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Seeing all these sterile rooms, inox pipings, reactors, tanks make me feel weird. I'm vegetarian but I'd eat a local farm animal over this if I had to chose. e
by lm28469 4y ago
Seeing all these sterile rooms, inox pipings, reactors, tanks make me feel weird. I'm vegetarian but I'd eat a local farm animal over this if I had to chose.
edit: to clarify, food for me is equal to traditions, know-hows, local, &c. not three dudes in hazmat suits populating a 60000 gallon tank of chicken soup. If you want cheap as fuck meat and have the choice between modern animal farming and that then by all means go for that. It just doesn't sit right with me.
It's so disconnected to everything I associate with good food, there already are alternatives, as nutritious, getting cheaper by the day, made from real thing we can grow with minimal post processing.
- myshpa 4y agoWhat's so weird about sterile rooms and stainless steel tanks? Do you think breweries (for example) are so much different? Very weird thing to hear from someone who claims to be a vegetarian. https://www.google.com/search?q=brewery&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=brewery&tbm=isch
- ihatepython 4y ago> What's so weird about sterile rooms and stainless steel tanks? Do you think breweries (for example) are so much different? I can brew my own beer in my own home. Can I make lab-grown meat in my own home?
- freddie_mercury 4y agoYou're moving the goal posts. The initial claim was that stainless steel tanks per se were the issue.
- smashed 4y agoThey feel unnatural and unconventional and is something a large part of the population will be unable to relate to. Food is a very cultural thing. We've also been educated to buy and prepare our own meals from the most natural/unprocessed ingredients as possible and avoid heavily industrialized/preprocess ingredients for health reasons. Lab grown meat is the opposite of both of that. I am just playing Devil's advocate here. I understand the appeal and potential environmental benefits as well.
- Hedepig 4y agoWhile this technology is becoming mainstream, those of us that are okay with it should understand there is something fundamentally "icky" for some people. Which is difficult to debate rationally. This is partly the fault of Sci-fi, bio-engineering is rarely shown as a positive in TV and Film. This will be mostly solved with time, eventually it may become economically unviable to buy "field meat" (not sure what the term will be), and it will become a lot more accepted when they see the people around them enjoying it without severe consequences.
- XorNot 4y agoI'd be extremely curious to see a lot of these people be presented with the bioreactor and the live cow, and pick which one they're going to eat. "Icky" is ignorance.
- hombre_fatal 4y agoI wouldn’t be so sure that most of the population could relate to the horrors of factory farms and slaughter houses—where basically all meat they’re buying comes from no matter how many alleged free roam grass fed consumers claim to exist on social media. That’s why there are laws to keep them from seeing it. Which might be why so many HNers think animals grow up in sunshine and rainbows and it’s the sterile lab that's icky.
- Hedepig 4y agoWith the right equipment, if not now, soon you will be able to.
- lm28469 4y ago> Very weird thing to hear from someone who claims to be a vegetarian I'm vegetarian for environmental reasons, not ethical. Nothing wrong with eating a chicken or a pig who had a good life on an open field for me
- rmorey 4y agoWithin rounding error, no chicken or pigs are raised this way today
- Gordonjcp 4y agoIn your country.
- rmorey 4y agoSorry, good point - worldwide it's only ~90% that are factory farmed https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/global-animal-farming-estimates https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/global-animal-farming-est...
- marcosdumay 4y ago> However, there is substantial uncertainty in these figures No kidding. They could start by using a single (and known) definition for "factory farmed". Unless you are in the business of refining that data, this study is useless.
- rmorey 4y agoit’s not useless, it’s just not that conclusive. Im pretty confident in saying a significant majority of animals raised for slaughter worldwide are done so in conditions commonly described as “factory farms”. We can quibble about the definitions all we want, but this is the dominant mode of raising animals for slaughter, that is clear to me
- 4y ago
- simmerup 4y agoWhat I find weird about lab grown meat is that it runs into all sorts of problems like how the cells have a lack of immune system so entire batches can be ruined by one errant germ. I think we’re going backwards by trying to replace the natural bio reactor of the body with steal and piping. It’s all too labour intensive. To make this work we’ll need to genetically engineer an animal that has only the parts we’re interested in. Including skin to replace the steel bio reactors. Cows due to generations of selective breeding are already remarkably close to this.
- morsch 4y agoThe milk most people drink is proceeded in facilities that look much the same, because whole batches of it are ruined by a single germ, since it has no immune system either. We also have to pasteurize it. Or we don't, and germs from cows are hundreds of times more likely to make us sick, despite generations of selective breeding.
