[HN Gopher] Singapore doubles down on lab-grown meat as Silicon ...
___________________________________________________________________
Singapore doubles down on lab-grown meat as Silicon Valley backs
off
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 115 points
Date : 2024-06-23 18:20 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (restofworld.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (restofworld.org)
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| Can someone explain how lab grown meat releases less greenhouse
| gasses? Seems like much more energy inefficient than the old
| fashion way. Are there any figures available that go into the
| thermodynamics of it all?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Nobody talks about the thermodynamics because right now it's
| terrible (also why the economics is terrible - nobody can get
| anywhere the $3/kg of chicken breast).
|
| However, _theoretically_ lab grown meat could be a big win on
| the thermodynamics front, and whoever solves that will have a
| far easier time getting the economics working too.
| architango wrote:
| The idea is that cows, and all the infrastructure around
| raising them, are a huge source of greenhouse gasses, while
| just cultivating cow meat eliminates everything not directly
| related to producing a hamburger. More recent studies [1] cast
| doubt on that and even suggest as you do that cell-cultured
| meat may be more environmentally damaging, not less.
|
| [1]
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.21.537778v1....
| energy123 wrote:
| Can you condense the argument for us? Why can't the supply
| chain be decarbonised?
| kibwen wrote:
| When talking about beef specifically, the problem is that cows
| produce a disproportionate amount of methane, which is a
| disproportionately powerful greenhouse gas. If you don't want
| to give up meat but do want to make a dent in your emissions,
| even just eating pork or chicken instead is an improvement.
| There might be ways to reduce the emissions of cows in the
| future (different feeds, gut biome interventions,
| bioengineering), but right now these are science fiction.
|
| As for the energy inputs themselves, the notion of grass-fed
| beef often gets trotted out as a way to make beef more eco-
| friendly, but in practice this mostly amounts to greenwashing.
| Most beef is not grass-fed, and most places in the world that
| raise cows are not suited to pure grass feeding.
|
| And then there's the land use aspect. When we're clearcutting
| the Amazon in order to satisfy the world's demand for beef,
| we've fucked up.
| klipt wrote:
| > There might be ways to reduce the emissions of cows in the
| future (different feeds, gut biome interventions,
| bioengineering), but right now these are science fiction.
|
| I thought there's already research showing that seaweed in
| the cow's diet drastically reduces methane emissions.
| coryrc wrote:
| Yes, just 2% of diet as seaweed essentially eliminates
| methane emissions. But there's no price on methane
| emissions for the farmer so no incentive to do so.
| raverbashing wrote:
| I wonder if anyone tried to capture methane produced in this
| way
| ryanjshaw wrote:
| > cows produce a disproportionate amount of methane, which is
| a disproportionately powerful greenhouse gas.
|
| Can somebody explain run through these quickly, I'm not sure
| which parts are wrong and how much they're wrong:
|
| 1. the constituents in the methane came from the food the
| cows eat?
|
| 2. the food got it from the atmosphere?
|
| 3. cows don't increase methane constantly, rather it's the
| marginal volume of feed required to sustain every new cow on
| the planet less the ones slaughtered? I.e. the growth in new
| supply?
|
| 4. Eliminating cows raised for meat would stop the increase
| in methane due to increase in supply and it would result in a
| one-off net reduction in atmospheric methane in time
| proportional to what cows were releasing, assuming the food
| continues to grow?
|
| 5. What happens when the food the cows are no longer eating
| dies, does anything get released then?
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Not my field, so assumptions and simplifications follow.
| Animal feed mostly grows from absorbing carbon dioxide, not
| methane. Cows (and other grazing animals) produce net
| positive methane because their gut microbiota ferment the
| animal feed, producing methane. So, to keep methane in
| balance, something in the local grazing biome needs to
| absorb methane. Otherwise, cows can increase proportional
| atmospheric methane.
| gambiting wrote:
| Well yes, but the same grass that these cows eat....would
| rot and release methane eventually anyway? Is that not
| correct?
| lazide wrote:
| It is correct.
| ben_w wrote:
| 1/2: Grass turns CO2 and water into sugar and oxygen, cow
| eats grass and turns sugar and oxygen in to methane and CO2
| and more cow.
