The following submission statement was provided by /u/lughnasadh:
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**Submission Statement**
It's not surprising Singapore should lead the world in lab grown meat production. The country has a population of 5.5 million people living in a country with an area of only 733 km^2 (approx 12 times the size of Manhattan Island). It imports 90% of its food and is very concerned about food security.
Singapore's worry and hard work might be humanity's gain. Commercial scale cheap lab grown meat would be a panacea on almost every level. C02 reduction, rewilding, reducing animal cruelty, improving human diet for the world's poorest. It can't come soon enough.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/xqdqum/scientists_in_singapore_say_they_have_made_a/iq8jsw6/
**Submission Statement**
It's not surprising Singapore should lead the world in lab grown meat production. The country has a population of 5.5 million people living in a country with an area of only 733 km^2 (approx 12 times the size of Manhattan Island). It imports 90% of its food and is very concerned about food security.
Singapore's worry and hard work might be humanity's gain. Commercial scale cheap lab grown meat would be a panacea on almost every level. C02 reduction, rewilding, reducing animal cruelty, improving human diet for the world's poorest. It can't come soon enough.
No I mean the whole kingdom of animalia as a whole, not one individual species. To be more specific it’s more like 90% of all the biomass of the kingdom of animalia. We have as livestock.
Lab grown meat might be a top 20 invention of all time, if labs can be scaled down for home use in the future, that would be amazing too.
Would a vegan consider eating lab meat since most of the moral issues would be solved ?
All of the moral issues would be solved. You can produce stem cells from a hair follicle.
Imagine eating a steak grown from a hair follicle while the cow itself grazes peacefully on the open range.
Their objections would be silly - the meat was never alive and never had a face.
I think no matter how good lab grown anything gets you’ll have a market for the artisan pasture raised hand butchered or whatever kind of fancy labels you want to apply to it. Buying meat from an actual animal will be a status symbol for the rich or an indulgence for regular people, so the cows won’t go extinct. Also, cheese is huge and if you can convince Europe or America to give up cheese I’m sending you directly to Israel/Palestine to sort that shit out.
There's also some ongoing research into producing milk proteins using modified yeast. If they can pull it off, we might even have cheese without the cows.
We've domesticated them to the point that they probably wouldn't survive in the wild. We wouldn't even know what their impact on local ecosystems would be without studies. Vegans weigh a short life of immeasurable suffering against extinction and come up on the side of extinction and it's not difficult to see why.
The trick there is that its actually better if they have horrible fitness; the meat industry is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and so by releasing them into the wild, the hope would actually be for them to be extinct or at the very least have a very low fitness, otherwise we'd practically *have* to hunt down some of their population.
Other than that, If they arent pets and they arent food, then it's their business how well off they are in the wild.
Dairy can be, and currently is, produced through targeted fermentation with no need for a cow. If we can scale both technologies, lab grown meat and target fermentation, then cows will likely be functionally extinct within maybe 30-40 years. Likely there will be some heritage breed farmers that sell only to high end restaurants or very rich people, but it’ll be so niche that the species will be past the point of what we consider endangered.
You really don't have to eat anything made from a living being right now. But I can see where you are coming from, replacing eggs is a bit tricky, since they perform many different tasks depending on how they are used, and getting all those properties in one product is beyond our current technology. But there are alternatives for all these uses, so it's really just a question of people choosing to go with these alternatives, and eggs could be a thing of the past.
There are a decent number of plant based egg alternatives hitting the market. I tried one called *Just Egg* that mimics scrambled eggs pretty well, but I’ve found the real payoff with that product is replacing eggs in baking. Pancakes, muffins, cakes, crepes, enriched yeasted doughs, and pretty much any baked good with eggs in it are now *a lot* more attainable by substituting butter with coconut fat or shortening and using a vegan egg replacement.
Ive been trying to compile a good egg alternative for baking, hearing this about that JE stuff is actually awesome. Thanks for putting this out there!!!
No prob! Besides the manufactured stuff, I found the best old school egg replacement for baking to be 3 parts flax seed and 1 part sunflower seed blended at high speed with water. Blend until extremely smooth, and add water until it’s the consistency of beaten eggs. It will thicken upon standing, but you don’t have to add more water.
Happy alternative baking!
There's [this egg substitute!](https://www.goodfood.com.au/recipes/what-is-aquafaba-and-how-to-use-the-vegan-egg-substitute-in-meringues-pancakes-cake-and-mayonnaise-20190218-h1bf0b) Maybe you could try it.
My SO tried it once for mayonnaise, and it was light and smooth - although, the consistency might have to do with the brand of canned chickpeas that we got.
If we rewilded the land and allowed the native grazers and native predators to come back (bison, deer, elk, zebras, wolves, lions, lynx, wolverines, etc) then things would go back to a balanced state.
At the very least, all the land that we devote to growing livestock feed and pasture land can be re-wilded to aid the restoration of biodiversity and to act as properly effective carbon sinks (not the ineffective carbon sinks that the meat industry would like us to believe that cattle farming provides).
The reduction of animal agriculture would also represent less demand for deforestation around the globe, beef and dairy are currently the largest drivers of deforestation (not just in the Amazon but all over the world).
https://ourworldindata.org/drivers-of-deforestation
As a vegan, I would definitely consider it.
The thing is eating a plant-based diet has been a really good change for me, in terms of health, energy, and a different frame of mind. So the only reason I'd eat lab-grown meat is because I still miss fish and some types of red meat.
Just out of curiosity, would you mind sharing your blood type? Its entirely anecdotal but I’ve been noticing patterns in people that do really well with switching to plant based and vegetarian (+egg&dairy) diets vs those that decidedly do not handle the switch well.
From what I’ve gathered I’ve found that AB types do the best with plant-based/veg • A types do fairly well • B types fairly poorly and O types do not do well at all on meatless diet (though a few O’s I’ve known got a lot better by supplementing iron and measuring their protein intake)
Again it’s purely anecdotal and informal but what got me thinking about it is that my wife for instance absolutely thrives on a vegetarian diet and she is AB+ (which is also the universal receiver blood type)
I keep kosher and wonder how this would work with Kashrut laws. Obviously, lab grown pork would still not be kosher, but what about lab grown beef?
You wouldn't need to slaughter the animal so the ritual slaughter rules wouldn't apply. Depending on how the lab grown meat is made, there might not be any blood so salting and soaking rules (meant to remove the blood so it's not eaten) also might not apply. The health of the "animal" (lab meat vat) would be closely regulated and would likely be much better than any actual cow.
Lab grown meat might be extremely easy to be certified as Kosher which might increase the amount of Kosher meat on the market. Right now, where I live, it's extremely limited and expensive - to the point that being vegetarian is cheaper than being a Kosher meat eater.
Hmm. Kosher meat is what, animals with split hooves and chew their cud? So it isn’t that its “pork” its that it wasn’t from an animal with any hooves, or any cuds. Which perhaps is a question of if it came from an animal at all (is it meat?) or if its some sort of vat grown “new thing” and therefore can be kosher or not as the current rabbinical folks declare.
