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Singapore approves lab-grown 'chicken' meat
- markdown 6y agoDo vegans eat lab-grown meat?
- Numberwang 6y agoNo, since all the issues with cholesterol, salt and blood pressure would be the same (for now).
- wefhi 6y agoYes veganism is about not harming animals and not about the diet
- pcr0 6y agoDepends on the motivation for being vegan. I think vegans who used to eat meat but stopped for environmental/ethical reasons would. Whereas people who never ate meat (e.g. religious reasons) would probably avoid it since they have no motivation to eat meat and it seems too similar (uncanny valley) to something they've always avoided.
- sriku 6y ago... or have adverse physiological reactions to it. I recall when once I ate what my friends told me was raw fish (as part of a Chinese New year party). I didn't get an odd taste at all .. but a couple of hours later threw up. I'm vegetarian from birth and my cheeky friends just watched me eat it without warning me!
- p2t2p 6y agoThat's just evil. Bad friends
- latch 6y agoIt's common for vegans and vegetarians - whatever their reason - to become disgusted with meat after a long enough period. I think it makes more sense for these products (impossible, beyond, ..) to: 1 - Not worry too much about existing vegetarians / vegans 2 - Put more attention towards the growing number of people who eat meat less frequently 3 - Get prices below real meat and then, I think, it's game over
- simias 6y agoI agree with you, although the "uncanny valley" for fake meat is definitely something I've experienced even though I'm full vegetarian for merely over a year now. I went to a restaurant that had rather convincing fake-chicken and it was a strangely unpleasant experience, even though I used to eat chicken regularly before. But I think all these meat alternatives are a great thing for meat lovers who try to reduce their consumption for ethical reasons.
- doublerabbit 6y agoLab/grown meat is still a cell from an animal. I'm vegan and sway towards of not wanting to eat anything from an animal. So as curious as I am, it's still a no for me. But I approve for that it would be nice to see less slaughter caused by those who do eat meat.
- idnefju 6y agoBeing vegan is about animal suffering and consent though
- 1propionyl 6y agoThere are different sorts of vegans with different reasons for their dietary choices. And regardless, for some, after avoiding animal products for a long time the thought of eating them can come to be unappealing.
- Fnoord 6y agoThere are three global reasons one can decide to be vegan, vegetarian, and reducetarian. 1) Animal well-being. 2) Environmental well-being. 3) Personal health well-being. You may substitute well-being with suffering, and there's also a nuance between death and staying alive but using (e.g. milking). [EDIT: I suppose there's a fourth, a psychological reason how some people find certain products 'impure' to eat. But I'm not sure how I'd define that group.]
- Fnoord 6y agoWhat being a vegan is about is up to each individual themselves. There is no kind of contract which allows you to call yourself or see yourself as a vegan, and its furthermore very tiring when someone's trying to preach to you what veganism is about <fill in strict ruleset here>.
- Fnoord 6y agoAh, right, its still a cell from an animal, as is a tire using a cell from an animal, so I guess someone who doesn't eat meat derived from stem cells also walks a lot. The amount of suffering the animal who's cell is used has to endure to grow the lab owned meat is in no relation to the amount of suffering a cow who is being milked has to endure. Therefore, I consider lab meat vegan in spirit, just like gelatin (e.g. not one pig less dies if you eat some licorice with gelatin in it). Meanwhile, vegans eat avocados, which have a massive impact on the environment, and there's barely anyone in the vegan community who opposes that cause its aligned to the animal suffering dogma, and its almost like a cult, too.
- beyondcompute 6y agoIt’s a good question. I am not sure I see a lot of reason to eat it except to support the movement (“create demand”, “vote with my wallet”) and maybe to occasionally blend-in with non-vegans (“Look, I can do the same thing as you without most of the associated problems”). But the latter does not seem that attractive or important to me, to be honest. Now “nutritional” reasons can be: 1) protein, 2) vitamins/minerals. 1st is quite ridiculous. Many plants and vegan foods have so much protein! Even broccoli or green peas. And I am not even starting about tofu, tempeh, etc. So vitamins/minerals is actually a more relevant concern. Now I am not sure if the lab-grown meat is going to have as much of those as farm-grown one. Or still the multi-vitamin pill is a better (and cheaper and more convenient) option?
- ggm 6y agoSome will. Some may. Some won't. Some will argue you can't be vegan and eat lab meat.
- kitbrennan 6y agoApparently the meat is made using Foetal Bovine Serum (which requires the slaughter of cows), and chicken cells (which do not require the slaughter of a chicken). [1] So technically a vegan would not be happy eating it. I'm however curious about the ratio of slaughter to end product (e.g. is it one slaughter to 10kg of end product, or one slaughter to 1 tonne of end product), since that may sway some vegans/vegetarians. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/dec/07/lab-grown-chicken-tastes-like-chicken-but-the-feeling-when-eating-it-is-more-complicated https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/dec/07/lab-grown-chick...
