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Animal agriculture seems to me like one of those things that in 50 to 100 years people will look back on with bewilderment. "You mean you birthed whole animals,

Animal agriculture seems to me like one of those things that in 50 to 100 years people will look back on with bewilderment. "You mean you birthed whole animals, let them grow for two years, fed them all the while, just to kill them, chop up their remains, and ship that to people?" Plant based protein and maybe even more so cultured/clean meat (e.g. http://www.memphismeats.com/ http://www.memphismeats.com/) seem likely to totally replace how we do things now. Disclosure: I'm an investor in Memphis Meats

mynameishere 10y ago
Yeah, on the same token I'm totally mystified that people used horses to pull plows. What the heck were they thinking?
- arcticbull 10y ago
  I would argue the difference here is we could just, you know, eat the plants but we don't want to. 36% of US corn goes to feed animals for meat and dairy (3%-40% efficient). [1] There would be significantly more food to go around if the plants were just eaten directly. It would be more like if there were plows at the time that operated on solar but nobody wanted to use them, and instead, decided to tie horses to the plows because they would rather. Had a hard time working farm subsidies into the analogy. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-corn/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-c...
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    If we all lived in 3 foot by 7 foot cubes it would cost a great deal less to heat our homes as well. Just because a more optimal way to do things exist doesn't mean anyone actually wants to do it. I enjoy eating meat, thus I will continue to do so.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - arcticbull 10y ago
      The difference is one's uncomfortable, the other you're just used to. Plants are no less tasty, they're just different. I eat meat too, I'm just saying.
      - bobcostas55 10y ago
        >Plants are no less tasty Sketch out a model of the evolution of dietary preferences in the ancestral environment (esp post-fire) and you will quickly see this is an insane thing to believe.
        kranner 10y ago
        You're talking pre-agriculture.
        arcticbull 10y ago
        Fair, I could restate that not as 'no less tasty' but 'tasty in their own right'. Though there are also plenty of societies that are primarily vegetarian, as in South India, and I don't see them running for the nearest meat market due to the insane flavor advantages of a good cut of meat.
      - nightski 10y ago
        Meat is extremely tasty but I am not going to just eat meat. Similarly with vegetables, I love cauliflower and broccoli but at the end of the day I need variety. Just because one is very tasty doesn't mean it makes the other any less desirable. On the same topic, it's ironic how we lump "meat" into a single category. How the animals are raised and fed has a huge effect on the flavor and taste of the meat. If McDonalds hamburgers disappeared I wouldn't even notice. If I am not able to buy grass fed ribeye from a local farm I'd be very disappointed.
    - warent 10y ago
      Fair enough. It may be worth empathizing that animals probably don't enjoy being farmed and slaughtered by the billions
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - cmdrfred 10y ago
        I doubt corn wants to be farmed and eaten either. Should we stop the use of antibiotics to preserve the lives of billions of bacteria? You see its not a matter of caring about life when you boil it down. The majority of vegans are pro choice for example. This is a matter of where you draw the line. You may move that line a little bit further down the food chain than I but all mammals must kill to survive.
        warent 10y ago
        Neither bacteria or corn are animals, and bacteria isn't even part of the Eukarya domain, it's something else entirely. I was pretty specific about saying animals in my post. Why animals? Because we are known to mourn the death of other animals.
        cmdrfred 10y ago
        >Because we are known to mourn the death of other animals. We don't mourn the death of food animals typically so its OK then? Your criteria are arbitrary, and that's fine for a personal value but you certainly can't expect others to agree with you.
  - jimmywanger 10y ago
    > we could just, you know, eat the plants but we don't want to. You're really arguing something separate here. We can't eat a lot of plants that animals can. 36% of corn goes to feed animals for meat, but what percentage of corn is inedible for humans? (husks, leaves, cobs) There's a reason we don't domesticate carnivores - we're not creating any more food sources. We don't compete with things that digest cellulose.
    - arcticbull 10y ago
