
| 5) if it made it through to my table the economics of the
| market and all the "ewww science" and appeal to nature
| fallacy hurdles means it'll taste really really good.
|
| Im not arguing eating more vegetables isn't a good idea. But
| that argument exists regardless of SPAM, and hasn't compelled
| much of a change in diet. I'd rather not see animals born to
| suffer than just shake carrots in peoples faces telling them
| eat veggies and hope they listen.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| As another vegetarian, I'd much prefer to eat lab grown meat
| than real meat for both ethical and environmental reasons.
|
| Food I already eat is produced in factories, including things
| like Quorn or Beyond Meat, and I don't find it off-putting
| whatsoever. For health reasons, I try to ensure the majority of
| my diet is home cooked plant-based whole foods, but that's only
| because the current evidence is diets based on "ultra processed
| food" are harmful. However, it doesn't seem to be at all clear
| yet on what specifically makes processed food diets harmful in
| aggregate, so I can't currently make an educated decision on
| whether one type of processed food is healthier than another. I
| just treat anything processed as junk food to be enjoyed
| occasionally, and the same would be true for me if we had
| viable lab grown meat.
|
| By comparison, I find those occasional tiny maggots in farm-
| grown strawberries much more off-putting, but strawberries
| taste so good that I do my best to just focus on the free
| protein.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| This is the first comment I've seen in this thread that would
| actually buy/consume this product. As a meat eater, I am
| incredibly opposed to this product.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm pretty much a carnivore whenever given a choice. I find
| the Impossible line of beef replacement perfectly edible
| and usable in any dish where cooked ground beef would
| otherwise work. (I don't think I'd enjoy it as mett, but
| it's fine for anything else.)
|
| Impossible's only problem for me is the price makes it
| impossible for them to succeed in the market. Their product
| tastes fine; it's not enough better than $3/lb ground beef
| for people to pick it.
| comex wrote:
| I'm surprised by the amount of negativity. Personally I eat
| meat but feel guilty about doing so because of animal
| cruelty. If someone is actually able to produce lab-grown
| meat that tastes the same and has the same nutritional
| value, I'll switch in a heartbeat.
|
| I don't care at all whether the food I eat is "natural". I
| don't even care whether the ingredients are authentic, if
| there isn't a health hazard; my reaction to the article's
| mention of rodent DNA contamination is "who cares". So of
| course I've tried plant-based meat alternatives, but found
| that they don't taste right, while also being higher-
| calorie. My layman's hope is that lab-grown meat will be
| able to replicate the taste more accurately. I realize that
| there's no guarantee it will, even if they do succeed at
| producing something edible that's made of animal cells (but
| has a very different structure). But it might.
| earlyriser wrote:
| I'm on the opposite side, I'm omnivorous and try to eat less
| meat for ethical & environmental reasons and I really want lab
| meat to become mainstream, for the obvious ethical reasons, but
| also hoping that we could use less resources and especially
| land and give it back to natural ecosystems.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Have you tried home made seitan/tofu/tempeh/&c. ? Once you
| master the thing it's not even a question of taste, cheap
| meat becomes vomit inducing
| earlyriser wrote:
| No I haven't. Maybe I'll try. I'm happy with industrial
| tofu tbh and never thought about homemaking.
| tokai wrote:
| So rather keep and kill animals than having a modern industrial
| food production? Try looking into modern brewing, dairy
| production, etc. That's just how it looks.
| [deleted]
| lm28469 wrote:
| No, more like instead of pushing the thing further and
| further every day, scale down, go back to the basic, respect
| nature, do sustainable things like we've been doing for
| literal millions of years.
|
| I don't want to live in a future in which all we have left is
| your 6x6cm of Google chicken and your 2x6 Amazon bacon stripe
| pflenker wrote:
| "Going back to the basic" _also_ means a drastically
| decreased life expectancy, dying of avoidable sicknesses
| and generally a dull, short and miserable life. You can't
| retain all the benefits of modern society and only "go
| back" on all the drawbacks. But this is no either/or
| situation, a future as you describe it is avoidable, and
| lab-grown meat does not automatically lead to Google
| Chicken or Amazon Bacon.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > "Going back to the basic" _also_ means a drastically
| decreased life expectancy, dying of avoidable sicknesses
| and generally a dull, short and miserable life.
|
| By having a bit less of mass scale animal abusing
| factories ? I fail to see the correlation
| pflenker wrote:
| Your original comment implied much more.
| cjsawyer wrote:
| Consider that without modern efficiency gains there would
| be significantly fewer people alive today, and that you
| might not be in the "extra" portion that we do have now. Is
| that a fair trade off? If we dropped all further
| advancements in the name of tradition I'd say that's
| equivalent to giving up as a species.
| cute_boi wrote:
| What do "respect nature" mean? Nature is wild, brutal and
| full of grey areas and it doesn't care what we do tbh.
| d23 wrote:
| It is not possible for us to "go back to the way things
| were" at the scale at which we consume meat and animal
| products today. Even if it were possible, I highly doubt it
| would be any more sustainable or environmentally friendly,
| and none of the arguments you're making seem consistent
| with environmental vegetarianism.
| horstmeyer wrote:
| I can't believe in let's say 200 years from now humans will
| still consume animals - if our species survives that is.
| I'm sure this will be looked upon as very barbaric to breed
| real animals and eat them.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| If we survive 200 years from now we will either not
| really know what happened during this time because most
| people will be illiterate or we will be growing food by
| using the vast amounts of almost free energy we have
| figured out how to produce. I don't really see any other
| situations happening.
| ejb999 wrote:
| Is it barbaric when coyotes kill and eat a deer (often
| while still alive)? or when a lion eats an antelope?
| esafak wrote:
| No, because the argument only applies to animals with
| moral faculties, and the luxury of choosing what to eat.
| [deleted]
| Tade0 wrote:
| > do sustainable things like we've been doing for literal
| millions of years.
|
| Problem is, there was never that many of us. Hell, for most
| of human history there was less than 1/8 of us now.
|
| The future is going to be somewhat cyberpunk because
| generations before us already made some choices that we
| have to live with now.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Problem is, there was never that many of us.
|
| Never has been as many obese people nor food waste. We
| can and should eat less anyways
|
| We're clearly not producing for sustenance, but for
| profit
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Never has been as many obese people nor food waste. We
| can and should eat less anyways
|
| The food waste is because food's extremely cheap. The fix
| is to make it expensive.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Hunger is not a production problem but a distribution
| problem. It isn't profitable to sell things to people
| with no money so rather than do that we discard it, turn
| it into something else or whatever it takes to keep the
| prices up in the producing countries. Do you have a fix
| for capitalism and the profit motive? If not, obese
| 'rich' people and starving 'poor' people is what we get.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > We can and should eat less anyways
|
| Yeah, but 20% less, not a quarter of what we do now,
| because we obviously wouldn't survive on that.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| What do you think, say, a milk or orange juice factory looks
| like?