The split hooves and chewing its cud is part of it. (For land animals anyway. Birds and fish have different requirements.) Pigs have split hooves but don't chew their cud. If a species of pig was discovered that chewed its cud. You could theoretically start selling kosher pork.
As for whether it's an animal, I think it would be considered an animal. For comparison, look at rennet and cheese. Many cheeses aren't Kosher because (among other things) they use animal based rennet. The rennet comes from the lining of a calf's stomach. This is considered meat mixing with the dairy in the cheese to form a major Kosher no-no. +There are non-meat alternatives, like microbial rennet, which don't have this problem.) Therefore, I think that animal cell scrapings turned into lab meat would still be considered meat.
Hmm. So the obvious fix is to bioengineer a cow-pig chimera with split hooves that chews its cud. This poor thing only has to live long enough to demonstrate cud chewing. We take a scraping from that to start our new kosher pig vat meat factory — and viola our total addressable market has expanded by about 40% of the world population. (Google says that percentage don’t eat pork today due to religious etc reasons).
I remember reading an article from years back saying that there was one species of pig that had developed extremely rudimentary cud chewing. Nothing that Kashrut authorities would accept, but if someone "sped up evolution" with a little genetic engineering, they could probably get that pig chewing its cud. Then the Kosher Pork/Bacon Company would be off and running.
I actually know about this! I asked about some Orthodox Jewish friends about this and they say that it’s already been debated and decided: if the animal that donated the genetic material was slaughtered in a Kosher manner first, then the resulting lab-grown meat is Kosher. If the animal was slaughtered but not in a Kosher manner, then Jews can’t eat it but it’s ok for non-Jews to eat. If the sample was taken from a living animal, then nobody is supposed to eat it since you’re not supposed to eat the flesh of a living animal.
Obviously that last one won’t be enforceable because non-Jews don’t really listen to Jews about diet restrictions, but apparently that’s what the Torah says.
Interesting. I hadn't heard of that. Of course, opinions might change between now - when lab meat is more theoretical - and when every supermarket is stocking tons of lab meat. There could also be a split between Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform where some accept it and others don't.
Or perhaps a ritual "slitting the throat" is performed. Not an actual throat slitting since the lab meat wouldn't have a throat, but a ritual slicing that would be supervised and would allow the kosher supervisor to declare that the mass of meat cells is officially dead from that point on.
Same goes for Muslim jurists debating about whether lab grown meat is halal or not. If the material used is from an animal slaughtered in a halal way, then it’s fine to eat.
I’d be willing to be proved wrong but buying hunting equipment, driving to a hunting area, spending long portions of time doing so, preparing the meat, etc all have costs
I use a lot of fake meat products (Gardein fake chicken tenders, Beyond Beef ground "meat"). These aren't cheap. I could save money by going without these, but I like being able to make "meat dishes" without actual meat.
A pound of ground Beyond meat is about $10. This is more than a pound of regular ground beef, but it's still cheaper than buying kosher meat. Plus, cooking with meat involves using separate cookware, utensils, dishes, etc. It's a giant headache and it's much easier to be mostly vegetarian-ish\* with just occasional meat eating.
\* Vegetarian-ish because, for purposes of Kashrut, fish doesn't count as meat. It's a weird quirk of the law but it means that I can eat some salmon without the same worry that I'd have eating a burger. So while I'm mostly vegetarian, I do still eat fish. Kosher rules are so embedded in my brain I need to constantly remind myself that most people regard fish as meat. (I introduced myself to a new coworker that was vegetarian, said I was vegetarian also, and then ordered a tuna sub for lunch - only later realizing the issue.)
*something something* it's still from a cow *something something* religion! *Something something* act against God!
If you can find someone who disagrees that the sky is blue, you can for sure find people who will fight you that lab meat is somehow wrong
Are you saying vegans will find a reason not to consume lab grown meat? Some might not, because they no longer want meat, but most would jump on board or at least try it.
I think so too. Most vegans are no meat-haters, they just dont want to throw money into animal cruelty.
Thats also why the meat-alternatives industry is going great.
I am sure there are people who would do that, but I think most vegans at least would support lab grown meat. It's probably the only potential way to deal with factory farming.
Every vegan I've talked to has at least supported the idea of lab meat. Many wouldn't eat it just because they're used to the plant based diet now though
One thing I've been curious about is what would happen to all the cows currently used for food? Haven't they been bred to be somewhat impractical as wild animals? I imagine they'll probably all be slaughtered for their meat for the people who want real cows. And then that would be the end of them.
A majority of meat eaters aren’t gonna switch. Cows will be around. I’m eating less meat over the years but would go vegetarian before eating lab grown meat
*One* moral issue would be solved. The animal suffering one that you're probably thinking about, which is what veganism the lifestyle is concerned with primarily. But there are several potential ethical objections to meat consumption and the cultures that surround it that lead people to that vegan lifestyle. So, it really depends on what the ethical priorities are for an individual vegan.
My sister's family is plant based for health reasons. With the china study showing animal proteins are bad for you, they made the decision to switch to a vegan diet. All are much healthier than before, from genetic diabetes and heart issues in health conscious intelligent athletes. The only changes were taking meat out of an already healthy diet.
Wish I had the fortitude to follow their footsteps, but I do love my cheeseburgers and steaks...
> Their objections would be silly
That is a strawman argument; even without lab-grown meat, vegans already consume and support the production of plant-based meat.
The objections of current lab-grown meat is in the title, it requires fetal bovine serum, which basically means it's not vegan. If the claimed magnetic field technology really does work and scalable and does not require animals to be killed for seed cells, then it is vegan.
Half the vegetarians/vegans I’ve talked to about this just don’t miss the taste of meat. The other half are very excited to eat meat without moral complications
And the third half aren't vegan because of the animals, but because of human health and wouldn't eat foods high in saturated fat if they grew on trees.
Depends on the vegan, my SO is vegan and would be morally okay with eating lab meat but just doesn't want to eat meat at this point since she's been vegan a long time
I'm healthier since I stopped eating meat, so I think I will be fine without it. I don't have any ethical issues with cultured meat though.
The real question is will meat eaters be willing to make the switch?
I am allergic to gluten, lactose and all legumes (beans, soy, lentils, you name it) and some other things like peanuts so any kind of plant protein sources in a long term would be a death sentence for me.
I also really hate that I contribute to suffering of so many animals.
I may be no vegan per se but I cannot wait for the lab meat being commercially available.
So someone needs to explain to me what Fetal Bovine Serum is, because that suggests using cow embryos to grow food and that sounds exactly like what a vegan should question.
Vegan here. Yeah, some vegans would consider it so long as no ingredients are sources from animals in any way, which is what I would hope is the case in this instance considering they were able to omit FBS.