- netcan 6y agoSlaughters per kg is a disparate ratio with regular meat too.
- refurb 6y ago"Those cells are acquired with a simple biopsy" I guess it depends on where you draw the line? The chicken isn't killed, but I assume it's anesthetized, and surgery is performed on it to get the biopsy sample. Is that cruel? Do you refuse to eat any product that came from that biopsy?
- doublerabbit 6y agoUnless an animal puts up it's paw and volunteers to be put under biopsy for food then yes. It's cruel. Why don't we make food out of humans instead?
- xkcd-sucks 6y agoYeah, and then the chicken is sacrificed after the biopsy because the techs are only certified for non-survival surgery where survival surgery would require an actual vet
- hwerwer24234 6y agoRepresenting India (dairy+vegan), I'd say no.
- krtkush 6y agoIndia != dairy + vegan. Indians eat meat of all kinds; from chicken to dogs. So you really can't claim to represent all of us. Me, personally, would love to switch over to lab grown meat as soon as it is declared safe and an environment friendly alternative.
- patall 6y agoThis product is quiet far from vegan actually since the cells (whos source we may ignore) are grown on FCS (fetal calf serum)
- Tade0 6y agoI'd say no, but I don't think that matters too much, since they're not the target demographic here.
- edent 6y agoI wrote about this https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/12/is-synthetarianism-compatible-with-veganism/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/12/is-synthetarianism-compatib... I don't think lab-grown meat is suitable for vegans. Taking a cell biopsy is no different from taking milk or eggs from a living animal. It's probably suitable for vegetarians though.
- peteretep 6y agoI think this is the wrong way to look at it, and the right way is “would omnivores be willing to pay a price premium and perhaps take a taste hit in order to know no animals were harmed?” For me, yep. What prevents me from eating vegan is the effort required to find, prepare, and get the macro nutrient profile I need. I’ll generally buy the “most organic” chicken I can find as a small token towards attempting less cruelty, and would probably happily pay three to four times the cost of chicken for a lab-brown substitute.
- globular-toast 6y agoIt depends. My father has been a vegetarian for most of his adult life (so 40+ years). To him meat is disgusting. It's dead animals. He tried an Impossible Burger but just doesn't like it. Similarly, there are people who have been vegetarian their entire life because that's their culture. India and Italy are home to the largest vegetarian populations. These people don't wish they could eat meat any more than you wish you could eat grass.
- markdown 6y agoIt took me a few attempts to parse this sentence: > The decision paves the way for San Francisco-based startup Eat Just to sell lab-grown chicken meat. Why would you hamstring your own startup by giving it such a terrible name?
- JimDabell 6y agoEspecially as the much bigger Just Eat already exists.
- mhh__ 6y agoBad SEO aside I don't think Just Eat serves the US?
- breakfastduck 6y agoThey recently purchased their US equivalent so technically yes.
- ordu 6y agoEnglish is not my native language, so I see nothing wrong with the name. I know that 'just' is a crazy word which could mean anything you like, but nevertheless (I'm just curious) what did you read in "eat just" from your first attempt?
- quietbritishjim 6y agoThe problem with "Eat Just" is that "just" is at the end but isn't a noun. Consider "Eat Just makes artificial chicken". Just is an adjective or adverb, it more naturally associates with the word following it, and an initial parse of that sentence is likely to be more like "eat" is an entity that just (only) makes artificial chicken. Compare with, say, "International Business Machines makes a big blue computer". This doesn't quite make sense (semantically) if you read it literally rather than understanding the start to be the name of a company; it sounds like some machines own the computer. But even then, it parses (syntactically) into the correct parts of speach so it's easier to extract the real meaning without conscious effort. Company names that end in a verb, like Just Eat, are also a little odd. But verbs have less of a habit of tightly binding to the word following them, so it's not quite as confusing as if the final word is an adjective or adverb.
- Mizza 6y agoThere have been a lot of articles about lab-grown meat lately, but none of them have solved the big problem in the space: fetal bovine serum. FBS is widely used for cell cultures in laboratories, but I as far as I'm aware, this is the first time that it's used as an industrial process for consumer products (although maybe it's used in commercial pharma, I don't know). FBS extraction is a "slaughterhouse" technology, so these new products don't yet move us any closer to the goal of ending industrial animal slaughter. In fact, this could actually be a step in the wrong direction. I've kept an eye on this space for a while, and there have been plenty of announcements of artificial FBS, but none of them have ever been able to offer any proof, just vapor. If a company comes along with a synthetic plant-derived alternative to FBS, and they can actually prove it works, invest heavily. They're the ones who will change the world. EDIT: Good news! I found there is now a commercially available FBS alternative called 'FastGro'. It is very expensive - $264.60 per 100ml - and it doesn't say how it's made, but hey, it's a start. It's also worth checking out their brochure just because of how hilarious and awesome the art is: https://media.mpbio.com/document/file/brochure/dest/l/s/1/0/2/LS102019-EN-FastGro-Brochure.pdf https://media.mpbio.com/document/file/brochure/dest/l/s/1/0/...
