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Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat
- josephmerz 9y agoAbout bloody time. Excuse the pun
- jseliger 9y agoBeyond Meat gets name-checked in the article, but I want to emphasize that their burgers are pretty good: https://jakeseliger.com/2017/08/23/beyond-meat-burgers-are-pretty-good/ https://jakeseliger.com/2017/08/23/beyond-meat-burgers-are-p... and in my view underappreciated right now. If you've not tried them yet, you ought to.
- Danihan 9y agoI love how highly, highly processed foods are suddenly A-OK to many people here once it's a fake meat product. Whatever happened to the concept of, "Eat real food?" Full Ingredient List: >Water, Textured Wheat Protein, Coconut Oil, Potato Protein, Natural Flavors, 2% or less of: Leghemoglobin (soy), Yeast Extract, Salt, Soy Protein Isolate, Konjac Gum, Xanthan Gum, Thiamin (Vitamin B1), Zinc, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Vitamin B12. I shouldn't even have to post about "Textured Wheat Protein" but it's essentially another denatured protein, one that is completely doused in glyphosate right before harvest. That's the main ingredient of these "burgers." Check out the chart on page two... http://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/ITX_2013_06_04_Seneff.pdf http://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/ITX_2013_06_04_Seneff.pdf These "vegan" foods are nowhere near healthy. Then there's Soy Protein Isolate: >But high-temperature processing has the unfortunate side effect of so denaturing the other proteins in soy that they are rendered largely ineffective.23 That's why animals on soy feed need lysine supplements for normal growth. >Nitrites, which are potent carcinogens, are formed during spray-drying, and a toxin called lysinoalanine is formed during alkaline processing.24 Numerous artificial flavorings, particularly MSG, are added to soy protein isolate and textured vegetable protein products to mask their strong "beany" taste and to impart the flavor of meat.25 >In feeding experiments, the use of SPI increased requirements for vitamins E, K, D, and B12 and created deficiency symptoms of calcium, magnesium, manganese, molybdenum, copper, iron, and zinc.26 Phytic acid remaining in these soy products greatly inhibits zinc and iron absorption; test animals fed SPI develop enlarged organs, particularly the pancreas and thyroid gland, and increased deposition of fatty acids in the liver.27 http://www.mercola.com/article/soy/avoid_soy.htm http://www.mercola.com/article/soy/avoid_soy.htm
- gwern 9y ago> I love how highly, highly processed foods are suddenly A-OK to many people here once it's a fake meat product. Whatever happened to the concept of, "Eat real food?" People do usually eat 'real food' when they eat meat products. That's the problem.
- ethnic_throw 9y agoThat's an ethical problem, which is orthogonal to the fact that this fake meat is basically a soy hot dog in terms of nutrition.
- gwern 9y agoIt is most certainly not 'orthogonal' to the question of whether eating it is 'A-OK', it is the entire point for most people.
- ethnic_throw 9y agoMorally or nutritionally? These are two entirely different evaluations.
- gwern 9y agoNo, they are not, they are part of one evaluation. You only make one decision: to eat or not eat. When deciding whether it is 'A-OK' to choose the eat decision, both the moral and nutritional aspects are relevant. Either can justify it. Danihan's criticism is wrong and projecting onto an imaginary strawman because he pretends that the only reason anyone could ever care about vat meat or fake meat is for the possible health benefits and accuses them of hypocrisy for endorsing processed foods in one case but not in hypothetical others - which is bizarre because that reason is literally not even in the laundry list of reasons in OP or other coverage (suggesting he didn't even read OP). Read through the article again, health is never mentioned, all the reasons are moral, environmental, or economic. I am perfectly willing to say that maybe vat meat or fake meat are not exactly as healthy as eating some tomatoes or something, but you know what, I really don't give a shit about minor issues or cherrypicked chemistry as I am far more concerned about whether it will soon be possible for me to continue eating tasty meat (possibly even for less cost) without killing hundreds of animals a year.
- nightski 9y agoI'm sure it tastes just fine, but at something like $16/lb for a hamburger substitute that puts it on the same price level as prime grade ribeye or tenderloin. It's really unfortunate all the meat "alternatives" take the organic/healthy but huge premium approach as this makes it very inaccessible to your standard consumer. Maybe for 6+ figure earning HNers it's not an issue but for the majority of the country it is.
- deegles 9y agoPrime grade meat will stay that price or higher forever... manufactured protein will go down in price over time.
- nightski 9y agoSure costs will go down. But as far as price goes that's my point, it doesn't feel like they want it to go down. It keeps being priced and pitched as a premium organic healthy food and not something everyone can afford.