| ihatepython wrote:
| > What do you think, say, a milk or orange juice factory
| looks like?
|
| Something like this:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZuWvwrEl_I
| lm28469 wrote:
| The same, it doesn't mean I want more of it, nor that I agree
| with the milk industry
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| >food for me is equal to traditions, know-hows, local
|
| There's not much less things that I care about when talking
| about food. I care about taste, texture, nutritional value,
| availability of ingredients or ease of preparation. If some
| Italian-Mexican-Japanese fusion scores better on that then I'll
| very happily eat it too.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Anything you can make in a shed is going to be far far far less
| resource intensive and therefore better for the environment
| than something that takes a multi-billion-dollar factory.
| XorNot wrote:
| This is untrue for the meat packing industry _today_. One cow
| going into a modern slaughterhouse is more efficiently
| processed then even the most meticulous native American
| tribemember could ever have achieved.
|
| Efficiency is all that matters if resource utilisation is
| your metric.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Right, but even your hypothetical tribe member is going to
| be many orders of magnitude more efficient than a billion
| dollar factory trying to grow a postage-stamp-sized piece
| of fake meat.
| esafak wrote:
| Are you counting the resources it takes to raise the
| animal?
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Yes, because they are literally just lying around on the
| ground.
| myshpa wrote:
| What's so weird about sterile rooms and stainless steel tanks?
| Do you think breweries (for example) are so much different?
|
| Very weird thing to hear from someone who claims to be a
| vegetarian.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=brewery&tbm=isch
| jbc1 wrote:
| As someone who has given a lot of tours through a brewery and
| wineries, a good amount of people are in fact disappointed by
| the abundance of stainless steel tanks.
| chihuahua wrote:
| This is fascinating and bizarre. Any idea what those people
| expect or would prefer to see? Ancient wooden tubs, and
| people in quaint medieval costumes stomping grapes with
| their bare feet?
| Animats wrote:
| Yes. Years ago I was involved with a controversy on
| Wikipedia over Skyy Vodka. Skyy had dumped a PR piece into
| Wikipedia, and that was flagged. So I did some cleanup. It
| turned out that Skyy Vodka was just a marketing company.
| Production was outsourced to Frank-Lin Distillers Products
| in San Jose. Frank-Lin makes most of the low-end booze on
| the West Coast. It's a big operation. Many stainless steel
| tanks. Their own railroad siding, where tank cars of
| industrial ethanol come in. The ethanol was from a company
| called MGP Ingredients, formerly Midwest Grain Products,
| formerly Midwest Solvents, in Illinois. MGP also supplied
| ethanol for fuel use.
|
| Frank-Lin takes industrial ethanol, city water, and
| flavoring, and makes a large number of alcohol-based
| products. They make over a thousand brands, but there are
| only a hundred or so different recipes, they admit. Each
| brand has its own label, and many have their own bottles. A
| few years back, they moved to Fairfield, CA, to be next to
| the bottle factory.
|
| The Skyy Vodka article was updated accordingly. Skyy
| marketing was not happy.
| golemotron wrote:
| > Very weird thing to hear from someone who claims to be a
| vegetarian.
|
| A lot of vegetarianism is cloaked aesthetics.
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| Not a vegetarian, but "cloaked aesthetics" sounds very
| interesting, could you elaborate?
| pookha wrote:
| Seems like it's a cute way of saying that it's a material
| and superficial way of life (like religious ceremony).
| Which might be true for some people. I've been a
| vegitarian since I was YOUTH CREW (lol) but I've kept
| doing it for my own reasons. Most people have no idea...
|
| What I notice though is that people get attached to their
| diets and act offended when you don't eat something that
| they consider to be some core part of their life
| style(barbeque, steak, meaty burritos, sushi, vegan fake
| meat). Some people can and do get butt-hurt when they
| find out I don't eat meat and then want to play "gotcha"
| reindeer games.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| They don't like "chemicals".
| simmerup wrote:
| What I find weird about lab grown meat is that it runs into
| all sorts of problems like how the cells have a lack of
| immune system so entire batches can be ruined by one errant
| germ.
|
| I think we're going backwards by trying to replace the
| natural bio reactor of the body with steal and piping. It's
| all too labour intensive. To make this work we'll need to
| genetically engineer an animal that has only the parts we're
| interested in. Including skin to replace the steel bio
| reactors.
|
| Cows due to generations of selective breeding are already
| remarkably close to this.
| morsch wrote:
| The milk most people drink is proceeded in facilities that
| look much the same, because whole batches of it are ruined
| by a single germ, since it has no immune system either.
|
| We also have to pasteurize it. Or we don't, and germs from
| cows are hundreds of times more likely to make us sick,
| despite generations of selective breeding.
| tivert wrote:
| > The milk most people drink is proceeded in facilities
| that look much the same, because whole batches of it are
| ruined by a single germ, since it has no immune system
| either.
|
| But you're not _growing_ milk in those facilities, only
| _storing and processing_ it. That 's an important
| distinction, because it means with milk it's totally fine
| to deal with those "single germs" with long-understood
| sterilization techniques.
|
| If you try to sterilize your "lab grown meat" cultures to
| deal with the germs, you're going to destroy your "meat"
| too.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| Well, sterilizing the meat is the same as cooking it. The
| problem is keeping it sterile while it's growing/brewing.
| It can be done, as has been with breweries, but it is os
| not an easy task.
| simmerup wrote:
| To make this analogy complete you'd have to compare
| current milk production to some fictional milk that would
| require far less human processing and facility
| investment.
|
| I understand you're saying the challenges lab grown meat
| faces arent insurmountable, but short of some outside
| influence (statutory interference?) I don't see how it
| can compete with traditional cattle on the cost
| perspective
| candiodari wrote:
| Cattle production, especially large scale for more
| efficient meat production (ie. chickens and pigs in very
| small spaces) _is_ already somewhat outlawed.
| simmerup wrote:
| I could see it being further outlawed/discouraged as
| climate change starts to bite
| candiodari wrote:
| Yeah, me too. It wouldn't help much, of course, but it's
| a popular way to do _something_.
|
| At 380 ppm anything that doesn't either directly alter
| reflectivity of the atmosphere or drastically lower CO2
| in the atmosphere is just not going to work.
| candiodari wrote:
| No they're not. Cow milk, fresh from the udder spoils in
| something like 16 _hours_. Most people cannot tolerate the
| milk, even if you 're lactose tolerant, and it has various
| hormones in it that if you drink it long term would, uh,
| let's just say one would be able to notice the difference
| in your body in the swimming pool, especially if you're
| male.