- viraptor 6y agoI'm a bit confused here. If there a chicken version of FBS? Or is FBS used in chicken-culture meat growth?
- Mizza 6y agoFBS is growing the chicken-culture. The fact that it's bovine is ancillary, it's just a convenient source of the good proteins for organism development as we have a whole system in place to grow and slaughter cows already. There are some technical problems with FBS as well, it varies in quality and in composition of the component proteins, so a synethetic/plant alternative that could be adjusted for different purposes would be useful in the lab as well.
- aaron695 6y agoFetal bovine serum is so expense anyway, even if you wanted to use it it's not practical, it seems... This article addressees this with Eat Just in Singapore (They are looking at plant based in the future) - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/02/no-kill-lab-grown-meat-to-go-on-sale-for-first-time https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/02/no-kill-... I'd read it as this is just to get another round of funding. At best a very expensive restaurant might sell slithers for the experience. But I think it is a industry that's moving forward, so it's all a good thing. Many other industries are just stuck in scam stage.
- tsjq 6y agoHow long before we get lab-grown rat meat, elephant meat, dinosaur meat, rhino meat, tiger balls, etc ? And , would these have the same boner effects as the original ones ?
- draugadrotten 6y agoOriginal dinosaur meat, you say?
- tsjq 6y agoLab-grown original dinosaur meat
- waterhouse 6y agoAn Isaac Asimov story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Statue_for_Father https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Statue_for_Father
- keiferski 6y agoPersonally, I wish the focus were more on new appetizing vegetarian recipes and not on creating Frankenfood that's grown in a lab. I'd rather real meat just be an expensive, rare treat than eat something like this. India, for example, as a pretty long history of great vegetarian recipes. Why not take a similar approach, instead of coming up with better ways to make fake things appear real?
- afarrell 6y ago> the focus The focus of...whom?
- keiferski 6y agoThe focus of economic and cultural forces pushing for meat alternatives, whether that be vegans, environmentalists, or anyone else.
- afarrell 6y agoThose forces lack any sort of central Executive Function. Expecting them to have a consistent focus on one over another ignores the fact that they are inherently split-brained.
- FeepingCreature 6y agoBecause people have different preferences than you? I mean, I want lab grown meat. That sounds great.
- keiferski 6y agoThe first word of my comment is personally.
- FeepingCreature 6y agoSure, but then there's no real answer to "why not X?" Why X? Why not Y? Let's just do both.
- fabian2k 6y agoI'd be interested in the price, I can't really imagine that this is anywhere near competitive yet. And of course this can't replace meat only in stuff like chicken nuggets where you don't have the meat in a full piece. Hmm, just noticed that there were parts of the article I missed, the header formatting is a bit weird there. Somewhat lower than $50 a chicken nugget does sound like you might only want to try this for novelty. I do think there is quite a lot of potential in that area, if people can be convinced that "lab-grown" isn't a bad thing.
- mFixman 6y agoVegetarian burgers are much cheaper than meat and chicken burgers, and yet they are less popular and most people have never had one. People are conditioned to buy meat burgers, and price isn't a problem as long as they can afford it. An ultra cheap lab-grown chicken burger wouldn't be able to compete against a more expensive meat one without a big cultural shift.
- fabian2k 6y agoThe article only gives a slightly outdated number, but using the $50 chicken nugget as a reference we'd be somewhere like $500 for a single burger. I do assume that that price would be a problem.
- elaus 6y agoIn my country (Europe) meat substitutes are more expensive than the cheap meat you'll find in discounters. So if you want to have a meat-like taste for many poorer people meat is the obvious choice.
- dagw 6y agoVegetarian burgers are much cheaper than meat and chicken burgers Where are you? I've never seen this in any country I've been to. If you buy the raw ingredients and make them yourself then it might work out cheaper, but if you but a package of ready made veggieburgers or order them at a restaurant then they cost the same as meat.
- rishabhd 6y agoHope this does not gets warped into something to the likes of Soylent Green/ Snowpiercer or Cloud Atlas in future. That apart, since this requires FBS/ chicken cells, not sure if it is going to attract vegans. Pricing is going to be another interesting avenue. Do we have double blind studies if it really tastes like meat or is it just another experiment?
- Razengan 6y agoPeople have and are still being harvested for their organs right now. [0] If someone can see a way to profit off “undesirable” people and get away with it, they will. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_trade
- lowdose 6y agoJust Eat --> Eat Just is pretty brilliant.