|
| (Via intermediary step of some of their stomachs being
| bioreactors filled with bacteria, oh the irony).
|
| 3: Sure, but demand is still going up: https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/File:Beef_production_1961_2021...
|
| 4: I'm not sure I follow the question, but methane has an
| atmospheric lifetime of about 12 years, so it would
| probably fall, but I'm not sure how much by
|
| 5: Some mixture of CO2, methane, and carbon sequestration;
| at this scale it's worth considering which crops are grown
| and how they are used precisely to minimise that kind of
| impact
| lazide wrote:
| Assuming no fossil fuels provide the carbon, the whole
| thing is indeed carbon neutral.
|
| However, from a green house gas perspective, plants consume
| Co2 (moderate green house potential), and either due to
| rotting or as part of digestion, methane does get produced.
| Which has a high green house potential. Not in identical
| proportions to the co2 consumed of course, cows and rotting
| plants also produce co2.
|
| So think of part of the problem being some co2 being
| converted into a more problematic green house gas (methane)
| with a lot of steps in the middle.
|
| Also people being jealous of that tasty steak that is a
| byproduct of the process.
| dvh wrote:
| I think the end goal is control of food production:
|
| 1. Introduce artificial meat that only large corporations can
| make
|
| 2. Ban natural meat as artificial alternative exists
|
| 3. Jack up the prices and profit
| llamaimperative wrote:
| That's actually super hilarious given the conglomeration that
| has occurred already anyway.
|
| Turns out you can just skip both the incredible engineering
| problem of lab grown meat _and_ the incredible political
| problem of "banning meat" and even people who are apparently
| paranoid about corporate /government control will just go
| right along with it.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Most of the meat consumed in the US already comes from a
| large corporation. 99% of it is factory farmed.
|
| Source: https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-are-
| factory-farm...
| energy123 wrote:
| Reality is the opposite with the agriculture and beef lobbies
| influencing government and cultured meat facing outright bans
| 123yawaworht456 wrote:
| however, agriculture and beef lobbies don't demand a ban on
| small farms and individual cattle raising.
| ohmyiv wrote:
| Yeah, that already happens in the current world with current
| corporations. You just don't notice because you're too busy
| consuming.
|
| And I dont mean this in an angry environmentalist way. There
| are a lot of people who dont pay attention to their current
| food chain and don't know just how tightly most of the brands
| are controlled by a select group of companies.
|
| So before jumping to future conspiracies, look at what you're
| in now:
|
| https://capitaloneshopping.com/blog/11-companies-that-own-
| ev...
|
| https://xtalks.com/food-industry-by-the-numbers-leading-
| food...
|
| I eat some of the above foods, so I'm not some anticorporate
| person.
| standardUser wrote:
| A perpetual goal of _all_ civilization has been control of
| food production, without which we reliably starve to death.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| One of the larger issues is the methane byproduct, i.e. they
| fart. It isn't just about energy.
| coryrc wrote:
| Burps, actually. Even harder to capture if you were going to
| try.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I think it's more an issue of resources rather than raw energy.
| If this can be produced using much less space, locally to
| consumers, and using clean energy then it's a net gain.
|
| What I'm interested in is where do the raw materials come from?
| I suppose this needs a number of "ingredients", including
| proteins, that must be sourced from somewhere.
| architango wrote:
| Cell-cultured meat industry veteran (and dropout) here. If
| Singaporean companies are able to make a viable business out of
| cell-cultured meat, that would be fantastic, and a boon to the
| world. Some skepticism is warranted, though. It's very difficult
| to do this at scale, and that's regardless of unit price.
| Cultivating the meat that sells at a mass-market price is the
| real challenge and one I wouldn't bet on anytime soon, not even
| by 2030. The technical challenges are too many to list here, some
| of which are not public knowledge. Besides, the once-touted
| environmental advantages have turned out to be marginal at best.
|
| One way this business might make sense would be to sell boutique
| cell-cultured "specialty" meats, like scallops, veal, and wooly
| mammoth (yes, it's been seriously considered). They're not nearly
| as price-sensitive, and the scale is smaller. Here's hoping we
| can ease the burden on endangered populations and mitigate the
| inherent cruelty of some of those industries with cell-cultured
| alternatives.