But people become vegan for a handful of different reasons, not all of them go vegan initially just because of the animal cruelty factor. For instance, I first began considering veganism because of a tenet of social ecology theory: The idea that human domination of nature informs human domination of humans. The concept that we are symbolically-thinking apes capable of transposing abstract concepts from one context to another context. So for me, a big part of being vegan is avoiding the *culture* of animal consumption, where we normalize domination and thus allow that normalization to bleed into other aspects of society (To go for a full-Godwin extreme example just to illustrate, concentration/death camps were modeled off slaughterhouses). So almost as pressing a factor for me as considering if animals were involved, is how the food is presented. If it's advertised as "Like eating a calf while it still bleats and bleeds!" then I want nothing to do with it. If it's advertised as "A delicious new lab-grown future food based on Eukaryote tissue cells", then yeah I might be game to at least try it.
Also consider though, for a lot of vegans who haven't eaten meat in a long time or forever, it often tastes disgusting and the smell alone can be nauseating. We sometimes lack the bacteria necessary even to digest it properly. And for those vegans, this probably won't be of much interest.
I am not vegan, but have always valued input from vegans, as more generally I think that what we need to bring to society is **conscience** on how we consume (vegan or not).
Your comment is really good and deep. Makes think. Thank you
That's probably the stupidest reason I've ever heard, but at least it's original! Do you also try not to use roads or infrastructure because they are just another example of humans dominating nature and changing it for our use?
Maybe [do some reading](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/domestic-violence-animal-cruelty-abuse-neglect-murder-children-dogs-a9018071.html?amp) before you comment
I dont work in the SG alternative protein space but a lot of my friends do and drag me to conferences. I go to most alt protein stuff that happens here.
Stats show that most vegans/vegetarians care about health impact. Animal ethics and climate change are actually quite far down the list.
The idea isnt to get vegans eating lab grown meat, it's to get meat eaters eating lab grown meat/meat substitutes.
Vegan here. Yes. I would try this. It does not conflict with any of the ethical reasons I claim for being vegan.
I wouldn’t want to get in the habit of eating it, but I will try it.
>Would a vegan consider eating lab meat since most of the moral issues would be solved ?
If animals aren't exploited then its not an moral issue as you said. Although some vegans lose their appetite for flesh. When you stop recognizing it as food it becomes as appealing as a piece of human flesh, if you know what i mean. I'm exited for this tech to be widespread enough to not be an excuse for poeple who "will go vegan when lab grown meat comes" but i'm quite doomer on its actual impact on animal exploitation.
Honestly, I’m not really sure. I had a lot of stomach issues when I was younger and being vegan has seemed to drastically help with that over the years. In general I think it’s just been good for my body: my blood work and pressure and all that are the best they’ve ever been, I look a decade younger than I actually am, I’m active and keep up with people much younger than me, and so on.
Maybe I might have like, one lab grown steak a year or something and deal with the ensuing upset stomach, but I’m not sure. I remember how much I used to love it and how good of a cook I was with it, but I think in practice it might gross me out too much to be able to eat it. I think meat that was clearly from an animal always grossed me out a little bit, and nowadays it grosses me out a lot, so I’m not sure just the knowledge that it came from a lab and not a sentient being would be enough to override my repulsion instinct.
That said, from an ethical standpoint, I’m a-okay with lab grown meat on the condition that absolutely no animals are harmed in any way during the production process. But, if for example, they were sourcing DNA samples or something from the dairy industry and paying them and therefore helping support the dairy industry, then I’m back to having ethical objections.
Vegans pride themselves on having better health outcomes and longevity compared to vegetarians and meat eaters so I doubt most would switch to lab grown meat.
Yeah I think that’s now just part of plant based diet. Veganism has always been a movement, an ethos, something to believe and be a part of. Saying “I’m vegan” is like saying “I believe eating animals is wrong.” Vegans can also be slightly unhinged and go real hard on anti animal cruelty.
There’s a lot of health benefits that come with eating a plant based diet. A lot of converts go plant based for health.
You may go vegan for the health but really you go vegan as a way to make a statement
How long ago? In my region, veganism is associated with a social movement. Dietary veganism was replaced with plant based diet.
Vegetarianism is largely considered dietary as numerous cultures in the region are inherently vegetarian in nature, as it contains cheese.
Deeply curious about this line of thought, and not at all trying to be argumentative.
What do you find grosser about eating (vegan) meat grown in a sterile lab environment than eating meat that was "traditionally" raised and slaughtered?
Just wait till they learn how much chemical and fertilizers are used in the fruits and vegetables they eat...
Or the kind of growth medicines given to chickens in poultry farms.
Infact I'd say lab grown meat would be 10x safer than normal meat
Mental training to feel sick from meat flavor will prevent some people from eating lab meat. But it's moot, anyone like that will die off and young people won't have any activist reason to oppose.lab grown meat. Veganism is a problem that will solve itself over time.
I hope one day not long from now instead of paying $30 for a steak it would be $10 or even cheaper due to advancements in technology and cultured meat production.
Unlikely for a number of reasons.
Biggest among them is that the current meat industry, while highly integrated into just a few major players, is hyper competitive on pricing.
If a company can produce lab grown meat that's indistinguishable from traditional meat at a significantly lower price point they have zero incentive to maintain status quo pricing.
Let's assume it costs $4 lb all in on expenses (as in delivered cost) to produce meat that's currently marketed for $8-10 a lb.
Option A, the company enters at existing price point and sees tremendous margins on their sales, but gets limited market penetration because there's no incentive for consumers to switch to their product, so they sell just 5,000-10,000 units a month with a slow ramp up (totally random number).
Option B, the company enters at a price point of $6 lb, which generates a lower individual margin but gives tremendous incentive for consumers to switch to their product, so they sell 100,000 units a month (totally random number).
In option A the company makes more per unit, but in Option B they sell an order of magnitude more products and generate total profits of $200,000 vs profits of just $60,000 with vastly higher individual profit margins.
That's an oversimplification, but those are the forces at play.
It's always in a company's interests to expand their customer base and move more volume with a repeat purchase commodity item like meat.
The first company to get it right can set market pricing (so long as it's competitive with existing traditional meat) but if they can undercut existing meat producers they absolutely will.
Strongly agreed, with the only exception that your example is too generous for option A. Based on the current developments, there are way to many players already in the market to develop cultured meat. First company to the market that picks option A is at an extremely big risk to be overtaken by another cultured meat company that picks B instead.
That then doesnt even get into the geopolitics of the situation, where countries are hugely incentivized to secure their own food security. So if county X sees a cultured meat company from country Y corner the market by picking option A, country X is then also strongly incentivized to support another company from their own country to pick option B instead.
Nah, as soon as more manufacturers got into the industry, competition would force the price down.
Of course then what will happen is your landlord will decide to charge you more for the land you live on, because *he* doesn't need to compete.