      I believe that corn stalks and husks are not particularly good feed for livestock, they're very low protein (3-4%) and thus usually have to be supplemented. Ideally, it would be mulched back into the ground to prevent erosion and soil depletion, AFAIK.
  - hinkley 10y ago
    Those endless fields of corn in the midwest are feed corn, not corn on the cob. They're destined for processed food or to feed animals. Soy isn't all that much different. What would have to happen is that we start planting something else, that's more immediately edible.
wollstonecraft 10y ago
How are you going to do aseptic technique and metabolic regulation rate for less energy than skin+immune system and a liver? Anyone who's ever cultured mammalian cells knows that you toss the medium with most of the carbon source remaining because it's gotten too acidic with lactate. Turns out that livers are a really energy-efficient way of keeping cells alive.
- derefr 10y ago
  Why not grow pseudo-animals that consist of tiled blocks of muscle + liver + dermis?
  - pzone 10y ago
    Mmmm that phrasing. So appetizing.
    - kefka 10y ago
      Not any more appetizing if you knew what most slaughterhouses do. Admittedly, it would be tremendously hard for me to be a vegetarian. Im a T2 diabetic. Grains, starches, and sugars are all bad for me.
  - stagbeetle 10y ago
    For the same reason eugenics, GMOs, human cloning, and to a lesser extent stem cells, aren't popular: It's an abomination against nature, in the public eye.
- agitator 10y ago
  Or you could take the Impossible Foods approach and use plant based methods to replicate the components of meat.
droopyEyelids 10y ago
It's not clear to me that humans are going to think of a more efficient way to turn energy and matter into food in the next century. We could potentially alter the animals into something that would be hard to recognize, but that'll be an evolution of animal husbandry, not something that will leave us bewildered at animals. What do you see that indicates we're going to make massive leaps beyond what animal life has already provided in turning sunlight and air into useful lipids and proteins?
- xsmasher 10y ago
  There's already a more efficient way to turn energy and matter into food - plants. Running it through animals before we eat it is the inefficiency.
  - tomjakubowski 10y ago
    Livestock can subsist on plants, like wild grasses, that are unpalatable or even inedible to humans. These plants often grow on "unarable" land that won't support human crops. For millennia, humans raised livestock on pasturing lands, seemingly without harming the environment too badly. What stops us from doing that now? I suspect the real problem is closer to wasting arable land, water, shipping (with all of those environmental externalities), etc. on growing crops that aren't used to directly feed humans, and government subsidies that hide the true cost of corn-fed livestock from consumers.
    - agitator 10y ago
      Yes, and the high demand for animal based proteins has been a large cause of deforestation. Also, beef and other livestock produce a large portion of green house gas emissions.
    - sanswork 10y ago
      We don't need to use that land though. If we're not feeding livestock then we don't need near as many crops to support ourselves so let the unusable land return to the wild. Also if you want to use scrub land to feed your livestock you're going to need a lot of it like in Australia. >For millennia, humans raised livestock on pasturing lands, seemingly without harming the environment too badly. For millennia most people wouldn't be getting access to 200lbs of meat a year. There was also a lot fewer of us to feed that much meat to.
hinkley 10y ago
Actually, a lot of the perennial food crops we do or could eat are adapted to environments containing ungulates or other animals, and there are a number of nutrient problems and pathogen vectors that wouldn't be as much of an issue if the land was being judiciously (rotation) grazed. What will end up being seen as crazy is locking them all up in a barn and burning fossil fuels to bring the food to them instead of them using their own legs, all for another 20% body mass and giant meat portions (think: steak, chicken breast).
notyourwork 10y ago
"You mean you planted that whole acreage with seed, let them grow, watered and fertilized them all the while, just to cut them down, chop them up and ship that to people?"
- soheil 10y ago
  We think alike!
- sanswork 10y ago
  This would work better if we didn't have to grow more plant material to feed the meat than just feeding ourselves directly.
  - toomanybeersies 10y ago
    That's a very American thing to grow crops and ship them off to other farmers to feed their animals. Most meat animals (or at least goats, sheep, and cows) worldwide feed on whatever grows on the ground (whether that be turnips, grass, or something else).
