3 ms·

It is of course impossible to verify either way, but I am very sure these statistics of 96% savings in freshwater are total nonsense. Anyone who has ever cultu

It is of course impossible to verify either way, but I am very sure these statistics of 96% savings in freshwater are total nonsense. Anyone who has ever cultured cells on any scale can attest to the amount of water needed at any scale in terms of washing, rinsing, diluting, sterilizing, feeding, etc. Moreover, we have seen time and time again, the reporting of extremely high numbers for water usage in beef and milk production, but it turns out they are counting the water that falls as rain on the pasture land, or the rain/ground water used to grow the alfalfa. Should that be counted? Rain seems to be fairly renewable, but I admit that (in the extreme) society can harm ecosystems by diverting too much rain water (see Colorado River). Ground water renewability is a bit context dependent. If the water savings is mostly nonsense, well then I also question the savings in GHG emissions. Land savings? Sure, fine, that makes sense... but farm land is orders of magnitude cheaper than land that has a fully functioning cell culture factory on it. In the end, we will know if this works by what price it can sell at and make a marginal return. The jury is out on that one.

ceejayoz 5y ago
> Anyone who has ever cultured cells on any scale can attest to the amount of water needed at any scale in terms of washing, rinsing, diluting, sterilizing, feeding, etc. Given that this is all happening in a lab, is collecting and filtering for reuse an option?
- hcknwscommenter 5y ago
  Sure. But then you have to spend way more energy on the "filtering" part. It typically makes a lot more sense in terms of energy usage to just take tap water and run it through a polishing step (deionization and/or reverse osmosis), than to take the comparatively "dirty" water coming out of your process (dirty but not toxic) and try to clean that up.
- f38zf5vdt 5y ago
  An autoclave requires distilled water and an enormous amount of energy to operate. You could save the water but you'd potentially need to distill it again after. They use an enormous amount of energy and water overall. The feed for the cells still has to come from somewhere too, and the growth of the cells is aerobic and generates CO2. That said, artificial meat is supposed to hit market parity price by 2026 and probably below parity after. [1] We will probably see a rapid transition to cultured meat within a decade. There are a very large number of these companies competing right now. [2] [1] https://www.mitsui.com/mgssi/en/report/detail/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2021/01/18/2011t_sato_e.pdf https://www.mitsui.com/mgssi/en/report/detail/__icsFiles/afi... [2] https://cellbasedtech.com/lab-grown-meat-companies https://cellbasedtech.com/lab-grown-meat-companies
  - hcknwscommenter 5y ago
    "supposed to". I am hopeful but I think we are very early here and it is going to be very difficult to actually meet these targets. We shall see.
trainsplanes 5y ago
I imagine a lot of the freshwater savings involves not needing to feed an animal. What they drink and eat takes large scale agriculture and processing operations which will be cut drastically.
- hcknwscommenter 5y ago
  But you have to feed the cells. And you can't just grow some plants and feed it to the cells, you have to manufacture a very precise blend of chemicals (amino acids, sugars, surfactants, antioxidants, etc.) at >99% purity for each one. Often extremely nasty solvents are involved in the production process. Usually, some sort of petroleum product is a feedstock. Those chemically synthesized materials are hardly green.
matthewdgreen 5y ago
>but it turns out they are counting the water that falls as rain on the pasture land, or the rain/ground water used to grow the alfalfa. Can we use that pasture-land (and the rain that falls onto it) to grow more useful crops? If so: I don't understand why that wouldn't count.
- hcknwscommenter 5y ago
  Pasture land is not, usually, crop growing land. Moreover, the rain falls regardless. You could grow no crops, and your "water usage" would be exactly the same. Why would you count it?
JohnWhigham 5y ago
Regarding the weasel-worded "less land usage", most of the land that livestock use for grazing is unsuitable for conventional farming anyway. Only ruminants can properly utilize it.
- EForEndeavour 5y ago
  > most of the land that livestock use for grazing is unsuitable for conventional farming anyway Ah, but are most cows in the world actually grazing on pasture unsuitable for arable farming? I wasn't able to find an estimate of that number, but am willing to bet good money it's pretty low, considering that the number one driver of tropical deforestation is converting land to raise cattle, and the number two driver is soybean production mostly to feed said cattle: https://www.worldwildlife.org/magazine/issues/summer-2018/articles/what-are-the-biggest-drivers-of-tropical-deforestation https://www.worldwildlife.org/magazine/issues/summer-2018/ar...
c618b9b695c4 5y ago
>Anyone who has ever cultured cells on any scale can attest to the amount of water needed at any scale in terms of washing, rinsing, diluting, sterilizing, feeding, etc. There is an enormous difference in scale and efficiency between a lab scale process and an industrial one. Researchers (myself included) do what gets the job done quickly, not necessarily balancing the budget at the same time.
- hcknwscommenter 5y ago
  Yes there is an enormous difference in scale. Efficiency? In cell culture? In terms of GHG or emissions or energy use? I find that hard to believe. In my personal experience (not data, but relevant), none of the manufacturing scale processes were particularly optimized in terms of GHG/energy. Rather, yield was the primary target and consistency was the very close secondary target. Sometimes, vice versa. I 10x improvement of yield can very easily lead to higher GHG emission intensity, or no effect at all, e.g.

