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I find it disingenous to call meat grown in a lab clean meat. Would you call Margarine clean butter ?
by mmisu 9y ago
I 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.
- yellowapple 9y agoUsually, though, lab-grown meat is actually meat. It's possible that it'd have to be labeled "synthetic" or "lab-grown" (similar to how synthetic diamonds are named), but claiming that meat is not meat is nonsensical.
- maxerickson 9y agoWell what's the definition of meat? A typical simple one is "animal flesh". Cells grown in a vat aren't flesh, they are a tissue culture. Note that I'm not particularly animated by the issue, I just don't agree that it is as simple as "claiming that meat is not meat".
- FeepingCreature 9y agoThis seems like a particular definition of "flesh" that's not particularly germane to meatness. Lab meat is made of the exact same animal cells that regular meat is, the tissue just happens to never have inhabited an animal. When we eat meat, we don't value the fact that the cells we're eating were once part of an animal, we mostly value the taste. It seems to me that this isn't a necessarily property of meat but a contingent one caused by the fact that meat used to only be possible to produce from animal flesh.
- maxerickson 9y agoI'm pretty sure it is not a particular definition.
- coldtea 9y ago>When we eat meat, we don't value the fact that the cells we're eating were once part of an animal, we mostly value the taste You'd be surprised. We even have different names and preferences for different age stages of the animal, different varieties of the animal (regional etc), etc.
- jonathanpoulter 9y agoThose distinctions exist because of the perceived impact on the tastes and textures of meat. Not because of anything such as ethical preferences to old/young animals.
- mmisu 9y agoDiamonds are pretty simple from a chemical point of view, atoms of Carbon linked together in a particular structure. You can't compare something as complex as creating animal meat with creating synthetic diamonds.
- mmisu 9y ago> 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. Calling something clean meat, based purely on arbitrary ethical grounds, implies that what other people eat and call meat is somehow unclean. It is a value judgement on the others.
- ggreer 9y agoI assumed "clean" referred to the fact that lab-grown tissue would have a much lower risk of disease. Animals have digestive tracts full of bacteria, and farms aren't exactly pristine. Every year in the US, meat-borne pathogens kill thousands and sicken millions.[1] 1. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/5/5/99-0502_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/5/5/99-0502_article
- mmisu 9y ago> I assumed "clean" referred to the fact that lab-grown tissue would have a much lower risk of disease. Animals have digestive tracts full of bacteria, and farms aren't exactly pristine. Every year in the US, meat-borne pathogens kill thousands and sicken millions. OK, let's check the numbers. According to the CDC https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/attribution/attribution-1998-2008.html https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/attribution/attribution-... from 1998 - 2008 from the total of foodborn illnesses 46% were linked to plant based, 22% to meat and poultry, 20% to dairy and eggs and 6% to fish products. From the total number of deaths 23% were linked to plant based products, 29% to meat and poultry (19% to poultry). You can see a more detailed graphic here https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/attribution-image.html#foodborne-illnesses https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/attribution-image.html#f...
- ggreer 9y agoA couple of points: 1. The percentages you cite aren’t useful on their own, as one also needs to know how often each kind of food is consumed. Only then would we know the relative risk of eating each kind of food. 2. Most food plants are grown outdoors (often near livestock) and many aren’t cooked before eating. Cultured meat is grown in sterile environments and is typically cooked. These differences mean that it will almost certainly have a lower disease risk than any natural food.
- jhbadger 9y agoAbsolutely -- some dairy producing states like Wisconsin have forced makers of soy and almond milk to stop calling them "milk" so I'm almost positive that meat producing states would do the same.
- theBobBob 9y agoI'm always annoyed (admittedly only slightly) when they are referred to as milk. Nothing wrong with soy milk, but milk it is not.
- upvotinglurker 9y agoFWIW I've seen medieval recipes containing almond milk (referred to as milk or equivalent period word), so calling such substances milk is not a newfangled idea.
- mmisu 9y agoCalling meat grown in a lab clean meat is just a marketing gimmick that could potentially make people believe they eat natural grown meat.
- KGIII 9y agoIt does confuse me, as a term. Pretty much every bit of meat that I eat was harvested and processed by myself or my neighbor. Given that we are going to be the folks eating it, it's pretty clean. I clean my fish, deer, moose, beef critter, fowl, etc... I clean them very well. (They are delicious.)
- coldtea 9y ago>Pretty much every bit of meat that I eat was harvested and processed by myself or my neighbor You do understand that you are the very definition of an outlier, right? So it would OK if the term only confused you, since you are supposed to be confused, given that you do these things differently than 99.99% of the population. But I think the term is confusing in general, not just to people who "kill and clean their own meat".
- KGIII 9y agoThat's certainly true, but I suspect I'd have been just as confused even before I moved here. Today, I know my meat is pretty clean. Back then, I'd have assumed it was clean because it hadn't made me sick.
- lawless123 9y agoby clean they mean its not made from cows farting into the atmosphere
- mmisu 9y agoWhat about cold rice? By cold I mean it was grown in my lab, no fart was released in the process. Would you buy cold rice from me ?
- dasil003 9y agoThe ethics might work, but the metabolization might not.
- fish_fan 9y agoWell, butter is a well-defined substance; there's a reason why "I can't believe it's not butter" isn't called "better butter". Furthermore margarine is associated with health risks that butter is not; clean is just disingenuous.
- nkoren 9y agoFair enough, but margarine is not a good analogy to in-vitro meat. It's a substance that has very little molecular resemblance to butter. In-vitro meat, however, is meat. It's not a different substance -- it's just produced in a different way.
- overcast 9y agoYes, but margarine isn't butter, this lab grown meat is actually the same product. You're comparing a substitute, to a replacement.
- tray5 9y agoIf the stats in the article are true, 96% less greenhouse emissions, 45% less energy, 99% less land use and 96% less water used in the production of the lab meat, I think it makes perfect sense to call it clean meat. Plus it doesn't involve the death of an animal, which is pretty "clean" I guess.
- Freak_NL 9y agoAlso, calling it green meat might not evoke the desired association.
- bmj 9y agoI think this is an issue of context. "Clean" food means something very different than "clean" energy. If I'm looking for clean food, my standards are very different than someone looking for clean energy. I know folks who wouldn't think lab grown meat was very clean simply because it was created in a lab. All that to say: you're not wrong, but clean means something very different to the food-conscious person shopping at their local co-op.
- gambiting 9y ago>> I know folks who wouldn't think lab grown meat was very clean simply because it was created in a lab. I'm confused, it's not clean because it was grown in a lab, or is there some other factor?
- bmj 9y ago"Clean food" generally means minimally processed--you are eating food that is as close to its natural form as possible, such this[0]. So, meat created in a laboratory is about as far aware from this sort of "clean eating" as possible. [0] https://the30clean.com/what-is-30-clean/ https://the30clean.com/what-is-30-clean/
- gambiting 9y agoThat quoted website just sounds like pseudo-BS-science, especially since the very first thing they mention is removing gluten from diet. That particular horse has been beaten to death and then a bit more. Our bodies don't give two shits whether the food we eat was grown outside in a natural environment or in a lab - as long as it's chemically the same then there can't be any difference to how we absorb it. Edit: Ok, after going deeper onto this website it mentions doing juice cleanses and ridding yourself of "toxins". Stay as far away from this website as possible.