    - sanswork 10y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_feeding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_feeding says that 9% of beef is raised by grazing. Poultry is going to be almost all feed. Along with Pork. Those are the 3 biggest sources of meat by far.
- 1123581321 10y ago
  "Why should salt suffer?" (http://www.online-literature.com/chesterton/napoleon-of-notting-hill/1/ http://www.online-literature.com/chesterton/napoleon-of-nott...)
- Mathnerd314 10y ago
  Hydroponics is actually a ton easier (at scale): http://www.epicgardening.com/hydroponics-vs-soil/ http://www.epicgardening.com/hydroponics-vs-soil/ Seems like a good argument.
soheil 10y ago
And then 50 to 100 years after that people will look back on with bewilderment. "You mean you planted whole seeds, let them grow for months, watered them all the while, just to kill them, chop up their leaf, and ship that to people?" Plants are alive too.
- kranner 10y ago
  Are they as sentient? Do they suffer as much? I don't think there is reason to believe these things.
  - soheil 10y ago
    Animals shouldn't suffer either if they're raised right. I also don't see how putting a bullet through a cow's head somehow causes any suffering.
    - pdexter 10y ago
      The problem is, that's not what's happening. Not everyone who eats cows are getting them from people who treat them as nicely as I guess you claim to. Further, why waste food and water on cows when humans can just eat and drink that themselves? Why raise a cow and then shoot it in the head when you can just, you know, eat plants.
      - soheil 10y ago
        I'd argue it's great for the cow! Think about it they're doing really well as a specie, never before in history they were so successful and enjoyed such high numbers. Their population has simply sore, that however cannot be said about most other species. Also Daniel Dennet gave a TED talk about this. [1] [1] https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_s_response_to_rick_warren https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_s_response_to_rick_war...
        sanswork 10y ago
        If aliens arrived tomorrow and took half the humans to another planet to farm their meat would you think that was great for those humans because we are now a multiplanetary species?
booleandilemma 10y ago
How long something has been around is often a good way to determine how much longer it will be around in the future. I'd be willing to bet that humans will stop driving cars much sooner than they stop farming. Humans have been practicing animal agriculture for a long time...
- pyre 10y ago
  On the other hand, animal agriculture on the scale we see it today is massively different than anything that was seen 100+ years ago. Trying to say "people raised cattle 100 years ago" is much different then talking about ranchers with 1000-strong cattle herds or industrialized "factory farms."
- azakai 10y ago
  > How long something has been around is often a good way to determine how much longer it will be around in the future. Might be some correlation there, but probably it's mostly unrelated. We did many things for a super-long time then stopped, because we found something better. For example, we used horses to get around for millennia. We've done animal agriculture for a long time, but once something better comes around, we'll switch - and food technology is getting very close, and has other benefits too (helps against global warming, etc.). But just like riding horses, eating animal products will never go away completely, of course.
- jamestnz 10y ago
  >How long something has been around is often a good way to determine how much longer it will be around in the future This mode of (purely statistical) longevity argument is the "Doomsday Argument". The classic version is about predicting how much longer human civilization might endure. The crux of it is that there's only a 5% chance that we're currently in the first 5% of humanity's total timeline, and a 95% chance that we're in the last 95% of it. If we assume that 60 billion humans have been born so far, it can be estimated that there is a 95% chance that the total number of humans ever will be less than 20 × 60 billion = 1.2 trillion. Assuming that the world population stabilizes at 10 billion and a life expectancy of 80 years, it can be estimated that the remaining 1,140 billion humans will be born in 9,120 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument
ars 10y ago
> Animal agriculture seems to me like one of those things that in 50 to 100 years people will look back on with bewilderment. Really? It's not like we've been doing that for 5,000 years or something. But in 50 years they'll be like "What were you doing for the last 5,000 years?" Animal agriculture is not going to be one of those things. In fact I can guarantee you that even if we figure out a meat replacement people will still eat animals in 100 years. Something that's been done for 5,000 years doesn't get stopped that quickly. As evidence look at how many people want to "go back to the farm", and raise their own animals. On the surface, why? It's harder and more expensive. Yet, people want that anyway.