|
| To fix this it is processed in food factories that you can
| describe as squeaky clean massive installations of ceramic
| tiles and shining steel.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| How do you propose they fix the milk in processing? Are
| you saying they are removing hormones from milk before
| bottling? I need some data about all these things you are
| claiming.
| candiodari wrote:
| They burn them, breaking up any proteins that are "too
| large" which includes a lot of stuff.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| They burn hormones? Where did you learn this?
| candiodari wrote:
| When you heat proteins they become unstable. Long chains
| become unstable first. So when you heat suddenly or not
| that high long chains break, but proteins still remain
| proteins, they just have a very high chance of losing
| their function.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Where did you learn that they do this to destroy
| hormones?
| simmerup wrote:
| Sorry, I'm comparing a cows body with its heart and skin
| to keep out pathogens and immune system to protect it and
| mouth to ingest nutrients, vs a steel bioreactor with
| steel skin and piped nutrients and a clean
| room/disinfectant for an immune system.
|
| I'm not talking about cow milk
| Amezarak wrote:
| This comment is largely incorrect.
|
| Raw milk is generally better tolerated than
| homogenized/pasteurized milk. However, in the early
| 1900s, as supply chains lengthened and the travel time
| for largely un-refrigerated milk from cow to table
| increased to days, we found that milk was a primary
| source of food-borne infections. The _absolute_ risk was
| still low, but the relative risk was high. Thus,
| pasteurization became common and in most places,
| mandatory.
|
| People have drunk raw milk for millennia and have not
| suffered from hormone-related effects..including people
| on dairy-centric diets. If you're talking specifically
| about rbGH, it's very easy to find milk free of it, which
| I would recommend anyway - I'd hazard a guess that's more
| common. It's disputed that it has any ill effects, but
| I'm totally on board with not risking it.
|
| Everything else aside, powerlifters aren't recommending
| crazy diets like gallon-of-milk-a-day (GOMAD) and
| bodybuilders aren't paying out the nose for human breast
| milk because milk has estrogenizing effects.
| culopatin wrote:
| I don't understand your point. Are you saying you prefer we
| continue torturing cows for our benefit because otherwise
| we are putting too much effort?
| simmerup wrote:
| Preference doesn't come into it. My point is effectively
| that I can't see how the current process will be scaled
| up to be economical enough for widespread adoption.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I recall a very old sci-fi story in which bored scientists
| at a remote space outpost, well, some of them really missed
| milk. So they decided to try to produce it. But then that
| needed some kind of circulatory system to support the
| udder, and that required a filtration system, and an
| oxygenation system, and a way to get nutrition _into_ the
| circulatory system ...
|
| They ended up building a kind of exploded steel cow, all
| pipes and vats and such. It seems we are heading in this
| direction.
|
| I have often wondered what it would be like to start with a
| cow, then engineer it to be anencephalic, then start paring
| away "features" or moving them around. Skip the legs, but
| do have networks of heart-like cells providing a
| contractile rhythm for the muscles, and so on.
| esafak wrote:
| I think that would be immoral because you would be
| mutilating an already sentient, intelligent animal.
| Better start bottom up.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| No, because anencephalic.
| a_shovel wrote:
| I recall another article on the subject that said lab meat
| needed purified amino acids as food for the culture, and
| that many amino acids just aren't sold in the necessary
| quantities. A cow, on the other hand, needs only grass
| because it has extensive equipment to generate those amino
| acids from grass, called a digestive system.
| akiselev wrote:
| The amino acids are generally supplied as - I kid you not
| - fetal bovine serum.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| There are ways to produce them by breaking down soy
| protein or pea protein (plain old acid hydrolysis,
| perhaps microwave enhanced - plus filtration; less
| cleanly enzymatically too), but it's another expensive
| step... And then you need to scale this process up.
| ihatepython wrote:
| > What's so weird about sterile rooms and stainless steel
| tanks? Do you think breweries (for example) are so much
| different?
|
| I can brew my own beer in my own home.
|
| Can I make lab-grown meat in my own home?
| Hedepig wrote:
| With the right equipment, if not now, soon you will be able
| to.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| You're moving the goal posts. The initial claim was that
| stainless steel tanks per se were the issue.
| smashed wrote:
| They feel unnatural and unconventional and is something a
| large part of the population will be unable to relate to.
| Food is a very cultural thing.
|
| We've also been educated to buy and prepare our own meals
| from the most natural/unprocessed ingredients as possible
| and avoid heavily industrialized/preprocess ingredients
| for health reasons.
|
| Lab grown meat is the opposite of both of that.
|
| I am just playing Devil's advocate here. I understand the
| appeal and potential environmental benefits as well.
| Hedepig wrote:
| While this technology is becoming mainstream, those of us
| that are okay with it should understand there is
| something fundamentally "icky" for some people. Which is
| difficult to debate rationally.
|
| This is partly the fault of Sci-fi, bio-engineering is
| rarely shown as a positive in TV and Film.
|
| This will be mostly solved with time, eventually it may
| become economically unviable to buy "field meat" (not
| sure what the term will be), and it will become a lot
| more accepted when they see the people around them
| enjoying it without severe consequences.
| XorNot wrote:
| I'd be extremely curious to see a lot of these people be
| presented with the bioreactor and the live cow, and pick
| which one they're going to eat.
|
| "Icky" is ignorance.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I wouldn't be so sure that most of the population could
| relate to the horrors of factory farms and slaughter
| houses--where basically all meat they're buying comes
| from no matter how many alleged free roam grass fed
| consumers claim to exist on social media.
|
| That's why there are laws to keep them from seeing it.
| Which might be why so many HNers think animals grow up in
| sunshine and rainbows and it's the sterile lab that's
| icky.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Very weird thing to hear from someone who claims to be a
| vegetarian
|
| I'm vegetarian for environmental reasons, not ethical.
| Nothing wrong with eating a chicken or a pig who had a good
| life on an open field for me
| rmorey wrote:
| Within rounding error, no chicken or pigs are raised this
| way today
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| In your country.
| rmorey wrote:
| Sorry, good point - worldwide it's only ~90% that are
| factory farmed
|
| https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/global-animal-farming-
| est...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > However, there is substantial uncertainty in these
| figures
|
| No kidding. They could start by using a single (and
| known) definition for "factory farmed".
|
| Unless you are in the business of refining that data,
| this study is useless.
| rmorey wrote:
| it's not useless, it's just not that conclusive. Im
| pretty confident in saying a significant majority of
| animals raised for slaughter worldwide are done so in
| conditions commonly described as "factory farms". We can
| quibble about the definitions all we want, but this is
| the dominant mode of raising animals for slaughter, that
| is clear to me
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > in conditions commonly described as "factory farms"
|
| Except that this phrase doesn't mean anything.
