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> ...the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will need to inspect the company’s production facilities and product While I'm not undercutting the work that th

> ...the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will need to inspect the company’s production facilities and product While I'm not undercutting the work that the USDA places into regulating consumer safety in the food supply chain, isn't it crazy to think that lab-grown meats are probably going to be under higher scrutiny from a food safety perspective than farm grown and butchered meats?

couchand 4y ago
> isn't it crazy no, it's not
dottedmag 4y ago
Is it really higher scrutiny, or the same scrutiny USDA applies to farm-grown/butchered meats?
roflyear 4y ago
I think so, yeah. It isn't crazy b.c that is how lobbying works in the US, but it is crazy b.c you'd expect a lab to be better defacto than a slaughterhouse.
- lzooz 4y ago
  >you'd expect a lab to be better defacto than a slaughterhouse That worked well in Wuhan
  - DoctorOW 4y ago
    What reason do you theorize the USDA wasn't present in Wuhan?
  - roflyear 4y ago
    Lately going on HN is like walking into my local gun shop ...
    - DoctorOW 4y ago
      I've yet to see a satisfying solution to the hyperpolarization of previously neutral spaces. HN is the gold standard in moderation IMO but still isn't immune.
      - roflyear 4y ago
        I don't know what the solution is, but some communities I'm a member of react aggressively towards it. That seems to work.
TheCoreh 4y ago
Nah, considering one has well understood risks and has been practiced for thousands of years, while the other approach is brand new, I think it's reasonable. It can also be a selling point for lab-grown meat, the fact that it is safer and free of bacteria.
- roflyear 4y ago
  Our modern way of raising animals for slaughter is just that - modern. Not thousands of years. We have not been pumping steroids into the meat we eat for thousands of years. We give our food substances that fatten them up as quickly as possible, and we're surprised we're getting fat.
  - jodrellblank 4y ago
    We give our food water, but it doesn't quench our thirst. We give our food grass, but it doesn't tear up our teeth. Our food has poop in it, but doesn't taste of poop. Is there any evidence that steroids which are digested by a cow linger in its body as an active substance for years, in a large enough quantity to have a steroid effect after going through another creature's digestive system? Isn't obesity rather well explained by cheap easily available food, carb heavy diet and increasingly sedentary lifestyle? Otherwise, cows grow to much bigger than people, much quicker than people do. Why don't their natural growth hormones affect us in the same way?
    - roflyear 4y ago
      - jodrellblank 4y ago
        If you think asking you to support your claims is "some kind of weird joke", it isn't. Are you basing your claim on evidence? Then link some. US cheese consumption has gone up from 20lbs per person-year in 1975 to almost 40lbs per person-year by 2020[1]. Total dairy consumption up to record high levels from below 550lbs per person-year to over 650lbs per person-year milkfat equivalent. Compared to 1970, Americans average grain eating went from 400 Calories per day to nearly 600. Fats and oils went from ~330 Calories per day to almost 600. Sugars went up, fruit and fruit juices went up. Daily Calorie averages went from eating 2025/day to 2481/day between 1970 and 2010, while beef eating went down.