8 ms·

Taken to the extreme, is replacing insects and animals with a microbial production pipeline any better? It feels like steps to completely lose any healthy rela

by jiofih 6y ago

Taken to the extreme, is replacing insects and animals with a microbial production pipeline any better? It feels like steps to completely lose any healthy relationships with our environment and simply industrialize everything. That is a scary vision.

moeedm 6y ago
Pray tell what "healthy relationship" we have with nature with the current status quo? Using science and technology for good by reimagining the antiquated methods of creating stuff like milk, cheese, beef , honey, leather, etc is a good thing. I'm vegan, btw.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  Some vegans do oppose lab-grown meat (perhaps also dairy), on the grounds that humankind will never treat our animal brothers and sisters justly until we have lost the very appetite for their flesh.
  - ur-whale 6y ago
    Every religion has extremists.
- boo_boo 6y ago
  Replacing these "antiquated" methods with extensive supply chains (even more) dependent on non-renewable resource extraction doesn't seem like using technology "for good"
  - moeedm 6y ago
    Supply chains and process can be streamlined. A herd of cows is a herd of cows.
    - boo_boo 6y ago
      A barrel of oil is a barrel of oil.
      - moeedm 6y ago
        > Renewable energy has entered the chat
        boo_boo 6y ago
        Right, because all of the plastics used in these labs are made from renewable sources?
        moeedm 6y ago
        Yes, it’s possible but you can’t say the same about live feed. Cows will be cows, pigs will be pigs.
philipkglass 6y ago
Agriculture itself has been industrialized for a century in the developed world. It's increasingly industrialized all over the world. Only a small part of the world's cultivated land is worked with techniques recognizable to the farmer of 1850. If agricultural productivity declined to pre-industrial rates, many people would starve to death. The good news is that population growth is slowing and will probably reverse in the present century. It's still going to be a while yet before widespread de-intensification can be embraced without widespread starvation. In the mean time, microbial production looks like a good option to provide food for growing populations while limiting environmental damage. It can produce food with lower demands on land, water, and artificially fixed nitrogen than ordinary agriculture. It's resilient against extreme weather events and pest outbreaks.
- jiofih 6y ago
  I didn’t claim otherwise. What I do think, is that 1) these views are heavily colored by industrialization in the USA / low animal welfare / high-intensity farming, which is not matched anywhere else 2) we can lower demands on land and water by moderating our consumption of meat (the US average is something like 1 burger pp/day?) while still growing most of our food in natural ways Turning to more industrialization seems like a cop-out instead of real (hard) solutions: change of consumption habits, organic farming, strong environmental laws and so on. I don’t particularly look forward to having most of my food being some form of goo coming out of a massive factory, completely inscrutable, which is where this is leading.
  - philipkglass 6y ago
    The United States could feed its own population with significantly reduced industrial inputs, particularly if Americans were content to eat only as much meat per capita as e.g. Japanese people [1]. But the United States has over twice as much arable land per capita as the world average: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.ARBL.HA.PC https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.ARBL.HA.PC The US is currently one of the world's top exporters of corn, wheat, and soy beans. If the US exported less food then other countries would intensify production further. I don't think that any dietary changes could prevent mass starvation if the world abruptly stopped using artificial nitrogen fertilizers altogether. Microbial protein production is one of the ways that the world could gradually cut back on artificial nitrogen fertilizers, though. Some chemoautotrophs are capable of assimilating atmospheric nitrogen. "Autotrophic nitrogen assimilation and carbon capture for microbial protein production by a novel enrichment of hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria" https://www.powertoprotein.eu/wp-content/uploads/pagination_wr_12112.pdf https://www.powertoprotein.eu/wp-content/uploads/pagination_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_consumption#Meat_consumption_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_cons...
DennisP 6y ago
At the scale we do it, farming is not a healthy relationship to the environment. It does immense damage. Right now, livestock are 60% of the biomass of all mammals on the planet. Humans are 36%, leaving only 4% wild mammals. Our poultry has three times the biomass of wild birds.[1] Food production takes up 40% of the Earth's land mass.[2] Scientists have defined nine "planetary boundaries" we need to avoid crossing to avoid environmental catastrophe. For the ones related to farming, we've already crossed the boundaries for land use, biodiversity, and the nitrogen cycle, we're close for the phosphorus cycle, and over halfway there for freshwater use.[3] According to the book Clean Meat, a 2011 study found that cultured beef would use 99% less land and 96% water. We feed nine calories to chicken to get one calorie of meat. If we were to convert to cultured meat and milk, we could stop most deforestation and let most of that 40% of land mass revert to native forest and prairie. We'd pull back from those planetary boundaries and absorb gigatons of carbon. Do the same with fish and maybe ocean populations could recover. That would be a healthy relationship with our environment. [1] https://www.ecowatch.com/biomass-humans-animals-2571413930.html https://www.ecowatch.com/biomass-humans-animals-2571413930.h... [2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/agriculture-food-crops-land https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/agricultu... [3] https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/08/05/have-we-crossed-the-9-planetary-boundaries/ https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/08/05/have-we-crossed-the...
- ur-whale 6y ago
  Thanks for this, wholeheartedly agree. If we are ever to restore earth to the Eden garden we'd all like it to be, then these type of advances are the only way this'll ever happen.
  - pif 6y ago
    I don't want Eden. I want medicine, engines, cheap energy and internet.
    - DennisP 6y ago
      We can have all of it. For medicines in particular, preserving biodiversity actually helps, we're still discovering new medicines in wild plants. Doing away with animal farming wouldn't hurt the rest of your list either.
rtrdea 6y ago
Hahahahahaha
ur-whale 6y ago
Out of curiosity: would you categorize milk-producing cows as a part of our natural environment? I'm not an expert, but I don't believe they existed as we know them today until man took an active hand in selectively breeding them into the very useful animal they are today. In other words, we're now just doing - albeit with sharper tools - to bacteria what we've been doing for millenia to all kinds of animals and plants in our "environment".
- luckylion 6y ago
  > I'm not an expert, but I don't believe they existed as we know them today until man took an active hand in selectively breeding them into the very useful animal they are today. I don't know either, but that feels counter-intuitive. Would ancient humans figure "hey, see that animal over there? I bet with a selective breeding program we could make it produce milk when it calves and we'd be able to drink that and get nutrients".
  - ur-whale 6y ago
    I do remember reading a research article a long time ago saying that is precisely what happened with wheat (did not exist in the wild as we know it today, was bred over millenia into the flour-yielding plant we know today). It's not a long shot to imagine that animals like cows and goats (or dog, for that matter, although not with food as a goal) were given the same treatment.
    - jiofih 6y ago
      Not a long shot at all - nearly every animal you encounter today is the result of domestication or human interaction, unless you go for a safari. Even pidgeons.
    - jfim 6y ago
      Chickens have changed a lot in the last 50 years as well. This 2014 paper [0] compares the growth of chicken breeds from 1957, 1978, and 2005. The pictures of chickens at 56 days are pretty striking. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0032579119385505?via=ihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003257911...