| rmorey wrote:
| hope this helps:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_animal_farming
| marcosdumay wrote:
| There is no reason at all to believe that the dozens of
| definitions that study used for "factory farm" fits the
| few ones stated on that wikipedia link. And there is no
| overwhelming problem that applies to all of the few
| definitions on your wikipedia link either.
| rmorey wrote:
| You said the phrase was meaningless, I disagree
| completely with that. We also disagree on the study, but
| that's a much more reasonable disagreement.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| As your wikipedia link shows, people commonly describe as
| "factory farm" anything from places where animals go
| indoor in the winter all the way to places where the
| animals have no space to move. Or places that create a
| lot of sessile animals are placed. Or places where
| animals are gathered to eat. Or places engineered to be
| comfortable for animals that don't move a lot.
|
| And that is only if you stay within the reasonable
| people. Almost everybody with an impulsion to talk about
| this subject uses unreasonable definitions. How is a
| single name that applies to all that still meaningful?
| cute_boi wrote:
| In a capitalist world where a small number of individuals
| possess significant wealth, the idea of free chicken is
| nothing but a myth. For the majority of people, money is
| the top priority and they will invariably choose it over
| any other option.
| the_af wrote:
| Free range chicken exist (or sometimes a slightly less
| free version of this, let's not split hairs). Their meat
| and eggs are more expensive. I don't know if they are
| economically feasible large scale though.
| cfn wrote:
| They are feasible, lookup Joel Salatin for an example.
| the_af wrote:
| Thanks, will do!
|
| Because this is HN, where someone is sure to nitpick
| and/or take my next statement to logical extremes, I must
| be very careful about how I word this. I will regret it,
| but here I go:
|
| I like eating chicken. I know lots of tasty recipes. I
| understand this involves killing the animal. Yes, I don't
| do it myself, but I could if I wanted -- I'm not
| squeamish. But factory chicken make me uneasy, it seems
| well past the inhumane line, almost like an extermination
| camp for chicken. I think free range chicken are happier,
| for whatever degree of "happiness" their tiny bird brains
| can understand. I like thinking that the chicken I eat
| lived a happy if short life trampling on actual grass and
| all that "breeze in their feathers" stuff. Yes, in the
| end it still involves killing them, but I think it's way
| better.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Personally vegetarian for the same reason. Obviously I'd
| encourage people to be vegetarian if they can, but
| choosing options that avoid cruelty at personal expense
| or inconvenience is laudable.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Indeed if they had a happy life where they did not need
| to suppress their instincts too much (roaming, scratching
| the ground, picking with their becks for tiny life in the
| soil) and getting killed in an instance, why would you
| feel bad about the killing&eating parts?
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I don't have a good answer for how I feel about killing
| and animals that were raised to have a good life. I get
| away with not having an answer to this question and
| defaulting to vegetarianism in two ways:
|
| 1) If I avoid all meat I cannot be held ethically
| accountable for it's provenance when, for example, a
| company's marketing department lies to you or the FDA
| does not sufficiently protect certain terms of art like
| "free range" which imply a lack of cruelty that wouldn't
| pass muster if I saw the treatment with my own eyes
|
| 2) If I am vegetarian, I will support vegetarian options,
| and I create support for companies and businesses that
| are unambiguously dedicated to reducing cruelty/suffering
| cfn wrote:
| Killing a chicken is hard, I have done that many times
| and I it never get easier. After all it is a living thing
| and you feel it is distressed, angry and in fear. I know
| people that are impervious to that but I am not and
| understand why you would feel bad about eating animals.
| rmorey wrote:
| like ~1% of chickens in the US are raised this way, it's
| extremly marginal:
| https://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/about-the-
| industry/ch...
| https://animalequality.org/blog/2022/10/14/factory-
| farming-f...
|
| essentially all animals raised for slaughter in the US
| are factory farmed
| floodle wrote:
| This is an odd argument. I'd bet the environmental impact
| of a battery farm chicken is less than a free-roaming
| chicken, in terms of hectares of land use, feed (less
| energy expended from movement), water use.
|
| So if you are vegetarian for environmental reasons and had
| to eat a chicken, you should go with the battery-farmed
| one.
|
| You would go with the (arguably mythical) happy chicken if
| you were vegetarian for moral reasons.
| cfn wrote:
| Arguing that the impact of free roaming chickens is
| higher than a battery farm tells me you haven't seen one
| or the other. Roaming chicken have a positive impact in
| the environment by spreading their manure over the land
| (where does this negative impact for anything that moves
| and eats comes from?) whereas chicken batteries stink for
| miles and produce a huge amount of sludge that contains
| heavy metals that is hard to process.
| ejb999 wrote:
| I agree - chickens roaming around your yard or small farm
| as free range, are a net positive for many reasons.
| jabradoodle wrote:
| It really isn't. They have ethical problems with factory
| farming. They eat a specific diet to reduce environmental
| impact. There is nothing contradictory in those
| statements.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| That seems very contradictory. Their specific diet
| _increases_ their environmental impact: the opposite of
| what they want.
| fnordlord wrote:
| My takeaway was that it would only increase the
| environmental impact if their actual diet stays the same,
| in other words they ate the same # of chickens but only
| from free-range, local farms.
|
| Given the same amount of money, I'm assuming they mean
| buy less chicken (but from non-factory sources) and spend
| the remainder on other foods with less environmental
| impact.
| jabradoodle wrote:
| I don't think you read the OP comment. They said they are
| vegetarian.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| It's actually ecologically and ethically better to have
| "barn" chickens, which live in massive steel sheds on
| trays with roosting boxes and perches about 50cm high,
| miles and miles of racking.
|
| They're free to move about at least in their "bay" and
| have the company of other hens that can wander about too.
| Sure, they don't get the marketing feelgood "sun on their
| backs and wind in their feathers", but they also don't
| get raptors, foxes, or rats.
|
| You can get rescue hens and they're just about savvy
| enough to figure out - after you've lost one or two -
| that predators are a thing, and you'll get an egg every
| couple of days per hen. They'll eat all the bugs in your
| garden (and most of the herbs, and the tops of your
| carrots) and shit everywhere.
| [deleted]
| lm28469 wrote:
| If your moral compass is a boolean switch I guess.
|
| > feed (less energy expended from movement)
|
| Less muscles, more disease, worse health, lifespan of 4
| weeks, &c.
