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What 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 ruine
by simmerup 4y ago
What 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
- candiodari 4y agoYeah, me too. It wouldn't help much, of course, but it's a popular way to do something. At 380 ppm anything that doesn't either directly alter reflectivity of the atmosphere or drastically lower CO2 in the atmosphere is just not going to work.
- tivert 4y ago> The 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. But you're not growing milk in those facilities, only storing and processing it. That's an important distinction, because it means with milk it's totally fine to deal with those "single germs" with long-understood sterilization techniques. If you try to sterilize your "lab grown meat" cultures to deal with the germs, you're going to destroy your "meat" too.
- AstralStorm 4y agoWell, sterilizing the meat is the same as cooking it. The problem is keeping it sterile while it's growing/brewing. It can be done, as has been with breweries, but it is os not an easy task.
- tivert 4y ago> Well, sterilizing the meat is the same as cooking it. Once you have it. > The problem is keeping it sterile while it's growing/brewing. This is what I was talking about. > It can be done, as has been with breweries, but it is os not an easy task. I think growing meat in a vat is only superficially similar to brewing beer.
- candiodari 4y agoNo they're not. Cow milk, fresh from the udder spoils in something like 16 hours. Most people cannot tolerate the milk, even if you're lactose tolerant, and it has various hormones in it that if you drink it long term would, uh, let's just say one would be able to notice the difference in your body in the swimming pool, especially if you're male. To fix this it is processed in food factories that you can describe as squeaky clean massive installations of ceramic tiles and shining steel.
- simmerup 4y agoSorry, I’m comparing a cows body with its heart and skin to keep out pathogens and immune system to protect it and mouth to ingest nutrients, vs a steel bioreactor with steel skin and piped nutrients and a clean room/disinfectant for an immune system. I’m not talking about cow milk
- Eisenstein 4y agoHow do you propose they fix the milk in processing? Are you saying they are removing hormones from milk before bottling? I need some data about all these things you are claiming.
- candiodari 4y agoThey burn them, breaking up any proteins that are "too large" which includes a lot of stuff.
- Eisenstein 4y agoThey burn hormones? Where did you learn this?
- candiodari 4y agoWhen you heat proteins they become unstable. Long chains become unstable first. So when you heat suddenly or not that high long chains break, but proteins still remain proteins, they just have a very high chance of losing their function.
- a_shovel 4y agoI recall another article on the subject that said lab meat needed purified amino acids as food for the culture, and that many amino acids just aren't sold in the necessary quantities. A cow, on the other hand, needs only grass because it has extensive equipment to generate those amino acids from grass, called a digestive system.
- akiselev 4y agoThe amino acids are generally supplied as - I kid you not - fetal bovine serum.
- AstralStorm 4y agoThere are ways to produce them by breaking down soy protein or pea protein (plain old acid hydrolysis, perhaps microwave enhanced - plus filtration; less cleanly enzymatically too), but it's another expensive step... And then you need to scale this process up.
- at_a_remove 4y agoI recall a very old sci-fi story in which bored scientists at a remote space outpost, well, some of them really missed milk. So they decided to try to produce it. But then that needed some kind of circulatory system to support the udder, and that required a filtration system, and an oxygenation system, and a way to get nutrition into the circulatory system ... They ended up building a kind of exploded steel cow, all pipes and vats and such. It seems we are heading in this direction. I have often wondered what it would be like to start with a cow, then engineer it to be anencephalic, then start paring away "features" or moving them around. Skip the legs, but do have networks of heart-like cells providing a contractile rhythm for the muscles, and so on.
- esafak 4y agoI think that would be immoral because you would be mutilating an already sentient, intelligent animal. Better start bottom up.
- at_a_remove 4y agoNo, because anencephalic.
- culopatin 4y agoI don’t understand your point. Are you saying you prefer we continue torturing cows for our benefit because otherwise we are putting too much effort?
- simmerup 4y agoPreference doesn’t come into it. My point is effectively that I can’t see how the current process will be scaled up to be economical enough for widespread adoption.