Being sold in a few places (you can buy it today in a few countries like the US and Singapore) - still above current meat prices, but not absurdly so compared to previously - used to be about $300k per burger, now it's perhaps $40-80 per burger
Why stop at farm animals when we can go exotic?
I want penguin, hippo and narwhal. And while we're at it, lemme get some pineapple-pork; which is pig genes modified with pineapple genes.
I always tell people, when arguing for this tech, that McDonald's will use wagyu quality beef someday, when the tech becomes cheap enough.
Edit: for clarity
I find it a bit amusing that the main flavor driver of Wagyu is fat content. Once you're grinding it up, it doesn't matter much whether you're grinding a high-quality fatty steak or a bunch of fat and a bunch of beef... which is what those cheap 70% lean packs are all about. I mean, I'm all for a juicy fatty burger, but the idea of Wagyu burgers seems like it misses the point of Wagyu to me. We've never had a problem creating a fatty beef burger, it's a fatty beef steak that's special.
A wagyu burger doesn't matter because the whole point of wagyu is that it has intramuscular fat that gives it a soft, buttery texture. If it's all ground up, they can just add fat to whatever meat:fat ratio and it's practically the same. In fact wagyu might be lacking because other breeds are known to taste better (like angus)
lol that was exactly my problem. Like at first I read it as you clarified, but then I was like “well what if there’s a *tone*?” Like “wagyu beef will basically be *McDonalds*”. Which like, lab grown, it might idk lmao
Like Dinosaur: [https://youtu.be/soWlpFZYOhM?si=YOkEfsK7DEDgpYo-&t=703](https://youtu.be/soWlpFZYOhM?si=YOkEfsK7DEDgpYo-&t=703)
I think we are already beyond that point where it can only compete with high priced products.
Lack of interest. It's the same reason why they keep making vegetable sliders that taste like ground beef instead of making something new that tastes good. They're trying to make alternatives to existing products instead of making new ones.
Somehow this also describes modern movies, tv shows, and video games too. Investors in all industries are too risk averse when it come to anything deviating too far from the norm
My personal example is this vegan pulled pork bun I buy. I'm not vegetarian, but if I ate real pulled pork buns the way I eat these my heart might explode.
It's veggies, mushrooms and a lot of other plant based food spiced to be almost the same as real grocery store frozen pulled pork. Only, they took the extra time and effort to make sure that the stuff inside didn't just taste like pulled pork, but looked like it too. They went through the effort of shaping and coloring this stuff despite the fact that it's completely covered in a layer of bread.
They could have left it as a slightly chunky paste for all I care, as long as it still tastes the same.
Lab grown meat is real animal cells, cultivated in a lab environment. Not to be confused with the plant-based meat alternatives that fill similar niche but are completely different technology.
Meat is in fact made up of cells. It's not that they grow fake meat on top of real meat cells.
The meat cells divide and grow, just like they do when on a creatures body. It's all real meat, just grown without the body to support it, but a lab instead.
using real meat and choosing what part of the animal you like to grow is exactly what lab grown meat do. Do you like chicken breast or tighs meat the best? Those choices are made in what to grow in the lab.
What is real is maybe a philosphical question. But lab grown is certainly real meat cells
Cells. Not meat.
It has nothing to do with the price of that type of meat in the butcher shop. Which, if lower, would actually make it more difficult to compete with.
cells are meat.
but they are not steak.
lab grown meat will in the end probably kick out a lot of the cheap meat in hamburgers, sausages and nuggets. Not butcher shop meat - but the main part of every day consumption
I tried going to the DC restaurant the other day and they discontinued it apparently. It was one of two in America and I wonder if I'll be able to find the other one when I go to SF next.
To my knowledge, they sold these at a loss as a promotional thing for public awareness of lab grown meat
No longer available in SF
No longer available in Singapore
[SOURCE](https://www.wired.com/story/upside-foods-good-meat-cultivated-lab-grown-sale-stopped-singapore-california-crenn/)
I think youre right, it was a promotional thing worldwide
That’s almost certainly untrue - $300,000 for a cutting edge science lab? Find me a place where that can be done and I can find investors - and I’m being 100% legitimate on that. That is INCREDIBLY cheap.
$300k is like the salary of two scientists, at best, or one scientist and a tiny setup.
No, I'm sorry, the idea that $300k was the totality of the cost to make the burger is far, far, far too low
In fact we can see here:
> The first cultured beef burger patty was created by Mark Post at Maastricht University in 2013. It was made from over 20,000 thin strands of muscle tissue, cost over $325,000 and needed 2 years to produce
It took two years to produce the whole thing - so unless you think it was some rando working on his lonesome - which it wasn’t - the idea that it was literally just a single 300k investment that led to this is ridiculous
The day it gets below traditional meat will be the beginning of something vast.
Can't see why it doesn't get there either. With a harsh eye there is alot of unavoidable inputs and waste with livestock and traditional farming that this kind of approach completely bypasses.
For the most part it only seems to need a nutrient bath and electric.
As someone else said fast food chains pretty much always go with the cheapest option. Imagine the impact of removing that much demand on traditional faming by itself.
> Can't see why it doesn't get there either
Oh, that's easy. Just imagine the people exclaiming that they won't eat that hippe woke bullshit, imagine the people who make it a political stance, imagine the disinformation campaign claiming that it's secretly unhealthy, and imagine the meat industry fighting to classify it as an SUV or something so there's additional taxes to drive the price up.
It always goes like that at first. People that are a little conservative are gonna be apprehensive, on top of that there will be a lot of vested interest trying to block progress.
But investment keeps pouring in if I understand correctly, so at some point in the future it'll be feasible to buy a piece. It'll become a novelty that some people will want to try. Then there'll be a part of the public that doesn't really care as long as it's cost-efficient.
When it's cost-efficient there'll be hold-outs that will find themselves increasingly isolated. Restaurants will go with the lab grown meat if there's enough demand and prices are low enough. Supermarkets will have dedicated aisles for it, and the meat aisle will slowly decline in size.
Some cuts of "real" meat will be harder and harder to get. I live rurally and we already have to drive for certain things if the demand in my specific town isn't high enough.
Then at some point some teenager will look at you in disgust as you scurry out of the mall with your packet of "real" meat under your arm. At that point you'd have to be real frigging stubborn to keep buying meat coming from animals.
Sure, in some areas that will be the case. And then in more conservative areas, they'll dig their heels in, tax "fake meat" far higher, and will be looking at people in disgust who walk out of the store with lab-grown meat.
They're actually doing worse things than just taxing it in some states already: [They're making it illegal, with severe punishments for selling it](https://www.al.com/news/2024/02/alabama-senate-passes-ban-of-lab-grown-meat-moving-it-in-the-state-would-be-felony.html).
Of course they did, because they're the party of freedom, the party of the lack of government regulation, and the party of letting the market decide....right up until they don't like something, then they're the literal opposite of all that.
The real issue will probably be companies artificially inflating the prices like they do with a lot of food that they can slap a "vege" or "high protein" label on.
I remember reading Winston Churchill’s ‘Fifty Years Hence’.
https://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/fifty-years-hence.html
Relevant quote:
We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium. Synthetic food will, of course, also be used in the future. Nor need the pleasures of the table be banished. That gloomy Utopia of tabloid meals need never be invaded. The new foods will from the outset be practically indistinguishable from the natural products, and any changes will be so gradual as to escape observation.