- simmerup 4y agoTo make this analogy complete you’d have to compare current milk production to some fictional milk that would require far less human processing and facility investment. I understand you’re saying the challenges lab grown meat faces arent insurmountable, but short of some outside influence (statutory interference?) I don’t see how it can compete with traditional cattle on the cost perspective
- candiodari 4y agoCattle production, especially large scale for more efficient meat production (ie. chickens and pigs in very small spaces) is already somewhat outlawed.
- simmerup 4y agoI could see it being further outlawed/discouraged as climate change starts to bite
- jbc1 4y agoAs someone who has given a lot of tours through a brewery and wineries, a good amount of people are in fact disappointed by the abundance of stainless steel tanks.
- chihuahua 4y agoThis is fascinating and bizarre. Any idea what those people expect or would prefer to see? Ancient wooden tubs, and people in quaint medieval costumes stomping grapes with their bare feet?
- Brendinooo 4y agoGotta say, the Mount Vernon distillery had vibes like that and it was really cool.
- Animats 4y agoYes. Years ago I was involved with a controversy on Wikipedia over Skyy Vodka. Skyy had dumped a PR piece into Wikipedia, and that was flagged. So I did some cleanup. It turned out that Skyy Vodka was just a marketing company. Production was outsourced to Frank-Lin Distillers Products in San Jose. Frank-Lin makes most of the low-end booze on the West Coast. It's a big operation. Many stainless steel tanks. Their own railroad siding, where tank cars of industrial ethanol come in. The ethanol was from a company called MGP Ingredients, formerly Midwest Grain Products, formerly Midwest Solvents, in Illinois. MGP also supplied ethanol for fuel use. Frank-Lin takes industrial ethanol, city water, and flavoring, and makes a large number of alcohol-based products. They make over a thousand brands, but there are only a hundred or so different recipes, they admit. Each brand has its own label, and many have their own bottles. A few years back, they moved to Fairfield, CA, to be next to the bottle factory. The Skyy Vodka article was updated accordingly. Skyy marketing was not happy.
- golemotron 4y ago> Very weird thing to hear from someone who claims to be a vegetarian. A lot of vegetarianism is cloaked aesthetics.
- LoveMortuus 4y agoNot a vegetarian, but "cloaked aesthetics" sounds very interesting, could you elaborate?
- pookha 4y agoSeems like it's a cute way of saying that it's a material and superficial way of life (like religious ceremony). Which might be true for some people. I've been a vegitarian since I was YOUTH CREW (lol) but I've kept doing it for my own reasons. Most people have no idea... What I notice though is that people get attached to their diets and act offended when you don't eat something that they consider to be some core part of their life style(barbeque, steak, meaty burritos, sushi, vegan fake meat). Some people can and do get butt-hurt when they find out I don't eat meat and then want to play "gotcha" reindeer games.
- AtlasBarfed 4y agoThey don't like "chemicals".
- fisherjeff 4y agoOther industrially processed foods don’t live in the uncanny valley of meat. I know garden burgers and the like are produced in basically a lab but I still enjoy them. Impossible burgers and Tofurky skeeve me out. Not a vegetarian FWIW.
- mattgeo_j 4y ago[flagged]
- tokai 4y agoSo rather keep and kill animals than having a modern industrial food production? Try looking into modern brewing, dairy production, etc. That's just how it looks.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lm28469 4y agoNo, more like instead of pushing the thing further and further every day, scale down, go back to the basic, respect nature, do sustainable things like we've been doing for literal millions of years. I don't want to live in a future in which all we have left is your 6x6cm of Google chicken and your 2x6 Amazon bacon stripe
- pflenker 4y ago"Going back to the basic" _also_ means a drastically decreased life expectancy, dying of avoidable sicknesses and generally a dull, short and miserable life. You can't retain all the benefits of modern society and only "go back" on all the drawbacks. But this is no either/or situation, a future as you describe it is avoidable, and lab-grown meat does not automatically lead to Google Chicken or Amazon Bacon.
- lm28469 4y ago> "Going back to the basic" _also_ means a drastically decreased life expectancy, dying of avoidable sicknesses and generally a dull, short and miserable life. By having a bit less of mass scale animal abusing factories ? I fail to see the correlation
- pflenker 4y agoYour original comment implied much more.
- horstmeyer 4y ago
- freddie_mercury 4y agoWhat do you think, say, a milk or orange juice factory looks like?
- lm28469 4y agoThe same, it doesn't mean I want more of it, nor that I agree with the milk industry
- ihatepython 4y ago> What do you think, say, a milk or orange juice factory looks like? Something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZuWvwrEl_I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZuWvwrEl_I
- luxuryballs 4y agoI fully agree and, despite other remarks here about milk and juice and beer, it’s unnerving precisely because of the context of producing flesh.
