4 ms·

Why 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

• maxerickson 9y ago
  It 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 ago
    Usually, 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 ago
      Well 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 ago
        This 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 ago
          I'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 ago
            Those 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 ago
      Diamonds 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 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.[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 ago
          A 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 ago
    Absolutely -- 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 ago
      I'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 ago
        FWIW 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 ago
  Calling 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 ago
    It 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 ago
        That'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 ago
    by clean they mean its not made from cows farting into the atmosphere
    • mmisu 9y ago
      What 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 ago
  The ethics might work, but the metabolization might not.
• fish_fan 9y ago
  Well, 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 ago
    Fair 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 ago
    Yes, but margarine isn't butter, this lab grown meat is actually the same product. You're comparing a substitute, to a replacement.