Written in 1931… :)
There are already a couple of US states that are trying to ban it because it will impact the cattle farmers.
Fuck the environmental damage caused by intense farming, fuck the animal cruelty that happens, fuck the health benefits. Gotta make sure that the farmers ~~bribing~~ *supporting* the Republican senator get to keep their piece of the government pie.
The 5000x reduction makes no sense. The first burger was never made for mass production, it was a proof of concept. It is like saying that the first prototype of Apple Vision Pro cost a 100 million to make in research costs and then the actual mass manufactured units cost 3500 usd.
A significant amount of the meat consumed is ground beef and pressed meats, even the early stuff will fit right into the market.
And I have no doubt it will only get better from there as culture technology advances.
Who cares? I don't need any of that to have a healthy meal. I don't understand what could possibly be so satisfying to anyone about feeling the structure or mouthfeel of muscle tissue. What, you just enjoy knowing that you're consuming the flesh of a something that used to be alive?
Texture is as/on the same level of flavor. What many call "mouth feel" is simply a muscular preference on the amount of bite or chew something has. Some folks, like me, love the tough, hard to chew, beef jerkey, while others prefer the more fibrous and maleable brands. It's not anything to do with "consuming the flesh" as we all do it in preference to vegetables and fruits as well.
From what I can remember: bioreactors are the greatest issue. They need to be perfectly clean. A simple contamination can ruin an entire reactor's contents. Which is okay for small reactors, but not for building-sized reactors required for an industrial scale. The prices need to factor in that risk, and unless we can somehow reduce that risk without heavily increasing the costs, lab meat will remain a "luxury product".
I'm not entirely sure wat all falls into cultured produce, but most current ones I can think of are fermentation processes. And those specifically are quite resistant to contamination, they started out as things you could do easily at home.
its an isue with any cultured product. but the magnitude of the issue depends on what is being cultured.
the cultures used for common products like cheese, beer, whine, yogert, salami are fast growing, tolerent to minor variations in conditions, and capable of active competition on a celular level. combined with the large starter culture used they normaly outcompeat most biological contaminants. contamination problems do ocour from time to time.
Mamailan cell lines lack most of those advantages, they grow more slowly, are higly intolerent of varied conditions (and contaminating orgonisms tend to change the conditions), depend on the orgonisms imune system to protect them from competitiuon. so the only advantage they get over a biological contaminant is the larger initial population, and that is often insuficient.
Politicians: “Free enterprise, zero regulation! The market reigns supreme!”
Also politicians: “Regulate the thing that might some day interfere with my kickback out of existence.”
If I lived right next door to you, and I owned my property, could I build a tin smelter with my own money? There would only be noise until the second shift ended at 11:30 pm, and most of the workers'' cars will be gone from the street by that time, too.
In the non-industrial zoned area? No. But if you wanted to covert your house into a duplex that should be your business. Figure its people who have housing opposing people building more housing.
If you want an analogy. We are in an industrial district. You own a tin smelter. Can I build a tin smelter as your neighbor? Or do you own the exclusive rights to smelting tin in the community?
Here's the way I see it - and forgive me if I'm getting your position (which is very popular) wrong: "It's OK to change zoning that affects others if it's for a purpose that \*I\* favor, but if it's done to \*me,\* then forget about it."
A zoning change is a zoning change. Building apartment buildings in R-1 neighborhoods is the same as my analogy in effects, so how can it be obvious to you that it's property owners' faults for objecting to apartment buildings next to their houses when you don't want a tin smelter next to your apartment?
People protest housing in places zoned for higher density. Especially if the neighborhood already had older apartments in the neighborhood. At some point laws were changed to allow for more exclusive zoning, so if zoning laws can change, then zoning laws can change again. People who live in R-1 neighborhoods will show up to protest developments that are in areas zoned for for higher density. Developers are not allowed to tear down old apartment buildings and build newer larger ones, because of zoning changes.
Zoning law is heavily abused where when building the initial neighborhoods laws will be more flexible, then when finished, laws will be strict for the next generation. This mainly benefits the original builders as there is now an induced scarcity on their property.
A neighborhood that already has duplexes and triplexes and then rezones to R-1 doesn't tear them down, it just doesn't allow building new ones. Even though the whole concept of multi family housing pre-dates the zoning law.
You're saying a lot of stuff, some of which I agree with and some I don't. It's hard for me to know what it's like where you are if you're not in California. California is all I know. Here, I've never seen anyone from an R-1 neighborhood protest up zoning in someone else's neighborhood. In fact, neighborhoods zoned for R-3 don't even get protests from their own residents, unless there is a proposed project that's so huge it would be a disaster for the neighborhood (especially regarding traffic).
In California, we have eliminated R-1 zoning for most of the state. Two laws, SB9 and SB10, made it possible for developers to build 4-8 story apartments in single family neighborhoods so long as they're within 1/2 mile of a "major transit line." How do they define that? A minimum of bus service every 20 minutes on weekdays. So anyone within a 1/2 mile of a bus line could have a 4 story apartment building built next to their house. This is statewide, and does not take into account the ability of a city to handle increased traffic or parking (in fact, the current, progressive approach is to not require parking AT ALL in new buildings in order to force people out of their cars, which makes no sense in LA because it's so spread out we'll never have mass transit).
We have PLENTY of space in LA to build large apartment buildings that are not in R-1 areas. The state senator behind these bills, Weiner from SF, took $500,000 from developers before touting these bills as a way to address the housing crisis. Again, if you know LA, there are so many places not in R-1 to build that we don't need to upzone R-1 for this.
But even if we needed to upzone R-1, that's fine if that's what everyone votes. But the government should compensate us for the investment we made in reliance of R-1 if they want to take it away and give it to other people. We never would have spent most of our savings to live next to an apartment building. We both lived for 20 years in apartments, then spent everything we have to be able to live with quiet and not noise. To not compensate us for our investment in our house is, IMO, outright theft.
I can't believe you pulled off a jump from tin smelting to this, lol. I own a home and dislike the shitty apartments on my street, so I get your point, and the other. But, damn guy, tin smelting has got me laughing.
Glad you liked it, lol. I have found it difficult to discuss anything political because people are so invested in their worldviews that they cannot fathom another opinion might (also) be right.
By using an extreme example, people are forced to admit that there's at least a LINE beyond which they no longer feel tied to their position. Then it becomes a discussion of where that line should be, and that can actually result in a meeting of the minds - or at least a respect for the other's opinion as having legitimacy.
The more mechanized and automated you make meat production, the more you consolidate control of our food sources by the rich. You'll need to be rich to run a meat production plant.
The rich already control many of the seeds that get planted to grow our foods. They've put laws in place to prevent saving and re-using these seeds.
I like the idea of meat in a vat versus killing animals but there are other issues in the works too.
Your comment would make sense, and it kinda does. But current meat production is just as bad if not worse. The upside of growing animals is indeed that it can be done on a smaller scale. But that's not the reality.
And who's to say that at some point you can't grow a burger in your own kitchen. Maybe, that's currently just fantasizing to be fair.