| contingencies wrote:
| Singapore is a follower. Whatever they're in to happened
| elsewhere 2 years before.
|
| More broadly, it's not really about cell-cultured meat. It's
| about producing _any kind of protein whatsoever_ which can be
| ingratiated in to the food supply chain _anywhere_. The huge
| success in culturally normalizing the consumption of 'beef
| balls' and similar '<highly processed, derivative, nominal
| protein identity> balls' in markets like Thailand to my
| critical eye largely stem from the beef ball factories of
| Shantou in Guangdong. Make no mistake: those people are making
| bank selling total bunk for real bucks.
|
| Poverty will be the driver.
|
| Economically, it's hard to pass up plants. They've literally
| evolved over millions of years to produce the goods using
| almost nothing in resource terms. Somehow the world just needs
| to learn to love Indian food and stop expecting protein and
| lipid dense meals.
| jsemrau wrote:
| Singapore also has great universities. Research into this
| area fits Singapore well.
| pydry wrote:
| The entire culture of the country is much more oriented to
| being a fast follower though. They do not innovate.
| acheong08 wrote:
| By your standards, most of the world outside the US does
| not innovate, which makes sense since if they did, the
| tech would be bought up by a US company anyways
| nradov wrote:
| You're not wrong about the economics. Access to large amounts
| of high-quality protein (regardless of whether it's plant or
| animal derived) is increasingly going to divide the rich and
| poor. We can easily grow enough crops to provide everyone
| with enough calories (distribution problems aside), but
| people can't maximize performance and healthspan eating
| mostly grains and starches.
|
| https://peterattiamd.com/lucvanloon/
| contingencies wrote:
| Sure but most people aren't in to resistance training.
| They're in to high fructose corn syrup, processed foods,
| and sedentary lifestyles. I wondered which product
| generates higher returns: protein powders or statins?
| Actually according to Google the former is USD$28B and the
| latter is only USD$20B at the moment. I'd expect the latter
| to grow and the former to shrink.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Not just statins but diet drugs like wegovy. I suspect
| that people's addiction to corn syrup will be solved
| medically, not with willpower or lifestyle changes.
|
| Side note: "in to" should be one word - "into".
| jfengel wrote:
| I fear that people will eat less corn syrup but only
| because they're eating less overall. I'd love to see
| people put the money they save into higher quality food,
| but history suggests otherwise.
|
| The corn syrup based foods are cheap, tasty, and really
| easy to eat. It's too bad they have no nutrients besides
| calories.
| bboygravity wrote:
| The corn syrup thing is a US-only thing, isn't it?
|
| The rest of the world seems to use sugar from beets/sugar
| cane/coconuts?
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong, I base the above statements on a
| rant by an American coworker about how the corn lobby
| managed to somehow force American food producers to
| exclusively use relatively high calory corn syrup as a
| sweetener as opposed to much lower calory sweeteners.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| The short version is it's because of steep subsidies on
| corn as a crop. We have tons of the shit, and
| artificially cheap at that. It goes into foods as itself,
| foods as corn syrup, corn flour, and a substantial amount
| is converted to ethanol for fuel.
| nradov wrote:
| Corn syrup is kind of a bogeyman in some circles because
| it contains a slightly higher fraction of fructose than
| sugar produced from beets or sugar cane. There might be a
| little something to that as fructose is metabolized
| through a different pathway than glucose and there is
| some correlation at the country level between consumption
| and diabetes rates. But with sugar it's really more the
| quantity that matters rather than the composition.
|
| https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2012.736257
| Avshalom wrote:
| It actually contains less fructose than cane sugar, it
| just has more fructose than normal corn
| fbdab103 wrote:
| Were you attempting to post a different link? That study
| points a pretty strong negative correlation with corn
| syrup. ...Diabetes prevalence was 20%
| higher in countries with higher availability of HFCS
| compared to countries with low availability, and these
| differences were retained or strengthened after adjusting
| for country-level estimates of body mass index (BMI),
| population and gross domestic product (adjusted diabetes
| prevalence=8.0 vs. 6.7%, p=0.03; fasting plasma
| glucose=5.34 vs. 5.22 mmol/L, p=0.03) despite
| similarities in obesity and total sugar and calorie
| availability. These results suggest that countries with
| higher availability of HFCS have a higher prevalence of
| type 2 diabetes independent of obesity.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >The corn syrup thing is a US-only thing, isn't it?