- chroma 10y ago
  > Something that's been done for 5,000 years doesn't get stopped that quickly. Doesn't this prove too much?[1] Plenty of things were common for millennia before they suddenly weren't. Eg: Monarchies, slavery, beasts of burden, and diseases such as smallpox. 1. https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/13/proving-too-much/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/13/proving-too-much/
  - ars 10y ago
    > they suddenly weren't. Eg: Monarchies, slavery, beasts of burden, and diseases such as smallpox. Except that every one of those things still exists! Smallpox doesn't exist, but other diseases such as syphilis do. So that actually demonstrates exactly the opposite of the point you were trying to make. Monarchies is an especially bad example because they still exist precisely because people are unwilling to stop a tradition that has gone on that long.
    - dntrkv 10y ago
      Slavery does exist but in 1st world countries people do look at it with bewilderment even though it is still around in some places.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > Monarchies is an especially bad example because they still exist precisely because people are unwilling to stop a tradition that has gone on that long. I'm not sure that's the reason; perhaps the largely-symbolic monarchies of Europe, but the substantive monarchies in the world are actually mostly quite newly established.
fluxby 10y ago
The future is in algae based proteins. They contain all essential amino acids, naturally anti inflammatory and have no known allergens. The taste profile problem will be solved eventually and algae based chemical compounds as taste and color additives will be omnipresent in our foods in 5-10 years. @sethbannon you should also consider investing in algae based meat alternatives. (I.e. Solazyme / TerraVia)
stagbeetle 10y ago
Keto and Paleo are constantly growing. I personally think we'll head in the direction of "to-fit" dieting (through genetics, personal experimenting, etc.). It'd be foolish to keep swinging back and forth on the USDA/HHS "one size fits all" legislature.
SN76477 10y ago
Why the name Memphis Meats? I do not think that you are in Memphis.
- bglazer 10y ago
  They're not in Memphis. They're in San Francisco. My guess for why they're named Memphis Meats is ”[a founder's] family also owns a chain of 43 BBQ restaurants based out of Memphis, Tennessee"
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    I was curious about that too being from Memphis. Which BBQ chain?
    - bglazer 10y ago
      Baby Jacks BBQ You're from Memphis? It's so rare to run into another Memphian on HN.
      - nickpsecurity 10y ago
        I'm about 10-20 minutes away from it right now. Ain't had Baby Jacks. Might have to try it. Far as Memphians, yeah there's just a handful of us that I've seen. Gonna have a Memphis HN get-together one day with all of us.
        bglazer 10y ago
        Agreed!
      - SN76477 10y ago
        Im in Memphis. PM me for the local slack info.
        nickpsecurity 10y ago
pdog 10y ago
This is the perfect example of Silicon Valley hubris: farming animals is bewildering and barbaric, so obviously this New Thing™ that didn't even exist two years ago will totally replace what humans have been doing for the past ten thousand years.
- pekk 10y ago
  It's 2017, weren't we all supposed to be living on soylent by now?
whyenot 10y ago
I don't see it. A cow's rumen is amazing. You can feed a cow almost any vegetable matter and they will grow and produce milk and meat. Chickens and pigs are more particular but in terms of energy in to food out, are still very inexpensive and easy to manage. Cell cultures require sterile laboratory conditions, growth factors and very specific nutrient requirements. A largely plant-based diet, sure, that is what most (but not all) of our hunter gatherer ancestors ate, but I doubt cell cultures will ever get within even a order of magnitude of the efficiency of growing and eating real animals.
- mythrwy 10y ago
  You could be right. But animals spend a lot of energy making products other than consumable protein. They require a lot of land and water and fuel even if housed in close quarters. And you have to tend them which is labor intensive. And ship them around to be finished and slaughtered. If energy costs rise to a certain point and technology becomes good enough (including automation) I'd expect protein from whole animals to be considerably more expensive than lab grown. The exception maybe being strictly grass fed beef on land that isn't useful for much else. But that won't have the taste people expect and might not actually be as good as the lab grown stuff.

