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First chicken-free egg white product reaches US markets
- Flankk 5y agoThis type of stuff will eventually lead us to a vegan world. It's hard to see it now but future generations will find it harder to slaughter millions of animals when perfect meat substitutes are available. It will be similar to the slow transition from fossil fuels.
- krageon 5y agoChickens lay eggs. It is a fact of their life, there is nothing exploitative or bad about it (in principle, I will say that a lot of farms are garbage). "solving" egg whites is the furthest from the ideal that you are espousing that you could possibly get. What needs to be solved properly is dairy, specifically cheese. It is a giant range of foods and none of the current vegan offerings come even close to covering it.
- frrxcccfff 5y ago
- rsynnott 5y agoPer the article, cow-free cow's milk is beginning to become a thing. There are, incidentally, non-animal-welfare-related reasons that this stuff is interesting. In particular, there's the potential to considerably reduce the CO2 cost of producing egg whites this way, and the product could reasonably be expected to be safer.
- krageon 5y agoThose things are all very positive, it's true. I hadn't looked at it that way.
- sweetheart 5y ago> there is nothing exploitative or bad about it Have you seen what goes into industrial egg operations? How on Earth could you not call it exploitative or bad?
- krageon 5y agoYou are purposefully ignoring what my comment says and it is not only insulting, it is also boring.
- sweetheart 5y agoI directly quoted your comment, how is that purposefully ignoring it? You said other things, too, sure, but I was addressing the first part.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago> Have you seen what goes into industrial egg operations? How on Earth could you not call it exploitative or bad? White Leghorns, New Hampshire Reds, and Barred Plymouth Rocks (the common egg-laying chickens in industrial farms) are not exactly existential. Farming grasshoppers and maggots is at one end of the spectrum, with Orcas at Sea World on the other end. Egg farming is somewhere in between.
- sweetheart 5y agoIm not sure what point you’re trying to make.
- pmoriarty 5y agoA big reason for many people still eating meat is that they don't know about what goes on in fatory farming and slaughterhouses... and they don't want to know.
- AnonC 5y ago> Chickens lay eggs. It is a fact of their life, there is nothing exploitative or bad about it It seems like you don’t know much about the poultry industry in general. Your statement is like saying — to use an analogy — that human women give birth to human children as a fact of life, and that it’s ok to force them to give birth consecutively for decades without a break. Left to themselves, chickens would probably lay about 25 eggs in a whole year. In the industry, they’re forced to lay more than 300 eggs a year. There is simply no way that this is not constant physical abuse (even if you ignore battery cages, starvation, light exposure, etc.).
- krageon 5y agoYou are purposefully ignoring what my comment says and it is not only insulting, it is also boring.
- traviswt 5y agoYou don’t slaughter a chicken to get its eggs. On a more serious note, why do ethical vegan proponents feel it is better for an animal to never live at all? To be devoid of purpose due to lack of existence?
- hnrj95 5y agoi’m not vegan, but the egg industry is probably one of the most atrocious concerning animal welfare iiuc. they do slaughter chicks in droves—just not for meat
- traviswt 5y agoAnimal welfare should not focus on if an animal dies if the alternative is for it to never live at all. Any amount of time, even a day after hatching, is greater than zero. Instead we should focus on quality of life and how humane the death is.
- frrxcccfff 5y ago[flagged]
- macintux 5y agoHypothetically if slavery resulted in more children, we should never have abolished it?
- hunterb123 5y ago1. Freed slaves became independent. They aren't chickens which wouldn't survive in a non domesticated environment. 2. Farming chickens and enslaving people is not even remotely on the same level.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago“They aren't chickens which wouldn't survive in a non domesticated environment.” You would be very surprised how quickly animals can adapt to a new environment. There are plenty of examples of domesticated animals being released into the wild and doing just fine.
- InsaneOstrich 5y agoThis kind of research seems promising because it's not even a substitute, it claims to be the exact same product, only derived from a different source. A lot of people don't want weird plant based alternatives to animal products because of the taste or nutritional content.
- detritus 5y agoThe yolk's on them if they're only getting the white right - they're missing the best bit.
- tootie 5y agoI don't think this is intended for people to put in their fridge and make breakfast with as much it's going to replace egg whites in a lot of factory processed foods and bakeries.
- sweetheart 5y agoAnything that gets us closer to a world in which chickens are not farmed for their meat or eggs is good. The incomprehensible violence of factory farming for mere taste is unforgivable, and stuff like this is a small step to its undoing.
- GordonS 5y agoI'm aware that the USA has shockingly, appallingly low animal welfare standards, especially for a developed country - but chickens don't have to be farmed like that. I haven't bought a non-free range egg in at least a decade, and I make sure any poultry I buy has been reared with good welfare.
- dewey 5y ago> but chickens don't have to be farmed like that They probably have to if you want to keep the same, low and subsided price that people, who don't want or can pay more, got used to.
- slap_shot 5y agoI think I pay $8 a dozen for Vital Farms eggs. My assumption is that a lot of that price is for whatever overhead is required to run things a bit more humanely than the average.