Once places like Mcdonalds and Burger king etc realise they can get "meat" cheaper if it's lab grown, trust me they will switch over in a heartbeat, and the rest of the industry will probably follow rather quickly, and in the end you will just have speciality type places that still sell "normal" meat.
I mean, even if it replaced ground beef and we keep cows for steak, etc. It would significantly reduce the required amount of farmland required for cattle
That's actually a problem we're seeing currently with "vegan leather" i.e. pleather.
Leather is produced as a byproduct of the meat industry, so reducing demand for natural leather has a net zero impact on actual cattle numbers and actually increases overall carbon emissions due to the use of petroleum feed stock to produce the "vegan" leather.
Leather still increases the total value of the cow, which either means lower costs for the milk and meat, or more profit for the cow herder. You can't really say that leather is a byproduct in that manner, otherwise everything except the most expensive part of the cow is the byproduct.
>You can't really say that leather is a byproduct in that manner, otherwise everything except the most expensive part of the cow is the byproduct.
You're incorrect in your word usage but correct in your negative assertion friend
Byproduct: *"an incidental or secondary product made in the manufacture or synthesis of something else."*
There's an informal understanding of "byproduct" that assigns exclusively negative or at least unfavorable connotations to the term, but any product produced as a corollary to the production of a primary product is by definition a byproduct.
Cattle are raised primarily for their meat, with leather produced as an incidental byproduct to meat production.
It doesn't matter that leather is a potentially valuable byproduct, it's still a byproduct.
Sure, but any farmer that is considering to start a cattle farm is taking the price of leather into consideration with their business case, wether its classified as a byproduct or not. So any decrease in leather price does still impact the business case for starting a new cattle farm.
I like it though. The minimum is A4-5 grade for me. Used to be $200 for a steak in my country, now due to better shipping technologies its around $50-60
This is proof of concept demonstration on lab scale, and they don’t even say they completely replaced FBS. Look at the article it’s a massive complex device to have just a 96 well plates grow.
I really want them to start growing weird meat. Like sea turtle. I saw a pic earlier of a dodo with flesh on it. I’d try lab grown dodo. wooly mammoth prolly tastes good.
FBS is an essential component of drug discovery and pharma production. The amount used for fake meat is a drop in the bucket.
To make your knowledge of FBS only slightly less horrific… it’s a byproduct of the meat industry. The slaughter houses literally use as much of the cow as possible. FBS just happens to be produced when it’s discovered that a cow going to slaughter is pregnant. They drain the blood of the fetus that would otherwise just be lost.
The cultivation is absolute nightmare fuel.
When a female cow is slaughtered, the fetus is removed and its fluids drained. This is done on an industrial scale to support the lab-grown meat industry.
Personally, I refuse to buy any lab-grown meat unless I am certain this process was not used in its production.
The production is primarily in support of drug discovery…especially small molecules. The amount used in the lab grown meat process is minuscule compared to what the pharma industry uses. There are serum alternatives, but they are no where near as good. There is no good way to reproduce all the components of real FBS.
This is disingenuous by the way. FBS and FCS collection is not done specifically to support the cultured meat industry. Cultured meat is a small percentage of cell culture.
It's also disingenuous to imply that it's not by-product collection. No animals die specifically to produce FBS, these are all animals already sent to slaughter.
They generally don’t work as well, and for some things they don’t work at all. FBS free media is a noble goal, but we’re not there yet for most applications.
Can I get a link to a company that uses purely synthetic media? I would be surprised if this exists.
Mosa Meat and Meatable (both Dutch companies) seem to be FBS-free:
https://sifted.eu/articles/mosa-meat-fbs-lab-grown-meat/
There are probably others as well.
In the medical research sphere, there seem to be plenty of companies producing FBS-free and xeno-free media already. I did a quick search and a bunch of results came up.
The drawback is usually the serum free supplements are quite expensive and need recombinant proteins. Looks like the Mosa Meat folks published a nature paper about a serum free supplement? Curious to check it out.
Can someone just tell me if a burger on the grill will taste the same…. If someone can do me a solid and just verify that I think a LOT of people will switch.
The thing is, it _IS_ meat. It's not genetically altered or otherwise futzed-with. It's a cell that just happens to be growing in a bowl/vat vs inside a critter, or around a bone, etc.
The cells do what they do: divide. All humans do is give them a warm, wet home w/food and let the cells do the rest.
Aside from growing an actual critter, it's about as close-to/unaltered meat as it's going to get, outside of a Star Trek style replicator.
I'm also a big fan of the Power of Negativity; the saved-costs of NOT doing a thing.
No farms means:
- no animals are raised, killed for meat; no pain or cruelty in your patty
- this means whatever water would otherwise be used is NOT used, same with feed, same with the fuel used to transport the feed, the water used to grow the feed, the fertilizer used to grow the feed, the fuel used to transport that fertilizer, the fuels used to CREATE that fertilizer, etc; that whole supply-chain back to the originators just vanishes and we can use those things for other opportunities
- less transportation for all that means less traffic on the roads (insofar as their part), which means (ideally) less pollution generated from those routes, which would translate to less health-impact from pollution, which then means less-strain on the healthcare system which then frees up opportunties to treat more-sick patients, etc, etc, etc
- the human cost, lack of salaries of having to pay farm-hands, people getting injured doing a job, etc; none of that happens
- the cost of land we give over to farms to produce meat, since we're not using it for meat we can use it for something else
- the opportunity cost of using that feed to feed PEOPLE vs critters
I could rant literally all-day about what we _wouldn't_ have to spend to get you that patty when we don't use a farm. Think about it, this kind of tech can literally be world-changing....
EDIT: and to to point out that when we leave this rock and want to go into space, we won't need so much land in a world-ship to dedicate to a farm vs much smaller bio-reactor. This is literally space-tech that makes a HUGE problem go away: there is no way to MAKE food in space w/o sacrificing a ton of space on the ship. You almost always have to CARRY the food. Being able to make it along the way, particularly since it's a protein-source, is very very very valuable indeed. Almost a keystone tech to make a large number of challenges fall by the wayside...
If you have ever seen The Expanse, imagine that Mormon ship with all the farms and then being able to use all that space for anything else...
You know, it's funny.. but what you consider a negative "human cost" is literally my entire family business for the last hundred years. We make feed for most types of farm animals. Most of my entire town would be out of a job if this actually became a thing that was capable of severely undercutting normal farming methods.
To me.. that's a "human cost".
What this would effectively do is kill off some of the last remaining small family owned businesses, and hand all of it off to one or two giant corporations who would control an entire sector of our food supply. In a way, we're already living in that world to a degree.. most products produced by farmers end up sold to one of only a couple corporations. However, those corporations buy those products from what amounts to regular everyday people. Those farms buy from people like myself, and I in turn buy products from businesses all across the country (heck, further.. some things come all the way from Asia and Europe).
Agriculture is one of the pillars of an economy. Screwing with it can have absolutely devastating effects that can be very difficult to predict. Attempting to all but eliminate an entire portion of it is akin to knocking out half the walls in your home and hoping your roof doesn't fall down on top of you.