ceejayoz 5y ago

> Anyone who has ever cultured cells on any scale can attest to the amount of water needed at any scale in terms of washing, rinsing, diluting, sterilizing, feeding, etc. Given that this is all happening in a lab, is collecting and filtering for reuse an option?

hcknwscommenter 5y ago
Sure. But then you have to spend way more energy on the "filtering" part. It typically makes a lot more sense in terms of energy usage to just take tap water and run it through a polishing step (deionization and/or reverse osmosis), than to take the comparatively "dirty" water coming out of your process (dirty but not toxic) and try to clean that up.
f38zf5vdt 5y ago
An autoclave requires distilled water and an enormous amount of energy to operate. You could save the water but you'd potentially need to distill it again after. They use an enormous amount of energy and water overall. The feed for the cells still has to come from somewhere too, and the growth of the cells is aerobic and generates CO2. That said, artificial meat is supposed to hit market parity price by 2026 and probably below parity after. [1] We will probably see a rapid transition to cultured meat within a decade. There are a very large number of these companies competing right now. [2] [1] https://www.mitsui.com/mgssi/en/report/detail/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2021/01/18/2011t_sato_e.pdf https://www.mitsui.com/mgssi/en/report/detail/__icsFiles/afi... [2] https://cellbasedtech.com/lab-grown-meat-companies https://cellbasedtech.com/lab-grown-meat-companies
- hcknwscommenter 5y ago
  "supposed to". I am hopeful but I think we are very early here and it is going to be very difficult to actually meet these targets. We shall see.

trainsplanes 5y ago

I imagine a lot of the freshwater savings involves not needing to feed an animal. What they drink and eat takes large scale agriculture and processing operations which will be cut drastically.

hcknwscommenter 5y ago
But you have to feed the cells. And you can't just grow some plants and feed it to the cells, you have to manufacture a very precise blend of chemicals (amino acids, sugars, surfactants, antioxidants, etc.) at >99% purity for each one. Often extremely nasty solvents are involved in the production process. Usually, some sort of petroleum product is a feedstock. Those chemically synthesized materials are hardly green.

matthewdgreen 5y ago

>but it turns out they are counting the water that falls as rain on the pasture land, or the rain/ground water used to grow the alfalfa. Can we use that pasture-land (and the rain that falls onto it) to grow more useful crops? If so: I don't understand why that wouldn't count.

hcknwscommenter 5y ago
Pasture land is not, usually, crop growing land. Moreover, the rain falls regardless. You could grow no crops, and your "water usage" would be exactly the same. Why would you count it?

JohnWhigham 5y ago

Regarding the weasel-worded "less land usage", most of the land that livestock use for grazing is unsuitable for conventional farming anyway. Only ruminants can properly utilize it.

EForEndeavour 5y ago
> most of the land that livestock use for grazing is unsuitable for conventional farming anyway Ah, but are most cows in the world actually grazing on pasture unsuitable for arable farming? I wasn't able to find an estimate of that number, but am willing to bet good money it's pretty low, considering that the number one driver of tropical deforestation is converting land to raise cattle, and the number two driver is soybean production mostly to feed said cattle: https://www.worldwildlife.org/magazine/issues/summer-2018/articles/what-are-the-biggest-drivers-of-tropical-deforestation https://www.worldwildlife.org/magazine/issues/summer-2018/ar...

c618b9b695c4 5y ago

>Anyone who has ever cultured cells on any scale can attest to the amount of water needed at any scale in terms of washing, rinsing, diluting, sterilizing, feeding, etc. There is an enormous difference in scale and efficiency between a lab scale process and an industrial one. Researchers (myself included) do what gets the job done quickly, not necessarily balancing the budget at the same time.

hcknwscommenter 5y ago
Yes there is an enormous difference in scale. Efficiency? In cell culture? In terms of GHG or emissions or energy use? I find that hard to believe. In my personal experience (not data, but relevant), none of the manufacturing scale processes were particularly optimized in terms of GHG/energy. Rather, yield was the primary target and consistency was the very close secondary target. Sometimes, vice versa. I 10x improvement of yield can very easily lead to higher GHG emission intensity, or no effect at all, e.g.