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Yeah I’m going to let other folks experiment with that for 10 or so years and see where it goes. I’m sure the meat is fine, it’s just a matter of not contaminat
by rdtwo 4y ago
Yeah I’m going to let other folks experiment with that for 10 or so years and see where it goes. I’m sure the meat is fine, it’s just a matter of not contaminating it during the process that I’m concerned about. The FDA is really poor at enforcing the health and safety aspects of manufacturing and processing. They simply don’t have enough inspectors and the inspectors don’t fine big offenders enough
- technotony 4y agoIt's the USDA that will regulate the actual manufacturing and processing, not the FDA. As the article mentions that process hasn't started yet. It's hopefully quicker/easier than the FDA safety approvals however.
- Gordonjcp 4y agoOr consuming terrifying amounts of energy and resources, when you can put a cow in a field until it's big enough to eat.
- jcutrell 4y agoOne cow is fine, it's when you try to put millions of cows out there and grow them as fast as possible that you get problems.
- chairhairair 4y agoImagine thinking modern factory farming is anything as simple as “putting a cow in a field”.
- newsclues 4y agoI don't think the expectation is the replicate the horrid factory farming system. Traditional farming and cattle ranching still exists!
- macinjosh 4y agoImagine thinking modern factory farming is the only way to go about things. It really can be as simple as putting a cow in a field with grass and water. My family has been doing it for 150 years.
- HDThoreaun 4y agoimagine thinking this is possible at the scale required to satiate humanities appetite for meat.
- chairhairair 4y agoIt can be, but the reality is that it largely isn’t. You can refine your own iron if you’d like, but most people do not.
- addisonl 4y agoAnd that scales for the 32 million cows consumed in America per year? https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/statistics-information/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/...
- Gordonjcp 4y agoAnd yet that's where all the meat I eat comes from, and indeed most of the meat eaten in this country.
- waboremo 4y agoYou are wildly mistaken if you believe traditional "cow does whatever it wants until slaughter" farming is where the majority[0] of meat comes from in this country (assuming USA). [0] https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-estimates https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-estima...
- Gordonjcp 4y agoI'm not in the USA. You haven't got any form of safe or ecologically sustainable farming in the US, and you need to fix that.
- mlindner 4y agoHuge portions of the midwest are used nigh exclusively for cattle grazing. Yes they spend the end of their lives in close quarters eating a lot, but they're not generally being birthed in those environments.
- aaroninsf 4y agoThis is a nonsensical comment. Culturing meat is entirely about minimizing resource and land usage, and curbing the serious environmental impacts of the beef industry, which is of course truly infamous for methane emissions and deforestation.
- rmah 4y agoPersonally, I doubt that. I strongly suspect that lab-grown meat is mostly about making lots of money selling it for high margins to vegetarians who still want to eat "meat".
- algoatecorn 4y agoBingo. I'm an agricultural researcher with a background that includes in vitro biology, now getting another degree focused on entire food systems. I have spent a lot of time looking into the economic realities of food innovation, land-use, energy, water, price-sensitivity, and consumer preferences. There's nothing wrong with getting excited about lab-grown meat, but we have a loooong way to go before considering it as a realistic food source in the future. One must consider the current price of food is grounded in the use of fossil fuels, ignoring negative externalities, and millennia of optimization. To consider lab-grown meat as a future replacement of conventional animal production, you have to go way back to primary energy sources and work your way back from there. Chances are, you'll find that a hypothetical future of lab-grown meat is cost-prohibitive for basically the entire world. I'm not here to argue the ethics, environmental damage, etc. Just pointing out the COST, and why consumer adoption should not be viewed through the lens of a six-figure salary programmer.
- roflyear 4y agoIt's some revelation that capitalism is driving this? Shocker.
- mmiyer 4y ago97%[0] of cows are finished on feedlots, i.e. get a substantial amount of calories from corn and other feed. Other animals like pigs are exclusively fed feed. Animal factory farming already consumes a terrifying amount of resources, using up a lot of the plant agriculture that we do. [0] https://littlecreekmontana.shop/blogs/ranch-blog/food-for-thought-are-cattle-born-on-feedlots https://littlecreekmontana.shop/blogs/ranch-blog/food-for-th...
- rdtwo 4y agoThe finishing process changes the tase quite a bit. Some folks like the grain taste some like it grassy.
- algoatecorn 4y agoBlind taste-testing overwhelmingly favors feedlot-finished beef.
- hollerith 4y agoPeople used to eating grain-fed beef prefer grain-fed beef, yes.
- algoatecorn 4y agoGo out and find an isolated tribe who only eats occasional wild game. Serve them grain-finished beef and grass-fed beef. Do you actually believe they will choose grass-fed over grain-fed?
- hollerith 4y agoI prefer meat that has been fed only grass and never buy grain-fed meat. (I eat mostly lamb, not beef.) I prefer the taste and believe it is better for my health; in particular, the omega 6 fatty acids in grains and in grain-fed meat promotes chronic inflammation. (I don't buy grains either.)