|
| No, corn syrup is used in food and drinks all over the
| world.
|
| Personally, I have nothing against corn syrup so long as
| the sweetness actually tastes nice and appropriate for
| what I'm consuming.
|
| Corn syrup is also a _lot_ better than artificial
| sweeteners which all taste like hot garbage and make me
| literally ill.
| bsder wrote:
| > They're in to high fructose corn syrup, processed
| foods, and sedentary lifestyles.
|
| The problem is that US government subsidies for corn and
| soy have created an entire class of products that are
| cheaper than any alternatives.
|
| If we removed those subsidies, there would be far less
| incentive for companies to use them.
| olejorgenb wrote:
| > It's about producing any kind of protein whatsoever which
| can be ingratiated in to the food supply chain anywhere
|
| We have at least some options for this already. Mycoprotein
| is one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycoprotein |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn#Production (apart from
| the plant isolates)
| Scarblac wrote:
| > Singapore is a follower. Whatever they're in to happened
| elsewhere 2 years before.
|
| > [...]
|
| > It's about producing any kind of protein whatsoever
|
| Personally I follow fermentation based (bacteria based)
| proteins with interest, potentially they can have an even
| smaller footprint than plant based protein.
|
| Like Solein ( https://solarfoods.com/solein/ ), which has now
| been accepted as safe for human consumption in one country:
| Singapore.
|
| So they're not always behind the curve.
| contingencies wrote:
| _potentially they can have an even smaller footprint than
| plant based protein._
|
| Maybe one day - the potential of fungi is amazing. It's a
| whole world that is fundamental to ecology and
| comparatively poorly understood or mapped. However, I
| remain skeptical at present once you factor in one or both
| of the lab costs (steel vats, process control, power
| consumption, thermal systems, and lab employees) and the
| raw inputs (fermentation doesn't happen on thin air).
|
| By the time you've grown the raw input, why not just grow a
| food crop?
|
| I feel virtue-signalling regulatory moves are meaningless.
| Case in point: many markets are totally unregulated, by
| your logic they're ahead of the curve. I don't disagree.
| padjo wrote:
| It does seem like hubris to think we're anywhere near
| being able to design a protein synthesis process that's
| more efficient than a soy plant.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| I don't think so. A soy plant has tons of evolutionary
| baggage tied to its protein synthesis. It has to
| reproduce, out compete other life for resources, be hardy
| enough to survive both pests and pesticides, and it
| evolved in a resource constrained environment.
|
| For life generating protein is a byproduct of other
| goals. It seems possible that we can do better.
| 1992spacemovie wrote:
| > wooly mammoth (yes, it's been seriously considered)
|
| Hell yeah. I'm not really a fan of the lab grown meat aspect
| but I'd try a wooly mammoth burger.
| perihelions wrote:
| To think no one in history has ever tasted mammoth burger--
| milled flour bread buns wouldn't have coexisted with
| Neolithic mammoth hunters, that was an expensive
| specialization of the agriculture era.
|
| (Or perhaps Neolithic people would pity us and our culinary
| traditions--the bland, meaningless ennui of takeout fast-
| food. The true enjoyment of mammoth steak, we shall never
| know, is what it tastes when you've chased it down yourself
| for three days on foot).
| delichon wrote:
| Lab grown human flesh would remove the health risks around
| cannibalism but I assume the taboo would remain. Otherwise
| I'm imagining tasting menus of an extreme variety of
| creatures extinct, endangered or just previously hard to fit
| into the supply chain.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| Depending on where tastes go, you could even have celebrity
| meats.
|
| Swiftie Burgers. Kardashian hot dogs. Nixon ribs.
| leni536 wrote:
| Eat the rich?
| rsynnott wrote:
| Arthur C Clarke got there some 60 years before you:
| https://bestreadables.com/short-stories/arthur-c-clarke-
| the-...
| photonthug wrote:
| Weird to think about, but maybe a sideline in medical
| applications can offset r+d. useful as grafts?