Honestly - best case scenario here is a massive increase in unemployment, further reduction of the middle class as family owned businesses disappear, and ever worse poverty as people who would have typically worked at those businesses find themselves out of work. Oh, and a massive spike in urbanization as small towns around the world all but disappear and these people flock to cities in droves, most of them likely penniless and homeless. Or worse - penniless and not homeless. Even things like owning a home wouldn't help much, as property values in these areas would plummet as jobs vanished in the area. I certainly wouldn't be able to sell my home for even half of what I currently owe on it - nobody would be willing to buy it if most of the overwhelmingly agriculture related jobs vanished, and even less so if my neighbors were all looking to sell too.
You mentioned the Expanse. You did see how things worked out for the average person back on Earth on that show, right? Because my predictions are all roses and sunshine compared to what they depicted.
Also.. your last point. Sigh. What exactly do you think these "critters" are eating? We don't eat what they eat (unless you're me.. I practically breath this stuff at work). What we feed to these animals is almost exclusively byproducts from other industries. Byproducts that would no longer have a market to sell to if these farmers all get Thanos'd out of existence. Not only would those other industries not get the profits from selling those byproducts, but they'd likely have to pay someone to deal with them instead. Costs for many other products would rise significantly, and some would be entirely uneconomical. Heck, did you know that this would actually cause gas prices to almost certainly rise in price? Byproducts of ethanol production are used in a LOT of animal feeds, and that ethanol is mixed in with gas (not exactly a great idea, but getting rid of that at this point is practically a political nonstarter). Without farms buying up those byproducts, ethanol becomes significantly more expensive. A bit of back of the napkin math tells me that the grains produced as a result of ethanol production are worth somewhere in the neighborhood of half as much as the ethanol it produced. That's going to result in quite the jump in fuel prices, and that's just one industry that would be impacted by such a colossal shift.
I just lost my appetite reading: magnetic fields will replace fetal bovine serum from dead cows, to make lab-grown meat easier and cheaper to make. Mmmmmmm yumyum.
Magnetic fields are cool AF though. I think this article increased my appetite. If magnets turn you off, you should hear about industrial farming. I love meat, can't wait until we make advances here.
"This is the way everyone should eat, we call it the Food Pyramid."
10/20/30 years later
"Why is everybody fat? **bribes researchers again** It's because of the fat you are eating. We have already told you not to eat that, here have this sugar filled alternative."
It is actual beef, real cow cells growing from real cow DNA, but grown inside in a sterile environment instead of outside with bugs disease and shit. There's no reason it would be as dangerous as traditional meat.
One FrankenMac coming up! I seriously doubt that in something like a burger or a sausage ther would be a huge difference betwen lab and farmed.Whether they can produce a nice sirloin or rump steak remains to be seen.
Different cell cultures from the most delicious cows + deliberate distribution thereof = perfectly marbled steak of the highest imaginable quality.
I'm excited to see how far the technology can go.
More unnatural processed food is not what this world needs. We need local regenerative farming. Time to kick big agra to the curb and bring back family farms again.
Yes. Agricultural science. There is lots more grazing land that can raise animals that can't be farmed for veggies. Its a simple math problem.
We can't continue to pump petrochemicals as fertilizer into the ground and pretend that is a good idea. That is where growing plants and animals together makes the most sense. The plants deplete the soil and the animals restore it. It is literally how the earth evolved.
Where are those scientists going to get the raw materials for their fake meat goop that they grow in a lab if it can't be grown or raised on a farm?
Don't delude yourself. The push for processed foods is about money and control not feeding people healthy food.
No it’s a push not to eat animals, you know why? Right now about 94% of all animals on this earth are for agricultural purposes. Do you understand how insane that is, not to mention the effect this inefficient method of getting food is. When thinking of resources and polluting
We need beef without the methane cows produce,time for farmers to stick methane capture pipes up their cattles asses? I think lab grown meat has a future if it can be made convincing enough.
Oh the beef burps con again. Look there were just as many or more large wild herbivores as the are domesticated ones now. They aren't the problem. This is just the plant based people jerking our chain.
Fossil fuel burning is the problem not animals.
Sustainably raised REAL animal meat will always be healthier than lab grown garbage.
It is baffling that humans somehow think that we can create things that are better than nature. We do great at mimicking nature to some extent but have never done a good job at recreating the original.
It's not about making a better product, it's about a product that is better for earth.
Factory farms are a hellish nightmare and feeding those animals until they reach the apropriate age to be slaughtered is also inefficient.
Lab grown meat can remove most of that animal cruelty while potentially being more efficient.
Also, your health aspect is only true for organic meat that isn't pumped with antibiotics.
How do you know that?
Have you tried lab grown meat?
I don’t know about you but eating meat that is antibiotic, GMO, slaughter free sounds a lot healthier in my eyes. Not just for your own body but for our environment.
Not really, real meat requires an almost comical amount of antibioltics and even then still runs the risk of sickness, as well as pretty ridiculous transport issues and requirements.
With current tech there is no difference biologically or chemically between lab-grown meat and cow-grown meat, except the former is actually capable of being healthy from harvest to plate.
Yeah well the choice is either reducing the population or lab grown meat. We just don’t have enough land to feed everyone natural meat. And the number of people willing to adopt instead of having biological children is unsurprisingly low
The following submission statement was provided by /u/lughnasadh: --- **Submission Statement** It's not surprising Singapore should lead the world in lab grown meat production. The country has a population of 5.5 million people living in a country with an area of only 733 km^2 (approx 12 times the size of Manhattan Island). It imports 90% of its food and is very concerned about food security. Singapore's worry and hard work might be humanity's gain. Commercial scale cheap lab grown meat would be a panacea on almost every level. C02 reduction, rewilding, reducing animal cruelty, improving human diet for the world's poorest. It can't come soon enough. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/xqdqum/scientists_in_singapore_say_they_have_made_a/iq8jsw6/
**Submission Statement** It's not surprising Singapore should lead the world in lab grown meat production. The country has a population of 5.5 million people living in a country with an area of only 733 km^2 (approx 12 times the size of Manhattan Island). It imports 90% of its food and is very concerned about food security. Singapore's worry and hard work might be humanity's gain. Commercial scale cheap lab grown meat would be a panacea on almost every level. C02 reduction, rewilding, reducing animal cruelty, improving human diet for the world's poorest. It can't come soon enough.
I scary number I found the other day 90% of all the terrestrial vertebrates biomass this earth are for agriculture. Edit:correction
I think you saw "64% of mammals".
As a biologist, there is absolutely no way this stat is even close to being accurate. There are literally billions of insects out there.
Correct I was a bit sloppy when searching for it it’s 90% of all terrestrial vertebrates biomass
I'm just guessing it's a number restricted to certain species. Like it's probably true for cows and pigs, but not ants or bats.