- Maken 4y agoUnlike, let's say, tofu with is crafted with love in factories that look nothing like that. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2efPWpSKgVE&t=85s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2efPWpSKgVE&t=85s
- lm28469 4y agoAll you need is soy beans, water and some acid... you can do that at home with a pot a fork and an old tshirt, good luck making chicken meat like that
- Maken 4y agoOf course you can make your own chicken meat in your house, with just a knife and a chicken. But this is about not needing, you know, the chicken.
- lm28469 4y agoYes you're making my point, you either need to abuse live animals or make it in industrial scale factories. Whereas alternatives can be made at home from raw ingredients and minimum processing, today, cheaper than meat, just as nutritious, without the need of anything more technological than a stove
- tashoecraft 4y agoSure, but we can’t meet everyone’s nutritional needs by cooking raw ingredients at home. We need these solutions, if you can afford alternatives then go for it. But we should be promoting all solutions .
- ecshafer 4y agoSlaughtering an animal for food isn't abuse.
- cute_boi 4y agoIt is an abuse. Animal abuse is rampant in the practice of factory farming, and a visit to such facilities would make it clear just how much these animals suffer. Therefore, it is important for consumers to avoid being misled by labels such as "happy cows" on meat products and to be mindful of the ethical implications of their choices.
- pflenker 4y agoLab Grown Meat has a marketing problem above all. The lab that grows meat is not drastically different from the facilities that produce modern milk, cheese or other products, but the marketing of these respective products suggest that medieval farmers are hand-milking happy cows to produce them. This is due to the fact that at this stage, this meat is academia-driven and not marketing-driven.
- dpkirchner 4y agoAnd due in part to laws in many states prohibiting photographing inside meat production facilities (the so-called Ag-Gag laws.) I think a side by side comparison with photos/videos would be highly favorable to the lab grown meat folks.
- earlyriser 4y agoI'm on the opposite side, I'm omnivorous and try to eat less meat for ethical & environmental reasons and I really want lab meat to become mainstream, for the obvious ethical reasons, but also hoping that we could use less resources and especially land and give it back to natural ecosystems.
- lm28469 4y agoHave you tried home made seitan/tofu/tempeh/&c. ? Once you master the thing it's not even a question of taste, cheap meat becomes vomit inducing
- earlyriser 4y agoNo I haven't. Maybe I'll try. I'm happy with industrial tofu tbh and never thought about homemaking.
- KptMarchewa 4y ago>food for me is equal to traditions, know-hows, local There's not much less things that I care about when talking about food. I care about taste, texture, nutritional value, availability of ingredients or ease of preparation. If some Italian-Mexican-Japanese fusion scores better on that then I'll very happily eat it too.
- Gordonjcp 4y agoAnything you can make in a shed is going to be far far far less resource intensive and therefore better for the environment than something that takes a multi-billion-dollar factory.
- XorNot 4y agoThis is untrue for the meat packing industry today. One cow going into a modern slaughterhouse is more efficiently processed then even the most meticulous native American tribemember could ever have achieved. Efficiency is all that matters if resource utilisation is your metric.
- Gordonjcp 4y agoRight, but even your hypothetical tribe member is going to be many orders of magnitude more efficient than a billion dollar factory trying to grow a postage-stamp-sized piece of fake meat.
- hammyhavoc 4y agoYou're conflating vegetarianism with veganism. You being a vegetarian is largely irrelevant because being a vegetarian isn't a vegan, and veganism is focused on ethics, which is something commenters who are neither vegetarians nor vegans are likely to understand the nuance of. You'd probably never drink coffee or beer again if you saw how it was made. Come to think of it, you'd probably never eat any kind of processed food if hygiene is unacceptable.
- indigodaddy 4y agoHe didn’t conflate anything. He said “I’m vegetarian.” You are the one who is making ethical assumptions on his behalf. He can state he is a vegetarian and then state another opinion without an arrogant and condescending vegan looking down on him from up high.
- hammyhavoc 4y ago[flagged]
- indigodaddy 4y agoHe said nothing about vegans. He is only talking about himself. You are making assumptions about what point you think he is trying to make, and/or belittling his own personal ethical stance on things, just because he is vegetarian. What you are doing is wrong. But you are correct that I’m projecting a bit. This is because as a vegetarian, I’ve seen so much vegan arrogance, condescension, and outright aggression toward vegetarians that I am indeed particularly sensitive to it. So if I see it I call it out. In my experience, an average vegan has more hostility toward a lifelong vegetarian than they have toward a lifelong meat-eater (granted that most vegans hold no hostility at all— so this would be a smaller subset of vegans that do hold hostility— a great many can be seen on any random Facebook vegan group).