| nkrisc wrote:
| Maybe this is more of a philosophical question, but to me
| "lab-grown mammoth muscular tissue" is not "mammoth meat" if
| it hasn't lived a mammoth's life. I doubt it would taste the
| same as the real deal. Of course it's as close is we're going
| to get, most likely.
| krisoft wrote:
| Idk. I would love to taste real mammoth. But with the lab
| grown "mammoth" i feel there is just too many knobs they can
| tweak, and without a reference who knows how authentic it
| would be. Basically the company making it would be strongly
| incentivised to squeeze some strange yet acceptable flavour
| profile. You don't want everyone to think it tastes too much
| like a cow, because how do you justify the price point then.
| But you also don't want it to taste so gamey or weird that
| people refuse it. Both would be financial ruin for the
| company. So instead of getting how a real mammoth tasted you
| would get some taste balanced to feel exotic yet acceptable.
|
| I bet the taste would depend more on the tastes of the team
| making it than the actual flavour profile of a mamoth.
| 23B1 wrote:
| > the once-touted environmental advantages have turned out to
| be marginal at best.
|
| Would love to see an article about this if you have one. Just
| curious is all.
| foota wrote:
| Singapore is a rich nation with tiny amounts of land, so it
| might make sense there even if not other places.
|
| Huh... I figured that china would account for most of their
| food imports, but that's not actually the case.
|
| https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/SGP/Yea...
|
| Surprisingly France and the UK are high up there, despite being
| geographically distant industrialized countries (e.g., not
| primarily based on agriculture). I wonder if this is because
| this is showing dollar value imports and these places export
| high cost food products? ... is it just champagne from France?
|
| Edit: oh my god it is champagne (or more generally spirits:
| https://tradingeconomics.com/singapore/imports/france)
| metadat wrote:
| At what point does the high-effort labmeat become more
| economical for Singapore than importing meat? I suspect this
| is the nontrivial bit of the equation, massive quantities of
| imports are already inbound every single day.
| foota wrote:
| There may be some aspect of geopolitical independence here
| as well, if they're dependent on imports for luxury foods
| (like meat) then they're more exposed to higher prices and
| external supply issues (which might be health related,
| scarcity, or some kind of politically caused scarcity).
| metadat wrote:
| I must respectfully disagree. Geopolitical independence
| is fundamentally less of a concern for luxury goods. You
| not being able to get a fancy steak is not a national
| security threat.
| photonthug wrote:
| Isn't part of the point that they are importing their
| staples and luxury, rice as well as steak?
| metadat wrote:
| Not in times of scarcity (with a recent example being the
| pandemic).
| foota wrote:
| Sure, but it's not going to make people happy. (tongue in
| cheek) Unhappy people can be a national security threat.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > high-effort labmeat become more economical for Singapore
| than importing meat?
|
| When you would be able to import the labmeat ingredients
| for at least 8x times the result weight of the imported
| meat.
|
| Where S. would get these ingredients _domestically_?
| wordofx wrote:
| Most people in Singapore try to food from China if possible.
| arugulum wrote:
| Two points to consider, one against and one for.
|
| 1) It's a small island, but it's also a major trading port.
| Which means its whole economy is already geared towards
| importing food from neighboring countries.
|
| 2) On the other hand: no domestic industry to disrupt! No
| domestic farming groups lobbying against meat substitutes,
| which may push research/distribution furhter along.
| tapotatonumber9 wrote:
| I wonder how much of the French/UK imports are resold as duty
| free good's especially champagne, spirits and LVHM luxury
| items.
| Staple_Diet wrote:
| Given we are talking about meat I thought your linked plot
| looked weird (Australia was way too small). Then I realised
| that you have to select 'Animal' rather than 'Food Products'
| to see just meat imports, with the expected suspects being
| there (Aus, NZ, Brazil, Malaysia and Indonesia).
| rodgerd wrote:
| > Cultivating the meat that sells at a mass-market price is the
| real challenge and one I wouldn't bet on anytime soon, not even
| by 2030.
|
| Given the money going into lobbying states to make it illegal
| in the US, I can only assume that it must have some chance of
| success.
| 39896880 wrote:
| > The formulation of its new product uses just 3% cultivated
| chicken in order to sell at a lower price point so more people
| can try it, he said
|
| So it's 97% normal chicken, but 3% cultured? That doesn't seem
| too interesting.