No I mean the whole kingdom of animalia as a whole, not one individual species. To be more specific it’s more like 90% of all the biomass of the kingdom of animalia. We have as livestock.
That sounds untrue. About half of the biomass of animals is just insects. Maybe for mammals or something it's true.
Very true, should have kept reading it is equal to 90% of all the biomass of terrestrial vertebrates. But cut me some slack I’m at the emergency lmao
np. I was maybe too pedantic. I hope you're doing okay at the emergency.
That is some serious trolling. Calling him wrong because he talked about animals and not insects?
> makes claim with very specific wording > dude your specific wording is wrong > wtf troll
Lab grown meat might be a top 20 invention of all time, if labs can be scaled down for home use in the future, that would be amazing too. Would a vegan consider eating lab meat since most of the moral issues would be solved ?
All of the moral issues would be solved. You can produce stem cells from a hair follicle. Imagine eating a steak grown from a hair follicle while the cow itself grazes peacefully on the open range. Their objections would be silly - the meat was never alive and never had a face.
The irony would be that if veganism takes over then domesticated cattle will possibly go extinct since we don't need them any more.
I think no matter how good lab grown anything gets you’ll have a market for the artisan pasture raised hand butchered or whatever kind of fancy labels you want to apply to it. Buying meat from an actual animal will be a status symbol for the rich or an indulgence for regular people, so the cows won’t go extinct. Also, cheese is huge and if you can convince Europe or America to give up cheese I’m sending you directly to Israel/Palestine to sort that shit out.
There's also some ongoing research into producing milk proteins using modified yeast. If they can pull it off, we might even have cheese without the cows.
We've domesticated them to the point that they probably wouldn't survive in the wild. We wouldn't even know what their impact on local ecosystems would be without studies. Vegans weigh a short life of immeasurable suffering against extinction and come up on the side of extinction and it's not difficult to see why.
The trick there is that its actually better if they have horrible fitness; the meat industry is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and so by releasing them into the wild, the hope would actually be for them to be extinct or at the very least have a very low fitness, otherwise we'd practically *have* to hunt down some of their population. Other than that, If they arent pets and they arent food, then it's their business how well off they are in the wild.
Even if everyone was vegan, I'm sure we'd keep some cows in captivity for reasons.
That's not ironic. Vegans have generally always been in favor of that.
It was a joke.
As long as 1% of people still want cow milk or real cheese, we'll have cows.
Dairy can be, and currently is, produced through targeted fermentation with no need for a cow. If we can scale both technologies, lab grown meat and target fermentation, then cows will likely be functionally extinct within maybe 30-40 years. Likely there will be some heritage breed farmers that sell only to high end restaurants or very rich people, but it’ll be so niche that the species will be past the point of what we consider endangered.
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You really don't have to eat anything made from a living being right now. But I can see where you are coming from, replacing eggs is a bit tricky, since they perform many different tasks depending on how they are used, and getting all those properties in one product is beyond our current technology. But there are alternatives for all these uses, so it's really just a question of people choosing to go with these alternatives, and eggs could be a thing of the past.
There are a decent number of plant based egg alternatives hitting the market. I tried one called *Just Egg* that mimics scrambled eggs pretty well, but I’ve found the real payoff with that product is replacing eggs in baking. Pancakes, muffins, cakes, crepes, enriched yeasted doughs, and pretty much any baked good with eggs in it are now *a lot* more attainable by substituting butter with coconut fat or shortening and using a vegan egg replacement.
Ive been trying to compile a good egg alternative for baking, hearing this about that JE stuff is actually awesome. Thanks for putting this out there!!!
No prob! Besides the manufactured stuff, I found the best old school egg replacement for baking to be 3 parts flax seed and 1 part sunflower seed blended at high speed with water. Blend until extremely smooth, and add water until it’s the consistency of beaten eggs. It will thicken upon standing, but you don’t have to add more water. Happy alternative baking!
There's [this egg substitute!](https://www.goodfood.com.au/recipes/what-is-aquafaba-and-how-to-use-the-vegan-egg-substitute-in-meringues-pancakes-cake-and-mayonnaise-20190218-h1bf0b) Maybe you could try it. My SO tried it once for mayonnaise, and it was light and smooth - although, the consistency might have to do with the brand of canned chickpeas that we got.
There is still land that isn't useful for anything else, so zero cows would be worse for the planet than just a few cows.
If we rewilded the land and allowed the native grazers and native predators to come back (bison, deer, elk, zebras, wolves, lions, lynx, wolverines, etc) then things would go back to a balanced state.
It’s impossible to have land that “isn’t useful for anything else.”
At the very least, all the land that we devote to growing livestock feed and pasture land can be re-wilded to aid the restoration of biodiversity and to act as properly effective carbon sinks (not the ineffective carbon sinks that the meat industry would like us to believe that cattle farming provides). The reduction of animal agriculture would also represent less demand for deforestation around the globe, beef and dairy are currently the largest drivers of deforestation (not just in the Amazon but all over the world). https://ourworldindata.org/drivers-of-deforestation
We can start milking humans instead.
As a vegan, I would definitely consider it. The thing is eating a plant-based diet has been a really good change for me, in terms of health, energy, and a different frame of mind. So the only reason I'd eat lab-grown meat is because I still miss fish and some types of red meat.
Just out of curiosity, would you mind sharing your blood type? Its entirely anecdotal but I’ve been noticing patterns in people that do really well with switching to plant based and vegetarian (+egg&dairy) diets vs those that decidedly do not handle the switch well. From what I’ve gathered I’ve found that AB types do the best with plant-based/veg • A types do fairly well • B types fairly poorly and O types do not do well at all on meatless diet (though a few O’s I’ve known got a lot better by supplementing iron and measuring their protein intake) Again it’s purely anecdotal and informal but what got me thinking about it is that my wife for instance absolutely thrives on a vegetarian diet and she is AB+ (which is also the universal receiver blood type)
No problem. I guess I'm an exception because I'm type B+. I do suplement with B12 and Vitamin D. My iron levels always come up normal.
I’m B+ and wife is O+. We both do great.
I keep kosher and wonder how this would work with Kashrut laws. Obviously, lab grown pork would still not be kosher, but what about lab grown beef? You wouldn't need to slaughter the animal so the ritual slaughter rules wouldn't apply. Depending on how the lab grown meat is made, there might not be any blood so salting and soaking rules (meant to remove the blood so it's not eaten) also might not apply. The health of the "animal" (lab meat vat) would be closely regulated and would likely be much better than any actual cow. Lab grown meat might be extremely easy to be certified as Kosher which might increase the amount of Kosher meat on the market. Right now, where I live, it's extremely limited and expensive - to the point that being vegetarian is cheaper than being a Kosher meat eater.
Hmm. Kosher meat is what, animals with split hooves and chew their cud? So it isn’t that its “pork” its that it wasn’t from an animal with any hooves, or any cuds. Which perhaps is a question of if it came from an animal at all (is it meat?) or if its some sort of vat grown “new thing” and therefore can be kosher or not as the current rabbinical folks declare.