- oezi 5y agoUnfortunately in the case of animal wellfare or Bio as the call it in Europe your extra money mostly goes to supermarkets as profit, to the low volume producers and less than 5% actually go towards a better product or animal wellfare. For things like eggs I would be very surprised if more than 1 cent extra per egg is actually spend towards improving the conditions of chickens.
- brimble 5y agoThis seems to undercut the "doing it ethically would significantly increase prices" argument for why it doesn't happen. Does this mean we could legislate the worst kinds of egg production out of existence and, once things settled down, only pay single-digit-percentages more for a dozen eggs, because most of the difference now is just middlemen gouging price-insensitive buyers? $5 more per dozen is a shock and would have people up in arms (probably literally), $0.20 more per dozen seems... not so bad.
- Fargoan 5y agoThe things yeast has been engineered to do keeps on surprising me. I hope this can quickly and cheaply scale up to make eggs obsolete.
- FrozenVoid 5y agoIt would require much more than "cheaply": 1.It has to provide same nutrition.e.g. egg with B12 removed would not be equivalent to chicken egg. 2.It could be privately produced like eggs. (As otherwise people depend on megacorporations abusing their mass production costs to monopolize the market) 3.It would need to have to compete with existing culinary preferences: i.e. recipes with eggs would not 'adapt to artificial eggs', with people continuing to use chicken eggs.
- divbzero 5y agoChicken-free egg products have become remarkably good. I bought and enjoyed ready-made folded egg recently and didn’t realize until afterwards that it was plant-based.
- tootie 5y agoTechnically, this isn't plant-based. The main ingredient is a replica of animal protein created by genetically modified yeast. So, it's fungus-based.
- boston_clone 5y agoThe parent comment is probably talking about JUST brand eggs, which is made primarily from mung bean. I scrambled some up this past weekend with kimchi for a great breakfast! Shameless plug for their site - https://www.ju.st/eat/just-egg https://www.ju.st/eat/just-egg
- tootie 5y agoUgh, I hate that they advertise as non-gmo.
- eliaspro 5y agoI can't wait to be able to buy stuff like this or "cow-free milk" in the supermarket, but it'll be a long long time due to the irrational European fear of GMOs which is a basic tool for most cases of bio-engineered yeasts.
- saiya-jin 5y agoWe in Europe have good reasons, in fact very good reasons to reject GMOs. Its a very powerful tool, very poorly tested, side effects on whole ecosystem not tested at all (aka if you don't brag about safety in ads, it means there is nothing to brag about). They often come from most amoral companies in the world, ie Monsanto which clearly don't care about human health and life, only profits at all costs. They are often pushed by political means (ie US business folks coming ie to UK to lobby for lowering food safety standards compared to those from EU right after it was clear Brexit is happening). You want to solve world hunger and feed those poorest and most unfortunate that would otherwise die? Sure go ahead, but at least attempt to be moral and show some serious research into collateral damage. You try to push that cheap untested crap on one of the world's most rich and free regions? Well clearly your chops are not good enough right now.
- fsflover 5y agoAnother FUD afer the nuclear. There is no evidence that GMO is dangerous at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food#Health_and_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food#Heal....
- pmoriarty 5y ago"I can't wait to be able to buy stuff like this or "cow-free milk" in the supermarket..." There's plenty of cow-free milks in the supermarket already: they're called nutmilks (ex: soy milk, almond milk, oat milk, etc). They've been around for decades. The main thing I'm waiting for are good vegan versions of sharp cheeses like sharp cheddar and blue cheese. A good vegan smoked gouda would be nice too. I've yet to taste creamy vegan ice cream that's on par with the best milk-based ice cream, but at least vegan ice creams can be pretty good and getting better.
- adrian_b 5y agoI would like very much to eat proteins of the same quality as animal proteins, but made by a fungus or yeast, instead of eating animal proteins. I hope that one day this would be possible. Nevertheless, I will never eat food having a secret chemical composition and/or food whose production is monopolized by the sole owner of some patents, as it appears to be the case with this product. Any kind of food must have a chemical composition that is completely published, because there have been far too many examples in history, of stupidity in assessing what is good or not too eat. I would not care if some non-essential food has a single-source, e.g. some fancy kind of chocolate. On the other hand for a food whose purpose is to provide the nutrients that keep you alive, e.g. the necessary daily intake of proteins, it must be possible to be produced everywhere and by everyone, without restrictions. It is acceptable for its production methods to be patented, but the patents must be licensed to anyone on FRAND terms. Until such conditions will be met by an animal-substitute food, it cannot really substitute the animal food, except for niche uses, regardless of how well it reproduces the taste and any other qualities of the original food.
- 2143 5y agoWhat's wrong with humans eating authentic meat and eggs? I mean, other creatures do it. I can't wait for the day when they come out with plant-free vegetables. If it already exists please don't tell me.
- twoxproblematic 5y ago
- zeveb 5y agoThese aren't really egg whites, since they don't come from … eggs. They could be called 'chicken-free egg white substitutes,' though.