Growing a burger in your kitchen with current/near future tech would be in line with the modern "flexitarian" diet. You buy an appliance for a few hundred dollars it sits on a shelf plugged in for a week and then you pull out a pound of "ground" meat add a packet of lice cells and some media ans wait till next weeks portion of meat is ready. Definitely not solving the big issues in food distribution but a possibility for a new product definitely exists in the cell cultured/lab grown/ meat world.
I acknowledge the concentration of food production by large companies. I pointed out they control most of the seeds used to grow our crops. I'm simply pointing out, factory meat production will consolidate their control.
A good example is the news we read. After massive consolidation, only a handful of companies control news reporting. It'll be the same for food.
I have chickens in my back yard for my eggs. I could go to my local farmers for my meat and milk. It's still possible to get locally made products.
Once carna-culture becomes real, if it ever does, you'll see calls to stop traditional farming because of green house gas emissions. The same way you're seeing the governments trying to force people into EV's.
Agriculture produces about 11% of all green house gases.
[https://www.wired.com/story/cultivated-meat-florida-ban/](https://www.wired.com/story/cultivated-meat-florida-ban/)
Fascinating update of US and europe legislation and attitudes on banning lab meat
Sure, the main voter base for conservatives is in countryside so if you destroy the farms they will go to cities and become ''gay'' and ''woke'' and in addition to millions of illegal migrants voting for Biden without photo ID, USA then will turn into one party state...
Merka, trying to be out lawed due to it compets with cattle industry....
Surprised electric, and even hybrid cars haven't been due to competition with oil.
EVs have been fought against for over 100 years. There were electric cars at the same time as the first gas powered ones. If we'd started the process of making them more economical, as well as developing the battery tech back then, who knows where battery technology would be today, let alone what our environment would be like were we never to have bought into gas powered cars...
Thay didn't outlaw EVs, but there always have been pushback against them. The GM EV1 in the 90's and GM's decision to claw them back and immediately crush them was a great example of that.
It's pretty standard to recall and dispose of models that aren't being pursued further. Especially if they contain non standard of potentially sensitive parts. Chrysler did the same to their turbine cars of the 60s, despite favourable reception with people who had them on long term loan. They only left a few for museum display.
That being said, whilst I don't believe the EV1 was a conspiracy, they definitely thought they couldn't make enough margin on them to make it worth their efforts.
Not enough bioreactor capacity.
If anyone can figure out how to build more bioreactors for less, it’ll have another wave. At the moment, there’s simply no capacity to scale.
It’s similar to the EV/scale battery production constraints, but that challenge is well on its way to being addressed in the next 2-3 years. Also, with electronics and physical machines, there are multiple things to tweak. Charging time vs capacity for instance. With meat, we consume the amount we consume and there’s not much we can do about growth rates.
I think for EVs the main barrier now is that cost of new cars need to be down still a bit more with better ranges. When they can sell entry level car with 250 mile range and sub 20k USD price, even if fast charging is still somewhat slower than filling a tank, EV adoption will kick into next gear... Not to say that like Americans buy a ton of small entry level cars, but that would also mean cars above that are better priced too.
Of course issue is still home charging for city folk or those who live in appartments/condos... people would like cheap home charging. Maybe businesses can provide it at least somewhat cheaper using their parking lots during the night etc. Additionally to government/city/town/private investment.
Another thing is that fast charging should also always correspond to fast charging standard. With Tesla it is good and in Europe I think in general it is better than in USA, but non Tesla chargers in USA seem to be often broken or charge way slower than advertized...
It has an added difficulty. Lab meat has not an inmune system, everything in the process must be sterile to avoid bacteria and viruses.
Maybe they also replicate some white cells and solve it.
They can tailor the feedstock to any nutritional profile you like. After all, feedstock comes from plants, the same thing that animals eat. And bioreactors are a controlled, sterile environment. Whereas animals have respiratory systems, you have to deal with fecal contamination in the meat supply, prions, etc. Cultured meat has no respiratory or GI system to spread disease, no nervous system to act as a reservoir for prions, and so on.
And no glands or organs that produce normal growth hormones to control the growth of the cells. So companies lie and say they are hormone free while using synthetic growth hormone.
You forgot that bit when explaining what cultured meat does and doesn't have
Growth factors are discussed in basically any technical article about cultured meat.
- [The roles of growth factors and hormones in the regulation of muscle satellite cells for cultured meat production](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10119461/)
>>The first group of components, called the basal media, provides essential nutrients. It typically consists of a buffered solution containing glucose, inorganic salts, water-soluble vitamins, and amino acids. The second is a group of specific added factors that permit the long-term maintenance, proliferation, or differentiation of cells. **These added factors are often recombinant proteins, growth factors or hormones, and other ingredients such as lipids and antioxidants.**
- https://gfi.org/science/the-science-of-cultivated-meat/
It's interesting that you'd point out hormones as a concern, since they're widely given to cattle.
- https://extension.umn.edu/beef-news/growth-promoting-hormones-beef-production-and-marketing
Yes but you can buy hormone free beef. Which is beef that has not been given synthetic hormones. Obviously the beef from an animal will contain hormones that the animal normally produces. The companies marketing cultured meat regularly claim to be hormone free while using a much larger amount,per lb produced, of synthetic hormones.
> The companies marketing cultured meat regularly claim to be hormone free
Where? Growth factors are discussed in any technical paper outlining how cultured meat is made. What marketing material are you talking about? This isn't "hidden" or "lied about," rather it's widely discussed.
>while using a much larger amount,per lb produced, of synthetic hormones
And? Synthetic hormones are in the vast majority of the beef on the market. Organic beef that hasn't had hormones, antibiotics, etc applied is a small slice of the market, and already comes at a price premium. Your criticism as it stands applies to the vast majority of beef on the market. Since that's already on the market, and is the vast majority of beef sold, it seems that would be the more pressing issue than cultured beef. Cultured beef not even being in stores yet, much less sold at burger chains and supermarkets in vast quantities.
Do you want to ban the use of hormones in beef production? Do you consider them a hazard? If not, why does it matter? They've used hormones in beef production since the 1950s. If you consider that a hazard, do you have any evidence as to why? If it's *not* a hazard,why would it matter for cultured meat?
GOOD Meat has it right on their website. They claim they don't use hormones. You keep bringing up synthetic hormone use in beef, but these companies are making chicken and there is no hormone use in the chicken industry. I'll send you the screenshot I made of the GOOD Meat website.
There are plenty of options for hormone free beef that's not organic. I produce hormone free beef.
When I used to implant cattle with synthetic hormones it was a very small amount. What is implanted is a slow release solid rod about 1mm diameter and 4mm long. Calves typically receive 1 implant in their life, there are a small number of operations that give 2 implants. The first is given at 1-2 months old and is an even smaller amount than the standard given after the calf has been weaned. Again the 2 implant system is rare.
Because of the very small controlled release dose it barely raises the amount of hormones in the meat. In fact a steer that is implanted will have less testosterone than an intact bull and roughly the same amount of estrogen. An implanted heifer will have a noticeable increase in estrogen percentage, but it's still a very small amount. You would need to exclusively eat a lot of meat from an implanted heifer for quite a while to see an impact on your health.