[2] At the same time "Over the last 50 years in the U.S. we estimate that daily occupation-related energy expenditure has decreased by more than 100 calories, and this reduction in energy expenditure accounts for a significant portion of the increase in mean U.S. body weights for women and men."[3] At the same time, TV watching went from 4.5hrs/day in 1950 to nearly 8hrs/day in 2018[4]. "Eating more" and "moving less" is a much better explanation for "we wonder why we are fat" than your explanation. No magical [1] https://www.idfa.org/news/american-dairy-consumption-reaches-all-time-high-cheese-butter-and-yogurt-continue-to-drive-growth-for-dairy-industry https://www.idfa.org/news/american-dairy-consumption-reaches... [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/12/13/whats-on-your-table-how-americas-diet-has-changed-over-the-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/12/13/whats-on-yo... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3102055/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3102055/ [4] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/when-did-tv-watching-peak/561464/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/when-...
Retric 4y ago
From a certain point of view lab grown meat is a high risk yolo solution. Animals have a highly effective immune system pumping out hunter killer nano bots to actively fight off invasive microorganisms, lab grown meat doesn’t. Similarly it’s far easier to tell of an animal is extremely infected.
- ben_w 4y ago
  > lab grown meat doesn’t I'm so not a biologist, so: why would that be harder than also lab growing the bit of their bodies which makes the various immune cells?
  - zaroth 4y ago
    Extremely unimaginably harder to produce to working immune system in a lab alongside your cell culture soup you want to market as “meat”. Like, an immune system needs to be trained, needs to be maintained, needs plumbing, needs waste removal… Kinda like the difference between playing catch in the backyard and launching rockets to outer space? Plus all that extra stuff is almost certainly not tasty.
- CharlieDigital 4y ago
  If anything, it seems it would be easier to monitor lab-grown meats for chemical byproducts of harmful microorganisms.
  - Retric 4y ago
    That assumes quite a bit, noticing a cow died is dead simple. Building, validating, using, and monitoring a system to detect harmful byproducts has a rather high threshold by comparison.
dfxm12 4y ago
isn't it crazy to think that lab-grown meats are probably going to be under higher scrutiny from a food safety perspective than farm grown and butchered meats? Will they be? There's quite a long list of information about slaughter inspection just meant for regular people to understand. I'm sure the technical documentation goes into quite a bit of scrutiny. https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/food-safety-basics/slaughter-inspection-101 https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and... Even if lab grown meats do end up being more highly scrutinized, it's not crazy to look more closely at a brand new process than one has been exercised for over a hundred years (the Federal Meat Inspection Act is from 1906).
GuB-42 4y ago
Cows have an immune system, labs don't. That's a pretty big problem with lab-grown meat. Bacteria are much better at reproducing quickly than cells of complex organisms like animals. So if your reactor is not perfectly clean, you are going to grow bacteria instead of meat. The reason live animals (including us) don't get overwhelmed by bacteria is because they have all sorts of defenses, most importantly, an immune system. Unless labs have something equivalent in, they will have to be under extreme scrutiny.

