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>> Humbird likened the process of researching the report to encountering an impenetrable “Wall of No”—his term for the barriers in thermodynamics, cell metaboli

>> Humbird likened the process of researching the report to encountering an impenetrable “Wall of No”—his term for the barriers in thermodynamics, cell metabolism, bioreactor design, ingredient costs, facility construction, and other factors that will need to be overcome before cultivated protein can be produced cheaply enough to displace traditional meat. > I have no experience in the area, but just to point out that you could equally apply some of those arguments to meat production. > The current meat industry is only cost effective because we've spent the last few millennia optimising the everloving hell out of it Eh. I'd probably say the meat industry is cost effective because they have a superior bioreactor design: rugged, self-contained, low maintenance, and cheaply replicated. Lab grown meat probably can't compete until they re-invent "animals" in the lab.

wussboy 5y ago
Maybe that’s the solution. Is there some level of “living” things that has all the same qualities of a cow, but that we would feel comfortable raising and slaughtering in inhumane conditions? If not, what makes eating cultivated tissue better?
- mjevans 5y ago
  Imagine an industrial life support system, I would venture our medical tech is either there or almost there for it. The hard part where I'd envision the greatest challenge is an artificial immune system that works in the tanks but absolutely won't harm people after the vat grown products are taken out of the loop. As a bonus this same type of technology could work for growing organs and any other biological part.
  - newsbinator 5y ago
    In Dune, they’re called Axlotl Tanks. One benefit I see is lab-grown meat won’t come with misfolded proteins. After we solve most bacteria and viruses, this’ll be the next thing you solve, and lab-grown meat probably solves it out of the box.
    - samplatt 5y ago
      Not sure the Dune simile is a good one, here... in the prequals they're shown to be humans hooked up to nutrient feed lines. Or that was the point and I missed it...
      - pas 5y ago
        Not just in the prequels. Not just any humans. Humans with a womb.
  - pas 5y ago
    Isn't the typical solution for this is to isolate the vats? Eg just like chip fabs are kept clean.
    - native_samples 5y ago
      Yes and the article discusses this extensively. The problem is that it's very hard to achieve the necessary level of cleanliness. The article mentions needing to take apart, clean and re-assemble entire plants because some bacteria were hiding in small pits inside imperfect welds!
      - pas 5y ago
        Similar to how hard it is to clean MRSA or prions. Hot high pressure CO2 does it. (It's cheap, readily available everywhere. It's a process problem. It's hard to do it in hospitals in a safe and automated way because humans, but in a factory the pesky humans are not a problem.)
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  Yeah, I know the thought of semi brainless cows all hooked up to some machine, Matrix-style, may seem like a horror show to many, but from my perspective, it's the ethical thing to do. The primary reason I try to cut down on eating meat is from an animal rights perspective - I just can't grok the cognitive dissonance it takes to ooh and ahh over the cute, "human-like" reactions of, say, a cow getting a backscratch on r/aww, while simultaneously munching down on a burger. If I could eat meat from a creature that I knew felt no pain and basically had no higher emotions at all, I wouldn't have an ethical dilemma over it.
  - fighterpilot 5y ago
    > semi brainless cows ... it's the ethical thing to do A second way to make it ethical in terms of animal suffering is to effectively start eating road kill. That is, you raise a farm of cows, treat them well, and eat them when they die naturally. A third way is to raise a farm of cows, anaesthetise them via their food when they're old enough, and kill them in their sleep. It's more debatable than the above but I believe it's ethical as long as it's done right (which it won't be, in practice). This all of course ignores GHG emissions and loss of biodiversity due to the need to produce large amounts of feed and large uses of land. But speaking strictly from the cow's perspective, I think it is ethical.
