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Lab-grown meat might be only 6 months away
- pointyhat 15y agoI wonder if they will grow human flavoured meat :)
- fractallyte 15y agoPork already has that infamy. Hence the slang for human flesh: 'long pig'.
- danssig 15y agoTalk about niche markets...
- stephencelis 15y ago> 2.5 centimeters long and 0.7 centimeters wide An improvement on the 8mm x 2mm meat reported on just a few months ago: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_specter http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_... But still, where is "6 months" coming from? A vague "year" figure is given by Mark Post (with the caveat that funding is needed), but that doesn't even bring into consideration the process of getting the meat out of the lab and into the grocery store.
- spacemanaki 15y agoI wondered the same thing about the 6 month figure. This is some aggregator site run by the SciFi/SyFy channel? It's the kind of pop science reporting I think is bordering on irresponsible, really. Their source is New Scientist requiring a signup: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128283.500-meat-without-slaughter-6-months-to-biosausages.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128283.500-meat-with... That article isn't much more informative though. That New Yorker article was much higher quality, as expected.
- Alex3917 15y agoRelevant NPR interview: http://www.npr.org/2011/08/30/139786731/tube-burgers-the-world-of-in-vitro-meat http://www.npr.org/2011/08/30/139786731/tube-burgers-the-wor...
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- sien 15y agoWould it be legal to produce a product called 'Soylent Green' ?
- apostlion 15y agoSoylent Green is people. Seriously though, an idea of a fake meat modified to taste like human meat is both troubling and intriguing.
- pavel_lishin 15y agoI'd try it. And then I'd stay up for nights on end, wondering - "Is that really what human meat tastes like?"
- bartonfink 15y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hufu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hufu It wasn't terrible, but it didn't make me want the real thing.
- stellar678 15y agoIt's been done: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hufu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hufu
- Sodaware 15y agoI'm skeptical that this is only 6 months away (6 years sounds more reasonable), but I'm still curious about the ramifications of synthetic meat. Would it be more energy efficient to grow meat in a factory than in the fields? What are the energy requirements for a pound of lab meat vs a pound of pig meat? More importantly, what would happen if it turned out cheaper and tasted the same? How many industries depend on eating meat? What would happen to all the pigs if nobody wanted to eat them?
- sliverstorm 15y agoEven more interesting, at least to me- what will the vegetarians do? As for all the animals, their populations would obviously get scaled back. The transition would not happen overnight, there would be plenty of time. Though you may have a point- domestic pigs would likely become pets and little else. However, chickens still lay eggs, cows still make milk, and sheep and goats still produce milk and wool.
- spacemanaki 15y agoThis vegetarian would rather eat "real" meat from a farm like Polyface (featured in Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and some documentaries) than eat lab meat, at least the first many iterations of lab meat. I don't want anyone to think I'm spreading FUD, I'm genuinely interested and concerned. Who knows what the nutritional consequences would be? We've only just started to realize that there might be some detrimental effects due to consuming the products of a corn-soy (duo-)monoculture farms, all in the name of efficiency, what of lab-meat? Plus, I'm just creeped out by it. I do think it's valuable work, and largely inevitable, and wouldn't suggest for a moment that we (humans) not fund this kind of research.
- gte910h 15y agoYour points about non-meat animal products still very much hold still. Pigs would be pets and sources of organ scaffolding for humans. Additionally, the yearlong production of milk in animals requires contant pregnancies, so will still cause many animals to killed. For instance, goat milk products kill far more male goats than any demands for the meat. There are multiple types of vegetarians. Ones who dislike the moral part of meat will not have an issue with the new meat. There are energy consumption vegetarians. If this new meat is considerably close to the energy requirements for a vegetarian diet, they may go for it. The health vegetarians who are afraid of adulterated food may go for this meat now, but the ones who are afraid of the general higher cancer risk from red- meat based diets, etc, will likely not be persuaded to change.
