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Where does the protein-carbohydrate slurry come from? A farm? Why not just let the chicken hang out on the farm in the first place, and eat the nutrients itsel

Where does the protein-carbohydrate slurry come from? A farm? Why not just let the chicken hang out on the farm in the first place, and eat the nutrients itself? I can't help but feel like the whole in vitro food movement is missing something fundamental. Energy has to come from somewhere. You can make a solar panel that generates food. You can make that food resemble what would come from a farm. But what's the benefit of having this solar food machine vs an expertly run farm a la http://www.polyfacefarms.com/ http://www.polyfacefarms.com/? The farm makes a bunch of animals and people happy. It is a beautiful place. It is an efficient use of solar resources, probably more efficient than any machine we'll be able to build in the next 50 years. To me there are two facts that both in vitro meat people and vegans seem to have a hard time accepting: 1) There's a limited amount of solar energy hitting the planet. It's either going to your food, or it's going to a wild ecology. It's a zero sum game, and animals either die, or are ecologically aborted in order for you to live. The only question is the number, and what life is like for the animals in your foodshed, whether you eat them or not. 2) For any given chemical process, there are already animals who are basically doing that process close to optimally. Replacing an animal with a solar machine isn't actually any kind of kindness. They like existing. They enjoy it. Exterminating a flock of happy chickens and replacing them with machines is mean. In the long term, it seems obvious to me that some combination of plant-heavy cuisine + expertly run, animal-included farms + ecologically sensitive hunting in wild spaces is the solution that gets you the most animal happiness per square foot of solar activity. Maybe in vitro meat can help out during this period of excessive meat consumption culture, but I just don't see how the math works out in the long run. And there's still this whole hand-wavy "costs and energy will come down" thing which hasn't technically happened yet, although people like to talk about it like its a foregone conclusion. Falafel sandwich for lunch, eggs benedict on Sunday, tempeh Reubans on Tuesday. That kind of diet keeps humans and chickens happy and is as close to absolute solar efficiency as I can imagine. I just don't see how a solar egg fits into that picture. Is there some other animal living under the solar panel that you prefer to a chicken? Solar farm snakes or something?