    - hoseja 5y ago
      The meat would probably be disgusting.
    - netjiro 5y ago
      > when they die naturally. For many (most?) animals, predation or starvation is the "natural" way to die before actual old age would be an issue. Many suffer horribly towards actual old age death. I think this is a children's tale disney style myth we've grown up with. I would argue that slaughter is more "humane" if done right. But significantly better to not breed animals for food to begin with, if there is an alternative. Even if the alternative costs significantly more.
    - petewailes 5y ago
- maximus-decimus 5y ago
  Yes, it's called a cow.
  - jrootabega 5y ago
    The key is "inhumane". There are many people ok with farming and slaughter, but not in the conditions necessary to accomplish it at the current scale, convenience, and price the world consumes.
    - maximus-decimus 5y ago
      I would be really surprised if none of those people had ethical problems with a Matrix-style farm of brain-dead cows too. It's like asking what they prefer between raising brain-dead children in vats vs raising like in the movie The Island. I'm not sure one dystopia is better than the other.
- telesilla 5y ago
  Insect protein is pretty good. I don't get why people are OK with the messy, cruel slaughter of pigs and cows who have family lives and friends, but eating insects, ugh?
- shinryuu 5y ago
  Insects. The meat would then be reprocessed into something different.
  - dtech 5y ago
    Insect cells don't have the compounds that makes meat taste like meat.
    - skocznymroczny 5y ago
      On the other hand, meat doesn't really have much of a taste. It's more about the texture. If you forget to add spices to your meat, it tastes like nothing.
      - Jensson 5y ago
        Meat tastes a lot, if you can't taste it then you have destroyed your taste buds with spices or something.
      - dtech 5y ago
        English is not my first language, with taste I meant to include flavor, texture, mouthfeel etc.
      - vidarh 5y ago
        That's a truly bizarre assertion. When I eat a good steak, I don't want spices on it, because I enjoy the taste of the meat. Different meats have a wide range of flavour.
      - Darmody 5y ago
        That's completely false. Even the most bland piece of meat has some taste. I understand you don't eat chicken breast without spices or some sauce but most pieces of meat are pretty good as they are, especially if it has some fat. Maybe if you grew up somewhere where spices are used a lot you can't enjoy food without them, but that doesn't make your comment true.
  - fourtrees 5y ago
distribot 5y ago
Ruggedness and low maintenance is kind of debatable. A lot of that is just anti-biotic overuse. Which is a big issue.
- danielheath 5y ago
  As I have read, that’s primarily a difference between pasture and feedlot breeds; pasture breeds mostly do fine without antibiotics whereas feedlot breeds require constant attention.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    Also worth noting that antibiotics in meat production is not only about health. For unclear reasons (or at least, it was unclear years ago when I learned about this) giving cows antibiotics just makes them grow much better and fatter. Presumably, there are bacteria that inhibit growth without making the cows visibly sick. Result: antibiotics get deployed to all cows as a general growth enhancer, rather than focusing on actual sickness.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Ruggedness and low maintenance is kind of debatable. A lot of that is just anti-biotic overuse. Which is a big issue. Not compared to a bioreactor. From the OP: > The simple reason: In cell culture, sterility is paramount. Animal cells “grow so slowly that if we get any bacteria in a culture—well, then we’ve just got a bacteria culture,” Humbird said. “Bacteria grow every 20 minutes, and the animal cells are stuck at 24 hours. You’re going to crush the culture in hours with a contamination event.” > Viruses also present a unique problem. Because cultured animal cells are alive, they can get infected just the way living animals can. > “There are documented cases of, basically, operators getting the culture sick,” Humbird said. “Not even because the operator themselves had a cold. But there was a virus particle on a glove. Or not cleaned out of a line. The culture has no immune system. If there’s virus particles in there that can infect the cells, they will. And generally, the cells just die, and then there’s no product anymore. You just dump it.” It's like comparing steel plate to a piece of tissue paper. Sure, an armor-piercing bullet can defeat the plate, but pretty much everything can defeat the tissue paper.