- DanI-S 15y agoThis is awesome. Presumably, at some point we'll have the process optimised to the point that it could be done in your own home, or at a local (supermarket?) level. Imagine having a kitchen appliance that produces meat from liquid feedstock. Even more speculatively, I wonder if the nutrient medium could be produced from other kitchen scraps? That's basically what animals were kept for in the past. Aside, it sounds like efforts are focused on replicating pork/beef. It seems like some kind of fish might be easier, since texture is less of an issue, but I guess that's not what the US palate demands.
- sliverstorm 15y agoNot only do markets appreciate beef, but they will pay top dollar for fancy high-quality beef. Once someone gets growing beef down, it probably won't be much of a stretch to develop top-quality sirloin, and more repeatably. Additionally, beef is a good target ecologically speaking. Fish and birds are much more efficient at energy conversion, so there's a much larger margin of energy and material savings to be had with beef. As yet even another bonus, I suspect the ratio of edible meat to body mass in beef is much lower than in fish.
- wpietri 15y ago> Not only do markets appreciate beef, but they will pay top dollar for fancy high-quality beef. Maybe. It depends on the extent to which high-end beef consumers are paying for the direct experience (taste, texture, mouth feel, etc) versus other things. For example, consider the scam that is high-end speaker cable. People pay a lot of extra money not for real quality, but for imagined quality, exclusivity, and brand association. The same thing definitely goes on with wine and cheese, and I'd suspect some beef purchase will be like that, too.
- mey 15y agoProper Kobe Beef falls into that category (and it's non-kobe counter part Wagyu). People take this and make burgers out of it, not because it makes a good burger (it doesn't), but because it is expensive. (See Vegas) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_beef http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_beef http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagy%C5%AB http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagy%C5%AB You can think of it as the Scotch or Champagne of the beef world, a geographic locality owning a market in the high end, and the external imitators.
- richcollins 15y agoIt's likely that the lab grown "meat" won't be a proper substitute for the meat that we evolved to eat. Food is more complicated than it outwardly appears (i.e. a collection of muscle cells != meat) http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?pagewanted=print http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t....
- asciimo 15y agoWe didn't evolve to eat happy meals, pizza, and onion rings, either. We evolved to exploit of a broad spectrum of foods, and this new food will probably fall within that spectrum.
- TheEzEzz 15y agoAgreed. As a carnivore with a conscience I'm all about jumping on the lab meat bandwagon. But as someone big on natural foods and skeptical of the current state of nutritional knowledge, I would be hesitant to base a substantial part of my protein requirements on this.
- ams6110 15y agototally agree. I wouldn't eat it. And I hope it would be required to be clearly labeled as to its origin.
- angryasian 15y agothis sounds more like industry FUD. People are able to get there daily sustenance from gruel. Yes it may not fit your definition of food, but this is a first world complaint. There are millions of people around the world starving, that this technique could help.
- spacemanaki 15y agoDid you read that linked Michael Pollan piece? If not, please do, it's good. So is his other work. He's not an industry shill spreading FUD. There are serious gaps in our understanding of nutrition. Suggesting that lab grown meat might lack something that "real" meat has isn't FUD. There may be more nutritionally sound food sources than vat meat for people currently starving or subsisting on gruel.
- sorbus 15y agoIn vitro meat has been coming (in that it's been researched) for at least the last 16 years, and there have been edible forms since 2000. None of the other breakthroughs have lead to large-scale production, which I believe was due to the poor taste and that it's currently more expensive to produce than normal meat, per-pound. So don't get your hopes too high.
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- trebor 15y agoThis is gross! Can they guarantee that the synthetic meat is healthy? Like, will it contain CLA, B-12, Omega-3s (found in grass-fed cows, and well-raised pigs), B-12, and so on? We get a lot of important nutrients from animal meat and fat that are harder to process from plant or synthetic sources.
