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I never understood this obsession with eating lab grown meat. It seems a lot less sustainable than eggs or milk
by guestbest 3y ago
I never understood this obsession with eating lab grown meat. It seems a lot less sustainable than eggs or milk
- ajmurmann 3y agoLess animal suffering and totally different taste and texture profile than eggs or milk.
- hanniabu 3y agoIt's sustainability should be compared to raising millions of cows since that's the alternative
- onetoo 3y agoDisregarding moral or sustainability reasons and taking a more cynical view, I can understand taking a long-term bet on the technology improving enough for lab-grown to become a cheaper alternative. If we ever reach that point, whoever's in the market to capitalize on the opportunity is going to be very well off.
- freitzkriesler2 3y agoIt's because they want us to eat slop while the real meat is then sold to the rich and shipped out of the country for export to nations where their income is worth more than ours. Same goes for this new obsession with roach milk and bug eating. They want to turn the real thing into luxuries and exports while the working poor eat bugs and lab grown slop. The claim about being good for the environment is a red herring used to get a certain segment of the population excited for it. Make no mistake, factory farming will continue to exist because the Uber rich will happily pay for it both domestic and abroad.
- ajmurmann 3y agoWhat benefit do those "Uber rich" have from poor people eating "slop"? Why can the "real thing" not be exported right now?
- imbusy111 3y agoAlso, who is "they", and are "they" hiring?
- freitzkriesler2 3y agoThey would be Monsanto, Tyson foods, any Argo business, and pretty any company in this list https://indiebio.co/companies/# https://indiebio.co/companies/# Select food and Ag.
- Daishiman 3y agoThose companies make gigantic amounts of money selling animal feed. They have no conspiratorial desires except to make money. If there's a market for animal-sourced protein they'll go there; if there's a market for synthetic meats likewise.
- freitzkriesler2 3y agoIt's how "innovation" works. You get a new supposedly "cheaper" product that's like the original thing but cheaper because of questionable advances in either science or engineering. That cheaper product isn't actually better in most cases, it's filled with poorer quality magerials and lab engineered chemicals. The working poor then buy it because it looks like the original product. Except it isn't. Its filled with questionable chemicals and industrial processes that have an unknown effect in the human body. See the replacement of lard for seed oils and how the obesity epidemic came from that. Beef lard which was once a cheap cooking oil is now an expensive premium product. What ends up happening then is the original product becomes a premium product and is priced accordingly. Since America doesn't make anything, the only thing we export in significant quantities are food stuffs, especially meat. That meat gets sent abroad to places like China where they make more money than you and are able to afford the original product you are now priced out of. So you end up eating grasshoppers and lab grown mystery slop.
- ajmurmann 3y agoAll these advances you describe have made food vastly more affordable to everyone. Not that long ago millions of Americans died of pellagra for a reason. > "Since America doesn't make anything" The top exports of United States are Refined Petroleum ($83.3B), Petroleum Gas ($70.9B), Crude Petroleum ($67.6B), Cars ($55.4B), and Integrated Circuits ($51.3B) sauce: https://oec.world/en/profile/country/usa#latest-data https://oec.world/en/profile/country/usa#latest-data >"That meat gets sent abroad to places like China where they make more money than you and are able to afford the original product you are now priced out of." Why would the original product get more expensive if people like it and supply continues? There is now increased supply in comparable products which brings prices down. Also, China is a quite poor country. The median income is $4,500.
- aeyes 3y agoHydroponic salads would be the counter-example which you can already buy today. I prefer them because I get much more consistent quality, less risk of contamination, less pesticides (think antibiotics in the case of meat), less water and soil use. I don't care what the 1% do, never did. If it tastes good and if the texture is good I don't mind eating lab grown food. With meat we aren't quite there yet.
- ajmurmann 3y agoThe availability of hydroponicly grown salads also should have lowered the price of conventionally grown salad, since there is now more supply of salads in general.
- imbusy111 3y agoOr it would kill the conventionally grown salad industry, cause it cannot compete. It is extremely labor intensive already. Not that I care that much, if I eat salad from one process or the other.
- ajmurmann 3y agotrue, if consumers decide it's not worth the extra cost. Either way, a win.
- ch4s3 3y ago> shipped out of the country for export to nations where their income is worth more than ours. I just don't think Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Singapore eat that much meat.