bweitzman 5y ago
The meat industry is also cost effective due to massive government subsidies, at least in the US. Would these subsidies be available to lab grown meat operations?
- laingc 5y ago
  The New Zealand meat and dairy industries do not receive subsidies after radical market deregulation during the Labour government of '84. We have a highly efficient and profitable sector, mainly for the reason that we compete in fairly extreme conditions against subsidised international players. Note that this process incurred significant pain for many individuals while the industry reoriented and consolidated, and I am not inviting any argument around environmental impacts (which I would contend are bad, but also clearly less bad than other countries). So yes, "natural" meat can be competitive and efficient without government subsidies.
  - lcpriest 5y ago
    All that is true, but - we also don’t force farmers to internalize the externalities created by their industry. Southland farmers themselves are saying that if they had to comply with proposed water and soil quality regulations that they wouldn’t be able to exist due to the increased costs involved. The backlash even from the introduction of a heavy vehicles tax are representative of how much these farmers think they rely on the unpriced benefits they are getting.
    - kibibu 5y ago
      > if they had to comply with proposed water and soil quality regulations that they wouldn’t be able to exist due to the increased costs involved People always say things like this until they are forced to, and somehow find a way. (Particularly if imports were charged similar tariffs)
      - stkdump 5y ago
        > People always say things like this until they are forced to, and somehow find a way. That is one of two possible outcomes. The other is that the sector just dies off and relocates to another place on earth, where externalities don't have to be considered, maybe for strategic reason. This has happened many times.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
> Lab grown meat probably can't compete until they re-invent "animals" in the lab. Yes, but this also means it's going to be huge improvement over "regular" meat - they don't have to reinvent whole animals, just the parts that matter. I find it weird to postulate deal-breaking fundamental limits for a process that's a strict subset of a process we've been using and improving for thousands of years.
- ianbicking 5y ago
  > Yes, but this also means it's going to be huge improvement over "regular" meat - they don't have to reinvent whole animals, just the parts that matter. Meanwhile breeding will be working toward the same end from the other direction: minimizing unnecessary animal components. We have chickens that are impaired by the weight of their own overgrown breasts, and very possibly there are already other organs that are withering away under breeding pressure. Both directions of advancement are disturbing. I think the breeding program, if it reaches this optimal efficiency conclusion, is probably more disturbing. But also much easier.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > I find it weird to postulate deal-breaking fundamental limits for a process that's a strict subset of a process we've been using and improving for thousands of years. The process that they're talking about isn't anything like the one we've been using for thousands of years. "Lab grown meat" is about growing cells in vats. Very different. It almost feels like trying to make a car cheaper by not having tires and a windshield (and no substitute). Sure you might be able to get something that limps along, but the things you're dropping solve important problems. Trying to grow massive amounts of animal cells with no immune system seems just as foolish.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > It almost feels like trying to make a car cheaper by not having tires and a windshield (and no substitute). The way I see it, it's like people were buying cars only to hook stuff up to the alternator to power it, and someone figured maybe we should just build a combustion engine in a box, optimized for electricity generation, so we don't have to deal with the rest of the car.