mynameishere 10y ago

Yeah, on the same token I'm totally mystified that people used horses to pull plows. What the heck were they thinking?

arcticbull 10y ago
I would argue the difference here is we could just, you know, eat the plants but we don't want to. 36% of US corn goes to feed animals for meat and dairy (3%-40% efficient). [1] There would be significantly more food to go around if the plants were just eaten directly. It would be more like if there were plows at the time that operated on solar but nobody wanted to use them, and instead, decided to tie horses to the plows because they would rather. Had a hard time working farm subsidies into the analogy. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-corn/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-c...
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  If we all lived in 3 foot by 7 foot cubes it would cost a great deal less to heat our homes as well. Just because a more optimal way to do things exist doesn't mean anyone actually wants to do it. I enjoy eating meat, thus I will continue to do so.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - arcticbull 10y ago
    The difference is one's uncomfortable, the other you're just used to. Plants are no less tasty, they're just different. I eat meat too, I'm just saying.
    - bobcostas55 10y ago
      >Plants are no less tasty Sketch out a model of the evolution of dietary preferences in the ancestral environment (esp post-fire) and you will quickly see this is an insane thing to believe.
      - kranner 10y ago
        You're talking pre-agriculture.
      - arcticbull 10y ago
        Fair, I could restate that not as 'no less tasty' but 'tasty in their own right'. Though there are also plenty of societies that are primarily vegetarian, as in South India, and I don't see them running for the nearest meat market due to the insane flavor advantages of a good cut of meat.
    - nightski 10y ago
      Meat is extremely tasty but I am not going to just eat meat. Similarly with vegetables, I love cauliflower and broccoli but at the end of the day I need variety. Just because one is very tasty doesn't mean it makes the other any less desirable. On the same topic, it's ironic how we lump "meat" into a single category. How the animals are raised and fed has a huge effect on the flavor and taste of the meat. If McDonalds hamburgers disappeared I wouldn't even notice. If I am not able to buy grass fed ribeye from a local farm I'd be very disappointed.
  - warent 10y ago
    Fair enough. It may be worth empathizing that animals probably don't enjoy being farmed and slaughtered by the billions
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - cmdrfred 10y ago
      I doubt corn wants to be farmed and eaten either. Should we stop the use of antibiotics to preserve the lives of billions of bacteria? You see its not a matter of caring about life when you boil it down. The majority of vegans are pro choice for example. This is a matter of where you draw the line. You may move that line a little bit further down the food chain than I but all mammals must kill to survive.
      - warent 10y ago
        Neither bacteria or corn are animals, and bacteria isn't even part of the Eukarya domain, it's something else entirely. I was pretty specific about saying animals in my post. Why animals? Because we are known to mourn the death of other animals.
        cmdrfred 10y ago
        >Because we are known to mourn the death of other animals. We don't mourn the death of food animals typically so its OK then? Your criteria are arbitrary, and that's fine for a personal value but you certainly can't expect others to agree with you.
- jimmywanger 10y ago
  > we could just, you know, eat the plants but we don't want to. You're really arguing something separate here. We can't eat a lot of plants that animals can. 36% of corn goes to feed animals for meat, but what percentage of corn is inedible for humans? (husks, leaves, cobs) There's a reason we don't domesticate carnivores - we're not creating any more food sources. We don't compete with things that digest cellulose.
  - arcticbull 10y ago
    I believe that corn stalks and husks are not particularly good feed for livestock, they're very low protein (3-4%) and thus usually have to be supplemented. Ideally, it would be mulched back into the ground to prevent erosion and soil depletion, AFAIK.
- hinkley 10y ago
  Those endless fields of corn in the midwest are feed corn, not corn on the cob. They're destined for processed food or to feed animals. Soy isn't all that much different. What would have to happen is that we start planting something else, that's more immediately edible.