MereInterest 9y ago
I think your second point of the harder one. The optimization of a cow is not toward making meat. Rather, it is toward making more cows. In vitro meat does not need to have a digestive system. It does not need to have skin, or teeth. It does not need to avoid necrosis. All it needs to do is taste good and provide nutrition. If the end goal is meat, I think there are a lot of places where gains in efficiency are possible.
- wayn3 9y ago
  I'd hope it does avoid necrosis, though.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  I don't share your same values. The end goal for me is not just meat. I don't see the sun as just a think that's there to produce meat for me. That's my point. I think you can get much more off of a square of solar exposure than just meat. And I think a cow is more than a meat factory. The cow's life is intrinsically valuable, and especially if we can have a relationship with the cow, it can make our lives more valuable. Let's say you succeed in making a beef factory that's more efficient than an optimal cow pasture. Great, what are you going to do with the extra space? Make a movie theater? A theme park? A nature preserve? A cow pasture is a nature preserve! I think a cow pasture is actually pretty nice. I don't think we need nearly as many of them as we have, and we could stand to eat a lot more plants, but I don't think replacing the cow pasture with a meat machine is really a step forward.
jjawssd 9y ago
> Where does the protein-carbohydrate slurry come from? Plants
zensavona 9y ago
Because if you've see the kind of "farm" most eggs come from you'll know it's a horrific kind of place.
- LoSboccacc 9y ago
  true, but consumer can choose with their wallet if they're so inclined, you just need the right incentives and at least full knowledge (because market ain't free without knowledge) i.e. here in Italy you get a code to distinguish between happy chicken in a farm, free range chicken, closed range non intensive and intensive. besides most of the 'horrible living condition' propaganda is aimed at the uneducated. of course in a large operation as huge as chicken farming there are gonna be mutated ones that get direct to waste - there's an estimate 7.2 billion chicken going around, even only considering normal genetic mutations there ought to be hundred millions yearly to go around to be used in those 'look these horrible sad chicken' videos, that are just a production of numbers and proportions more than actual cruelty (as compared to, say, foie gras)
  - wayn3 9y ago
    consumers cant choose with their wallets. you cant choose with your wallet to buy a model S because your wallet is not fat enough. most consumers cant choose with their wallet to buy "fair trade happy animal farm" things because their wallets are not fat enough.
    - LoSboccacc 9y ago
      then there's even a better value in low price intensive farming, which is availability of food for the poor
  - throwaway18917 9y ago
    > Consumers can choose with their wallet if they're so inclined... You really don't understand how corporate capitalism works, do you. Good, healthy, "moral" food is expensive, and believe it or not, most people (at least most Americans) can't afford to pay $4.00 for a dozen eggs from chickens that have PhDs. It's a matter of scale. If millions of people don't make enough money for hippie chicken eggs, then they _actually cannot_ choose with their wallets. What is with the fucking Hacker News crowd and their delusional belief that people are making all of these free choices to buy the worst possible crap they can shovel into their bodies instead of being forced into it by jobs that don't pay enough and food companies that cut so many corners that they can get away with charging next to nothing for cheap, delicious garbage that's just going to make people addicted anyway? > besides most of the 'horrible living condition' propaganda is aimed at the uneducated... Have you ever _seen_ an industrial chicken farm in the United States (or any kind of industrial farm used for raising animals for meat)? It's not just one "horrible sad chicken" that had a genetic mutation. It's _thousands_ of chickens kept in the tiniest, filthiest, shittiest conditions imaginable because some rich executive wants a fourth Mercedes.
robbiep 9y ago
I agree with your ecological point but photosynthesis is a 1% efficient process and solar panels are easily available at 17%. So if you can gather the energy to perform the reactions to make the substrates to. Hold protein and carbohydrate in an industrial process, given the losses at each stage (some of which, as you identify, may be highly desirable - cow poo is a great fertiliser and there is a whole ecosystem supported in a hundred acres of land which could easily support 100 head cattle) your efficiency of generation would end up being orders of magnitude higher - quick fermi equation of 17x at solar conversion and guess at somewhere in the order of 50x for direct conversion to protein/cabs and you really do have a highly energy efficient process
- deleted 9y ago
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- deleted 9y ago
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- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  That 50x number... you just made that up? Are you thinking about all of the different chemicals in food, or are you just imagining like, a dextrose factory? I'm deeply skeptical of that number, but let's assume you can make your machine. Why? What good does it do? Why would you want to have a solar food factory when you can just live in an ecology? What's your vision for the Earth? Mine is that it's covered in healthy ecologies that sustain the plants and animals that live in them. It's not just about food, it's about how to enjoy being alive. It's about being connected with the plants and animals that sustain you, not for their sake, but for yours: so you might learn about yourself. Because we're just them, added together. I don't think an egg protein solar factory that's attached to a VR pod facility is an improvement on a rainforest. I'm happy for the VR pod/egg factory to exist, but I don't think a world covered in them is anything but a dystopian future for us.
  - robbiep 9y ago
    Mate At no point did I say it was a good idea, you're projecting your fears of a technical dystopia upon my pseudo-scientific hypothesising. In fact, if you re read my thread you'll see that I say I AGREE with your ecological point - i.e. I want garden earth. Don't be careless at comprehension. I just said it appears practically possible to improve significantly on the energy conversion of sunlight into not just dextrose but the full biological stack - fats, amino acids and subsequently proteins. Re the numbers, as I said that was my fermi equation method of getting to it. I know ballpark figures for most of the numbers so in true fermi fashion it's within an order of magnitude of the true figure. I don't care if you're skeptical of the figure, that's not the point of a fermi equation (unless you're the great man himself and get within 5kt of the yield of the trinity nuclear test by dropping a piece of paper)

MereInterest 9y ago

I think your second point of the harder one. The optimization of a cow is not toward making meat. Rather, it is toward making more cows. In vitro meat does not need to have a digestive system. It does not need to have skin, or teeth. It does not need to avoid necrosis. All it needs to do is taste good and provide nutrition. If the end goal is meat, I think there are a lot of places where gains in efficiency are possible.

wayn3 9y ago
I'd hope it does avoid necrosis, though.
erikpukinskis 9y ago
I don't share your same values. The end goal for me is not just meat. I don't see the sun as just a think that's there to produce meat for me. That's my point. I think you can get much more off of a square of solar exposure than just meat. And I think a cow is more than a meat factory. The cow's life is intrinsically valuable, and especially if we can have a relationship with the cow, it can make our lives more valuable. Let's say you succeed in making a beef factory that's more efficient than an optimal cow pasture. Great, what are you going to do with the extra space? Make a movie theater? A theme park? A nature preserve? A cow pasture is a nature preserve! I think a cow pasture is actually pretty nice. I don't think we need nearly as many of them as we have, and we could stand to eat a lot more plants, but I don't think replacing the cow pasture with a meat machine is really a step forward.

jjawssd 9y ago

> Where does the protein-carbohydrate slurry come from? Plants

zensavona 9y ago

Because if you've see the kind of "farm" most eggs come from you'll know it's a horrific kind of place.

