7 ms·

I suspect reality will be a lot more boring. Animals are a low efficiency method of converting plant material into meat, both in terms of calories and protein

I suspect reality will be a lot more boring. Animals are a low efficiency method of converting plant material into meat, both in terms of calories and protein mass input/output. So with scale, eventually lab-grown meat should become much cheaper than traditional meat. At the same time, it will be higher quality. Sterile production will eliminate E. Coli, salmonella, antibiotics... Input nutrients will be tightly controlled. Environmental pollutants and parasites will be kept out. Traditional meat will still be available, but it will be an expensive and morally questionable luxury product, like "foie gras" today.

marcus_holmes 5y ago
You may be right. There's this weird thing with some speciality produce clashing with EU regulations on food prep at the moment. Not to mention unpasteurised milk. It could end up in that basket. Strange clubs of weirdos meeting up to butcher and eat an animal, and everyone else thinking that's completely disgusting.
mildavw 5y ago
Don’t forget that the flavors and textures will also be optimized along the way. It will taste better to more people than animal meat.
- Jeff_Brown 5y ago
  And nutritional profiles! I read last year that beef engineered to have more B-vitamins starts to taste like fish.
datavirtue 5y ago
Now it is less efficient but when we needed a hedge against crop failure it was essential. One large beast can be kept alive by eating scrub and can subsist a large number of people. What we have going on right now is killing us.
paulirwin 5y ago
This is spot on. (I'm a long time vegetarian, so I've thought a lot about this.) Hunting, fishing, and even specialty slaughterhouses will likely continue. The economics will cause mass meat production to go out of business, though. Beef first, probably. Engineering can evolve much faster than cows and chickens and fish can. No politician, at least in the U.S. mainstream, is going to commit political self-destruction by going after farmers and making animal meat illegal. What will likely happen though is once the big restaurant chains and grocery stores start selling lab-grown meat that is better quality and cheaper than animal meat, the market for cheap animal meat will dry up. We'll have politicians trying to "save beef jobs" just like they are trying to save coal jobs today, due to more efficient and environmentally-friendly alternatives taking over the market. But unlike coal, consumers can still choose animal meat (you can't exactly choose your power plant), so it might be a long transition due to that market demand. Expect the Arby's and ilk to continue to tout how they use "real meat" with hypermasculine advertising for a long time to come.
- Jeff_Brown 5y ago
  The ironic counter-ads will be viscious: "Be a real man! Risk getting sick from one of our real burgers! Each one is made from the hormone-pumped flesh of a real baby cow that never knew its real mom!"
  - akoncius 5y ago
    "back in my days, salmonella wasn't a big deal anyway, these younglins are too fragile in modern times"
  - nmz 5y ago
    So basically White Castle?
    - bart_spoon 5y ago
      Sounds closer to Raw Water
    - henrikschroder 5y ago
ericmcer 5y ago
There will also be a visual sterility on top of the practical one. For some of my friends, the idea of eating a chicken drumstick with its bone and dark veins and bits of cartilage makes them shudder, but they will put away a dozen processed sterile looking chicken nuggets with no hesitation.
iammisc 5y ago
Animals are extremely efficient at converting inedible food to edible nutrition. For example, goats eat almost any plant, including many natives. Unless you think humans are going to be able to eat chaparral. The fact is that modern edible agriculture is heavily dependent on fossil fuel and mined fertilizers. Until we solve that problem, it's better to stop growing too many plants, let native vegetation regrow and set loose the troops of goats and chickens. People have this idea that plants and vegetables are clean..they're not
- Jeff_Brown 5y ago
  If you want meat at the scale we eat it at now, let alone the one we'll eat it at when China and India have twice their current incomes, free range isn't going to cut it.
  - iammisc 5y ago
    I don't disagree. I understand arguments for less meat. What I don't understand is abolition...that's just silly and a huge environmental catastrophe.
    - analog31 5y ago
      How is it a catastrophe? Why does the environment need domesticated livestock? Why does the food chain need us to be a predator?
      - iammisc 5y ago
        To be able to produce the calories currently made by meat using relatively meh land, we'd have to heavily increase our fertilizer use and deforestation to be able to grow enough human edible plants (grains or legumes really, since tubers are difficult to transport).
        analog31 5y ago
        It's been my impression that eliminating meat consumption would produce less need for farmland and fertilizer, not more.
Bancakes 5y ago
Naturally, this will instill a dependency on labs and their patented technologies. I'm surprised I don't need a Monsanto license to bake bread at home.
runawaybottle 5y ago
It should be added that a large portion of the world already eats processed meat. That chicken in chicken broccoli isn’t straight chicken. We’ve already shown we care very little of what is actually meat if you put the right sauce on it.
awillen 5y ago
I think an interesting comparison is lab-grown diamonds. To me (and I suspect a lot of others here on HN), the idea of getting a mined diamond is just lunacy. Why on earth would I pay twice as much for something that is literally the same at the atomic level? And yet enormous numbers of people still do. I'm lucky to have a wife who is a scientist (she would've slapped me upside the head if I had wasted money on a mined diamond), but there are a lot of women out there who would be very upset to receive a lab-grown diamond. So while I very much agree with what you're saying here, and it just seems crazy to me that anyone else wouldn't, I do wonder what percent of folks will continue to demand "real" meat even when lab-grown is superior along all dimensions.
DantesKite 5y ago
I like the idea that capitalism will just outweigh any questions of morality, because it'll be so much cheaper and better than anything else.
sireat 5y ago
As Gibson wrote in 1984 (a few years earlier actually): "`Jesus,' Molly said, her own plate empty, `gimme that. You know what this costs?' She took his plate. `They gotta raise a whole animal for years and then they kill it. This isn't vat stuff.' She forked a mouthful up and chewed."
golergka 5y ago
Artificial diamonds are cheaper and more pure than the real thing.

marcus_holmes 5y ago

You may be right. There's this weird thing with some speciality produce clashing with EU regulations on food prep at the moment. Not to mention unpasteurised milk. It could end up in that basket. Strange clubs of weirdos meeting up to butcher and eat an animal, and everyone else thinking that's completely disgusting.

mildavw 5y ago

Don’t forget that the flavors and textures will also be optimized along the way. It will taste better to more people than animal meat.