wollstonecraft 10y ago

How are you going to do aseptic technique and metabolic regulation rate for less energy than skin+immune system and a liver? Anyone who's ever cultured mammalian cells knows that you toss the medium with most of the carbon source remaining because it's gotten too acidic with lactate. Turns out that livers are a really energy-efficient way of keeping cells alive.

derefr 10y ago
Why not grow pseudo-animals that consist of tiled blocks of muscle + liver + dermis?
- pzone 10y ago
  Mmmm that phrasing. So appetizing.
  - kefka 10y ago
    Not any more appetizing if you knew what most slaughterhouses do. Admittedly, it would be tremendously hard for me to be a vegetarian. Im a T2 diabetic. Grains, starches, and sugars are all bad for me.
- stagbeetle 10y ago
  For the same reason eugenics, GMOs, human cloning, and to a lesser extent stem cells, aren't popular: It's an abomination against nature, in the public eye.
agitator 10y ago
Or you could take the Impossible Foods approach and use plant based methods to replicate the components of meat.

droopyEyelids 10y ago

It's not clear to me that humans are going to think of a more efficient way to turn energy and matter into food in the next century. We could potentially alter the animals into something that would be hard to recognize, but that'll be an evolution of animal husbandry, not something that will leave us bewildered at animals. What do you see that indicates we're going to make massive leaps beyond what animal life has already provided in turning sunlight and air into useful lipids and proteins?

xsmasher 10y ago
There's already a more efficient way to turn energy and matter into food - plants. Running it through animals before we eat it is the inefficiency.
- tomjakubowski 10y ago
  Livestock can subsist on plants, like wild grasses, that are unpalatable or even inedible to humans. These plants often grow on "unarable" land that won't support human crops. For millennia, humans raised livestock on pasturing lands, seemingly without harming the environment too badly. What stops us from doing that now? I suspect the real problem is closer to wasting arable land, water, shipping (with all of those environmental externalities), etc. on growing crops that aren't used to directly feed humans, and government subsidies that hide the true cost of corn-fed livestock from consumers.
  - agitator 10y ago
    Yes, and the high demand for animal based proteins has been a large cause of deforestation. Also, beef and other livestock produce a large portion of green house gas emissions.
  - sanswork 10y ago
    We don't need to use that land though. If we're not feeding livestock then we don't need near as many crops to support ourselves so let the unusable land return to the wild. Also if you want to use scrub land to feed your livestock you're going to need a lot of it like in Australia. >For millennia, humans raised livestock on pasturing lands, seemingly without harming the environment too badly. For millennia most people wouldn't be getting access to 200lbs of meat a year. There was also a lot fewer of us to feed that much meat to.

hinkley 10y ago

Actually, a lot of the perennial food crops we do or could eat are adapted to environments containing ungulates or other animals, and there are a number of nutrient problems and pathogen vectors that wouldn't be as much of an issue if the land was being judiciously (rotation) grazed. What will end up being seen as crazy is locking them all up in a barn and burning fossil fuels to bring the food to them instead of them using their own legs, all for another 20% body mass and giant meat portions (think: steak, chicken breast).

notyourwork 10y ago

"You mean you planted that whole acreage with seed, let them grow, watered and fertilized them all the while, just to cut them down, chop them up and ship that to people?"