| stickfigure wrote:
| > Nothing wrong with eating a chicken or a pig who had a
| good life on an open field for me
|
| Why vegetarian then? It's easy enough to buy meat that was
| raised on a local farm. Get a chest freezer, reach out to a
| local 4H club, and buy the whole animal. They'll butcher
| and vac-seal it for you. You could buy some kid's
| highschool project.
|
| I live an hour from SF and I get much of my meat this way.
| It's surprisingly inexpensive. There are agricultural
| communities close enough to every urban environment to make
| it worth the drive.
| fisherjeff wrote:
| Other industrially processed foods don't live in the uncanny
| valley of meat. I know garden burgers and the like are
| produced in basically a lab but I still enjoy them.
| Impossible burgers and Tofurky skeeve me out.
|
| Not a vegetarian FWIW.
| justinpombrio wrote:
| The farm might be local, but the slaughtering these days is
| usually done in large efficient slaughterhouses, right?
|
| Those are also full of stainless steel machinery:
| https://sc01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1HETwX5LrK1Rjy1zdq6ynnpXax/225...
| luxuryballs wrote:
| I fully agree and, despite other remarks here about milk and
| juice and beer, it's unnerving precisely because of the context
| of producing flesh.
| mattgeo_j wrote:
| [flagged]
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| You're conflating vegetarianism with veganism. You being a
| vegetarian is largely irrelevant because being a vegetarian
| isn't a vegan, and veganism is focused on ethics, which is
| something commenters who are neither vegetarians nor vegans are
| likely to understand the nuance of.
|
| You'd probably never drink coffee or beer again if you saw how
| it was made. Come to think of it, you'd probably never eat any
| kind of processed food if hygiene is unacceptable.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| He didn't conflate anything. He said "I'm vegetarian." You
| are the one who is making ethical assumptions on his behalf.
| He can state he is a vegetarian and then state another
| opinion without an arrogant and condescending vegan looking
| down on him from up high.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Uh, he goes on to say in another comment that he is a
| vegetarian for environmental reasons, not ethical ones, and
| there's apparently nothing wrong with eating an animal.
|
| If a vegan had said it, it might have been interesting as a
| talking point, but a vegetarian who sees no problem with
| eating animals said it. The two are nothing alike. He is
| LARPing vegetarianism.
|
| What condescension? I am not a vegan. You are projecting a
| lot of insecurities onto a complete stranger whilst making
| a very big assumption, and this speaks volumes about you.
| wongarsu wrote:
| As a meat-eater I agree with you in spirit, though imho
| that doesn't invalidate what the original poster said.
|
| "I don't eat meat for environmental reasons, but would
| prefer traditional farm-animal-meat to this" is a valid
| opinion. It is also easy to confuse with "I don't eat any
| animal products for ethical reasons, but still find
| eating real meat better than this", which would be much
| more surprising and interesting, but is not something
| expressed here. It's important to note the difference,
| though let's avoid judgements to avoid descending in a
| flamewar
| indigodaddy wrote:
| He said nothing about vegans. He is only talking about
| himself. You are making assumptions about what point you
| think he is trying to make, and/or belittling his own
| personal ethical stance on things, just because he is
| vegetarian. What you are doing is wrong.
|
| But you are correct that I'm projecting a bit. This is
| because as a vegetarian, I've seen so much vegan
| arrogance, condescension, and outright aggression toward
| vegetarians that I am indeed particularly sensitive to
| it. So if I see it I call it out. In my experience, an
| average vegan has more hostility toward a lifelong
| vegetarian than they have toward a lifelong meat-eater
| (granted that most vegans hold no hostility at all-- so
| this would be a smaller subset of vegans that do hold
| hostility-- a great many can be seen on any random
| Facebook vegan group).
| dheera wrote:
| I think you're making a lot of assumptions here. If you
| believe ethics drives you to be vegan, that's respectable,
| you do you, but it's not the only way to act on ethics.
|
| There are many, many reasons to be ethically-motivated but
| not go all the way to 100% veganism. Some of them include:
|
| * Having beliefs that are more socially compatible and being
| able to attend a wide spectrum of social events and enjoy
| them with others allows one to exert greater influence on
| others (especially if you believe that e.g. 10 people
| reducing meat intake by 25% is better than 1 person reducing
| by 100%). There's a good chance that hard vegans don't get
| invited to a lot of things, and are effectively locked out of
| a lot of opportunities to exert influence.
|
| * If you are pragmatic and believe the world is highly
| unlikely to stop eating meat altogether but can reduce meat
| intake to a point where peoples' appetites are satisfied but
| factory farming isn't necessary
|
| * If your ethical reasons are largely carbon-motivated, in
| which case going 90% vegan (time-wise OR portion-wise) is
| scientifically, mathematically, close enough to 100% that
| environmental concerns become a non-issue
|
| * If your body's physiology cannot cope with a vegan diet but
| can cope with a 90% vegan diet
|
| There are lots of other reasons, and while veganism is
| respectable, I disagree that black-and-white thinking is the
| only way to approach ethics.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| I don't disagree with some of the points raised, however
| the point still remains: his vegetarianism is largely
| irrelevant to the conversation at hand.
|
| It's no more relevant than someone who designs PC cases
| chiming in on chip architecture whilst leaning on the fact
| they have something to do with computers in an abstract
| way, somehow giving their opinion credence.
|
| It's a misdirection to prop up this idea that lab-grown
| meat is wrong because it's unnatural and they're a
| vegetarian. Well, cancer treatments are unnatural, sterile
| and hygienic hospitals too, as are most things in life. Is
| the world better off for medical progress even though
| Christian Scientists et al who hold no real medical
| qualifications disagree? Yup.
|
| This puritanical angle is bizarre, and doesn't make the
| point he thinks it does, whilst giving others who aren't
| vegans or vegetarians a pithy soundbite of "this vegetarian
| wouldn't even eat this shit", which once it's been repeated
| a few times, very quickly becomes "vegan".
