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How does the energy consumption of the bioreactors stack up against live animals? There’s two different opportunities here — a suffering-free meat substitute a

• sacred_numbers 4y ago
  Theoretically it should be way less energy intensive as well, since there won't be an animal expending energy to live for months before slaughter. Nor will there be a need to grow feathers, bones, or blood that end up as byproducts. Of course, this tech is still being developed, so it probably hasn't reached optimal efficiency, but it doesn't have to be that efficient to be better than standard animal agriculture.
  • dflock 4y ago
    Well, if the cow eats grass, then you aren't paying for that energy input.
    • aviramha 4y ago
      It's not the input. It's the output. Stock animals emit gasses (like any other animal) and it's non-neglectable footprint.
      • dtech 4y ago
        It's the main reason beef and lamb are so much worse in terms of CO2-equivalent than pork or chicken, and cheese isn't good either.
    • bayesian_horse 4y ago
      "Grass-fed" doesn't scale to the meat demand. It's a complacent luxury for some people, and that's all it's ever going to be until the Human population at least halves or becomes mostly vegan (so some people can enjoy better meat).
• mrshadowgoose 4y ago
  Does it matter? The carbon problem can (and IMO should) be fundamentally fixed by wholly transitioning electrical generation to non-carbon producing sources. Industrial/commercial processes that have carbon footprints beyond their electrical expenditure, can be offset by using additional (non-carbon producing) electrical energy to perform carbon capture and sequestration. Yes, that would raise the cost of everything, which is why few politicians seriously focus on this option. The common component to pretty much every process, product and comfort in our our society is energy utilization. Most people are not going to give anything up just because "the carbon footprint is bad/worse". So let's work on making it so the carbon footprint isn't even a factor.
  • whatshisface 4y ago
    If the energy costs are higher than those of normal farming, the whole enterprise becomes hard to justify.
    • NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
      On one hand, you have a highly artificial process in labs with high-tech equipment, probably all patented and proprietary. On the other hand, you have a process that occurs completely naturally, that man has understood for millennia, that is open-source and public domain. Which one to justify to consumers, farmers, and developing nations? Hmm.
      • mgrandl 4y ago
        You fail to mention that the second options causes immense amounts of suffering to both animals and slaughterhouse workers and absolutely destroys our environment due to GHG and manure runoff. It also completely fucks up the biodiversity on this planet as now 80% of mammals by weight are livestock.
        • NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
          It doesn't have to. None of that is an intrinsic property of animal husbandry. All of what I mentioned seems to be intrinsic to cultured/manufactured meat, though.
• tonmoy 4y ago
  Chicken production is already super energy efficient (and probably also the cruelest). Beef typically needs more land, at least if that land can be repurposed for growing crops (to turn into biofuel)
  • phire 4y ago
    Yes, chicken does make me feel a little uneasy. Beef and lamb are probably the least cruel, at least when they are fed grass outside (and where I live, they always are) I understand that grain fed beef can be more cruel, depending on how long they are kept inside.
  • Out_of_Characte 4y ago
    You cannot repurpose almost all land that farm animals use to grow crop. This is marginal land where only grass grows, or hilly, rocky terrain where equipment is not effective.
• hannob 4y ago
  The main energy input for meat from animals is the sunlight shining on the plants that the animals eat. The efficiency of that is utterly terrible. That's also the reason why any form of bioenergy from crops has such huge landuse requirements. It is likely almost impossible to do any worse with any technological process.
  • bayesian_horse 4y ago
    That's not really true. The energy used in the cultivation of their feed usually has the highest carbon footprint of the whole equation. "Grass-fed" and similar approaches don't scale up to the demand of meat. They require more land and more labor, all of which increases prices and increases competition for labor and arable land.