| benzible wrote:
| See https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-
| sca... for a thorough exploration of why lab grown meat will
| never happen...
|
| > 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."
|
| I've posted this comment before, but the linked article is
| relevant to every story about lab-grown meat as the entire
| concept is a fantasy, or less charitably, a scam.
| dekken_ wrote:
| all we need to do is break the second law of thermodynamics,
| what's the big deal?
| eikenberry wrote:
| > and other factors that will need to be overcome before
| cultivated protein can be produced cheaply enough to displace
| traditional meat.
|
| This elides over the cost differential and where that "cheaply
| enough" wall is. Animal grown meat is currently rising in costs
| and will continue to rise in costs as both demand is rising and
| the habitat for those animals is constricting due to climate
| change. How much cheaper does lab grown meat and how much more
| more expensive does animal grown meat need to be before it
| becomes viable. From what I've read they are closer than this
| argument assumes.
| exe34 wrote:
| another classic case of differential accounting - if the
| climate adaptation cost attached to farming was charged in
| the price of meat, maybe the no would be on the other foot.
| ben_w wrote:
| I can easily believe it's a fractal of _hard_ , but I cannot
| believe it's a fractal of _no_ , and absolutely not as a
| question of thermodynamics.
|
| It's clearly _possible_ to make muscle cells (and other
| components of meat) reproduce rapidly: cattle exist.
|
| It's clearly _hard_ , or we'd have already have all this plus
| vat-grown organs and (affordable) vat-grown leather.
|
| And some (non-meat) cells are already convenient to grow in
| vats (you just don't want to get all your protein from
| nutritional yeast and/or spirulina).
|
| "1000 ways to not make a lightbulb", or whatever the real
| original Edison quote was -- what's the number, 90% of start-
| ups fail?
| benzible wrote:
| The "no" in this context is addressing whether cultured meat
| will ever be economically viable at scale, not just
| scientifically possible. The article suggests a compelling
| argument against this viability, in that the breakthroughs
| needed for commercially viable cultured meat would also
| revolutionize the far more lucrative pharmaceutical industry.
| The fact that these advances haven't been achieved in pharma,
| despite massive financial incentives and decades of research,
| is strong evidence of their fundamental difficulty or
| impracticality.
|
| For instance, even the most efficient cell lines used in
| pharmaceuticals aren't efficient enough for low-cost
| production of bulk cell mass. This implies cultured meat
| companies are attempting to solve problems that have long
| eluded a much larger, better-funded industry. The absence of
| these breakthroughs in pharma, where the financial rewards
| would be enormous, suggests they may be fundamentally
| unattainable with foreseeable technology.
| ben_w wrote:
| > unattainable with foreseeable technology
|
| This I agree with; it's just... well, I'm 40 now[0], and a
| lot of biology that can be done today involved technology
| that was not foreseeable when I was born.
|
| So, yes, pharmaceuticals getting the hard problems solved
| first, sure -- I'd say that I'd know not to invest in vat-
| meat startups until pharmaceuticals companies have solved
| problems I'm oblivious to except for the logical
| impossibility with such a test.
|
| [0] aaaaaaa
| fabian2k wrote:
| The limits in pharma aren't production, they're figuring
| out which 10% of drugs will get through all the clinical
| trials.
| benzible wrote:
| While drug discovery may be the most lucrative
| opportunity overall, production costs remain significant
| in pharma, especially for biologics and cell therapies,
| and breakthroughs in these areas are well worth pursuing.
| CAR-T treatments, which use similar technologies to
| cultured meat, have manufacturing costs of
| $95,000-$156,000 per dose [0].
|
| For generics and biosimilars, more efficient production
| could be a major competitive advantage. The fact that we
| haven't seen breakthroughs in this area, despite clear
| financial motivation, suggests these are not easily
| solvable problems.
|
| [0] https://www.fiercepharma.com/manufacturing/car-t-
| manufacturi...
| dado3212 wrote:
| CAR-T treatments are expensive because they're
| individualized. The process has to be repeated per-
| individual. That's completely different from lab-meat.
| dekken_ wrote:
| > absolutely not as a question of thermodynamics.