wussboy 5y ago

Maybe that’s the solution. Is there some level of “living” things that has all the same qualities of a cow, but that we would feel comfortable raising and slaughtering in inhumane conditions? If not, what makes eating cultivated tissue better?

mjevans 5y ago
Imagine an industrial life support system, I would venture our medical tech is either there or almost there for it. The hard part where I'd envision the greatest challenge is an artificial immune system that works in the tanks but absolutely won't harm people after the vat grown products are taken out of the loop. As a bonus this same type of technology could work for growing organs and any other biological part.
- newsbinator 5y ago
  In Dune, they’re called Axlotl Tanks. One benefit I see is lab-grown meat won’t come with misfolded proteins. After we solve most bacteria and viruses, this’ll be the next thing you solve, and lab-grown meat probably solves it out of the box.
  - samplatt 5y ago
    Not sure the Dune simile is a good one, here... in the prequals they're shown to be humans hooked up to nutrient feed lines. Or that was the point and I missed it...
    - pas 5y ago
      Not just in the prequels. Not just any humans. Humans with a womb.
- pas 5y ago
  Isn't the typical solution for this is to isolate the vats? Eg just like chip fabs are kept clean.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    Yes and the article discusses this extensively. The problem is that it's very hard to achieve the necessary level of cleanliness. The article mentions needing to take apart, clean and re-assemble entire plants because some bacteria were hiding in small pits inside imperfect welds!
    - pas 5y ago
      Similar to how hard it is to clean MRSA or prions. Hot high pressure CO2 does it. (It's cheap, readily available everywhere. It's a process problem. It's hard to do it in hospitals in a safe and automated way because humans, but in a factory the pesky humans are not a problem.)
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
Yeah, I know the thought of semi brainless cows all hooked up to some machine, Matrix-style, may seem like a horror show to many, but from my perspective, it's the ethical thing to do. The primary reason I try to cut down on eating meat is from an animal rights perspective - I just can't grok the cognitive dissonance it takes to ooh and ahh over the cute, "human-like" reactions of, say, a cow getting a backscratch on r/aww, while simultaneously munching down on a burger. If I could eat meat from a creature that I knew felt no pain and basically had no higher emotions at all, I wouldn't have an ethical dilemma over it.
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  > semi brainless cows ... it's the ethical thing to do A second way to make it ethical in terms of animal suffering is to effectively start eating road kill. That is, you raise a farm of cows, treat them well, and eat them when they die naturally. A third way is to raise a farm of cows, anaesthetise them via their food when they're old enough, and kill them in their sleep. It's more debatable than the above but I believe it's ethical as long as it's done right (which it won't be, in practice). This all of course ignores GHG emissions and loss of biodiversity due to the need to produce large amounts of feed and large uses of land. But speaking strictly from the cow's perspective, I think it is ethical.
  - hoseja 5y ago
    The meat would probably be disgusting.
  - netjiro 5y ago
    > when they die naturally. For many (most?) animals, predation or starvation is the "natural" way to die before actual old age would be an issue. Many suffer horribly towards actual old age death. I think this is a children's tale disney style myth we've grown up with. I would argue that slaughter is more "humane" if done right. But significantly better to not breed animals for food to begin with, if there is an alternative. Even if the alternative costs significantly more.
  - petewailes 5y ago
maximus-decimus 5y ago
Yes, it's called a cow.
- jrootabega 5y ago
  The key is "inhumane". There are many people ok with farming and slaughter, but not in the conditions necessary to accomplish it at the current scale, convenience, and price the world consumes.
  - maximus-decimus 5y ago
    I would be really surprised if none of those people had ethical problems with a Matrix-style farm of brain-dead cows too. It's like asking what they prefer between raising brain-dead children in vats vs raising like in the movie The Island. I'm not sure one dystopia is better than the other.
telesilla 5y ago
Insect protein is pretty good. I don't get why people are OK with the messy, cruel slaughter of pigs and cows who have family lives and friends, but eating insects, ugh?
shinryuu 5y ago
Insects. The meat would then be reprocessed into something different.
- dtech 5y ago
  Insect cells don't have the compounds that makes meat taste like meat.
  - skocznymroczny 5y ago
    On the other hand, meat doesn't really have much of a taste. It's more about the texture. If you forget to add spices to your meat, it tastes like nothing.
    - Jensson 5y ago
      Meat tastes a lot, if you can't taste it then you have destroyed your taste buds with spices or something.
    - dtech 5y ago
      English is not my first language, with taste I meant to include flavor, texture, mouthfeel etc.
    - vidarh 5y ago
      That's a truly bizarre assertion. When I eat a good steak, I don't want spices on it, because I enjoy the taste of the meat. Different meats have a wide range of flavour.
    - Darmody 5y ago
      That's completely false. Even the most bland piece of meat has some taste. I understand you don't eat chicken breast without spices or some sauce but most pieces of meat are pretty good as they are, especially if it has some fat. Maybe if you grew up somewhere where spices are used a lot you can't enjoy food without them, but that doesn't make your comment true.
- fourtrees 5y ago

distribot 5y ago

Ruggedness and low maintenance is kind of debatable. A lot of that is just anti-biotic overuse. Which is a big issue.

