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Google's Sergey Brin explains why he paid $330,000 for lab burger
- fredley 13y agoWhat are the cells for the burger fed on? In tissue culture it's normal to feed cells Foetal Bovine Serum. Is this the case with these cells? If so we haven't fully removed the need for living, breathing animals from the equation.
- antimatter15 13y agoDuring the Q&A session of the press event, I think he did mention that they used Fetal bovine serum, and that it worked better than the alternatives.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- tovmeod 13y agomaybe this is not the objective, rather having a more efficient way to produce meat, you're taking out of the equation the farm, meaning less space used, maybe healthier meat (without all the antibiotics and less fat) from one cow you can produce 10 tons of meat without all the space needed not only to raise the cows, but to grow their food, the lab can also be closer to consumers having obvious implications on that.
- kentor 13y agofat is good for you. more fat please
- runarberg 13y agoWell, if efficiency is the endgoal here, than bean cultivation seems way more logical answere to beef alternatives than fake meat. You basically take the the food you would otherwice feed your cows, stew it together with some saffran and beet juice (the same colorants as for the fake meat) and you have your economy-burger. No intermediate step which takes 10 times the space of a traditional meat-farm, no anti-biotics, fat-free and no need for any living, breathing animal slughtering. Honestly I cant find a single logical reason why this artificial-meat buisness is a good idea except for "just because we can"
- mparramon 13y agoBecause that economy-burger you talk about will not taste like meat. Artificial-meat will, sooner or later.
- jasondemeuse 13y ago> Honestly I cant find a single logical reason why this artificial-meat buisness is a good idea You can't find a single reason why people would rather eat a replacement that eventually looks and tastes like a burger, rather than cow-food mixed with saffron and beet juice? If that sounds good to you, more power to you, but to think that people would pay for the mush the same way people currently pay for burgers is ridiculous.
- runarberg 13y agoNo, I can't find a single logical reason. Saturating peoples appetite for overmarkeded type of food doesn't seem logical to me. Just because people will pay money for it, doesn't make it a good idea.
- kbenson 13y agoWhy do people always confuse logic to mean we ignore all sociological concerns? Just because they are harder to reason about doesn't mean they don't matter. It's not logical to pretend that they don't matter.
- runarberg 13y agoIm sorry for the misuse of the word 'logic'. By 'logic' I ment 'makes human sence'. But I was wrong there too. For investigating in means to satisfy our tastebuts, more economly, sound really human to me. I guess, what I'm saying is simply that the time and effort going into artificial meat, and the promise it is going to generate will probably end up in continued overcomsuption. Totally overshadowing the social consernes. I only wish an investigation into how to behaviorally modify our species from doing wastefull and damaging stuff on mass scale, would get as much funding and attention.
- Someone 13y agoThe goal is not to completely get rid of the use of cows. Scroll down on http://culturedbeef.net/home/ http://culturedbeef.net/home/, and you will read "Better livestock conditions Cultured Beef can be produced without the slaughter of cattle, and far fewer cows are needed, so they can be reared without the need for intensive farming." http://culturedbeef.net/faqs/ http://culturedbeef.net/faqs/ also states: "Cultured Beef is created by painlessly harvesting muscle cells from a living cow. Scientists then feed and nurture the cells so they multiply to create muscle tissue, which is the main component of the meat we eat. It is biologically exactly the same as the meat tissue that comes from a cow."
- lechevalierd3on 13y agoYesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6159743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6159743
- marcuspovey 13y ago...And what happens when we no longer need cows? It's not going to be happy fun time for the species, because as soon as there's not a reason to breed them then we'll have a few cows kicking around in zoos and that's it. Good for the environment, possibly, but bad for the species.
- mtgx 13y agoWe don't need hundreds of millions of cows, do we? I think they contribute a lot to Earth's pollution, too.
- geebee 13y agohttp://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2013/08/05/taste-testers-sample-325000-test-tube-hamburger-funded-by-googler/ http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2013/08/05/taste-testers-sa... I've read that methane emissions from cattle contribute substantially to global warming and other pollution problems. According to the link above, this method could reduce methand emissions from cattle by 96%, and reduce the amount of land needed by 99%. I haven't followed the link to the study at Oxford and Amsterdam University (always a good idea if you start to get excited about general science coverage). I plan to do this later.
- lttlrck 13y agoDo you think they are having fun now? They are bred to be eaten, if we don't need them we'll stop breeding them.