- gfodor 15y agoGrosser than eating something that was once a living, breathing, feeling animal? Probably not. (I'm a meat eater but still acknowledge how horrible it is.)
- trebor 15y agoOur subjective opinions on how "gross" this is won't get us anywhere. I don't find killing and eating animals to be gross—eating something that literally wasn't alive (I don't find cells reproducing in that way to meet my definition of "living") is repulsive to me. I source all my meat possible from local farms that raise the animals in free-range methods, and slaughter them in ethical ways (IE, no shocking or killing them when they're in a panic, like a CAFO would). And that's as ethical and as kind as a meat eater can get, with no exceptions. But the nutritional point I raise isn't a light issue. These are animal cells coaxed into growing in foreign conditions. Just like hydroponic tomatoes have no taste, and possibly poor nutrition too, the "flesh vats" of the future will have nutritional problems too.
- puredemo 15y ago>Our subjective opinions on how "gross" this is won't get us anywhere. Then why did you start off by saying it was gross? >But the nutritional point I raise isn't a light issue. These are animal cells coaxed into growing in foreign conditions. Just like hydroponic tomatoes have no taste, and possibly poor nutrition too, the "flesh vats" of the future will have nutritional problems too. This will obviously be studied and tweaked at length. Input --> output.
- swah 15y agoI'll feed the worms one day too.
- jvoorhis 15y agoApparently nobody was paying attention when Meat Tube won Best New GMO in 08. http://www.ilovemeattube.com/about.html http://www.ilovemeattube.com/about.html
- jayair 15y agoI'm not sure if you are joking but that looks like a parody site.
- artursapek 15y agoThere's not much of a wait left until the day a man will be able to come home from work, eat a lab-grown Bratwurst, have sex with his sex robot, and then relax with an electric cigarette.
- kenjackson 15y agoAll that, yet he's still commuting home from work.
- burgerbrain 15y agoI think I would always commute, even if "come home from work" only means leave the room I only enter while on the clock. Blurring the line between home and work too much sounds terribly unappealing to me. Human contact is nice too.
- theotherdouche 15y ago> Human contact is nice too. Said the man with the sexbot.
- danssig 15y agoAre you talking about the commuting or the work? Why would he be working at all? We only have to work now because resources are finite. When they are no longer finite what will be the point of working? I just need a food/water machine. If, for some reason, rent still costs then I'll just find the best paying manual labor job and send my robots off to work there.
- burgerbrain 15y agoBecause work is fun.
- danssig 15y agoWorking on what I want to work on is fun. Making rich people even richer by rewriting the same kind of CRUD apps over and over is not remotely fun. It pays really well though.
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- stoph 15y agoMy first thought here is that fast food chains will try and pick this up to cut costs, it can be grown cheaper than farming.
- jessedhillon 15y agoMy thought was pet foods would be ahead of human foods in adopting this, due to, well, a less-than-discriminating end-user.
- cpeterso 15y agoThe other alternative meat: Japan scientist synthesizes meat from human feces http://www.digitaltrends.com/international/japanese-scientists-creates-meat-out-of-feces/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/international/japanese-scientis... Somehow this feels like a Vonnegut plotline: population boom equals food shortage. Solution? Synthesize food from human waste matter. Absurd yes, but Japanese scientists have actually discovered a way to create edible steaks from human feces.
- kentbuckle 15y agoThere is some evidence this might be a hoax: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/06/23/japan_feces_meat_viral http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/06/23/japan...
- laglad 15y agoMolecular gastronomy should converge with this. Imagine the wacky tastes and textures that we would be able to create.
- joezydeco 15y agoMolecular gastronomy is technology taken from the industrial food sciences, so they're probably one step ahead of you already.
- mambodog 15y agoA news story I saw last night about synthetic sausages contained a vox pop from a woman who claimed that she would not eat them because it was "unethical". I have to say, my mind was blown by her apparent construction of ethics.
- wlievens 15y agoStrange indeed. If her answer had been that it's unnatural, she may have a point (not one I'd uphold thouhg), but unethical makes no sense.