by jiofih 6y ago

moeedm 6y ago

Pray tell what "healthy relationship" we have with nature with the current status quo? Using science and technology for good by reimagining the antiquated methods of creating stuff like milk, cheese, beef , honey, leather, etc is a good thing. I'm vegan, btw.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Some vegans do oppose lab-grown meat (perhaps also dairy), on the grounds that humankind will never treat our animal brothers and sisters justly until we have lost the very appetite for their flesh.
- ur-whale 6y ago
  Every religion has extremists.
boo_boo 6y ago
Replacing these "antiquated" methods with extensive supply chains (even more) dependent on non-renewable resource extraction doesn't seem like using technology "for good"
- moeedm 6y ago
  Supply chains and process can be streamlined. A herd of cows is a herd of cows.
  - boo_boo 6y ago
    A barrel of oil is a barrel of oil.
    - moeedm 6y ago
      > Renewable energy has entered the chat
      - boo_boo 6y ago
        Right, because all of the plastics used in these labs are made from renewable sources?
        moeedm 6y ago
        Yes, it’s possible but you can’t say the same about live feed. Cows will be cows, pigs will be pigs.

philipkglass 6y ago

Agriculture itself has been industrialized for a century in the developed world. It's increasingly industrialized all over the world. Only a small part of the world's cultivated land is worked with techniques recognizable to the farmer of 1850. If agricultural productivity declined to pre-industrial rates, many people would starve to death. The good news is that population growth is slowing and will probably reverse in the present century. It's still going to be a while yet before widespread de-intensification can be embraced without widespread starvation. In the mean time, microbial production looks like a good option to provide food for growing populations while limiting environmental damage. It can produce food with lower demands on land, water, and artificially fixed nitrogen than ordinary agriculture. It's resilient against extreme weather events and pest outbreaks.