- bllguo 9y agoI don't really understand this concern; this is a common strategy for introducing new products. When smartphones came out they were a premium product. Over time they became more accessible as the market grew beyond just the first adopters. They're arguably commoditized now, if we're thinking about super cheap Android phones. Tesla is another example. And economics should force price down, if the costs of manufactured protein decrease substantially.
- nightski 9y agoIt's not a fair analogy. Smartphones are still a premium product ($800 new). They were heavily subsidized by the mobile carriers which made them accessible. However, we are slowly seeing that subsidization eroding (fortunately now everyone is addicted). I don't mean to be petty but it's not "economics" that drives prices down but rather competition. The thing about smartphones is while they all had dramatically different surface behavior, underneath they all shared very similar technological cores (Qualcomm processors, iOS/Android/Windows OS, etc...) and were able to utilize those same innovations. Artificial meat on the other hand doesn't seem to be like that. Every product is unique and requires significant investment in R&D to make a reality. They have been selling it for a long time now, it's not like this stuff is brand new. My only point was that we have not seen the effects you are describing happening yet which is worrisome. It feels like they are happy with product positioning at the moment.
- leovander 9y agoHow do you compare it against the Impossible Burger? I had a Beyond Burger at Veggie Grill and it didn't seem to be on par with the Impossible Burger.
- emmp 9y agoThe cat food smell when you cook them is for real. I noticed it independently, and it turns out plenty of people had already observed this. I wonder if this will hinder mass adoption -- it really did make my apartment smell strange! They tasted great though.
- hughes 9y agoI've had a few of them, and the smell was the most noticeable difference from real beef. At least in cooked form, the smell is more distinctly of beans, not cat food.
- rglover 9y agoVeggie burgers? Word. Lab-grown meat? Hell no.
- ubernetes 9y agoThanks for your substantive comment.
- sethbannon 9y agoFor those that are curious, as an early investor and advocate for clean meat, I wrote about my experience eating Memphis Meats' products and why their solution is so much better than convention meat production: https://medium.com/@sethbannon/i-just-ate-meat-for-the-first-time-in-20-years-214d0f875568 https://medium.com/@sethbannon/i-just-ate-meat-for-the-first...
- pkaye 9y agoSince you seem to know people in this industry, can you encourage them to put phosphorus numbers on nutrition labels. Currently they are not required by law. People like I with a failing kidney need to watch our phosphorus levels but still consume high amounts of protein. Knowing this little bit of information would open up a new food options for us.
- mmisu 9y agoI find it disingenous to call meat grown in a lab clean meat. Would you call Margarine clean butter ?
- emmp 9y agoWhy not? As long as its vegan margarine. Its clean of at least a subset of ethical concerns that many foods are not. Clean is a very overloaded word though so I certainly see where you're coming from, but it works just fine for me.
- maxerickson 9y agoIt would probably be illegal to market a product that wasn't butter as "Clean Butter", because there are rules about labeling things as butter. So I won't be surprised if the animal products industry lobbies for rules about what can be called meat (or if such rules already exist). Of course such labeling concerns don't apply to an internet discussion, but they do indicate that people care about what's in a name.
- 9y ago
- mmisu 9y agoHighly processed food made in a lab has a big chance to have hidden side effects. I would not eat this until it is tested in the wild for a few years.
- dexterdog 9y agoThat's what they're doing
- dsego 9y agoI think it's safer, probably harder to get mad cow disease or salmonella, don't you think? Also, today we get it from animals pumped full of antibiotics, hormones living in their own excrement.
- mmisu 9y agoI guess it is a question of personal choice. I won't eat fake meat the same way as I don't eat highly processed food unless I'm forced to eat it.
- KitDuncan 9y agoSeems like a very close minded thing to do. Unless of course you're not eating meat at all. In which case I understand.
- mmisu 9y agoFirst if I eat meat or not is none of your business. I think it is judgemental to qualify a person that you potentially don't agree with as close minded. A close minded person is a person that can't accept that other people can have a different opinion. An open society is a society that accepts diversity and doesn't try to shame people into conforming to a single way of thinking.
- matthewmacleod 9y agoIt’s stupid to say that it’s “close minded” for someone to come to a different conclusion about what level of processing is acceptable to them.
- grizzles 9y agoLab grown meat is the industry I'd pick if I had to pick where the next rags to world's richest person will come from. Can it be scaled & beat conventional slaughter economically? I'm betting that it can. And it will disrupt a 100B+ annual industry.
- adamnemecek 9y agoI agree to some extent but selling physical products, let alone perishable products is an insane endeavor.
