5 ms·

At $9,000 per pound of meat, this is not going to be replacing real meat from animals anytime soon. Chickens are already highly efficient when it comes to conve

by whyenot 10y ago

At $9,000 per pound of meat, this is not going to be replacing real meat from animals anytime soon. Chickens are already highly efficient when it comes to converting feed into edible meat. I'm skeptical that cell culture will ever be able to come close to the same level of efficiency. Cell cultures need to be sterile, the sugars, growth factors, and other nutrients used need to be highly refined. These are not requirements that are likely to change in the foreseeable future.

wjn0 10y ago
Cell culturing has a history of the requisite procedures being brought to scale when necessary (insulin production for one classic example). I'm not arguing that the scale is the same. Obviously, comparing a highly evolved animal literally designed for producing meat vs. the natural insulin production of a pig is completely different. But, the evidence says the procedures scale well, given enough time. Would this somehow be different?
- pm90 10y ago
  Is chicken really designed for producing meat? Speaking in exclusively in terms of resource consumption, it seems like a lot of resources would be wasted by the bird on a lot of necessary, but wasteful (from the point of producing meat) activities (e.g. moving?). I am not a biologist, so I am genuinely curious...
  - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
    I read it to mean efficient as compared to other ways of producing protein rich food, not efficient in the strict sense with regard to conservation of energy.
  - wjn0 10y ago
    It's less a biological question, and more a question of the laws regarding meat production where you live. IIRC, in the US (just some states I believe), chickens for example don't need to have space to move at all, except maybe a few inches. We quite literally turn them into machines for producing meat, at scale. Further, the breeds of chickens used for meat are usually for meat, eggs for eggs, etc - at least at the industrial scale.
blacksmith_tb 10y ago
Sure, no one is suggesting it's ready for market. I don't think the effort is entirely futile, though. While it's true that chickens are more efficient than pretty much any other kind of livestock (except possibly insects), they still have to produce feathers and bones (and guano - we do use most of that one way or another, but not having to dispose of it wouldn't be a bad thing). Still, it seems like vat-grown beef or lamb makes more sense, since they are much more resource-intensive than chicken to start with. That said, as a long-time vegetarian I would still guess that animal protein is likely to stay more resource-intensive than plant protein. But it could still be an improvement over our current situation, especially in terms of our treatment of animals, and use of water and feed.
tunesmith 10y ago
You don't need to match the scale, since people will pay a premium to not kill a chicken (or treat a chicken inhumanely). But you still would have to get pretty close - maybe double or triple the cost.
sethbannon 10y ago
You're absolutely right that conventional chicken is the hardest nut to crack when it comes to achieving price parity (beef and pork are easier), but I'm much more optimistic than you. In 2013, the first cultured burger cost $330,000 to make. Just under a year ago, Memphis Meats was at $18,000/lb of clean beef produced. Now they're at $9,000/lb. This is before any sort of efficiencies from scale, and before many steps of the process have been anywhere near fully optimized. They expect their costs to reach 2 cents/g by 2021, which would be cost competitive. And while chickens are somewhat efficient, they're not as efficient as culturing techniques ought to be at scale. Memphis Meats' process will require 3 calories of input to produce 1 calorie of beef. That's just better than chicken, and massively better than beef or pork.
- cderwin 10y ago
  A couple comments who knows absolutely nothing about how this works: * They don't need to reach price parity to be financially successful. I'm sure there are people out there (former vegans/vegetarians or those considering veganism/vegetarianism) who would pay a marked up price. People already pay marked up proces for things like grass-fed beef and uncured meats. * Is there any evidence that these price decreases hold at scale? There's a world of difference in being able to provide a market niche with artificial chicken at low cost and being able to produce enough chicken for the whole market at those marginal costs.
michaelkeenan 10y ago
> this is not going to be replacing real meat from animals anytime soon Put your prediction on PredictionBook? It's a great way to keep track of your predictions, and learn to be calibrated (e.g. to have about 80% of your predictions-of-80%-likelihood be correct, which doesn't come naturally to people). http://predictionbook.com/ http://predictionbook.com/
- owenversteeg 10y ago
  Huh, that actually looks pretty cool. Are there any stats on e.x. how often someone's "80% correct" predictions are actually true?
  - lkbm 10y ago
    I don't know if you can view your stats in comparison with the average user, but once you have some predictions that have ended up right/wrong, you get a nice little graph showing your calibration. For example: http://predictionbook.com/users/gwern http://predictionbook.com/users/gwern Assuming I'm reading it right, the perfectly calibrated guesser would trend towards a straight line going from 50 on the left to 100 on the right. They also have a way-too-addictive game where you can practice calibrating your confidence on a bunch of trivia questions: http://predictionbook.com/credence_games/try http://predictionbook.com/credence_games/try
- tdumitrescu 10y ago
  In case this advertisement sounds familiar: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13788836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13788836
Florin_Andrei 10y ago
> skeptical that cell culture will ever be able to come close to the same level of efficiency "Ever"? Really? I could see it for the next 5 years or so, but beyond that all bets are off.
jlebrech 10y ago
this is like saying the engineering sample for a brand new cpu is never going to replace normal cpus because it cost $1bn

by whyenot 10y ago

wjn0 10y ago

Cell culturing has a history of the requisite procedures being brought to scale when necessary (insulin production for one classic example). I'm not arguing that the scale is the same. Obviously, comparing a highly evolved animal literally designed for producing meat vs. the natural insulin production of a pig is completely different. But, the evidence says the procedures scale well, given enough time. Would this somehow be different?