- freitzkriesler2 3y agoMy answer was poor but this is what you want https://beef2live.com/story-beef-exports-country-year-date-0-109756#:~:text=8%25%20in%202023-,The%20United%20States%20has%20exported%20779.1%20million%20pounds%20of%20beef,countries%20so%20far%20in%202023 https://beef2live.com/story-beef-exports-country-year-date-0.... China hlused to be number 1 but they've been reducing their meat purchases since the late 2010s for obvious reasons.
- civilitty 3y agoThe uber rich don't eat factory farmed crap. It's all organic farm to table with Japanese cows hand massaged by their human concubines.
- candiddevmike 3y agoI'd imagine it's more sustainable than milk, and with far less suffering.
- Jcampuzano2 3y agoI'm not someone who really thinks that much of the morality of it, but I do understand some suffering is involved for my consumption. But if I was given the option of eating lab grown meat vs not, providing equal or almost the same nutrients while also reducing said suffering, I'd be all for it. It could also potentially become a cheap source of high quality nutrition if enough advances were made.
- xorbax 3y agoYou're ignoring what might be the most important part - energy input Cows are self-motivating bioreactors that vaguely maximize inputs as possible. You don't need to hire a tech or buy freezers or buy pipette tips or clean an industrial reactor for a cow to make grass into beef. Evolution has provided us a method which has reached some local thermodynamic minima. Not so much with Impossible patties. And anyway, afaik, lab beef still has BSA as a necessary component, so you need cows to make fake cows. Eat a goddamn bean, dorks.
- regularfry 3y agoBut also, methane. Maximised inputs, some very bad externalised costs. (Yes, fixable, no, not fixed yet at any sort of scale)
- xorbax 3y agoPlenty of processes required for artificial beef produce methane as well, it's just externalized from cells growing in a petri dish, so it's handwaved
- xyzzy_plugh 3y agoCows are not optimal, not remotely. This is a horrible argument to make. Cows produce a _ton_ of waste, are brittle and require a lot of care and energy. A lot of that energy is subsidized in some form or another, in places where cattle are produced in large quantities. They are very resource intensive. Our ability to iterate and optimize with technology is comically faster than evolution. Cows are, more or less, unchanged in the modern era, and will likely stay as they are for the considerable future. Conversely, if we produced convincing synthetic beef in a lab today, do you think that process would go unchanged for a decade, two decades, a century, without improvements in energy and other resource consumption? If you produce beef in a lab, you don't require farmers, or farm hands, or truck drivers, or veterinarians, or butchers, and so on. A tech and freezers and pipette tips and an industrial reactor sounds like a step up to me. (Also arguably beef cattle likely require more refrigeration than artificial beef ever could.)
- ch4s3 3y agoI think its compelling, because in theory an animal has to convert biomass into a lot of tissue we don't consume or use. It will probably also eventually be possible to grow meat with highly desirable properties in terms of texture, fat distribution, etc.
- snosages 3y ago[flagged]
- jhickok 3y ago>Every once in a while I feed regular steak to a vegan and pretend it is one of those beyond meat patties and they gloat how great it is getting with almost religious fervor. This is incredibly immoral.
- snosages 3y ago[flagged]
- reedf1 3y agoYikes dude - you're an extremist yourself; you do hopefully realize?
- snosages 3y agoI've been force fed vegan food under false pretenses by multiple vegans for "my own good". It is increasingly common to peer pressure people to convert to veganism. The marketing of these products exploits these attitudes.
- civilitty 3y agoGiven your folkloric understanding of consent, I assume you're force feeding steak to comma patients because only an honest-to-god vegetable could mistake a steak for a beyond meat patty.
- snosages 3y ago[flagged]
- LatteLazy 3y agoPeople like the solution, so they pretend it will fix big problems. You see the same with a bunch of things from tax cuts to term limits...
- KRAKRISMOTT 3y agoThe chemical engineering involved here can easily be extended to organ engineering once the technology matures. Having more basic and applied research in this space is good for everyone. It is far from a waste of resources.
- ot 3y agoI never understood this obsession with eating eggs or milk. They seem a lot less sustainable than soy.
- xorbax 3y agoA radio man said soy will diminish my vital essence So here I am drinking rainwater and lecturing an Englishman. I assume it works out well for me.
- helph67 3y agoSoy and turkey meat do provide health benefits. https://scienmag.com/major-research-initiative-explores-how-our-bones-and-muscles-age-new-ways-to-block-their-decline/ https://scienmag.com/major-research-initiative-explores-how-...