- superkarn 15y agoEasier to swallow than this http://www.dailytech.com/Japanese+Make+Delicious+Nourishing+Steaks+From+Human+Feces/article21932.htm http://www.dailytech.com/Japanese+Make+Delicious+Nourishing+...
- beatpanda 15y agoMan, this is great, because look at how well every other processed food has worked out for human nutrition!
- bobroberts 15y agoIf they can compete with textured soy protean then they have a viable market with pretty low technical requirements. As they develop texture and structure they could replace fajita and stir fry meats, maybe nuggets. Lots of markets as the product matures.
- ck2 15y agoI am 100% for devastating the livestock industry within my lifetime but I think they are going to fight this on every level, especially politically, so it's doomed.
- kleim 15y agoWhen will I be able to print my own T-bone with my 3D printer?
- free 15y agoInteresting article and I hope it becomes a reality in usage very soon. I have been a vegetarian since birth. Earlier it was because my family was vegetarian and later it was because of my belief that I wanted to cause minimum harm to living thing. But I don't know why my instant reaction was that I am not going to eat it. All my reasons for not wanting to eat meat are resolved by this. No on suffers. Yet I don't think I would touch that. I am all for it and I think it would be a very good step in many ways.
- sankara 15y agoHypothetical question. Let's say this fruitions and is widely popular. Wouldn't that mean we would simply stop rearing cattle and poultry? Would that mean the species will go extinct? Now isn't that cruelty.
- adrianN 15y agoI don't think you can be cruel to a species because a species doesn't feel anxiety and pain.
- sankara 15y ago"Now isn't that cruelty" - was meant at the species going extinct. Just a pun. Not a literal comparison with slaughter.
- dagw 15y agoI imagine that, no matter how popular this gets, there will always be a market for real cows, pigs and chickens. It's just going to end up being a high end luxury market. A whole animal for roasting is something that will never be able to made in a lab. Also from what I understand this process produces fairly homogeneous meat, meaning you're probably going to need a real animal to make more interesting cuts, or 'bi-products' like heart, marrow and liver. Combine that with the fact that there will probably also always be a market for real leather (which will also become a high end luxury product) and I can see cows being reared for a long time after this process becomes wildly popular .
- Leynos 15y agoI imagine that there would continue to be the equivalent of "rare breeds" farms if this ever took off.
- glyphobet 15y agoIf lab-grown meat qualifies as vegetarian, will that mean that lab-grown human meat won't count as cannibalism? Wacky.
- fractallyte 15y agoA few years back, some wit on Slashdot (responding on a similar topic) wondered whether vegans might object to eating meat grown from their own cells... That's even more twisty. Interesting, though.
- billswift 15y agohttp://www.amazon.com/Contingency-Cannibalism-Superhardcore-Survivalisms-Little/dp/1581600259/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314963383&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Contingency-Cannibalism-Superhardcore-...
- skrebbel 15y agoEarlier results of this process at Eindhoven University of Technology included that "due to safety restrictions, the scientists were not allowed to eat the meat, which tasted bland". (sorry, lost the reference)
- lobo_tuerto 15y agoWondering why the page was with no content. It seems to be Chrome (15.0.865.0 dev), loads good on Firefox.
- cmars232 15y agoAs a BBQ loving Texan, I find this fascinating. On the one hand, it does seem kind of creepy, on the other, this could be some cool resilient community-building technology to create a real alternative to the current food economy. I don't think this will ever be a complete replacement for real meat. There are such subtleties to how an animal lives and what it eats that affect its taste. Wild hogs and domestic pigs are the same animal but taste entirely different (I prefer the wild variety). Still, I'd prefer higher quality lab-grown meat created under safe and open conditions with some free range/hunted organic on the side to the factory farmed meat we're stuck with today. I drive 35 miles out of my way for groceries every week to avoid that stuff.