LoSboccacc 9y ago
true, but consumer can choose with their wallet if they're so inclined, you just need the right incentives and at least full knowledge (because market ain't free without knowledge) i.e. here in Italy you get a code to distinguish between happy chicken in a farm, free range chicken, closed range non intensive and intensive. besides most of the 'horrible living condition' propaganda is aimed at the uneducated. of course in a large operation as huge as chicken farming there are gonna be mutated ones that get direct to waste - there's an estimate 7.2 billion chicken going around, even only considering normal genetic mutations there ought to be hundred millions yearly to go around to be used in those 'look these horrible sad chicken' videos, that are just a production of numbers and proportions more than actual cruelty (as compared to, say, foie gras)
- wayn3 9y ago
  consumers cant choose with their wallets. you cant choose with your wallet to buy a model S because your wallet is not fat enough. most consumers cant choose with their wallet to buy "fair trade happy animal farm" things because their wallets are not fat enough.
  - LoSboccacc 9y ago
    then there's even a better value in low price intensive farming, which is availability of food for the poor
- throwaway18917 9y ago
  > Consumers can choose with their wallet if they're so inclined... You really don't understand how corporate capitalism works, do you. Good, healthy, "moral" food is expensive, and believe it or not, most people (at least most Americans) can't afford to pay $4.00 for a dozen eggs from chickens that have PhDs. It's a matter of scale. If millions of people don't make enough money for hippie chicken eggs, then they _actually cannot_ choose with their wallets. What is with the fucking Hacker News crowd and their delusional belief that people are making all of these free choices to buy the worst possible crap they can shovel into their bodies instead of being forced into it by jobs that don't pay enough and food companies that cut so many corners that they can get away with charging next to nothing for cheap, delicious garbage that's just going to make people addicted anyway? > besides most of the 'horrible living condition' propaganda is aimed at the uneducated... Have you ever _seen_ an industrial chicken farm in the United States (or any kind of industrial farm used for raising animals for meat)? It's not just one "horrible sad chicken" that had a genetic mutation. It's _thousands_ of chickens kept in the tiniest, filthiest, shittiest conditions imaginable because some rich executive wants a fourth Mercedes.

robbiep 9y ago

I agree with your ecological point but photosynthesis is a 1% efficient process and solar panels are easily available at 17%. So if you can gather the energy to perform the reactions to make the substrates to. Hold protein and carbohydrate in an industrial process, given the losses at each stage (some of which, as you identify, may be highly desirable - cow poo is a great fertiliser and there is a whole ecosystem supported in a hundred acres of land which could easily support 100 head cattle) your efficiency of generation would end up being orders of magnitude higher - quick fermi equation of 17x at solar conversion and guess at somewhere in the order of 50x for direct conversion to protein/cabs and you really do have a highly energy efficient process

deleted 9y ago
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deleted 9y ago
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erikpukinskis 9y ago
That 50x number... you just made that up? Are you thinking about all of the different chemicals in food, or are you just imagining like, a dextrose factory? I'm deeply skeptical of that number, but let's assume you can make your machine. Why? What good does it do? Why would you want to have a solar food factory when you can just live in an ecology? What's your vision for the Earth? Mine is that it's covered in healthy ecologies that sustain the plants and animals that live in them. It's not just about food, it's about how to enjoy being alive. It's about being connected with the plants and animals that sustain you, not for their sake, but for yours: so you might learn about yourself. Because we're just them, added together. I don't think an egg protein solar factory that's attached to a VR pod facility is an improvement on a rainforest. I'm happy for the VR pod/egg factory to exist, but I don't think a world covered in them is anything but a dystopian future for us.
- robbiep 9y ago
  Mate At no point did I say it was a good idea, you're projecting your fears of a technical dystopia upon my pseudo-scientific hypothesising. In fact, if you re read my thread you'll see that I say I AGREE with your ecological point - i.e. I want garden earth. Don't be careless at comprehension. I just said it appears practically possible to improve significantly on the energy conversion of sunlight into not just dextrose but the full biological stack - fats, amino acids and subsequently proteins. Re the numbers, as I said that was my fermi equation method of getting to it. I know ballpark figures for most of the numbers so in true fermi fashion it's within an order of magnitude of the true figure. I don't care if you're skeptical of the figure, that's not the point of a fermi equation (unless you're the great man himself and get within 5kt of the yield of the trinity nuclear test by dropping a piece of paper)