couchand 4y ago

> isn't it crazy no, it's not

dottedmag 4y ago

Is it really higher scrutiny, or the same scrutiny USDA applies to farm-grown/butchered meats?

roflyear 4y ago

I think so, yeah. It isn't crazy b.c that is how lobbying works in the US, but it is crazy b.c you'd expect a lab to be better defacto than a slaughterhouse.

lzooz 4y ago
>you'd expect a lab to be better defacto than a slaughterhouse That worked well in Wuhan
- DoctorOW 4y ago
  What reason do you theorize the USDA wasn't present in Wuhan?
- roflyear 4y ago
  Lately going on HN is like walking into my local gun shop ...
  - DoctorOW 4y ago
    I've yet to see a satisfying solution to the hyperpolarization of previously neutral spaces. HN is the gold standard in moderation IMO but still isn't immune.
    - roflyear 4y ago
      I don't know what the solution is, but some communities I'm a member of react aggressively towards it. That seems to work.

TheCoreh 4y ago

Nah, considering one has well understood risks and has been practiced for thousands of years, while the other approach is brand new, I think it's reasonable. It can also be a selling point for lab-grown meat, the fact that it is safer and free of bacteria.

roflyear 4y ago
Our modern way of raising animals for slaughter is just that - modern. Not thousands of years. We have not been pumping steroids into the meat we eat for thousands of years. We give our food substances that fatten them up as quickly as possible, and we're surprised we're getting fat.
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  We give our food water, but it doesn't quench our thirst. We give our food grass, but it doesn't tear up our teeth. Our food has poop in it, but doesn't taste of poop. Is there any evidence that steroids which are digested by a cow linger in its body as an active substance for years, in a large enough quantity to have a steroid effect after going through another creature's digestive system? Isn't obesity rather well explained by cheap easily available food, carb heavy diet and increasingly sedentary lifestyle? Otherwise, cows grow to much bigger than people, much quicker than people do. Why don't their natural growth hormones affect us in the same way?
  - roflyear 4y ago
    - jodrellblank 4y ago
      If you think asking you to support your claims is "some kind of weird joke", it isn't. Are you basing your claim on evidence? Then link some. US cheese consumption has gone up from 20lbs per person-year in 1975 to almost 40lbs per person-year by 2020[1]. Total dairy consumption up to record high levels from below 550lbs per person-year to over 650lbs per person-year milkfat equivalent. Compared to 1970, Americans average grain eating went from 400 Calories per day to nearly 600. Fats and oils went from ~330 Calories per day to almost 600. Sugars went up, fruit and fruit juices went up. Daily Calorie averages went from eating 2025/day to 2481/day between 1970 and 2010, while beef eating went down.[2] At the same time "Over the last 50 years in the U.S. we estimate that daily occupation-related energy expenditure has decreased by more than 100 calories, and this reduction in energy expenditure accounts for a significant portion of the increase in mean U.S. body weights for women and men."[3] At the same time, TV watching went from 4.5hrs/day in 1950 to nearly 8hrs/day in 2018[4]. "Eating more" and "moving less" is a much better explanation for "we wonder why we are fat" than your explanation. No magical [1] https://www.idfa.org/news/american-dairy-consumption-reaches-all-time-high-cheese-butter-and-yogurt-continue-to-drive-growth-for-dairy-industry https://www.idfa.org/news/american-dairy-consumption-reaches... [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/12/13/whats-on-your-table-how-americas-diet-has-changed-over-the-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/12/13/whats-on-yo... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3102055/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3102055/ [4] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/when-did-tv-watching-peak/561464/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/when-...

Retric 4y ago

From a certain point of view lab grown meat is a high risk yolo solution. Animals have a highly effective immune system pumping out hunter killer nano bots to actively fight off invasive microorganisms, lab grown meat doesn’t. Similarly it’s far easier to tell of an animal is extremely infected.

ben_w 4y ago
> lab grown meat doesn’t I'm so not a biologist, so: why would that be harder than also lab growing the bit of their bodies which makes the various immune cells?
- zaroth 4y ago
  Extremely unimaginably harder to produce to working immune system in a lab alongside your cell culture soup you want to market as “meat”. Like, an immune system needs to be trained, needs to be maintained, needs plumbing, needs waste removal… Kinda like the difference between playing catch in the backyard and launching rockets to outer space? Plus all that extra stuff is almost certainly not tasty.
CharlieDigital 4y ago
If anything, it seems it would be easier to monitor lab-grown meats for chemical byproducts of harmful microorganisms.
- Retric 4y ago
  That assumes quite a bit, noticing a cow died is dead simple. Building, validating, using, and monitoring a system to detect harmful byproducts has a rather high threshold by comparison.

dfxm12 4y ago

isn't it crazy to think that lab-grown meats are probably going to be under higher scrutiny from a food safety perspective than farm grown and butchered meats? Will they be? There's quite a long list of information about slaughter inspection just meant for regular people to understand. I'm sure the technical documentation goes into quite a bit of scrutiny. https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/food-safety-basics/slaughter-inspection-101 https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and... Even if lab grown meats do end up being more highly scrutinized, it's not crazy to look more closely at a brand new process than one has been exercised for over a hundred years (the Federal Meat Inspection Act is from 1906).

GuB-42 4y ago

Cows have an immune system, labs don't. That's a pretty big problem with lab-grown meat. Bacteria are much better at reproducing quickly than cells of complex organisms like animals. So if your reactor is not perfectly clean, you are going to grow bacteria instead of meat. The reason live animals (including us) don't get overwhelmed by bacteria is because they have all sorts of defenses, most importantly, an immune system. Unless labs have something equivalent in, they will have to be under extreme scrutiny.