5 ms·

The good news is that less chicken will have to die for the same amount of meat. But it's sad to see the amount of sophistication in deboning when the actual s

The good news is that less chicken will have to die for the same amount of meat. But it's sad to see the amount of sophistication in deboning when the actual slaughtering still seems to be a "mostly works" thing. I wish they'd invest the time and money in lab meat instead.

jlgreco 14y ago
As far as I know, chickens are still slaughtered by cutting their necks. The failure rate of that is probably about as low as you could possibly get in the entire meat industry. Regardless, money being spent on deboning technology is not automatically money that lab meat research missed out on. Research is not quite that zero sum..
reitzensteinm 14y ago
I'd expect a paradox of thrift situation to apply here; if prices go down due to efficiency, consumption will increase, likely to a point where the number of slaughters would actually increase.
- protomyth 14y ago
  Or at least restaurants / fast food will use it in more dishes. Look at how McDonald's brings back the McRib when poultry prices go down[1]. 1) http://www.theawl.com/2011/11/a-conspiracy-of-hogs-the-mcrib-as-arbitrage http://www.theawl.com/2011/11/a-conspiracy-of-hogs-the-mcrib...
netcan 14y ago
I'd expect lab meat is a different kind of beast altogether when it comes to who is funding the development of it. This robot has an obvious business/marketing plan: the moment its better & cheaper than humans, it'll start to replace them everywhere. Hit that point and it'll sell in more or less known quantities. Don't hit it, it's (at best) a technology looking for a problem. Lab grown meat is who-the-fuck-knows R&D. How cheap does it need to be to sell how much of it/ How do we know when it tastes good enough. Who will buy it when it just hits the shelves. Who will buy it ten years after. etc. etc. Two completely different and probably non-competing buckets of time & money.
- corin_ 14y ago
  Agree with you apart from "non-competing". They may not compete in terms of who wants to fund the research, but if both are successful then they would very much be in competition with each other.
crikli 14y ago
American markets will not accept lab meat. I say this based on the reaction to what was dubbed "pink slime" and about which the media and the public flipped out. The result is that a completely safe and efficient process to increase yield came under fire because of hysteria grounded in not a whit of logic. People are also whipping themselves into a frenzy about genetically modified organisms. They're also convincing themselves that organic food is what they should have been eating in lieu of food treated with chemicals(1). So if a public that is generally ignorant about food production is (over)reacting to existing scientific enhancements it follows that the reaction to a completely scientificly generated product would not be met with acceptance. Disclaimer: I'm part of a fifth generation farm family. We farm corn, soybeans, and milo. No livestock. (1)Certified organic food is often treated with chemicals, sometimes the same chemicals as non-organic, but at different dilutions and with different application methods.
- sp332 14y ago
  I don't understand the pink slime thing. I'm pretty sure the only reason people freaked out was because of Jamie Oliver's campaign against it.
  - DanBC2 14y ago
    People want to eat meat. Pink slime is a small amount of meat with large amounts of the bits you'd normally leave behind. I'm not against mechanically recovered meat. But I'd prefer children to get chunks of real meat cooked well than a squirt of slime and salt and flavourings in a crumb coating which is then fried and served with a sugary sauce. (ketchup, bbq, etc.) That combination of fat, salt, and sugar makes food "hyper palatable"[1] and, while much cheaper than "real" food contains little in the way of useful nutrition. [1] Not my term. It's used to describe food where the balance of salt, sweet, and fat have been carefully balanced, and where the food is very easy to eat, because it's small or soft and easy to chew. See the progression from roast chicken, to deep fried chicken, to deep fried chicken with a salty coating and sauces, to "popcorn chicken" which are small chunks of meat, with a lot of fat-soaked salty coating.
    - 14y ago

jlgreco 14y ago

As far as I know, chickens are still slaughtered by cutting their necks. The failure rate of that is probably about as low as you could possibly get in the entire meat industry. Regardless, money being spent on deboning technology is not automatically money that lab meat research missed out on. Research is not quite that zero sum..

reitzensteinm 14y ago

I'd expect a paradox of thrift situation to apply here; if prices go down due to efficiency, consumption will increase, likely to a point where the number of slaughters would actually increase.

protomyth 14y ago
Or at least restaurants / fast food will use it in more dishes. Look at how McDonald's brings back the McRib when poultry prices go down[1]. 1) http://www.theawl.com/2011/11/a-conspiracy-of-hogs-the-mcrib-as-arbitrage http://www.theawl.com/2011/11/a-conspiracy-of-hogs-the-mcrib...

netcan 14y ago

I'd expect lab meat is a different kind of beast altogether when it comes to who is funding the development of it. This robot has an obvious business/marketing plan: the moment its better & cheaper than humans, it'll start to replace them everywhere. Hit that point and it'll sell in more or less known quantities. Don't hit it, it's (at best) a technology looking for a problem. Lab grown meat is who-the-fuck-knows R&D. How cheap does it need to be to sell how much of it/ How do we know when it tastes good enough. Who will buy it when it just hits the shelves. Who will buy it ten years after. etc. etc. Two completely different and probably non-competing buckets of time & money.

corin_ 14y ago
Agree with you apart from "non-competing". They may not compete in terms of who wants to fund the research, but if both are successful then they would very much be in competition with each other.

crikli 14y ago

American markets will not accept lab meat. I say this based on the reaction to what was dubbed "pink slime" and about which the media and the public flipped out. The result is that a completely safe and efficient process to increase yield came under fire because of hysteria grounded in not a whit of logic. People are also whipping themselves into a frenzy about genetically modified organisms. They're also convincing themselves that organic food is what they should have been eating in lieu of food treated with chemicals(1). So if a public that is generally ignorant about food production is (over)reacting to existing scientific enhancements it follows that the reaction to a completely scientificly generated product would not be met with acceptance. Disclaimer: I'm part of a fifth generation farm family. We farm corn, soybeans, and milo. No livestock. (1)Certified organic food is often treated with chemicals, sometimes the same chemicals as non-organic, but at different dilutions and with different application methods.

sp332 14y ago
I don't understand the pink slime thing. I'm pretty sure the only reason people freaked out was because of Jamie Oliver's campaign against it.
- DanBC2 14y ago
  People want to eat meat. Pink slime is a small amount of meat with large amounts of the bits you'd normally leave behind. I'm not against mechanically recovered meat. But I'd prefer children to get chunks of real meat cooked well than a squirt of slime and salt and flavourings in a crumb coating which is then fried and served with a sugary sauce. (ketchup, bbq, etc.) That combination of fat, salt, and sugar makes food "hyper palatable"[1] and, while much cheaper than "real" food contains little in the way of useful nutrition. [1] Not my term. It's used to describe food where the balance of salt, sweet, and fat have been carefully balanced, and where the food is very easy to eat, because it's small or soft and easy to chew. See the progression from roast chicken, to deep fried chicken, to deep fried chicken with a salty coating and sauces, to "popcorn chicken" which are small chunks of meat, with a lot of fat-soaked salty coating.
  - 14y ago