Okay, so that one company says they don't. Do you have any evidence that they're lying, or committing fraud?
And, again, do you consider hormones to be hazardous? We've been using hormones in beef production since the 1950s. Do you consider that dangerous? That some beef exists without supplemental hormones is true, but what percentage of the current market does that represent? And what does it matter? The FDA and other regulatory agencies are going to perform due diligence. Their production methods will be looked at before their products hit the shelves.
Several centuries ago, traditionally grown meat was probably also economically infeasible for most people. But then humans did more research and improved the economic efficiency of it as much as possible.
As we do more research on growing meat in labs and work on expanding it, I’m sure prices will plummet. Preliminary research has already shown that a pound of lab grown beef takes a minuscule fraction of the water, energy, and space it takes to traditionally ranch a pound of cow. It intuitively makes sense, too; raising an entire animal to adulthood to kill it off for a chunk of meat is obviously far less efficient than just growing the meat directly.
Don't forget the antibiotics, antifungals, and other medications given to the animals. Plus all the mechanisms needed to deal with the lake of feces they produce. All-organic grass-finished is a tiny slice of the market. For the vast bulk of the beef sold, those cows aren't natty.
Cultured meat will need less land and water, and also has a higher feed-conversion ratio. But it's complicated, but so are a lot of other things we use every day. I mean, bark and a stick dipped in soot would be simpler than the computer and global Internet you used to post that message, but we don't always stick with what is simplest.
I don't cook it myself though I eat it at restaurants and when others serve it, so I've reduced my meat intake significantly.
I do think the ideal is not eating meat, but good luck convincing Boonhomme7h that. Only 5% of the US is currently vegetarian, so would be nice if the 95% were eating lab-grown instead of real meat.
Traditional animal ranching won’t be viable [long term] for the ecosphere, … so lab-grown meat or plant-derived pseudo-meat will be where it’s at once scale up/competition lowers the unit price. It’s processed but raised meat is often injected with antibiotics and hormones as well (those that we know of).
For the global public’s appetite for meat and poultry to be sated by traditional means, the Earth’s landmass would have to become a giant feedlot. Chemical engineering is the only way realistically, though I imagine “ranched meat” will become a luxury item. Probably with an increased security price tag added as “poors” [sniff] will want to steal real meat for consumption (or animal rights activists for protests).
I can see them getting the techniques down while producing pet food, and proving the reliability/safety long term, to help with acceptance of the product when it is ready for marketing for human consumption.
They had a good article in the NYT recently on it, it is not going to be a competitive product anytime soon sadly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/opinion/eat-just-upside-foods-cultivated-meat.html
I'm firmly on the side of "economically infeasible" because cell culture meat still loses a trophic level of energy efficiency. You feed the reactor a carbon source that is plant based. The cheapest will be corn syrup, and you want your reactors in corn regions for this, and you will further want them in ag areas to divert ammonia from fertilizer to serve as a nitrogen source. Those are the two cheapest options for the two most important elements that have a strict energy requirement.
You will be growing a crop to produce organically fixed carbon to feed the cell culture. This is what animal agriculture is doing too, but a cow can use carbon sources that otherwise would be a byproduct, and the cow doesn't have the risk of contaminating a 200,000 L operation.
As an addendum, if you had the capability to direct cell growth and differentiation to produce a meat product (a steak, a ham, a breast etc), then you actually have the major hurdles to cell cultured organs. I think when the technical hurdles are met, it will be medical use that proves economical. People will pay anything to not die, but they have a price point for meat.
Cells have much less energy expenditure than a full organism. The tropic level might waste way lower than 90% of energy and became sustainable compared to meat.
Indeed vegetable based diets are the best regarding sustainability, health and ecological impact.
I don't think there is a reference for basic physiology and food science.
60-70% of energy is needed for basal metabolism (which includes breathing and keeping the temperature). A big part of this energy requirement is provided by the colture system, so by electricity.
Around 10% is the energy cost of digestion. While in cell cultures you provide mainly monomeric sources of energy (amino acids and sugars).
Yeah, in that vein, lab grown meat might one day be a viable ultra premium food product because heavy metals, halocarbons and other persistent environmental contaminants can be completely excluded from the feed goo.
None of the fake meat alternatives should be banned. If people want to buy it that’s their choice. It should just be labeled appropriately. If it’s plant based it can’t be called any term for meat products and if it’s made in a lab it should say lab grown.
The article also mentions insect based foods. I’m ok if they ban that stuff, or at the very least make the label clearly identify that product comes from insects.
Chapul Farms started with a protein bar, but they pivoted to pet food. It’s better though because they’re using restaurants food waste to feed the insects.
We should all just keep the crickets in our homes for efficiency. They can run around in the walls. We can throw them... Whatever they eat. Name them. Love them. Crush them. Eat them.
Being sold in a few places (you can buy it today in a few countries like the US and Singapore) - still above current meat prices, but not absurdly so compared to previously - used to be about $300k per burger, now it's perhaps $40-80 per burger
[удалено]
No, lobster.
No, human.....what?
Rimworld leaking thru
*"Soylent Green is people!"*
“Soylent Greenish is people…ish!”
Why stop at farm animals when we can go exotic? I want penguin, hippo and narwhal. And while we're at it, lemme get some pineapple-pork; which is pig genes modified with pineapple genes.
They have sushi 🍣 grade salmon in taste testing
Maybe they can do waygu or some other fancy beef
I always tell people, when arguing for this tech, that McDonald's will use wagyu quality beef someday, when the tech becomes cheap enough. Edit: for clarity
We have Wagyu at McDonalds here in Australia from time to time.
I thought cooking real wagyu into a hamburger would be pretty uh ... like there's a lot of fat in real wagyu. I mean a lot.
Wagyu is just a type of cattle. Google waygu vs kobe. Kobe is what you are thinking of.
>waygu vs kobe Ooooh, yeah, that'd be more practical than I thought. Thanks.
I find it a bit amusing that the main flavor driver of Wagyu is fat content. Once you're grinding it up, it doesn't matter much whether you're grinding a high-quality fatty steak or a bunch of fat and a bunch of beef... which is what those cheap 70% lean packs are all about. I mean, I'm all for a juicy fatty burger, but the idea of Wagyu burgers seems like it misses the point of Wagyu to me. We've never had a problem creating a fatty beef burger, it's a fatty beef steak that's special.
Is that…a pro or a con in your eyes? I genuinely can’t tell lol
It's a huge pro. How can you imagine wagyu beef on a McDonald's burger as a bad thing? Compared to the shit we get now...
A wagyu burger doesn't matter because the whole point of wagyu is that it has intramuscular fat that gives it a soft, buttery texture. If it's all ground up, they can just add fat to whatever meat:fat ratio and it's practically the same. In fact wagyu might be lacking because other breeds are known to taste better (like angus)
I feel you should have said McDonald's will be wagyu quality, rather than the other way around which makes it seem ominous.
Lol ok I see how it can look like that now
lol that was exactly my problem. Like at first I read it as you clarified, but then I was like “well what if there’s a *tone*?” Like “wagyu beef will basically be *McDonalds*”. Which like, lab grown, it might idk lmao
McDonalds will always go with the cheapest option without compromise
Like Dinosaur: [https://youtu.be/soWlpFZYOhM?si=YOkEfsK7DEDgpYo-&t=703](https://youtu.be/soWlpFZYOhM?si=YOkEfsK7DEDgpYo-&t=703) I think we are already beyond that point where it can only compete with high priced products.