soheil 10y ago
We think alike!
sanswork 10y ago
This would work better if we didn't have to grow more plant material to feed the meat than just feeding ourselves directly.
- toomanybeersies 10y ago
  That's a very American thing to grow crops and ship them off to other farmers to feed their animals. Most meat animals (or at least goats, sheep, and cows) worldwide feed on whatever grows on the ground (whether that be turnips, grass, or something else).
  - sanswork 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_feeding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_feeding says that 9% of beef is raised by grazing. Poultry is going to be almost all feed. Along with Pork. Those are the 3 biggest sources of meat by far.
1123581321 10y ago
"Why should salt suffer?" (http://www.online-literature.com/chesterton/napoleon-of-notting-hill/1/ http://www.online-literature.com/chesterton/napoleon-of-nott...)
Mathnerd314 10y ago
Hydroponics is actually a ton easier (at scale): http://www.epicgardening.com/hydroponics-vs-soil/ http://www.epicgardening.com/hydroponics-vs-soil/ Seems like a good argument.

soheil 10y ago

And then 50 to 100 years after that people will look back on with bewilderment. "You mean you planted whole seeds, let them grow for months, watered them all the while, just to kill them, chop up their leaf, and ship that to people?" Plants are alive too.

kranner 10y ago
Are they as sentient? Do they suffer as much? I don't think there is reason to believe these things.
- soheil 10y ago
  Animals shouldn't suffer either if they're raised right. I also don't see how putting a bullet through a cow's head somehow causes any suffering.
  - pdexter 10y ago
    The problem is, that's not what's happening. Not everyone who eats cows are getting them from people who treat them as nicely as I guess you claim to. Further, why waste food and water on cows when humans can just eat and drink that themselves? Why raise a cow and then shoot it in the head when you can just, you know, eat plants.
    - soheil 10y ago
      I'd argue it's great for the cow! Think about it they're doing really well as a specie, never before in history they were so successful and enjoyed such high numbers. Their population has simply sore, that however cannot be said about most other species. Also Daniel Dennet gave a TED talk about this. [1] [1] https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_s_response_to_rick_warren https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_s_response_to_rick_war...
      - sanswork 10y ago
        If aliens arrived tomorrow and took half the humans to another planet to farm their meat would you think that was great for those humans because we are now a multiplanetary species?

booleandilemma 10y ago

How long something has been around is often a good way to determine how much longer it will be around in the future. I'd be willing to bet that humans will stop driving cars much sooner than they stop farming. Humans have been practicing animal agriculture for a long time...

pyre 10y ago
On the other hand, animal agriculture on the scale we see it today is massively different than anything that was seen 100+ years ago. Trying to say "people raised cattle 100 years ago" is much different then talking about ranchers with 1000-strong cattle herds or industrialized "factory farms."
azakai 10y ago
> How long something has been around is often a good way to determine how much longer it will be around in the future. Might be some correlation there, but probably it's mostly unrelated. We did many things for a super-long time then stopped, because we found something better. For example, we used horses to get around for millennia. We've done animal agriculture for a long time, but once something better comes around, we'll switch - and food technology is getting very close, and has other benefits too (helps against global warming, etc.). But just like riding horses, eating animal products will never go away completely, of course.
jamestnz 10y ago
>How long something has been around is often a good way to determine how much longer it will be around in the future This mode of (purely statistical) longevity argument is the "Doomsday Argument". The classic version is about predicting how much longer human civilization might endure. The crux of it is that there's only a 5% chance that we're currently in the first 5% of humanity's total timeline, and a 95% chance that we're in the last 95% of it. If we assume that 60 billion humans have been born so far, it can be estimated that there is a 95% chance that the total number of humans ever will be less than 20 × 60 billion = 1.2 trillion. Assuming that the world population stabilizes at 10 billion and a life expectancy of 80 years, it can be estimated that the remaining 1,140 billion humans will be born in 9,120 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument

ars 10y ago

> Animal agriculture seems to me like one of those things that in 50 to 100 years people will look back on with bewilderment. Really? It's not like we've been doing that for 5,000 years or something. But in 50 years they'll be like "What were you doing for the last 5,000 years?" Animal agriculture is not going to be one of those things. In fact I can guarantee you that even if we figure out a meat replacement people will still eat animals in 100 years. Something that's been done for 5,000 years doesn't get stopped that quickly. As evidence look at how many people want to "go back to the farm", and raise their own animals. On the surface, why? It's harder and more expensive. Yet, people want that anyway.