- aaronbrethorst 4y agoThey’d be bad enough at it without presidential malfeasance https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1055451 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1055451
- mikewarot 4y agoIf you put cattle on farmland, and utilize regenerative agriculture techniques, it costs a bit more, because yields aren't artificially boosted while destroying the topsoil. In return you actually capture carbon into the grasses from the atmosphere. That would normally just rot, but the herbivores digest it and make it bioavailable for the fungi and bacteria in the soil, where the carbon accumulates. The herbivores are key component of sustainable agriculture, you can't do it without them. Lab grown meat is an interesting, energy intensive step in the wrong direction. I think we can all agree that there are problems with factory farming, and grain finishing livestock.
- dqv 4y agoI've seen this argument get eaten, partialy digested, spit back up, then go through 3 compartments of a stomach and it still doesn't make sense when you actually think about it. If the intent is actual sustainability, then they have to be given their full 20 years to live. The cattle themselves act as carbon sinks too and have to be part of the whole ecosystem, not only exposed to one part of it. If you're constantly slaughtering them and replacing them, it's not doing much. It just sounds nice. >it costs a bit more "A bit" is an understatement. >The herbivores are key component of sustainable agriculture, you can't do it without them. You can't. But you have to do it without eating the vast majority of them. The Myth of Regenerative Ranching: >[...] >If regenerative agriculture were to challenge the mainstream food system, it would run into some hard physical limits. Converting the beef industry, at current levels of demand, entirely to a grass- and crop-forage feeding system would require increasing the total size of American beef herds by 23 million cows, or 30 percent, according to a recent article in the respected science journal Environmental Research Letters. And that increase, were it even possible, would have monumental consequences for both greenhouse gas outputs and land use. But there simply isn’t enough land in the U.S. for that many grazers. At best, beef production would have to decrease by 39 percent and potentially as much as 73 percent. Framed that way, grass-fed grazing, especially if scaled, doesn’t seem likely to regenerate many ecosystems—indeed, it would likely require deforestation, as is the case in Brazil, where the clear-cutting of the Amazon is driven both by soy plantations for feedlot and factory farm animal feed and by the need for grazing space for grass-fed cattle. And as the Environmental Research Letters article argued, even temporary overgrazing can lead to long-term and perhaps irreversible ecological degradation. >[...] >Actually making animal agriculture less ecologically disruptive would mean taking animals’ ecological value as a bedrock principle against and over their value as commodities. That means treating commodity production, not land, as “marginal”: Commodities could be extracted only if doing so didn’t disturb the ecological, social, and cultural value of the landscape. In other words, in most such systems, animals would more than likely play a minor support role for primarily plant agriculture. And that, in turn, would almost certainly mean far fewer grazers entering the commercial food system, and at a much higher price point. Point Reyes, for example, might feature free-ranging elk managed by an Indigenous best practice–driven conservation agency, not dairy cattle grazed by private ranches. This kind of truly eco-friendly meat production would produce even less meat than the current grab bag of practices loosely labeled “regenerative.” https://newrepublic.com/article/163735/myth-regenerative-ranching https://newrepublic.com/article/163735/myth-regenerative-ran...
- seydor 4y agoI 'm pretty sure we already eat far more shady stuff than industrially grown cells.
- mmmpop 4y agoThat's antisocial behavior as we've all learned recently. If you don't eat the fake meat, you'll just spread your clear love for animal cruelty to those around you, even if that's just conjecture. Anyway, snark aside, I'm curious how this goes because while I'm not apologetic for my place on the food chain, carbon emissions from animal farming are problematic and the price that real meat should cost if we raise them humanely is pretty exorbitant. It will be hilarious to see cattle rustling become a capital offense again.
- boston_clone 4y agoWithout being apologetic, it is still worthwhile to consider your responsibility as a moral agent for causing suffering; especially so when it is unnecessary.
- pkrotich 4y agoHow would you know next time you order a steak at your favorite restaurant? I can see restaurants substituting - just like they do with fish.
- Alex3917 4y agoYou won’t, because the FDA will make it illegal for supermarkets to label their meat as being not lab grown, the same as they do for GMO foods.
- AtlasBarfed 4y agoDo you have ANY idea what goes on in a meatpacking plant? Let's just say, the large intestine doesn't exactly stay pristine in the process, and I doubt they clean everything like you think they do.
- rdtwo 4y agoIt’s gross but we use heat to make it safe to eat. The contamination does not migrate into the meat for the most part just the outsides. With lab grown you could potentially contaminate an inner surface or induce some other contamination that’s not exposed to heat from a grill. Anyway after a decade or so we will probably know what the risks are and of contamination of that nature is likely or possible in the process. Seems like lab grown hot dogs might be a good place to start for example.