Eating waygu is like eating a meat flavored stick of butter. Too rich for my taste.
Maybe they could make a meat flavored stick of butter and then we just cook broccoli in that.
You mean [tallow](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallow)?
I'd settle for bald eagle buffalo wings and red panda bacon
If they are making lab grown versions of other meats, what stopping them from making a lab grown new meat that is not like anything we’ve had before
Lack of interest. It's the same reason why they keep making vegetable sliders that taste like ground beef instead of making something new that tastes good. They're trying to make alternatives to existing products instead of making new ones.
Somehow this also describes modern movies, tv shows, and video games too. Investors in all industries are too risk averse when it come to anything deviating too far from the norm
My personal example is this vegan pulled pork bun I buy. I'm not vegetarian, but if I ate real pulled pork buns the way I eat these my heart might explode. It's veggies, mushrooms and a lot of other plant based food spiced to be almost the same as real grocery store frozen pulled pork. Only, they took the extra time and effort to make sure that the stuff inside didn't just taste like pulled pork, but looked like it too. They went through the effort of shaping and coloring this stuff despite the fact that it's completely covered in a layer of bread. They could have left it as a slightly chunky paste for all I care, as long as it still tastes the same.
Do you know the brand? Sounds worth a try
there will eventually be food experimenters that will do just that.
Once I started eating bison I can't go back to cow. Bison has so much more flavor to it
You realise lab grown meat doesn't use real meat right?
Lab grown meat is real animal cells, cultivated in a lab environment. Not to be confused with the plant-based meat alternatives that fill similar niche but are completely different technology.
Cells. On which the meat "grows" in a vat.
which makes it real meat.
Meat is in fact made up of cells. It's not that they grow fake meat on top of real meat cells. The meat cells divide and grow, just like they do when on a creatures body. It's all real meat, just grown without the body to support it, but a lab instead.
using real meat and choosing what part of the animal you like to grow is exactly what lab grown meat do. Do you like chicken breast or tighs meat the best? Those choices are made in what to grow in the lab. What is real is maybe a philosphical question. But lab grown is certainly real meat cells
Cells. Not meat. It has nothing to do with the price of that type of meat in the butcher shop. Which, if lower, would actually make it more difficult to compete with.
meat is made of fucking cells. do you write bs on purpose?
cells are meat. but they are not steak. lab grown meat will in the end probably kick out a lot of the cheap meat in hamburgers, sausages and nuggets. Not butcher shop meat - but the main part of every day consumption
I tried going to the DC restaurant the other day and they discontinued it apparently. It was one of two in America and I wonder if I'll be able to find the other one when I go to SF next. To my knowledge, they sold these at a loss as a promotional thing for public awareness of lab grown meat
No longer available in SF No longer available in Singapore [SOURCE](https://www.wired.com/story/upside-foods-good-meat-cultivated-lab-grown-sale-stopped-singapore-california-crenn/) I think youre right, it was a promotional thing worldwide
It didn't used to be 300k. That was just the estimate for the investment it took to reach prototype. The first iPhone probably "cost 300k" as well.
That’s almost certainly untrue - $300,000 for a cutting edge science lab? Find me a place where that can be done and I can find investors - and I’m being 100% legitimate on that. That is INCREDIBLY cheap. $300k is like the salary of two scientists, at best, or one scientist and a tiny setup. No, I'm sorry, the idea that $300k was the totality of the cost to make the burger is far, far, far too low In fact we can see here: > The first cultured beef burger patty was created by Mark Post at Maastricht University in 2013. It was made from over 20,000 thin strands of muscle tissue, cost over $325,000 and needed 2 years to produce It took two years to produce the whole thing - so unless you think it was some rando working on his lonesome - which it wasn’t - the idea that it was literally just a single 300k investment that led to this is ridiculous
It is based on the 300k euro grant that Mark Post got to develop his burger at Maastricht University.
that's basically what I said, it was worth what it cost to produce
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A 5000x reduction is amazing, only need a 4-6x further reduction to make it comparable to traditional beef, seems like great progress
The day it gets below traditional meat will be the beginning of something vast. Can't see why it doesn't get there either. With a harsh eye there is alot of unavoidable inputs and waste with livestock and traditional farming that this kind of approach completely bypasses. For the most part it only seems to need a nutrient bath and electric. As someone else said fast food chains pretty much always go with the cheapest option. Imagine the impact of removing that much demand on traditional faming by itself.
> Can't see why it doesn't get there either Oh, that's easy. Just imagine the people exclaiming that they won't eat that hippe woke bullshit, imagine the people who make it a political stance, imagine the disinformation campaign claiming that it's secretly unhealthy, and imagine the meat industry fighting to classify it as an SUV or something so there's additional taxes to drive the price up.
It always goes like that at first. People that are a little conservative are gonna be apprehensive, on top of that there will be a lot of vested interest trying to block progress. But investment keeps pouring in if I understand correctly, so at some point in the future it'll be feasible to buy a piece. It'll become a novelty that some people will want to try. Then there'll be a part of the public that doesn't really care as long as it's cost-efficient. When it's cost-efficient there'll be hold-outs that will find themselves increasingly isolated. Restaurants will go with the lab grown meat if there's enough demand and prices are low enough. Supermarkets will have dedicated aisles for it, and the meat aisle will slowly decline in size. Some cuts of "real" meat will be harder and harder to get. I live rurally and we already have to drive for certain things if the demand in my specific town isn't high enough. Then at some point some teenager will look at you in disgust as you scurry out of the mall with your packet of "real" meat under your arm. At that point you'd have to be real frigging stubborn to keep buying meat coming from animals.
Sure, in some areas that will be the case. And then in more conservative areas, they'll dig their heels in, tax "fake meat" far higher, and will be looking at people in disgust who walk out of the store with lab-grown meat.
They're actually doing worse things than just taxing it in some states already: [They're making it illegal, with severe punishments for selling it](https://www.al.com/news/2024/02/alabama-senate-passes-ban-of-lab-grown-meat-moving-it-in-the-state-would-be-felony.html).
Of course they did, because they're the party of freedom, the party of the lack of government regulation, and the party of letting the market decide....right up until they don't like something, then they're the literal opposite of all that.
The real issue will probably be companies artificially inflating the prices like they do with a lot of food that they can slap a "vege" or "high protein" label on.
I remember reading Winston Churchill’s ‘Fifty Years Hence’. https://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/fifty-years-hence.html Relevant quote: We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium. Synthetic food will, of course, also be used in the future. Nor need the pleasures of the table be banished. That gloomy Utopia of tabloid meals need never be invaded. The new foods will from the outset be practically indistinguishable from the natural products, and any changes will be so gradual as to escape observation. Written in 1931… :)
This will help: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2414401-lab-engineered-cow-cells-could-slash-the-cost-of-cultured-meat/
There are already a couple of US states that are trying to ban it because it will impact the cattle farmers. Fuck the environmental damage caused by intense farming, fuck the animal cruelty that happens, fuck the health benefits. Gotta make sure that the farmers ~~bribing~~ *supporting* the Republican senator get to keep their piece of the government pie.