- SapphireSun 9y agoTell that to farmers, grocers, restauranteurs, laboratories, chemists, and many many other industries. Those problems are real, and they need solving even if their profit margins are lower (which is not always true).
- lovemenot 9y agoYou assume the massively successful product would the lab grown meat itself. It might be, but perhaps a bigger hit could be elsewhere: in licensing technology; support services; leasing lab equipment; consumable ingredients or something else entirely.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago> Can it be scaled & beat conventional slaughter economically? I'm betting that it can. I'm really skeptical of this. Feels like a "multiple PhDs later..." kind of problem. Is there are a reason why you think the research won't hit any roadblocks? And even if it succeeds, there could be insurmountable marketing issues. In the meantime, it's bad for vegetarianism. Meat eaters saying "why bother changing my diet, when lab grown meat will be here soon?" We need to eat more plants. We need to travel fewer miles. We need to dump less potable water into the sea. We need to throw away less packaging and stuff. We can't always wait for the perfect 1:1 replacement eco-technology. We also need to figure out how to change our culture. People all over the world learned how to survive just fine without without eating a half pound of flesh per day. Why are we clinging to these practices?
- issa 9y agoI think this is great. The current way food is produced in America (and other places) is not sustainable for either environmental or moral reasons. Take your pick.
- kjksf 9y agoAs a counter point, the CEO of Impossible Burgers thinks that meat grown from cells is "stupidest idea ever" (http://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/inventions/artificial-meat-wars-impossible-foods-ceo-calls-meat-grown-from-cells-stupidest-idea-ever/news-story/75d5ab1f2ac695d0080a8f460f4ce280 http://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/inventions/arti...). And I kind of don't see how Memphis Meat can possibly compete with Impossible Burger (or other companies that can produce meat-like products from vegetables + industrial processing). Today Memphis Meat costs "several thousand" per pound and generates literal pounds of meat. It's a pre-alpha prototype. Impossible Burger's ground beef costs "comparable to organic beef" and are scaling production to a million pounds of meat per month. They've shipped and are increasing velocity.
- nkkollaw 9y agoWhat a dumb idea to base one's argument regarding these things on price. As a new tech it will cost a lot (like computers once did, now you can get one for $5), but the price will eventually go down. Perhaps my generation won't enjoy fake meat like a real steak just because of the idea, but younger people won't mind. Personally, I'll take anything that can stop killing all those animals to then throw away huge quantities (if unsold).
- jonknee 9y agoWell the Impossible CEO has a good point in that if we can grow tissues on demand in a reliable and efficient process the first use will not be for food but for healthcare. Why grow quarter pounders when you could save lives and grow organs?
- L_Rahman 9y agoThe bar for something that roughly has the right muscle and fat blend for you to throw on a hot fire and eat is very different from the one that has to be biocompatible with a living being. That being said, I do favor the Impossible Foods approach to this. My position is that non-animal products like Impossible Foods can incrementally replace low-to-mid end meat consumption while the high end will continue to be served by actual living animals.
- shadykiller 9y agoI still believe that feeding people would be much more efficient and healthier if we accept natural alternatives to meat like insects.
- edison85 9y agoThis, crispr, and self driving cars are my favorite up and coming innovations that just seem mind boggling and that will make a profound impact in our lives. I think it is realistic to see widespread use of all 3 in the next decade. The social media, apps, cloud, big data, and phone innovations have been neat but I'm looking forward to disruptions in non tech arenas. Space, electric and hydrogen fuel cell cars, so many fascinating things up and coming.
- aswanson 9y agoIt's telling that space, electricity generation, crispr, self-driving cars, and this are thought of as 'non tech', but messaging apps and phones are.
- QAPereo 9y agoIf it makes you feel better, only on sites like HN would that ever be the case.
- adventured 9y agoWhere in the world did you get that obviously false notion? CRISPR is bio-tech. Self driving cars are overwhelmingly regarded as tech in every possible corner of the media universe. Apple, Google, Tesla, nVidia are among the frequent discussion points on self-driving, and it all ties in to AI which is another obvious tech subject. There's a reason all of those topics are regularly discussed on HN.
- aswanson 9y agoI got that notion from the grandparent comment characterization of tech.
- colordrops 9y agoIt seems that "tech" has come to be a colloquialism for "digital".
- 9y ago
- surrey-fringe 9y agoAnimal products are bad for you.
- woodandsteel 9y agoA lot of investors are interested in Memphis Meat. From what I understand, people have been trying to grow meat in laboratories for decades. Does MM have some special technology?
- Pxtl 9y agoHonestly, fakemeat products have become so good that I'm not longer interested. Their biggest failing is cost, and lab products aren't cheaper.