pm90 10y ago
Is chicken really designed for producing meat? Speaking in exclusively in terms of resource consumption, it seems like a lot of resources would be wasted by the bird on a lot of necessary, but wasteful (from the point of producing meat) activities (e.g. moving?). I am not a biologist, so I am genuinely curious...
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  I read it to mean efficient as compared to other ways of producing protein rich food, not efficient in the strict sense with regard to conservation of energy.
- wjn0 10y ago
  It's less a biological question, and more a question of the laws regarding meat production where you live. IIRC, in the US (just some states I believe), chickens for example don't need to have space to move at all, except maybe a few inches. We quite literally turn them into machines for producing meat, at scale. Further, the breeds of chickens used for meat are usually for meat, eggs for eggs, etc - at least at the industrial scale.

blacksmith_tb 10y ago

Sure, no one is suggesting it's ready for market. I don't think the effort is entirely futile, though. While it's true that chickens are more efficient than pretty much any other kind of livestock (except possibly insects), they still have to produce feathers and bones (and guano - we do use most of that one way or another, but not having to dispose of it wouldn't be a bad thing). Still, it seems like vat-grown beef or lamb makes more sense, since they are much more resource-intensive than chicken to start with. That said, as a long-time vegetarian I would still guess that animal protein is likely to stay more resource-intensive than plant protein. But it could still be an improvement over our current situation, especially in terms of our treatment of animals, and use of water and feed.

tunesmith 10y ago

You don't need to match the scale, since people will pay a premium to not kill a chicken (or treat a chicken inhumanely). But you still would have to get pretty close - maybe double or triple the cost.

sethbannon 10y ago

You're absolutely right that conventional chicken is the hardest nut to crack when it comes to achieving price parity (beef and pork are easier), but I'm much more optimistic than you. In 2013, the first cultured burger cost $330,000 to make. Just under a year ago, Memphis Meats was at $18,000/lb of clean beef produced. Now they're at $9,000/lb. This is before any sort of efficiencies from scale, and before many steps of the process have been anywhere near fully optimized. They expect their costs to reach 2 cents/g by 2021, which would be cost competitive. And while chickens are somewhat efficient, they're not as efficient as culturing techniques ought to be at scale. Memphis Meats' process will require 3 calories of input to produce 1 calorie of beef. That's just better than chicken, and massively better than beef or pork.

cderwin 10y ago
A couple comments who knows absolutely nothing about how this works: * They don't need to reach price parity to be financially successful. I'm sure there are people out there (former vegans/vegetarians or those considering veganism/vegetarianism) who would pay a marked up price. People already pay marked up proces for things like grass-fed beef and uncured meats. * Is there any evidence that these price decreases hold at scale? There's a world of difference in being able to provide a market niche with artificial chicken at low cost and being able to produce enough chicken for the whole market at those marginal costs.

michaelkeenan 10y ago

> this is not going to be replacing real meat from animals anytime soon Put your prediction on PredictionBook? It's a great way to keep track of your predictions, and learn to be calibrated (e.g. to have about 80% of your predictions-of-80%-likelihood be correct, which doesn't come naturally to people). http://predictionbook.com/ http://predictionbook.com/

owenversteeg 10y ago
Huh, that actually looks pretty cool. Are there any stats on e.x. how often someone's "80% correct" predictions are actually true?
- lkbm 10y ago
  I don't know if you can view your stats in comparison with the average user, but once you have some predictions that have ended up right/wrong, you get a nice little graph showing your calibration. For example: http://predictionbook.com/users/gwern http://predictionbook.com/users/gwern Assuming I'm reading it right, the perfectly calibrated guesser would trend towards a straight line going from 50 on the left to 100 on the right. They also have a way-too-addictive game where you can practice calibrating your confidence on a bunch of trivia questions: http://predictionbook.com/credence_games/try http://predictionbook.com/credence_games/try
tdumitrescu 10y ago
In case this advertisement sounds familiar: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13788836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13788836

Florin_Andrei 10y ago

> skeptical that cell culture will ever be able to come close to the same level of efficiency "Ever"? Really? I could see it for the next 5 years or so, but beyond that all bets are off.

jlebrech 10y ago

this is like saying the engineering sample for a brand new cpu is never going to replace normal cpus because it cost $1bn