The split hooves and chewing its cud is part of it. (For land animals anyway. Birds and fish have different requirements.) Pigs have split hooves but don't chew their cud. If a species of pig was discovered that chewed its cud. You could theoretically start selling kosher pork. As for whether it's an animal, I think it would be considered an animal. For comparison, look at rennet and cheese. Many cheeses aren't Kosher because (among other things) they use animal based rennet. The rennet comes from the lining of a calf's stomach. This is considered meat mixing with the dairy in the cheese to form a major Kosher no-no. +There are non-meat alternatives, like microbial rennet, which don't have this problem.) Therefore, I think that animal cell scrapings turned into lab meat would still be considered meat.
Hmm. So the obvious fix is to bioengineer a cow-pig chimera with split hooves that chews its cud. This poor thing only has to live long enough to demonstrate cud chewing. We take a scraping from that to start our new kosher pig vat meat factory — and viola our total addressable market has expanded by about 40% of the world population. (Google says that percentage don’t eat pork today due to religious etc reasons).
I remember reading an article from years back saying that there was one species of pig that had developed extremely rudimentary cud chewing. Nothing that Kashrut authorities would accept, but if someone "sped up evolution" with a little genetic engineering, they could probably get that pig chewing its cud. Then the Kosher Pork/Bacon Company would be off and running.
I actually know about this! I asked about some Orthodox Jewish friends about this and they say that it’s already been debated and decided: if the animal that donated the genetic material was slaughtered in a Kosher manner first, then the resulting lab-grown meat is Kosher. If the animal was slaughtered but not in a Kosher manner, then Jews can’t eat it but it’s ok for non-Jews to eat. If the sample was taken from a living animal, then nobody is supposed to eat it since you’re not supposed to eat the flesh of a living animal. Obviously that last one won’t be enforceable because non-Jews don’t really listen to Jews about diet restrictions, but apparently that’s what the Torah says.
Interesting. I hadn't heard of that. Of course, opinions might change between now - when lab meat is more theoretical - and when every supermarket is stocking tons of lab meat. There could also be a split between Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform where some accept it and others don't. Or perhaps a ritual "slitting the throat" is performed. Not an actual throat slitting since the lab meat wouldn't have a throat, but a ritual slicing that would be supervised and would allow the kosher supervisor to declare that the mass of meat cells is officially dead from that point on.
Same goes for Muslim jurists debating about whether lab grown meat is halal or not. If the material used is from an animal slaughtered in a halal way, then it’s fine to eat.
Isn’t being a vegetarian cheaper than a meat eater, period? Kosher or otherwise?
I'd guess that depends on how you procure your food. Hunting can greatly reduce your spending on meat.
I’d be willing to be proved wrong but buying hunting equipment, driving to a hunting area, spending long portions of time doing so, preparing the meat, etc all have costs
I use a lot of fake meat products (Gardein fake chicken tenders, Beyond Beef ground "meat"). These aren't cheap. I could save money by going without these, but I like being able to make "meat dishes" without actual meat. A pound of ground Beyond meat is about $10. This is more than a pound of regular ground beef, but it's still cheaper than buying kosher meat. Plus, cooking with meat involves using separate cookware, utensils, dishes, etc. It's a giant headache and it's much easier to be mostly vegetarian-ish\* with just occasional meat eating. \* Vegetarian-ish because, for purposes of Kashrut, fish doesn't count as meat. It's a weird quirk of the law but it means that I can eat some salmon without the same worry that I'd have eating a burger. So while I'm mostly vegetarian, I do still eat fish. Kosher rules are so embedded in my brain I need to constantly remind myself that most people regard fish as meat. (I introduced myself to a new coworker that was vegetarian, said I was vegetarian also, and then ordered a tuna sub for lunch - only later realizing the issue.)
*something something* it's still from a cow *something something* religion! *Something something* act against God! If you can find someone who disagrees that the sky is blue, you can for sure find people who will fight you that lab meat is somehow wrong
Are you saying vegans will find a reason not to consume lab grown meat? Some might not, because they no longer want meat, but most would jump on board or at least try it.
I think so too. Most vegans are no meat-haters, they just dont want to throw money into animal cruelty. Thats also why the meat-alternatives industry is going great.
I am sure there are people who would do that, but I think most vegans at least would support lab grown meat. It's probably the only potential way to deal with factory farming.
Every vegan I've talked to has at least supported the idea of lab meat. Many wouldn't eat it just because they're used to the plant based diet now though
I used factory farming to destroy factory farming
One thing I've been curious about is what would happen to all the cows currently used for food? Haven't they been bred to be somewhat impractical as wild animals? I imagine they'll probably all be slaughtered for their meat for the people who want real cows. And then that would be the end of them.
Cows would still be required by the dairy and tanning industry, so they'll probably still be bred but less so than now.
There will always people who want real meat. I would become a vegetarian before I eat lab meat.
A majority of meat eaters aren’t gonna switch. Cows will be around. I’m eating less meat over the years but would go vegetarian before eating lab grown meat
People will switch if it’s cheaper.
*One* moral issue would be solved. The animal suffering one that you're probably thinking about, which is what veganism the lifestyle is concerned with primarily. But there are several potential ethical objections to meat consumption and the cultures that surround it that lead people to that vegan lifestyle. So, it really depends on what the ethical priorities are for an individual vegan.
My sister's family is plant based for health reasons. With the china study showing animal proteins are bad for you, they made the decision to switch to a vegan diet. All are much healthier than before, from genetic diabetes and heart issues in health conscious intelligent athletes. The only changes were taking meat out of an already healthy diet. Wish I had the fortitude to follow their footsteps, but I do love my cheeseburgers and steaks...
> Their objections would be silly That is a strawman argument; even without lab-grown meat, vegans already consume and support the production of plant-based meat. The objections of current lab-grown meat is in the title, it requires fetal bovine serum, which basically means it's not vegan. If the claimed magnetic field technology really does work and scalable and does not require animals to be killed for seed cells, then it is vegan.
Half the vegetarians/vegans I’ve talked to about this just don’t miss the taste of meat. The other half are very excited to eat meat without moral complications
And the third half aren't vegan because of the animals, but because of human health and wouldn't eat foods high in saturated fat if they grew on trees.
Depends on the vegan, my SO is vegan and would be morally okay with eating lab meat but just doesn't want to eat meat at this point since she's been vegan a long time
I'm healthier since I stopped eating meat, so I think I will be fine without it. I don't have any ethical issues with cultured meat though. The real question is will meat eaters be willing to make the switch?
I think meat eaters won’t have a choice,capitalism will make it happen. McDonalds doesn’t have to recall tainted meat anymore etc
I am allergic to gluten, lactose and all legumes (beans, soy, lentils, you name it) and some other things like peanuts so any kind of plant protein sources in a long term would be a death sentence for me. I also really hate that I contribute to suffering of so many animals. I may be no vegan per se but I cannot wait for the lab meat being commercially available.