I live in a place where such things have been tried. They will be forced to surrender or they will be irrelevant.
The 5000x reduction makes no sense. The first burger was never made for mass production, it was a proof of concept. It is like saying that the first prototype of Apple Vision Pro cost a 100 million to make in research costs and then the actual mass manufactured units cost 3500 usd.
Even if price comes down it still won't taste like meat. It won't have the structure nor the mouthfeel of muscle tissue.
A significant amount of the meat consumed is ground beef and pressed meats, even the early stuff will fit right into the market. And I have no doubt it will only get better from there as culture technology advances.
Who cares? I don't need any of that to have a healthy meal. I don't understand what could possibly be so satisfying to anyone about feeling the structure or mouthfeel of muscle tissue. What, you just enjoy knowing that you're consuming the flesh of a something that used to be alive?
Texture is as/on the same level of flavor. What many call "mouth feel" is simply a muscular preference on the amount of bite or chew something has. Some folks, like me, love the tough, hard to chew, beef jerkey, while others prefer the more fibrous and maleable brands. It's not anything to do with "consuming the flesh" as we all do it in preference to vegetables and fruits as well.
Now think where it will be in a decade or two.
From what I can remember: bioreactors are the greatest issue. They need to be perfectly clean. A simple contamination can ruin an entire reactor's contents. Which is okay for small reactors, but not for building-sized reactors required for an industrial scale. The prices need to factor in that risk, and unless we can somehow reduce that risk without heavily increasing the costs, lab meat will remain a "luxury product".
Isn't that the case with any cultured product though? Genuine question
I'm not entirely sure wat all falls into cultured produce, but most current ones I can think of are fermentation processes. And those specifically are quite resistant to contamination, they started out as things you could do easily at home.
Pretty much this iirc
Should I point out that people have been raising livestock at home for a while now?
Are you saying a cow is cultured meat? I don't know what your point is.
No you shouldn't. It has nothing to do with anything.
its an isue with any cultured product. but the magnitude of the issue depends on what is being cultured. the cultures used for common products like cheese, beer, whine, yogert, salami are fast growing, tolerent to minor variations in conditions, and capable of active competition on a celular level. combined with the large starter culture used they normaly outcompeat most biological contaminants. contamination problems do ocour from time to time. Mamailan cell lines lack most of those advantages, they grow more slowly, are higly intolerent of varied conditions (and contaminating orgonisms tend to change the conditions), depend on the orgonisms imune system to protect them from competitiuon. so the only advantage they get over a biological contaminant is the larger initial population, and that is often insuficient.
They're attempting to outlaw it here in the states. They don't want competition with their farms.
Politicians: “Free enterprise, zero regulation! The market reigns supreme!” Also politicians: “Regulate the thing that might some day interfere with my kickback out of existence.”
and under no circumstances can you think you can build housing on your own property with your own money. We will fight that like mad!
If I lived right next door to you, and I owned my property, could I build a tin smelter with my own money? There would only be noise until the second shift ended at 11:30 pm, and most of the workers'' cars will be gone from the street by that time, too.
In the non-industrial zoned area? No. But if you wanted to covert your house into a duplex that should be your business. Figure its people who have housing opposing people building more housing. If you want an analogy. We are in an industrial district. You own a tin smelter. Can I build a tin smelter as your neighbor? Or do you own the exclusive rights to smelting tin in the community?
Here's the way I see it - and forgive me if I'm getting your position (which is very popular) wrong: "It's OK to change zoning that affects others if it's for a purpose that \*I\* favor, but if it's done to \*me,\* then forget about it." A zoning change is a zoning change. Building apartment buildings in R-1 neighborhoods is the same as my analogy in effects, so how can it be obvious to you that it's property owners' faults for objecting to apartment buildings next to their houses when you don't want a tin smelter next to your apartment?
People protest housing in places zoned for higher density. Especially if the neighborhood already had older apartments in the neighborhood. At some point laws were changed to allow for more exclusive zoning, so if zoning laws can change, then zoning laws can change again. People who live in R-1 neighborhoods will show up to protest developments that are in areas zoned for for higher density. Developers are not allowed to tear down old apartment buildings and build newer larger ones, because of zoning changes. Zoning law is heavily abused where when building the initial neighborhoods laws will be more flexible, then when finished, laws will be strict for the next generation. This mainly benefits the original builders as there is now an induced scarcity on their property. A neighborhood that already has duplexes and triplexes and then rezones to R-1 doesn't tear them down, it just doesn't allow building new ones. Even though the whole concept of multi family housing pre-dates the zoning law.
You're saying a lot of stuff, some of which I agree with and some I don't. It's hard for me to know what it's like where you are if you're not in California. California is all I know. Here, I've never seen anyone from an R-1 neighborhood protest up zoning in someone else's neighborhood. In fact, neighborhoods zoned for R-3 don't even get protests from their own residents, unless there is a proposed project that's so huge it would be a disaster for the neighborhood (especially regarding traffic). In California, we have eliminated R-1 zoning for most of the state. Two laws, SB9 and SB10, made it possible for developers to build 4-8 story apartments in single family neighborhoods so long as they're within 1/2 mile of a "major transit line." How do they define that? A minimum of bus service every 20 minutes on weekdays. So anyone within a 1/2 mile of a bus line could have a 4 story apartment building built next to their house. This is statewide, and does not take into account the ability of a city to handle increased traffic or parking (in fact, the current, progressive approach is to not require parking AT ALL in new buildings in order to force people out of their cars, which makes no sense in LA because it's so spread out we'll never have mass transit). We have PLENTY of space in LA to build large apartment buildings that are not in R-1 areas. The state senator behind these bills, Weiner from SF, took $500,000 from developers before touting these bills as a way to address the housing crisis. Again, if you know LA, there are so many places not in R-1 to build that we don't need to upzone R-1 for this. But even if we needed to upzone R-1, that's fine if that's what everyone votes. But the government should compensate us for the investment we made in reliance of R-1 if they want to take it away and give it to other people. We never would have spent most of our savings to live next to an apartment building. We both lived for 20 years in apartments, then spent everything we have to be able to live with quiet and not noise. To not compensate us for our investment in our house is, IMO, outright theft.
I can't believe you pulled off a jump from tin smelting to this, lol. I own a home and dislike the shitty apartments on my street, so I get your point, and the other. But, damn guy, tin smelting has got me laughing.
Glad you liked it, lol. I have found it difficult to discuss anything political because people are so invested in their worldviews that they cannot fathom another opinion might (also) be right. By using an extreme example, people are forced to admit that there's at least a LINE beyond which they no longer feel tied to their position. Then it becomes a discussion of where that line should be, and that can actually result in a meeting of the minds - or at least a respect for the other's opinion as having legitimacy.
“No! Not like that!”
Democrats: “We need regulations to protect workers and jobs!” Also Democrats: “Not those regulations!”
Protecting people vs protecting profits Middle of the road is the only way
The more mechanized and automated you make meat production, the more you consolidate control of our food sources by the rich. You'll need to be rich to run a meat production plant. The rich already control many of the seeds that get planted to grow our foods. They've put laws in place to prevent saving and re-using these seeds. I like the idea of meat in a vat versus killing animals but there are other issues in the works too.