- bananicorn 9y agoI do wonder though if this lab-grow meat will be allowed to be called meat, since there was a strange ruling about Vegan dairy products[0]. It seems that this is less likely to receive such a treatment, since it's much closer to the actual thing in terms of composition, but beyond Meat might be given a harder time there, since their product is plant-based... [0] https://www.just-food.com/news/eu-court-of-justice-rules-against-dairy-names-for-vegan-products_id136963.aspx https://www.just-food.com/news/eu-court-of-justice-rules-aga...
- Raz2 9y agoI am so sad that it won't be legal or at least profitable in Europe. People look for salt without GMO...
- roel_v 9y agoActually, the first (IIRC) lab-grown burger was served 4 years ago in Maastricht, The Netherlands, by a company called Mosa Meat, back then already backed by Gates. A quick google finds https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/08/bill-gates-and-richard-branson-are-investing-in-a-mysterious-new-kind-of-meat https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/08/bill-gates-and-richa... on that investment, but I'm sure there's more. I think they got the price down a few hundreds per burger by now, still a way to go obviously, but there are many in-vitro research groups in Europe.
- torpilla 9y agoThat they and their families will never eat. This is just like when the British Parliament approved GMOs in the UK and on the same day officially forbid GMO foods from being served in the Parliament restaurant. BTW I know the guy who was the head of the team who invented the GMO technology. He and his family and relatives only eat the cleanest, best quality ORGANIC food they can find.
- saiya-jin 9y agoso it will be less quality/taste product, at least in the beginning for sure. so what? why would you expect anything else in the beginning from such technology? it is not supposed to replace kobe beef, it should feed the world of poor and severely malnutritioned. it is supposed to help with reduction of greenhouse gasses, since methane is much more powerful than CO2. it also could end bad treatment of stock animals in many places (along the logic that lab meat should replace cheap real meat of questionable quality that we eat all the time ie in most restaurants/quick eats). when I travel to 3rd world countries, I have no expectations about quality of the meat products. meat is usually laden with loads of antibiotics, insecticides, growth hormones and what not. this should help too. if it achieves this, while being only mediocre product for burgers and sausages, I will applaud the effort.
- bananicorn 9y agoWhy did the other comment down here get downvoted? Is there anything wrong with it? He states fair points, as far as I can see.
- tonmoy 9y agoORGANIC is not same as NON-GMO
- sweep4r 9y agoOrganic food? As opposed to what? Aluminium food?
- fenwick67 9y agoI once explained to a bunch of 5th graders how landfills emit organic compounds into the air. When I asked them if they knew what Organic meant they said "it means it's healthy".
- jamesmattis 9y agoWill the plant protein meat ever trump the animal meat market? I believe that it will but it would take more than 10 years from now. India could become a huge market for the plant protein meat. Beyondmeat is one great example.
- grondilu 9y agoIt's great but if it really works, isn't there a concern about the existence of our beloved domestic animals? All domestic cattle nowadays descends from the Auroch, which is extinct. The Auroch disappeared because we did not need it as it was. It was hunted down as tend to be all large animals that can not be domesticated. If we don't need cows, pigs, sheep and whatnot, isn't there a risk they will fade away? When we invented cars, the domestic horse kept existing because it still has recreational use. Is there a recreational use for cows?
- fredsted 9y agoPeople would still want to eat 'real' meat, I'd venture. It would probably be a luxury thing, like shark fin soup, is my guess.
- vbuwivbiu 9y agothey'll be fine. they'll simply continue to evolve without us.
- grondilu 9y agoIf we leave them enough habitat. But why would we if we don't need them?
- lugg 9y agoI believe that may have been a subtle natural selection joke.
- vbuwivbiu 9y agoit was sincere - they will be fine without us. Sure, long term some of them may go extinct - who knows? but that's evolution. As for habitat, yes that's a problem for them and for non-domesticated creatures, and for us (we need wild spaces too).
- speby 9y agoEver hear of deer? We eat them, too, and even domestic ag as well. They also aren't "needed" and even tend to cause environmental issues of their own in the wild in certain areas. As expected, they also are recreationally hunted and regulated as such in each state that has a reasonable population of deer. So, in short, no, I don't think they'd go away or become extinct, not in the slightest. Declining numbers of them over time? Probably but extinct? No way.
- coldtea 9y agoWhich reminds me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLHRjaUBb3o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLHRjaUBb3o
- sunshiney 9y agoWhile I am a meat/fish-eater, I have not eaten store- purchased meat in decades and I will never eat lab-produced food. What a great way for innovative evil people to kill millions. Be careful what you wish for...very careful