|
| it "absolutely" is, anything that exists, is fundamentally a
| question of thermodynamics, it's unavoidable.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I wish I could get back the five minutes it took to read that
| stupid article. The argument for the second half is "his report
| seemed really technical to us and nobody has ever cited it in
| the four years since it was published so it's a massive
| conspiracy by every scientist ever because everything he said
| was so right."
|
| Either _every single_ company is wholesale lying about key
| parts of their processes and outputs...or this is just another
| hitpiece by Big Ag with exaggerated claims.
| ortsa wrote:
| It seems like all the arguments there are predicated on the
| "meat" being actual muscle cells in a vat, though. Wouldn't it
| be just as likely that the successfully engineered food ends up
| being just, like, kelp with GM'd amino acid byproducts or
| something? Or chicken-of-the-woods with more random proteins
| thrown in? (I mean as long as they don't kill the culture, it
| doesn't matter if it benefits the host organism.)
|
| I'm sure that's all harder than it sounds. But I doubt it's the
| same "wall of no" as muscles in a vat.
| miles wrote:
| > See https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-
| sca... for a thorough exploration of why lab grown meat will
| never happen...
|
| The NYT carried another opinion piece by the same author this
| year[1] along with a number of reader rebuttals[2], including
| this one from Mindy Kursban:
|
| > It is surprising that in his obituary for cultivated meat,
| Joe Fassler spends so few words on the viability of the science
| and cites more chief executives than scientists.
|
| > Just recently, the chair of Tufts University's biomedical
| engineering department, David Kaplan, who has published more
| than 1,000 peer-reviewed papers, told[3] a room full of
| cultivated meat scientists that progress over the past five
| years gives him "complete confidence that we're going to get to
| where we need to go."
|
| > There are many eminent scientists all over the world who
| share Dr. Kaplan's view, but readers would not know that from
| reading Mr. Fassler's essay, which argues that cultivated meat
| is a project of Silicon Valley "dreamers with a fancy
| prototype, a pitch deck and a good amount of natural charm."
|
| > This groundbreaking science may be taking longer than
| initially thought, but it's making strides, so it's a shame
| that Mr. Fassler spends so little time exploring it.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/opinion/eat-just-
| upside-f...
|
| [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/02/opinion/lab-grown-
| meat.ht...
|
| [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGzXAuiYKGU
| nerdjon wrote:
| As someone who has zero stakes in this (well beyond the planet)
| and limited knowledge in the biological sides of this.
|
| This feels incredibly dismissive? Sure I will concede that most
| likely the 9 year timeline mentioned in that article is
| incredibly optimistic and very likely will not come to
| fruition.
|
| But I think it is also naive to think, regardless of how much
| you know on a particular subject, that there are not solutions
| to problems that have not been developed yet or that there are
| already examples to those problems that are not public
| knowledge (it even mentions that the paper was written with NDA
| knowledge).
|
| Then it is even more naive to try to paint a "wall of no"
| seemingly in a way to shut down research on this subject.
|
| Just look at the silicone chips allowing us to have what once
| would have been considered a super computer in our pockets
| compared to when computers were tubes. Of course at that time
| anyone suggesting that a personal computing device would even
| be possible would likely be laughed out the room, the core
| technology didn't even exist to think that maybe some day it
| would be possible.
|
| Are these companies and that paper making lofty promises that
| may be borderline lying to investors, maybe. But I don't think
| we should be saying it is impossible at this point in time.
| pedalpete wrote:
| Many of the cultured meat companies are going about this the
| wrong way from an economic standpoint. They often try to make the
| new chicken nugget, a low cost mass produced food that may seem
| easy to replicate, because it is already so processed.
|
| This is were Vow, and a few others are going the high-end, foods
| that haven't really existed before, with their Japanese Quail
| Parfait. Similar to how Tesla started with the roadster, and then
| went to the S, 3, Y, etc etc.
|
| Imagine creating a cultured cavier or foie gras. Sold in small
| quantities to those who want the experience, social signaling,
| and opportunity to make a small difference. The companies won't
| make money on these items, but they can cover a higher percentage
| of their cost, and learn how to scale. Then move into less rare,
| but still coveted foods, etc etc
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