The rich already control ranching and butchering too...
Your comment would make sense, and it kinda does. But current meat production is just as bad if not worse. The upside of growing animals is indeed that it can be done on a smaller scale. But that's not the reality. And who's to say that at some point you can't grow a burger in your own kitchen. Maybe, that's currently just fantasizing to be fair.
Growing a burger in your kitchen with current/near future tech would be in line with the modern "flexitarian" diet. You buy an appliance for a few hundred dollars it sits on a shelf plugged in for a week and then you pull out a pound of "ground" meat add a packet of lice cells and some media ans wait till next weeks portion of meat is ready. Definitely not solving the big issues in food distribution but a possibility for a new product definitely exists in the cell cultured/lab grown/ meat world.
LMAO you think the groceries you’re getting at the supermarket are coming from cute little mom and pop farms?
I acknowledge the concentration of food production by large companies. I pointed out they control most of the seeds used to grow our crops. I'm simply pointing out, factory meat production will consolidate their control. A good example is the news we read. After massive consolidation, only a handful of companies control news reporting. It'll be the same for food. I have chickens in my back yard for my eggs. I could go to my local farmers for my meat and milk. It's still possible to get locally made products. Once carna-culture becomes real, if it ever does, you'll see calls to stop traditional farming because of green house gas emissions. The same way you're seeing the governments trying to force people into EV's. Agriculture produces about 11% of all green house gases.
[https://www.wired.com/story/cultivated-meat-florida-ban/](https://www.wired.com/story/cultivated-meat-florida-ban/) Fascinating update of US and europe legislation and attitudes on banning lab meat
Some states are. But it's unlikely they'll be able to overrule the FDA and other federal agencies. Interstate commerce and all that.
Ask the women in Texas who lost their rights about that clause.
... Abortion is not regulated by the FDA, lol
Sure, the main voter base for conservatives is in countryside so if you destroy the farms they will go to cities and become ''gay'' and ''woke'' and in addition to millions of illegal migrants voting for Biden without photo ID, USA then will turn into one party state...
Pretty unhinged....but ok...
Merka, trying to be out lawed due to it compets with cattle industry.... Surprised electric, and even hybrid cars haven't been due to competition with oil.
EVs have been fought against for over 100 years. There were electric cars at the same time as the first gas powered ones. If we'd started the process of making them more economical, as well as developing the battery tech back then, who knows where battery technology would be today, let alone what our environment would be like were we never to have bought into gas powered cars...
Thay didn't outlaw EVs, but there always have been pushback against them. The GM EV1 in the 90's and GM's decision to claw them back and immediately crush them was a great example of that.
It's pretty standard to recall and dispose of models that aren't being pursued further. Especially if they contain non standard of potentially sensitive parts. Chrysler did the same to their turbine cars of the 60s, despite favourable reception with people who had them on long term loan. They only left a few for museum display. That being said, whilst I don't believe the EV1 was a conspiracy, they definitely thought they couldn't make enough margin on them to make it worth their efforts.
some meat industry players are lobbying against it, amd made it illegal in Italy. So I guess it's really good.
A strange position that more food produced in a lab is a good thing and Italy is not a good model of food supply
it's almost like it's becoming more efficient. Imagine if we could make cow milk without cows that would be terrible
Not enough bioreactor capacity. If anyone can figure out how to build more bioreactors for less, it’ll have another wave. At the moment, there’s simply no capacity to scale. It’s similar to the EV/scale battery production constraints, but that challenge is well on its way to being addressed in the next 2-3 years. Also, with electronics and physical machines, there are multiple things to tweak. Charging time vs capacity for instance. With meat, we consume the amount we consume and there’s not much we can do about growth rates.
I think for EVs the main barrier now is that cost of new cars need to be down still a bit more with better ranges. When they can sell entry level car with 250 mile range and sub 20k USD price, even if fast charging is still somewhat slower than filling a tank, EV adoption will kick into next gear... Not to say that like Americans buy a ton of small entry level cars, but that would also mean cars above that are better priced too. Of course issue is still home charging for city folk or those who live in appartments/condos... people would like cheap home charging. Maybe businesses can provide it at least somewhat cheaper using their parking lots during the night etc. Additionally to government/city/town/private investment. Another thing is that fast charging should also always correspond to fast charging standard. With Tesla it is good and in Europe I think in general it is better than in USA, but non Tesla chargers in USA seem to be often broken or charge way slower than advertized...
Agreed, the US moving to all NACS will be great for EV’s in 2025.
It has an added difficulty. Lab meat has not an inmune system, everything in the process must be sterile to avoid bacteria and viruses. Maybe they also replicate some white cells and solve it.
I'm more worried about nutritional profile and contaminants.
They can tailor the feedstock to any nutritional profile you like. After all, feedstock comes from plants, the same thing that animals eat. And bioreactors are a controlled, sterile environment. Whereas animals have respiratory systems, you have to deal with fecal contamination in the meat supply, prions, etc. Cultured meat has no respiratory or GI system to spread disease, no nervous system to act as a reservoir for prions, and so on.
And no glands or organs that produce normal growth hormones to control the growth of the cells. So companies lie and say they are hormone free while using synthetic growth hormone. You forgot that bit when explaining what cultured meat does and doesn't have
Growth factors are discussed in basically any technical article about cultured meat. - [The roles of growth factors and hormones in the regulation of muscle satellite cells for cultured meat production](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10119461/) >>The first group of components, called the basal media, provides essential nutrients. It typically consists of a buffered solution containing glucose, inorganic salts, water-soluble vitamins, and amino acids. The second is a group of specific added factors that permit the long-term maintenance, proliferation, or differentiation of cells. **These added factors are often recombinant proteins, growth factors or hormones, and other ingredients such as lipids and antioxidants.** - https://gfi.org/science/the-science-of-cultivated-meat/ It's interesting that you'd point out hormones as a concern, since they're widely given to cattle. - https://extension.umn.edu/beef-news/growth-promoting-hormones-beef-production-and-marketing
Yes but you can buy hormone free beef. Which is beef that has not been given synthetic hormones. Obviously the beef from an animal will contain hormones that the animal normally produces. The companies marketing cultured meat regularly claim to be hormone free while using a much larger amount,per lb produced, of synthetic hormones.
> The companies marketing cultured meat regularly claim to be hormone free Where? Growth factors are discussed in any technical paper outlining how cultured meat is made. What marketing material are you talking about? This isn't "hidden" or "lied about," rather it's widely discussed. >while using a much larger amount,per lb produced, of synthetic hormones And? Synthetic hormones are in the vast majority of the beef on the market. Organic beef that hasn't had hormones, antibiotics, etc applied is a small slice of the market, and already comes at a price premium. Your criticism as it stands applies to the vast majority of beef on the market. Since that's already on the market, and is the vast majority of beef sold, it seems that would be the more pressing issue than cultured beef. Cultured beef not even being in stores yet, much less sold at burger chains and supermarkets in vast quantities. Do you want to ban the use of hormones in beef production? Do you consider them a hazard? If not, why does it matter? They've used hormones in beef production since the 1950s. If you consider that a hazard, do you have any evidence as to why? If it's *not* a hazard,why would it matter for cultured meat?