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Tbh this derailment is why we shouldn't put a whole lot of
| focus on the "As a black man..." of someone's post and
| focus on the content.
|
| There's a subreddit that even makes fun of the "As an X, I
| dislike Thing Y that I'm supposed to like, now upvote me
| fellow Thing Y haters!" device.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AsABlackMan/
| tivert wrote:
| The whole "lab-grown meat" thing always seemed like nonsense to
| me, at least techniques using cell cultures. Life is a no-rules
| arms race, which is why immune systems are a basic requirement,
| not an unnecessary luxury. Trying to build an organism out of
| tubes and pipes with industrial techniques seems utterly foolish
| to create such a low value/mass quantity product as food.
|
| IMHO, any kind of successful and practical "lab grown meat" would
| probably look like some kind of engineered "minimal viable
| animal" (e.g. a chicken without the brain, and maybe missing a
| _few_ other things, but recognizable as an animal with
| functioning organ systems).
| [deleted]
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Biology gives us many alternatives to the immune system, which
| is found only in vertebrates.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innate_immune_system#Beyond_ve...
| AstralStorm wrote:
| MeatBeast (TM) from Imperium Galactica. Way better than
| engineered fungus that predated it. :)
| Metacelsus wrote:
| Like this: https://asteriskmag.com/issues/1/they-may-as-well-
| grow-on-tr...
| bobwaycott wrote:
| Wow. That chicken may be one of the most horrifying
| illustrations I've seen in a while.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| >(e.g. a chicken without the brain, and maybe missing a few
| other things, but recognizable as an animal with functioning
| organ systems).
|
| Or a tumor
| Retric wrote:
| We already use several processes that are similar to lab grown
| meat. Ie beer and cheese are a bunch of cells dumped into a
| growth medium. Hell bread rises because of yeasts in a growth
| medium.
|
| So the "minimal organism" here is probably some kind of fast
| growing meat cell in a relatively sterile environment, alcohol
| production optional.
| tivert wrote:
| > We already use several processes that are similar to lab
| grown meat. Ie beer and cheese are a bunch of cells dumped
| into a growth medium. Hell bread rises because of yeasts in a
| growth medium.
|
| "Similar" is not the same. In _all_ those cases you cite, you
| 're using _non-animal cells_ that are very close to wild to
| _modify_ existing food in relatively minor ways.
|
| If "meat" was bacterial sludge or yeast blocks, it would be a
| lot more practical to grow in a lab, but it's not. Meat is
| things like chicken muscle cells, which are not evolved to
| grow outside the support of a complex organism.
| v8xi wrote:
| If your definition of food extends to everything, then yes.
| In all of these products (and lab grown meat) you take low-
| value starter materials and make them food through
| microbial processes. Without yeast we wouldn't really be
| eating wheat to the same extent as we do (except unleavened
| bread...)
| tivert wrote:
| > In all of these products (and lab grown meat) you take
| low-value starter materials and make them food through
| microbial processes.
|
| You are missing the key point. _Not all "microbial
| processes" are the same: they can have massively
| different characteristics._ Lab grown meat 1) uses
| exceedingly fragile microbes and 2) makes extensive
| modifications to the food (complete transformation).
| Making beer 3) uses much more robust microbes and 4)
| makes less extensive modifications to the food (i.e.
| metabolize a fraction of the carbs into a microbially-
| toxic substance called alcohol).
|
| If your understanding can't make these significant
| distinctions, it's too fuzzy to be very good.
| Retric wrote:
| The assumption that these cells cannot be hardy assumes a
| great deal about this process. It's lab grown meat not
| just lab grown beef.
|
| From the perspective of human health we can use non
| mammalian cells for meat such as fish, reptile, or even
| invertebrates. That greatly changed the risks from things
| like viral or bacterial infection.
|
| There's a massive tradeoff in terms of the need for an
| immune system vs antibiotics vs near perfect
| sterilization. Avoiding contamination is extremely
| difficult but _if possible_ solves many problems.
| JackFr wrote:
| I don't think so. With respect to beer, bread and cheese, we
| mainly eat the growth medium, and only the organism
| incidentally.
| Retric wrote:
| My point was more that these growth mediums don't result in
| harmful bacteria like salmonella.
|
| Also, Beer is more about eating the byproduct used by these
| cells to minimize competition. Cheeses have more variety
| with some using use aromatic molds or bacterial enzymes,
| but others just use Rennet.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's more that, since you need blood, muscle tissue, and fat,
| (and probably more stuff) you need something to support their
| growth, you can't just create an homogeneous mass.
|
| The GP is quite unimaginative to think you would need an
| entire animal for supporting those, but "some kind of fast
| growing meat cell" is wrong too.
| tivert wrote:
| > The GP is quite unimaginative to think you would need an
| entire animal for supporting those, but "some kind of fast
| growing meat cell" is wrong too.
|
| What you described is actually pretty close to what I had
| in mind. I think you'd need something close to an "entire
| animal," since animals don't typically have lots of extra
| organs and systems they don't actually need.
|
| If you start with muscle tissue and "add back in" all the
| stuff you'd need to grow it as a passive lump that just
| gets fed, I think you'd come pretty close to an entire
| animal: heart, lungs, and circulatory system; bones and
| bone marrow; kidneys; a digestive system and liver (because
| do you really want to feed it exotic growth factors); a
| rump of a nervous system; etc.
| 64operator wrote:
| It's also tough because nobody really wants this. I've asked
| around and none of the vegans, vegetarians, or meat eaters I know
| are even vaguely interested in this. Reactions range from "huh"
| to "I'll never eat fake meat." I wont eat it either, it's
| dehumanizing.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Interesting, I definitely know people who are looking forward
| to this. Some would be willing to pay a price premium for it,
| and others would wait until it is the same price or lower than
| regular meat.
| gamerDude wrote:
| To add the other side. Every single one of my friends are
| excited for lab grown meat. The potential for a cleaner and
| more ethical meat plus the potential for new and
| better/different tasting meat is a plus for everyone in my
| circle.
| 64operator wrote:
| The energy inputs alone preclude any thought of it being
| ethical.
| [deleted]
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| What are the energy inputs and how do they compare with
| meat?
| 64operator wrote:
| What aren't they, really? That's what I'd like to know.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Meat is resource intensive and certainly more resource
| intensive than eating vegetables directly. Meat is so
| inefficient that we grow most of our crops to feed meat,
| for example.
|
| Why is this difference presumably not an ethical concern
| for you, but it is with lab-grown meat?
|
| Differentiating on energy intensiveness sounds like an
| empirical claim, so I'm going to ask about the empirics.
| 64operator wrote:
| [flagged]
| stickfigure wrote:
| You can't eat grass, and most ungulates can. If you're
| concerned about your personal footprint, it's not hard
| (in the US) to buy locally-raised, small-farm grass-fed
| beef.
| 64operator wrote:
| All beef is, by default, grass fed for the vast bulk of
| the animal's life. Some animals like sheep can't even eat
| grains and will bloat, so the energy and ecological
| footprint is basically zero.
|
| The problem of humiliation remains, however, even if
| grain finishing were somehow to be banned. And the Indian
| tech bros sliding in their Hindu / Jain / Sikh agendas
| wouldn't achieve any progress in their mission to
| transform the West.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| urfullofsht wrote:
| [dead]
| spcebar wrote:
| If it ever actually comes to market there will be a huge
| marketing push to make it seem like or better than normal meat,
| and to reframe or make people not think about how the product
| is made. There's lots of things that are pretty gross when you
| think about them, but have been marketed and made palatable. I
| think they'll be able to create people who want the product by
| reframing what the product is, once they /have/ a product.