chroma 10y ago
> Something that's been done for 5,000 years doesn't get stopped that quickly. Doesn't this prove too much?[1] Plenty of things were common for millennia before they suddenly weren't. Eg: Monarchies, slavery, beasts of burden, and diseases such as smallpox. 1. https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/13/proving-too-much/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/13/proving-too-much/
- ars 10y ago
  > they suddenly weren't. Eg: Monarchies, slavery, beasts of burden, and diseases such as smallpox. Except that every one of those things still exists! Smallpox doesn't exist, but other diseases such as syphilis do. So that actually demonstrates exactly the opposite of the point you were trying to make. Monarchies is an especially bad example because they still exist precisely because people are unwilling to stop a tradition that has gone on that long.
  - dntrkv 10y ago
    Slavery does exist but in 1st world countries people do look at it with bewilderment even though it is still around in some places.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Monarchies is an especially bad example because they still exist precisely because people are unwilling to stop a tradition that has gone on that long. I'm not sure that's the reason; perhaps the largely-symbolic monarchies of Europe, but the substantive monarchies in the world are actually mostly quite newly established.

fluxby 10y ago

The future is in algae based proteins. They contain all essential amino acids, naturally anti inflammatory and have no known allergens. The taste profile problem will be solved eventually and algae based chemical compounds as taste and color additives will be omnipresent in our foods in 5-10 years. @sethbannon you should also consider investing in algae based meat alternatives. (I.e. Solazyme / TerraVia)

stagbeetle 10y ago

Keto and Paleo are constantly growing. I personally think we'll head in the direction of "to-fit" dieting (through genetics, personal experimenting, etc.). It'd be foolish to keep swinging back and forth on the USDA/HHS "one size fits all" legislature.

SN76477 10y ago

Why the name Memphis Meats? I do not think that you are in Memphis.

bglazer 10y ago
They're not in Memphis. They're in San Francisco. My guess for why they're named Memphis Meats is ”[a founder's] family also owns a chain of 43 BBQ restaurants based out of Memphis, Tennessee"
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  I was curious about that too being from Memphis. Which BBQ chain?
  - bglazer 10y ago
    Baby Jacks BBQ You're from Memphis? It's so rare to run into another Memphian on HN.
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      I'm about 10-20 minutes away from it right now. Ain't had Baby Jacks. Might have to try it. Far as Memphians, yeah there's just a handful of us that I've seen. Gonna have a Memphis HN get-together one day with all of us.
      - bglazer 10y ago
        Agreed!
    - SN76477 10y ago
      Im in Memphis. PM me for the local slack info.
      - nickpsecurity 10y ago

pdog 10y ago

This is the perfect example of Silicon Valley hubris: farming animals is bewildering and barbaric, so obviously this New Thing™ that didn't even exist two years ago will totally replace what humans have been doing for the past ten thousand years.

pekk 10y ago
It's 2017, weren't we all supposed to be living on soylent by now?

whyenot 10y ago

I don't see it. A cow's rumen is amazing. You can feed a cow almost any vegetable matter and they will grow and produce milk and meat. Chickens and pigs are more particular but in terms of energy in to food out, are still very inexpensive and easy to manage. Cell cultures require sterile laboratory conditions, growth factors and very specific nutrient requirements. A largely plant-based diet, sure, that is what most (but not all) of our hunter gatherer ancestors ate, but I doubt cell cultures will ever get within even a order of magnitude of the efficiency of growing and eating real animals.

mythrwy 10y ago
You could be right. But animals spend a lot of energy making products other than consumable protein. They require a lot of land and water and fuel even if housed in close quarters. And you have to tend them which is labor intensive. And ship them around to be finished and slaughtered. If energy costs rise to a certain point and technology becomes good enough (including automation) I'd expect protein from whole animals to be considerably more expensive than lab grown. The exception maybe being strictly grass fed beef on land that isn't useful for much else. But that won't have the taste people expect and might not actually be as good as the lab grown stuff.