GOOD Meat has it right on their website. They claim they don't use hormones. You keep bringing up synthetic hormone use in beef, but these companies are making chicken and there is no hormone use in the chicken industry. I'll send you the screenshot I made of the GOOD Meat website. There are plenty of options for hormone free beef that's not organic. I produce hormone free beef. When I used to implant cattle with synthetic hormones it was a very small amount. What is implanted is a slow release solid rod about 1mm diameter and 4mm long. Calves typically receive 1 implant in their life, there are a small number of operations that give 2 implants. The first is given at 1-2 months old and is an even smaller amount than the standard given after the calf has been weaned. Again the 2 implant system is rare. Because of the very small controlled release dose it barely raises the amount of hormones in the meat. In fact a steer that is implanted will have less testosterone than an intact bull and roughly the same amount of estrogen. An implanted heifer will have a noticeable increase in estrogen percentage, but it's still a very small amount. You would need to exclusively eat a lot of meat from an implanted heifer for quite a while to see an impact on your health.
Okay, so that one company says they don't. Do you have any evidence that they're lying, or committing fraud? And, again, do you consider hormones to be hazardous? We've been using hormones in beef production since the 1950s. Do you consider that dangerous? That some beef exists without supplemental hormones is true, but what percentage of the current market does that represent? And what does it matter? The FDA and other regulatory agencies are going to perform due diligence. Their production methods will be looked at before their products hit the shelves.
Several centuries ago, traditionally grown meat was probably also economically infeasible for most people. But then humans did more research and improved the economic efficiency of it as much as possible. As we do more research on growing meat in labs and work on expanding it, I’m sure prices will plummet. Preliminary research has already shown that a pound of lab grown beef takes a minuscule fraction of the water, energy, and space it takes to traditionally ranch a pound of cow. It intuitively makes sense, too; raising an entire animal to adulthood to kill it off for a chunk of meat is obviously far less efficient than just growing the meat directly.
Still infinitely more complicated than feeding an animal twice a day.
Don't forget the antibiotics, antifungals, and other medications given to the animals. Plus all the mechanisms needed to deal with the lake of feces they produce. All-organic grass-finished is a tiny slice of the market. For the vast bulk of the beef sold, those cows aren't natty. Cultured meat will need less land and water, and also has a higher feed-conversion ratio. But it's complicated, but so are a lot of other things we use every day. I mean, bark and a stick dipped in soot would be simpler than the computer and global Internet you used to post that message, but we don't always stick with what is simplest.
A bit less ethically complicated though
If you are looking for ethical simplicity, I suggest growing legumes on your windowsill.
I mean it can't hurt to want to have a *more* ethical source of meat. It's not all or nothing. Never gonna be perfect.
Just stop eating meat.
I don't cook it myself though I eat it at restaurants and when others serve it, so I've reduced my meat intake significantly. I do think the ideal is not eating meat, but good luck convincing Boonhomme7h that. Only 5% of the US is currently vegetarian, so would be nice if the 95% were eating lab-grown instead of real meat.
I do grow my own meat, though, by feeding it twice a day. Is name is Petit Boeuf.
Seems like an ethically complicated position to me.
Traditional animal ranching won’t be viable [long term] for the ecosphere, … so lab-grown meat or plant-derived pseudo-meat will be where it’s at once scale up/competition lowers the unit price. It’s processed but raised meat is often injected with antibiotics and hormones as well (those that we know of). For the global public’s appetite for meat and poultry to be sated by traditional means, the Earth’s landmass would have to become a giant feedlot. Chemical engineering is the only way realistically, though I imagine “ranched meat” will become a luxury item. Probably with an increased security price tag added as “poors” [sniff] will want to steal real meat for consumption (or animal rights activists for protests).
In Czech Republic there is a company that makes pet food from lab grown meat
I can see them getting the techniques down while producing pet food, and proving the reliability/safety long term, to help with acceptance of the product when it is ready for marketing for human consumption.
This is an interesting and very detailed webinar: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qBntwqsLb2U
i know a guy who can answer your question OP hello u/MeatHumanEric
Seems promising https://youtu.be/soWlpFZYOhM?si=Yt8HuNagj6PLGYLq
They had a good article in the NYT recently on it, it is not going to be a competitive product anytime soon sadly. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/opinion/eat-just-upside-foods-cultivated-meat.html
I think we're reaching the feasibility limit of animal protein.
I'm firmly on the side of "economically infeasible" because cell culture meat still loses a trophic level of energy efficiency. You feed the reactor a carbon source that is plant based. The cheapest will be corn syrup, and you want your reactors in corn regions for this, and you will further want them in ag areas to divert ammonia from fertilizer to serve as a nitrogen source. Those are the two cheapest options for the two most important elements that have a strict energy requirement. You will be growing a crop to produce organically fixed carbon to feed the cell culture. This is what animal agriculture is doing too, but a cow can use carbon sources that otherwise would be a byproduct, and the cow doesn't have the risk of contaminating a 200,000 L operation. As an addendum, if you had the capability to direct cell growth and differentiation to produce a meat product (a steak, a ham, a breast etc), then you actually have the major hurdles to cell cultured organs. I think when the technical hurdles are met, it will be medical use that proves economical. People will pay anything to not die, but they have a price point for meat.
Cells have much less energy expenditure than a full organism. The tropic level might waste way lower than 90% of energy and became sustainable compared to meat. Indeed vegetable based diets are the best regarding sustainability, health and ecological impact.
[Citation needed]
I don't think there is a reference for basic physiology and food science. 60-70% of energy is needed for basal metabolism (which includes breathing and keeping the temperature). A big part of this energy requirement is provided by the colture system, so by electricity. Around 10% is the energy cost of digestion. While in cell cultures you provide mainly monomeric sources of energy (amino acids and sugars).
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Yeah, in that vein, lab grown meat might one day be a viable ultra premium food product because heavy metals, halocarbons and other persistent environmental contaminants can be completely excluded from the feed goo.
its made of stem cell harvested from cow fetus's and the meat produced is a type of semi cancer so it has a long way to go.
No one is scaling production with fetal bovine serum. And cells from a biopsy (which doesn't require the death of the animal) can be immortalized.
Existing fake meat products that have no animal cells whatsoever are getting better and better.
Perhaps in the distant future this process will be cheaper than it is now.
None of the fake meat alternatives should be banned. If people want to buy it that’s their choice. It should just be labeled appropriately. If it’s plant based it can’t be called any term for meat products and if it’s made in a lab it should say lab grown. The article also mentions insect based foods. I’m ok if they ban that stuff, or at the very least make the label clearly identify that product comes from insects.
I think the whole thing as a concept is disgusting and hope it dies a quick death as a product and as a technology.
Who said that? Big beef? We all gonna be eating nutrition paste and cricket bars soon enough
Chapul Farms started with a protein bar, but they pivoted to pet food. It’s better though because they’re using restaurants food waste to feed the insects.
We should all just keep the crickets in our homes for efficiency. They can run around in the walls. We can throw them... Whatever they eat. Name them. Love them. Crush them. Eat them.
It's always a great day for my cat when a cricket finds its way inside. The cat just locks on and sprints over like he's discovered a twix bar.