danielheath 5y ago
As I have read, that’s primarily a difference between pasture and feedlot breeds; pasture breeds mostly do fine without antibiotics whereas feedlot breeds require constant attention.
- native_samples 5y ago
  Also worth noting that antibiotics in meat production is not only about health. For unclear reasons (or at least, it was unclear years ago when I learned about this) giving cows antibiotics just makes them grow much better and fatter. Presumably, there are bacteria that inhibit growth without making the cows visibly sick. Result: antibiotics get deployed to all cows as a general growth enhancer, rather than focusing on actual sickness.
tablespoon 5y ago
> Ruggedness and low maintenance is kind of debatable. A lot of that is just anti-biotic overuse. Which is a big issue. Not compared to a bioreactor. From the OP: > The simple reason: In cell culture, sterility is paramount. Animal cells “grow so slowly that if we get any bacteria in a culture—well, then we’ve just got a bacteria culture,” Humbird said. “Bacteria grow every 20 minutes, and the animal cells are stuck at 24 hours. You’re going to crush the culture in hours with a contamination event.” > Viruses also present a unique problem. Because cultured animal cells are alive, they can get infected just the way living animals can. > “There are documented cases of, basically, operators getting the culture sick,” Humbird said. “Not even because the operator themselves had a cold. But there was a virus particle on a glove. Or not cleaned out of a line. The culture has no immune system. If there’s virus particles in there that can infect the cells, they will. And generally, the cells just die, and then there’s no product anymore. You just dump it.” It's like comparing steel plate to a piece of tissue paper. Sure, an armor-piercing bullet can defeat the plate, but pretty much everything can defeat the tissue paper.

bweitzman 5y ago

The meat industry is also cost effective due to massive government subsidies, at least in the US. Would these subsidies be available to lab grown meat operations?

laingc 5y ago
The New Zealand meat and dairy industries do not receive subsidies after radical market deregulation during the Labour government of '84. We have a highly efficient and profitable sector, mainly for the reason that we compete in fairly extreme conditions against subsidised international players. Note that this process incurred significant pain for many individuals while the industry reoriented and consolidated, and I am not inviting any argument around environmental impacts (which I would contend are bad, but also clearly less bad than other countries). So yes, "natural" meat can be competitive and efficient without government subsidies.
- lcpriest 5y ago
  All that is true, but - we also don’t force farmers to internalize the externalities created by their industry. Southland farmers themselves are saying that if they had to comply with proposed water and soil quality regulations that they wouldn’t be able to exist due to the increased costs involved. The backlash even from the introduction of a heavy vehicles tax are representative of how much these farmers think they rely on the unpriced benefits they are getting.
  - kibibu 5y ago
    > if they had to comply with proposed water and soil quality regulations that they wouldn’t be able to exist due to the increased costs involved People always say things like this until they are forced to, and somehow find a way. (Particularly if imports were charged similar tariffs)
    - stkdump 5y ago
      > People always say things like this until they are forced to, and somehow find a way. That is one of two possible outcomes. The other is that the sector just dies off and relocates to another place on earth, where externalities don't have to be considered, maybe for strategic reason. This has happened many times.

TeMPOraL 5y ago

> Lab grown meat probably can't compete until they re-invent "animals" in the lab. Yes, but this also means it's going to be huge improvement over "regular" meat - they don't have to reinvent whole animals, just the parts that matter. I find it weird to postulate deal-breaking fundamental limits for a process that's a strict subset of a process we've been using and improving for thousands of years.

ianbicking 5y ago
> Yes, but this also means it's going to be huge improvement over "regular" meat - they don't have to reinvent whole animals, just the parts that matter. Meanwhile breeding will be working toward the same end from the other direction: minimizing unnecessary animal components. We have chickens that are impaired by the weight of their own overgrown breasts, and very possibly there are already other organs that are withering away under breeding pressure. Both directions of advancement are disturbing. I think the breeding program, if it reaches this optimal efficiency conclusion, is probably more disturbing. But also much easier.
tablespoon 5y ago
> I find it weird to postulate deal-breaking fundamental limits for a process that's a strict subset of a process we've been using and improving for thousands of years. The process that they're talking about isn't anything like the one we've been using for thousands of years. "Lab grown meat" is about growing cells in vats. Very different. It almost feels like trying to make a car cheaper by not having tires and a windshield (and no substitute). Sure you might be able to get something that limps along, but the things you're dropping solve important problems. Trying to grow massive amounts of animal cells with no immune system seems just as foolish.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > It almost feels like trying to make a car cheaper by not having tires and a windshield (and no substitute). The way I see it, it's like people were buying cars only to hook stuff up to the alternator to power it, and someone figured maybe we should just build a combustion engine in a box, optimized for electricity generation, so we don't have to deal with the rest of the car.