|
| It's not 'lab grown meat', it's 'cruelty free meat' or 'eco
| steak.'
| allemagne wrote:
| Every politician from the midwest, every meat industry
| lobbyist, and every livestock farmer will make damn sure that
| won't happen without a fight.
| 64operator wrote:
| Also the vast majority of the public, who eat meat. I would
| sacrifice your right to free speech before I sacrificed my
| ability to eat meat.
| cute_boi wrote:
| Many people overlook the implications of choices. I realized
| this when I purchased the Just Eggs. I don't purchase 1 or 2
| bottle per months, but it is good to have.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| yeah it might be prime time to start a flank of church that
| includes eating real meat from free range beef cattle, no
| sarcasm, puns intended... plus imagine if we actually let the
| real cattle dwindle enough to the point where commercial or
| infrastructure failure would leave us with a sudden large gap
| in available meat, seems like sustainable local farming is the
| only wise solution, not more factory farms with even less cows
| 64operator wrote:
| Can a modern military about to enter WWIII susbsist on root
| marm? Let's find out.
| lkbm wrote:
| I want this. I'll eat it. I'd be willing to pay some amount
| more than the current cost of regular meat (including the
| pricier more ethically-raised meat).
|
| Yahoo reports about a quarter of vegans say they would eat
| it.[0] MSU survey found that 35% of people overall would eat
| cultured meat[1], including a _majority_ of people aged
| 18-40)[2].
|
| It's not the majority of the population, but it's certainly not
| 0%, and certainly appears to be well into double-digit
| percentages.
|
| People are price-sensitive, so if it costs more than regular
| meat it will have a tough time gaining significant marketshare,
| but there's very clearly a sizable portion of the population
| who _do_ want this, anecdotal surveys of your friends
| notwithstanding.
|
| [0] https://news.yahoo.com/most-vegans-support-lab-
| grown-1208550...
|
| [1] https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/michigan-state-university-
| poll...
|
| [2] https://theconversation.com/would-you-eat-meat-from-a-lab-
| co...
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I'm an occasional-meat kinda eater, and yeah, I'll just go all-
| veggie (with eggs and milk--you can pry those from my cold,
| dead fingers, I'll farm my own if that's the only way to get
| it) before eating this stuff. If I want to fill gaps in
| nutrition with shit from a lab, I can just start taking
| vitamins. I dunno, maybe if it were super-cheap--well under the
| cost of farmed meat, like, 20% the price--I might use it some
| just because hey, cheap protein, but otherwise, no.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Same here, I don't get why people are craving this but I accept
| that they do. And it's much better ethically than the current
| raise, abuse and slaughter process. Let's just hope it's also
| better environmentally.
| [deleted]
| rcar1046 wrote:
| I'll add to your anecdotal evidence by saying I am a vegetarian
| and I am interested in this. So somebody does really want this,
| just not people "around" you.
| dokem wrote:
| Yea, I'll give up real meat when the elites do.
| mcdonje wrote:
| If you had to pay the actual cost of it instead of the
| subsidized cost, you'd probably eat a lot less of it.
| 64operator wrote:
| Couldn't you say this about nearly everything? Energy green
| or non, non-meat foodstuffs, medicines, education, mail?
| Let's cut all subsidies across the board.
| cute_boi wrote:
| Well, In these cases, I think Elites will win and there
| will be more poor people.
| 64operator wrote:
| With WWIII coming the poor people problem has been
| solved.
| 64operator wrote:
| It's the same with minimizing my carbon footprint. As soon as
| Al Gore and Bill Gates stop flying I'm all in.
| mcbits wrote:
| I'd think something like "lab-grown maple syrup" would be easier
| both to sell and (knowing nothing about how it would be produced)
| to produce. I love real maple syrup but can't justify paying $15
| for a little vial of it. A 10-story building filled with layer
| upon layer of sap seeping from living wood cells is less
| disturbing of a vision than layers of pulsating flesh.
| ethanbond wrote:
| But the upside, financially and environmentally, is not nearly
| as substantial.
| stasmo wrote:
| Good point. Environmentally it would probably be net negative
| to stop using trees and move the production to a lab that
| consumes electricity.
| mcbits wrote:
| We can keep using trees, but this particular use of trees
| is already energy-intensive, materially intensive
| (thousands of miles of plastic tubes), sensitive to the
| weather each year, and geographically limited.
| bioemerl wrote:
| I've been watching a YouTuber try to create animal cells in a
| pitri dish and it just gave me such an appreciation for how
| amazing multicellular life is. And just how mean our immune
| systems are.
|
| You have to go through so much trouble to keep things totally
| sterile. Control the oxygen contact of the medium. Maintain these
| crazy exact temperatures, all for a thin smear of cells that
| couldn't do anything functional at all.
|
| And here we are, millions of these helpless cells, ruining around
| ruling the would.
|
| To the world of life we are these supermassive towering beings
| that are ecosystems to their own that emerged from the birthplace
| of life eons ago and cover the planet.
|
| The universe is such a strange and wonderous place, and yet we're
| some of the most wonderous things in it.
| mptest wrote:
| Beautiful thought friend. May I ask what the youtube channel
| is? Sounds fascinating
| bioemerl wrote:
| "The thought emporium"
|
| Dudes nuts. Engineered/Infected himself with a virus that
| changed his intestines to make them produce lactose for a few
| months. Is working up to build a bunch of neurons trained to
| perform a task.
| mkaic wrote:
| Not GP but I wonder if maybe they're referring to The Thought
| Emporium[0]?
|
| [0]https://www.youtube.com/@thethoughtemporium
| benzible wrote:
| Also see https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-
| at-sca...
|
| > Humbird likened the process of researching the report to
| encountering an impenetrable "Wall of No"--his term for the
| barriers in thermodynamics, cell metabolism, bioreactor design,
| ingredient costs, facility construction, and other factors that
| will need to be overcome before cultivated protein can be
| produced cheaply enough to displace traditional meat.
|
| > "And it's a fractal no," he told me. "You see the big no, but
| every big no is made up of a hundred little nos."
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I like that phrase: the Wall of No. And the fact that it's no's
| all the way down.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| Would it be easier to breed some kind of brainless chicken with
| just the right organs and whatnot to sustain tissue growth?
|
| Sounds gruesome, but maybe more realistic than lab grown meat?
| etrautmann wrote:
| I seem to remember that this was done for producing eggs, and
| consumers were horrified?