Jeff_Brown 5y ago
And nutritional profiles! I read last year that beef engineered to have more B-vitamins starts to taste like fish.

datavirtue 5y ago

Now it is less efficient but when we needed a hedge against crop failure it was essential. One large beast can be kept alive by eating scrub and can subsist a large number of people. What we have going on right now is killing us.

paulirwin 5y ago

This is spot on. (I'm a long time vegetarian, so I've thought a lot about this.) Hunting, fishing, and even specialty slaughterhouses will likely continue. The economics will cause mass meat production to go out of business, though. Beef first, probably. Engineering can evolve much faster than cows and chickens and fish can. No politician, at least in the U.S. mainstream, is going to commit political self-destruction by going after farmers and making animal meat illegal. What will likely happen though is once the big restaurant chains and grocery stores start selling lab-grown meat that is better quality and cheaper than animal meat, the market for cheap animal meat will dry up. We'll have politicians trying to "save beef jobs" just like they are trying to save coal jobs today, due to more efficient and environmentally-friendly alternatives taking over the market. But unlike coal, consumers can still choose animal meat (you can't exactly choose your power plant), so it might be a long transition due to that market demand. Expect the Arby's and ilk to continue to tout how they use "real meat" with hypermasculine advertising for a long time to come.

Jeff_Brown 5y ago
The ironic counter-ads will be viscious: "Be a real man! Risk getting sick from one of our real burgers! Each one is made from the hormone-pumped flesh of a real baby cow that never knew its real mom!"
- akoncius 5y ago
  "back in my days, salmonella wasn't a big deal anyway, these younglins are too fragile in modern times"
- nmz 5y ago
  So basically White Castle?
  - bart_spoon 5y ago
    Sounds closer to Raw Water
  - henrikschroder 5y ago

ericmcer 5y ago

There will also be a visual sterility on top of the practical one. For some of my friends, the idea of eating a chicken drumstick with its bone and dark veins and bits of cartilage makes them shudder, but they will put away a dozen processed sterile looking chicken nuggets with no hesitation.

iammisc 5y ago

Animals are extremely efficient at converting inedible food to edible nutrition. For example, goats eat almost any plant, including many natives. Unless you think humans are going to be able to eat chaparral. The fact is that modern edible agriculture is heavily dependent on fossil fuel and mined fertilizers. Until we solve that problem, it's better to stop growing too many plants, let native vegetation regrow and set loose the troops of goats and chickens. People have this idea that plants and vegetables are clean..they're not

Jeff_Brown 5y ago
If you want meat at the scale we eat it at now, let alone the one we'll eat it at when China and India have twice their current incomes, free range isn't going to cut it.
- iammisc 5y ago
  I don't disagree. I understand arguments for less meat. What I don't understand is abolition...that's just silly and a huge environmental catastrophe.
  - analog31 5y ago
    How is it a catastrophe? Why does the environment need domesticated livestock? Why does the food chain need us to be a predator?
    - iammisc 5y ago
      To be able to produce the calories currently made by meat using relatively meh land, we'd have to heavily increase our fertilizer use and deforestation to be able to grow enough human edible plants (grains or legumes really, since tubers are difficult to transport).
      - analog31 5y ago
        It's been my impression that eliminating meat consumption would produce less need for farmland and fertilizer, not more.

Bancakes 5y ago

Naturally, this will instill a dependency on labs and their patented technologies. I'm surprised I don't need a Monsanto license to bake bread at home.

runawaybottle 5y ago

It should be added that a large portion of the world already eats processed meat. That chicken in chicken broccoli isn’t straight chicken. We’ve already shown we care very little of what is actually meat if you put the right sauce on it.

awillen 5y ago

I think an interesting comparison is lab-grown diamonds. To me (and I suspect a lot of others here on HN), the idea of getting a mined diamond is just lunacy. Why on earth would I pay twice as much for something that is literally the same at the atomic level? And yet enormous numbers of people still do. I'm lucky to have a wife who is a scientist (she would've slapped me upside the head if I had wasted money on a mined diamond), but there are a lot of women out there who would be very upset to receive a lab-grown diamond. So while I very much agree with what you're saying here, and it just seems crazy to me that anyone else wouldn't, I do wonder what percent of folks will continue to demand "real" meat even when lab-grown is superior along all dimensions.

DantesKite 5y ago

I like the idea that capitalism will just outweigh any questions of morality, because it'll be so much cheaper and better than anything else.

sireat 5y ago

As Gibson wrote in 1984 (a few years earlier actually): "`Jesus,' Molly said, her own plate empty, `gimme that. You know what this costs?' She took his plate. `They gotta raise a whole animal for years and then they kill it. This isn't vat stuff.' She forked a mouthful up and chewed."

golergka 5y ago

Artificial diamonds are cheaper and more pure than the real thing.