jiofih 6y ago
I didn’t claim otherwise. What I do think, is that 1) these views are heavily colored by industrialization in the USA / low animal welfare / high-intensity farming, which is not matched anywhere else 2) we can lower demands on land and water by moderating our consumption of meat (the US average is something like 1 burger pp/day?) while still growing most of our food in natural ways Turning to more industrialization seems like a cop-out instead of real (hard) solutions: change of consumption habits, organic farming, strong environmental laws and so on. I don’t particularly look forward to having most of my food being some form of goo coming out of a massive factory, completely inscrutable, which is where this is leading.
- philipkglass 6y ago
  The United States could feed its own population with significantly reduced industrial inputs, particularly if Americans were content to eat only as much meat per capita as e.g. Japanese people [1]. But the United States has over twice as much arable land per capita as the world average: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.ARBL.HA.PC https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.ARBL.HA.PC The US is currently one of the world's top exporters of corn, wheat, and soy beans. If the US exported less food then other countries would intensify production further. I don't think that any dietary changes could prevent mass starvation if the world abruptly stopped using artificial nitrogen fertilizers altogether. Microbial protein production is one of the ways that the world could gradually cut back on artificial nitrogen fertilizers, though. Some chemoautotrophs are capable of assimilating atmospheric nitrogen. "Autotrophic nitrogen assimilation and carbon capture for microbial protein production by a novel enrichment of hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria" https://www.powertoprotein.eu/wp-content/uploads/pagination_wr_12112.pdf https://www.powertoprotein.eu/wp-content/uploads/pagination_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_consumption#Meat_consumption_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_cons...

DennisP 6y ago

At the scale we do it, farming is not a healthy relationship to the environment. It does immense damage. Right now, livestock are 60% of the biomass of all mammals on the planet. Humans are 36%, leaving only 4% wild mammals. Our poultry has three times the biomass of wild birds.[1] Food production takes up 40% of the Earth's land mass.[2] Scientists have defined nine "planetary boundaries" we need to avoid crossing to avoid environmental catastrophe. For the ones related to farming, we've already crossed the boundaries for land use, biodiversity, and the nitrogen cycle, we're close for the phosphorus cycle, and over halfway there for freshwater use.[3] According to the book Clean Meat, a 2011 study found that cultured beef would use 99% less land and 96% water. We feed nine calories to chicken to get one calorie of meat. If we were to convert to cultured meat and milk, we could stop most deforestation and let most of that 40% of land mass revert to native forest and prairie. We'd pull back from those planetary boundaries and absorb gigatons of carbon. Do the same with fish and maybe ocean populations could recover. That would be a healthy relationship with our environment. [1] https://www.ecowatch.com/biomass-humans-animals-2571413930.html https://www.ecowatch.com/biomass-humans-animals-2571413930.h... [2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/agriculture-food-crops-land https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/agricultu... [3] https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/08/05/have-we-crossed-the-9-planetary-boundaries/ https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/08/05/have-we-crossed-the...

ur-whale 6y ago
Thanks for this, wholeheartedly agree. If we are ever to restore earth to the Eden garden we'd all like it to be, then these type of advances are the only way this'll ever happen.
- pif 6y ago
  I don't want Eden. I want medicine, engines, cheap energy and internet.
  - DennisP 6y ago
    We can have all of it. For medicines in particular, preserving biodiversity actually helps, we're still discovering new medicines in wild plants. Doing away with animal farming wouldn't hurt the rest of your list either.

rtrdea 6y ago

Hahahahahaha

ur-whale 6y ago

Out of curiosity: would you categorize milk-producing cows as a part of our natural environment? I'm not an expert, but I don't believe they existed as we know them today until man took an active hand in selectively breeding them into the very useful animal they are today. In other words, we're now just doing - albeit with sharper tools - to bacteria what we've been doing for millenia to all kinds of animals and plants in our "environment".

luckylion 6y ago
> I'm not an expert, but I don't believe they existed as we know them today until man took an active hand in selectively breeding them into the very useful animal they are today. I don't know either, but that feels counter-intuitive. Would ancient humans figure "hey, see that animal over there? I bet with a selective breeding program we could make it produce milk when it calves and we'd be able to drink that and get nutrients".
- ur-whale 6y ago
  I do remember reading a research article a long time ago saying that is precisely what happened with wheat (did not exist in the wild as we know it today, was bred over millenia into the flour-yielding plant we know today). It's not a long shot to imagine that animals like cows and goats (or dog, for that matter, although not with food as a goal) were given the same treatment.
  - jiofih 6y ago
    Not a long shot at all - nearly every animal you encounter today is the result of domestication or human interaction, unless you go for a safari. Even pidgeons.
  - jfim 6y ago
    Chickens have changed a lot in the last 50 years as well. This 2014 paper [0] compares the growth of chicken breeds from 1957, 1978, and 2005. The pictures of chickens at 56 days are pretty striking. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0032579119385505?via=ihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003257911...