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _In a 2019 incident, an analysis of a line of cultivated
| chicken revealed that it had been contaminated with a small
| amount of rodent DNA, former employees said, which Upside
| executives confirmed for this story.
|
| Ms. Chen said the DNA stemmed from a common medical-research
| technique that used treated rodent cells to help support the meat
| cells' growth early in the cultivation process. The company
| immediately stopped using that technique, she said._
|
| Can someone explain what this "common medical-research technique"
| would be? I'm having a hard time understanding how this is passed
| off as "contamination" when it sounds like the rodent cells were
| deliberately put in contact with the food being created.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Ms. Chen is likely referring to the use of feeder cells or
| feeder layers, which are often used in cell culture to support
| the growth and differentiation of the target cells. Feeder
| cells are typically derived from rodents like mice or rats and
| provide essential growth factors, cell-to-cell signaling, and a
| supportive environment for the target cells.
|
| In the case mentioned, rodent feeder cells were likely used to
| support the growth of chicken cells during the early stages of
| the cultivation process. The contamination with rodent DNA
| could have occurred due to the close proximity of the rodent
| feeder cells to the chicken cells being cultured.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25659081/
|
| That said, having some rodent dna isn't the same thing as
| eating rodents or allowing rodents to roll around in the meat
| or whatever. As long as it's fit for human consumption, and
| you're down with eating scientifically produced animal matter
| (SPAM), I don't see an issue tbh.
| DantesKite wrote:
| I've always wanted lab-grown meat.
|
| Not the kind that looks like sludge, but the kind that would be
| indistinguishable from a beef patty you buy at the store, not
| least because it would be a more efficient way of producing food
| at scale.
|
| But also because some of that technology would also eventually be
| applied to the creation of human organs.
|
| And I'd like to live in a world where the waiting list for an
| organ transplant is just a few hours for everybody.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| > But also because some of that technology would also
| eventually be applied to the creation of human organs.
|
| I'm not sure that this is true.
|
| I mean, it might be in the sense that the technology for
| cultivating yeast could be applied to human organs.
|
| But to my knowledge there's not much going on in lab-grown meat
| that could be applied to producing functioning organ tissue,
| let alone building the full organ in all its parts and making
| it compatible with the host.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| That's not true. A lot of it is applicable, and a lot of lab
| grown meat comes from lab grown organ growing (an active area
| of research). From the process of initiating stem cell
| differentiation and growth to the creation of the scaffolding
| matrices, the difference between growing lab meat and
| growing, say, a heart, isn't wildly divergent. The heart has
| more precision in its structure and function, but the
| material and processes are very similar. Other organs are
| more complex for certain. I'd note that people with injuries
| or burns also benefit from being able to grow muscles (aka
| meat) as well as skin.
| dekhn wrote:
| I'd rather be vegetarian than eat lab grown meat.
| ihatepython wrote:
| I'd rather be a cannibal than eat lab grown meat.
| Pxtl wrote:
| > They expect hybrid products, often made with animal cells and
| other ingredients such as plant-based protein, to have a quicker,
| less costly path to market.
|
| This is what I've always expected. Synthetic meat slurry added to
| conventional fakemeat vegetarian products, basically taking
| Impossible Burger's "synthetic heme" concept to the next level.
|
| > Upside said in 2021 that it found a way to produce some meat
| without using animal components. But its first chicken filets
| won't be made with that process, the company said, noting that it
| intends to phase out the use of animal components.
|
| Wait, what does this mean? Like, the process needs constant
| refreshing with new animal meat? So it's not really cruelty-free?
|
| > "If alternative proteins are not successful, the Paris climate
| agreement goals are probably impossible" to meet, said Bruce
| Friedrich, president of the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that
| advocates for alternative proteins. Beef and dairy cattle, along
| with other farm animals, are a major source of methane, a
| greenhouse gas.
|
| This isn't super relevant to the conversation here since there
| are very many alternative proteins that _don 't_ require
| inventing synthetic meat.
| aendruk wrote:
| > Wait, what does this mean?
|
| Maybe they're referring to FBS in media. Much of cell biology
| research has used cow blood as an easy way to nurture cells,
| and early lab grown meat continued to use that as a starting
| point. The switch to a more ethical alternative is underway.
| hnboredhn wrote:
| I'm curious what the legal restrictions are here. I would
| imagine if a hamburger from a fast food restaurant could
| replace half of its meat with plant protein that I may not
| really notice if no one tells me. At the same time, the price
| differential is probably going to be very small that I would
| absolutely go for the pure meat option every time if its just
| within a dollar difference.
|
| I can't find for the US but I know there are strict rules on
| what can be called juice, for instance. It looks like Europe is
| more lenient than the US:
| https://www.npr.org/2020/10/23/927278172/veggie-burgers-can-...
| wongarsu wrote:
| > This isn't super relevant to the conversation here since
| there are very many alternative proteins that don't require
| inventing synthetic meat.
|
| If you look at our diets over the last millenium or so there
| was much less meat in the median person's diet. Much closer to
| "meat once a week or less". Meat alternatives aren't really
| about what we need nutritionally, it's about offering something
| people will voluntarily choose instead of meat when given the
| choice. Through that lens, synthetic meat is worth pursuing
| even if plant-based "meat" continues getting better and
| hashbrowns continue to exist.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I'm not very knowledgeable about the subject so I ask myself...
| Why make things so difficult and try to produce meat? Why not
| just proteins or any nutrients in bulk in reactors? Is original
| structure and taste so important in these days where we can
| produce flavours and build structures afterwards rather easily?
| freeone3000 wrote:
| It appears to be currently made using more equipment, with less
| scale, and to top it all off they still use animal cell lines!
| It's nowhere near ready.
| Maken wrote:
| Of course they need to use animal cells. The point is to be
| able to grow _meat_ without "conscience", aka a central
| nervous system.
| chaxor wrote:
| I still fully support progress and research towards improving the
| world, which is precisely what lab grown meat is - but
| alternatives such as 'impossible' are still quite excellent
| substitutes as well. Honestly, I think impossible meat is _far_ ,
| _faaar_ better than pretty much any _real_ meat - and I say that
| including a 'good steak' or (even better) home cooked steak in
| the southern US from a local butcher shop. Of course, that can
| still be good - but impossible meat is way better due to actually
| being _uniformly smooth_ and much easier to marinate (if that 's
| what you're going for). Real meat has an enormous number of
| issues that make it sub par, such as health risks (unique disease
| sets, as well as the chronic-use red meat effects on health),
| random other tissues that affect quality (gristle, other tendons,
| etc), of course _extremely_ inhumane processes for which it comes
| from, and the pretty insane costs associated with it (much of the
| writeups on this are very disingenuous and favor 'real' meat,
| despite the glaring amount of capital it takes to sustain these
| farms).
|
| Ultimately I am really ready to move on from the past of eating
| real meat and I would love to see all facets of the world switch
| away from it.
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