- Ives 13y agoA lot of them are bread for milk too... (Whether they're having fun is another question, the ones that are allowed to graze outside probably are, the ones that never see the light of day probably aren't).
- corresation 13y agoDo you think they are having fun now? That's a very existential question that doesn't have an easy answer. Is a somewhat brief existence worse than no existence at all? If we eradicate fruit flies (or the many species that live short, brutish existences), have we done them a favor? I am a huge fan of the Omnivore's Dilemma and recommend it wholeheartedly because while Pollan faces these serious questions, he doesn't simply resort to the easy answer.
- benburleson 13y agoIt seems like this is all for solving the wrong problem. Why isn't there a shift away from the perceived need for more meat.
- myko 13y agoCould you elaborate? I don't understand what you mean by perceived need for more meat - to me this seems like a project geared at creating more ethical, future proof meat products.
- runarberg 13y agoHumanity has never -- with the exception of extreme cases, historical or modern -- eaten as much meat as the western man does now [1]. The only reason we eat as much meat as we do, I think, is out of marketing. The perceived need for more meat is therefor to saturate the marked. The problem arising from growing meat consumption include, pollution, maldistribution of food, animal suffering, wasting of land and resources, wasting of water, etc. [1] I suppose I need a reference for this claim, but think in terms of economy and you'll find that no other culture can afford this much land and resorces to go under meat-farming other than current western cultures --edit-- I forgot about humans living in extreme environments that live (by necesity) almost exclusively on meat, like the inuits in Greenland, before major western influence. It doesn't change the fact that the majority of all culteres do, and have in the past, eaten but a porportion of the meat that the average westerners eat today.
- VMG 13y ago> eaten as much meat as the western man does now sexist > The problem arising from growing meat consumption include, pollution, maldistribution of food, animal suffering, wasting of land and resources, wasting of water, etc. Most of these problems are addressed by artificial meat
- speeder 13y agoActually, the land/people ratio now is vert low, there is research named "original affluent societies" that show that stone age people were rich and lived better, because low population means they almost did not had to work, with plenty of food, including hunted meat available.
- tunnuz 13y agoThe real cool thing is that they are making great advertising to stem cells, by doing something that has a very positive ethical connotation (which is the typical argument against using stem cell in medicine).
- runarberg 13y agoStem cells don´t sell unless they come with hamburgers
- tunnuz 13y agoThat's another way to put it :D
- cko 13y agoIf it's stem cells from a cow, then it's okay because it's delicious. If it's stem cells from the human species it's controversial even if the purpose is to save lives. Unless both are controversial?
- 6cxs2hd6 13y agoThe timing on this is amusing: Jeff Bezos buys a newspaper for $250,000. Sergey Brin buys a burger for €250,000. Each smart in its own way.
- scott_meyer 13y agoWas that with or without a tip?
- agentsaran 13y agoA complete waste for $250,000. Lab meat? Why? Why would any one want to buy artificial, lab processed meat? Why do people insist on complicating food? Our supermarkets all already filled with things that can be barely classified as "food" and now we have this.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- clicks 13y agoWell, it's a good indication you chose to make a throwaway account for that post, as it suggests that you yourself are aware to some extent how uninformed and ignorant the question is. But, to answer: These animals are brought up in very inhumane conditions -- in crowded spaces, with no light, no freedom. The whole process is unsustainable, what happens when the world population reaches above 10 billion and demand for meat keeps getting higher? Do we have enough space to keep these animals, enough food to sustainably feed them without having bad environmental implications? It turns out there are alternative methods, and they may prove to be well worth the cost of investigating them. So here we are, doing science, in the hopes of a brighter future. Experimenting with food, to make it taste better, healthier, cheaper, more environmentally-friendly.
- corresation 13y agoThese animals are brought up in very inhumane conditions -- in crowded spaces, with no light, no freedom. It isn't accurate to paint an entire, very diverse industry with the paints of the worst offenders (e.g. Texas factory fattening houses).
- clicks 13y agoThat's missing the forest for the trees. There are probably lots of factories that treat animals more humanely than others but we still should be investigating alternative methods of creating meats. Ultimately you're going to have to meet problems of scalability down the road in some years, and/or other unforeseen problems with antibiotics and such. It's probably best to start heavy research/experimentation in preparation now than later.
- mesozoic 13y agoThis guy could pay $330k for a burger for lunch every day and not care.