- wongarsu 4y agoAs a meat-eater I agree with you in spirit, though imho that doesn't invalidate what the original poster said. "I don't eat meat for environmental reasons, but would prefer traditional farm-animal-meat to this" is a valid opinion. It is also easy to confuse with "I don't eat any animal products for ethical reasons, but still find eating real meat better than this", which would be much more surprising and interesting, but is not something expressed here. It's important to note the difference, though let's avoid judgements to avoid descending in a flamewar
- mock-possum 4y agoIt doesn’t look like three dudes in hazmats suits once it’s sitting on the table in front of you. It just looks like steak.
- cameronh90 4y agoAs another vegetarian, I'd much prefer to eat lab grown meat than real meat for both ethical and environmental reasons. Food I already eat is produced in factories, including things like Quorn or Beyond Meat, and I don't find it off-putting whatsoever. For health reasons, I try to ensure the majority of my diet is home cooked plant-based whole foods, but that's only because the current evidence is diets based on "ultra processed food" are harmful. However, it doesn't seem to be at all clear yet on what specifically makes processed food diets harmful in aggregate, so I can't currently make an educated decision on whether one type of processed food is healthier than another. I just treat anything processed as junk food to be enjoyed occasionally, and the same would be true for me if we had viable lab grown meat. By comparison, I find those occasional tiny maggots in farm-grown strawberries much more off-putting, but strawberries taste so good that I do my best to just focus on the free protein.
- TurkishPoptart 4y agoThis is the first comment I've seen in this thread that would actually buy/consume this product. As a meat eater, I am incredibly opposed to this product.
- comex 4y agoI’m surprised by the amount of negativity. Personally I eat meat but feel guilty about doing so because of animal cruelty. If someone is actually able to produce lab-grown meat that tastes the same and has the same nutritional value, I’ll switch in a heartbeat. I don’t care at all whether the food I eat is “natural”. I don’t even care whether the ingredients are authentic, if there isn’t a health hazard; my reaction to the article’s mention of rodent DNA contamination is “who cares”. So of course I’ve tried plant-based meat alternatives, but found that they don’t taste right, while also being higher-calorie. My layman’s hope is that lab-grown meat will be able to replicate the taste more accurately. I realize that there’s no guarantee it will, even if they do succeed at producing something edible that’s made of animal cells (but has a very different structure). But it might.
- sokoloff 4y agoI'm pretty much a carnivore whenever given a choice. I find the Impossible line of beef replacement perfectly edible and usable in any dish where cooked ground beef would otherwise work. (I don't think I'd enjoy it as mett, but it's fine for anything else.) Impossible's only problem for me is the price makes it impossible for them to succeed in the market. Their product tastes fine; it's not enough better than $3/lb ground beef for people to pick it.
- justinpombrio 4y agoThe farm might be local, but the slaughtering these days is usually done in large efficient slaughterhouses, right? Those are also full of stainless steel machinery: https://sc01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1HETwX5LrK1Rjy1zdq6ynnpXax/225042561/HTB1HETwX5LrK1Rjy1zdq6ynnpXax.jpg https://sc01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1HETwX5LrK1Rjy1zdq6ynnpXax/225...
- caycep 4y agoAgree...I have 2 thoughts re lab meat 1) If you're going through so much time and expense to simulate meat, why not just change your diet to something more akin to "primary sources" - i.e. vegetables, or other food that is better than meat in your desired criteria (land use, water use, etc)? That is more naturally grown and more appealing? 2) By the time you spend so much money/energy/biochemical processes to simulate the real meat, is what you get just as energy intensive/unhealthy as the original?
- fnordpiglet 4y agoProbably because they enjoy eating meat? I’m not sure I see what’s more appealing about how animals are raised and slaughtered and processed for consumption. It’s top to bottom an inhumane industrialized process replete with torture, filth, antibiotics, radiation, disease, and people in hazmat suits and steel vats (which strangely people find disturbing). It’s not like some sort of pastoral children’s story where sally the pig has a grand life and at the end of it is gently, if undescribed way, becomes a wonderful pork chop for family dinner. I’d rather eat scientifically produced animal matter (SPAM) because : 1) I know the meat isn’t capable of suffering 2) I know the meat is grown in highly controlled circumstances 3) by having a centralized lab regulators can easily inspect end to end food quality and handling 4) by being sterile end to end I know when I get it I won’t contract salmonella, ecoli, trichinoses, etc 5) if it made it through to my table the economics of the market and all the “ewww science” and appeal to nature fallacy hurdles means it’ll taste really really good. Im not arguing eating more vegetables isn’t a good idea. But that argument exists regardless of SPAM, and hasn’t compelled much of a change in diet. I’d rather not see animals born to suffer than just shake carrots in peoples faces telling them eat veggies and hope they listen.