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I predict synthetic meat will be hugely successful simply because it avoids all the gross parts of dead animals. No blood, no connective tissue, no risk of absc

by mrob 10y ago

I predict synthetic meat will be hugely successful simply because it avoids all the gross parts of dead animals. No blood, no connective tissue, no risk of abscesses or parasites, no worries about cross-contamination, the exact same size every time. If I can buy a sterile and perfectly uniform slab of synthetic muscle and marbled fat, to me that's a better product than natural meat. I don't even care if it tastes slightly worse. Put some ketchup on it and it'll be good enough. "Inferior" technology very often wins because of convenience. People preferred LCDs to CRTs long before they'd caught up with CRT image and motion quality. Touch screen phones are more popular than those with physical keyboards. More people use ballpoint pens than fountain pens despite the higher writing pressure and lack of flexibility in ink choice. Synthetic meat can be the ultimate convenient meat and that's enough to make up for a lot of other flaws.

jonathanstrange 10y ago
I'm not so sure. The problem is that any kind of processed real meat, like almost all other processed food, tends to be absolutely horrible from a culinary point of view and is often bad from a health-related point of view, too. It seems unlikely to me that lab-grown meat would fare better in that respect than, say, processed compressed chicken remains that are sold as an ingredient in a vast variety of processed food. I also don't think that lab-grown meat will have substantially less potential for biological contamination.
- onion2k 10y ago
  The problem is that any kind of processed real meat... The aim of this is that it doesn't produce something that needs processing though. The aim is to produce something that is identical to just plain, real meat. There's no cooking or preparation involved - the only difference is that instead of being grown in a cow it's grown in a vat.
- mrob 10y ago
  I'm confident contamination won't be an issue for consumers because AFAIK no current or proposed synthetic meat has an immune system. This means it will have to be grown in sterile conditions. Contamination will be a huge problem for producers, but they'll have to figure out a solution because the cost of losing whole batches would be too much if they don't.

by mrob 10y ago

jonathanstrange 10y ago

I'm not so sure. The problem is that any kind of processed real meat, like almost all other processed food, tends to be absolutely horrible from a culinary point of view and is often bad from a health-related point of view, too. It seems unlikely to me that lab-grown meat would fare better in that respect than, say, processed compressed chicken remains that are sold as an ingredient in a vast variety of processed food. I also don't think that lab-grown meat will have substantially less potential for biological contamination.

onion2k 10y ago
The problem is that any kind of processed real meat... The aim of this is that it doesn't produce something that needs processing though. The aim is to produce something that is identical to just plain, real meat. There's no cooking or preparation involved - the only difference is that instead of being grown in a cow it's grown in a vat.
mrob 10y ago
I'm confident contamination won't be an issue for consumers because AFAIK no current or proposed synthetic meat has an immune system. This means it will have to be grown in sterile conditions. Contamination will be a huge problem for producers, but they'll have to figure out a solution because the cost of losing whole batches would be too much if they don't.