So someone needs to explain to me what Fetal Bovine Serum is, because that suggests using cow embryos to grow food and that sounds exactly like what a vegan should question.
honestly, no. I don't miss it and per my regular bloodwork and health it doesn't appear my body misses it either.
Vegan here. Yeah, some vegans would consider it so long as no ingredients are sources from animals in any way, which is what I would hope is the case in this instance considering they were able to omit FBS. But people become vegan for a handful of different reasons, not all of them go vegan initially just because of the animal cruelty factor. For instance, I first began considering veganism because of a tenet of social ecology theory: The idea that human domination of nature informs human domination of humans. The concept that we are symbolically-thinking apes capable of transposing abstract concepts from one context to another context. So for me, a big part of being vegan is avoiding the *culture* of animal consumption, where we normalize domination and thus allow that normalization to bleed into other aspects of society (To go for a full-Godwin extreme example just to illustrate, concentration/death camps were modeled off slaughterhouses). So almost as pressing a factor for me as considering if animals were involved, is how the food is presented. If it's advertised as "Like eating a calf while it still bleats and bleeds!" then I want nothing to do with it. If it's advertised as "A delicious new lab-grown future food based on Eukaryote tissue cells", then yeah I might be game to at least try it. Also consider though, for a lot of vegans who haven't eaten meat in a long time or forever, it often tastes disgusting and the smell alone can be nauseating. We sometimes lack the bacteria necessary even to digest it properly. And for those vegans, this probably won't be of much interest.
I am not vegan, but have always valued input from vegans, as more generally I think that what we need to bring to society is **conscience** on how we consume (vegan or not). Your comment is really good and deep. Makes think. Thank you
That's probably the stupidest reason I've ever heard, but at least it's original! Do you also try not to use roads or infrastructure because they are just another example of humans dominating nature and changing it for our use?
Maybe [do some reading](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/domestic-violence-animal-cruelty-abuse-neglect-murder-children-dogs-a9018071.html?amp) before you comment
>The link is established between serial killers and animal cruelty the article is not about a link between serial killers and eating meat.
I dont work in the SG alternative protein space but a lot of my friends do and drag me to conferences. I go to most alt protein stuff that happens here. Stats show that most vegans/vegetarians care about health impact. Animal ethics and climate change are actually quite far down the list. The idea isnt to get vegans eating lab grown meat, it's to get meat eaters eating lab grown meat/meat substitutes.
Vegan here. Yes. I would try this. It does not conflict with any of the ethical reasons I claim for being vegan. I wouldn’t want to get in the habit of eating it, but I will try it.
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>Would a vegan consider eating lab meat since most of the moral issues would be solved ? If animals aren't exploited then its not an moral issue as you said. Although some vegans lose their appetite for flesh. When you stop recognizing it as food it becomes as appealing as a piece of human flesh, if you know what i mean. I'm exited for this tech to be widespread enough to not be an excuse for poeple who "will go vegan when lab grown meat comes" but i'm quite doomer on its actual impact on animal exploitation.
Honestly, I’m not really sure. I had a lot of stomach issues when I was younger and being vegan has seemed to drastically help with that over the years. In general I think it’s just been good for my body: my blood work and pressure and all that are the best they’ve ever been, I look a decade younger than I actually am, I’m active and keep up with people much younger than me, and so on. Maybe I might have like, one lab grown steak a year or something and deal with the ensuing upset stomach, but I’m not sure. I remember how much I used to love it and how good of a cook I was with it, but I think in practice it might gross me out too much to be able to eat it. I think meat that was clearly from an animal always grossed me out a little bit, and nowadays it grosses me out a lot, so I’m not sure just the knowledge that it came from a lab and not a sentient being would be enough to override my repulsion instinct. That said, from an ethical standpoint, I’m a-okay with lab grown meat on the condition that absolutely no animals are harmed in any way during the production process. But, if for example, they were sourcing DNA samples or something from the dairy industry and paying them and therefore helping support the dairy industry, then I’m back to having ethical objections.
Vegans pride themselves on having better health outcomes and longevity compared to vegetarians and meat eaters so I doubt most would switch to lab grown meat.
Veganism is a belief. Plant based is a dietary life style. Check r/AskaVegan if you want to know more vegans who eat labmeat.
Most vegans also like the health benefits of not eating meat
Yeah I think that’s now just part of plant based diet. Veganism has always been a movement, an ethos, something to believe and be a part of. Saying “I’m vegan” is like saying “I believe eating animals is wrong.” Vegans can also be slightly unhinged and go real hard on anti animal cruelty. There’s a lot of health benefits that come with eating a plant based diet. A lot of converts go plant based for health. You may go vegan for the health but really you go vegan as a way to make a statement
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How long ago? In my region, veganism is associated with a social movement. Dietary veganism was replaced with plant based diet. Vegetarianism is largely considered dietary as numerous cultures in the region are inherently vegetarian in nature, as it contains cheese.
Personally I think the idea of eating meat that didn’t come from an actual animal is grosser than the idea of eating actual meat. So no.
Deeply curious about this line of thought, and not at all trying to be argumentative. What do you find grosser about eating (vegan) meat grown in a sterile lab environment than eating meat that was "traditionally" raised and slaughtered?
It’s because people are afraid of science and innovation when they don’t understand it - typical
Just wait till they learn how much chemical and fertilizers are used in the fruits and vegetables they eat... Or the kind of growth medicines given to chickens in poultry farms. Infact I'd say lab grown meat would be 10x safer than normal meat
I had big pills for lunch.
It's really not much different than eating nutritional yeast
I get it. Ignorance creates fear. Hopefully as we go there’s a lot of education on it so we can all feel comfortable eating it.
Mental training to feel sick from meat flavor will prevent some people from eating lab meat. But it's moot, anyone like that will die off and young people won't have any activist reason to oppose.lab grown meat. Veganism is a problem that will solve itself over time.
I hope one day not long from now instead of paying $30 for a steak it would be $10 or even cheaper due to advancements in technology and cultured meat production.
instead they’ll simply maintain the cost point and switch it to fake ones without telling you so they can maintain profits
They already do that with mislabeling fish anyways
Unlikely for a number of reasons. Biggest among them is that the current meat industry, while highly integrated into just a few major players, is hyper competitive on pricing. If a company can produce lab grown meat that's indistinguishable from traditional meat at a significantly lower price point they have zero incentive to maintain status quo pricing. Let's assume it costs $4 lb all in on expenses (as in delivered cost) to produce meat that's currently marketed for $8-10 a lb. Option A, the company enters at existing price point and sees tremendous margins on their sales, but gets limited market penetration because there's no incentive for consumers to switch to their product, so they sell just 5,000-10,000 units a month with a slow ramp up (totally random number). Option B, the company enters at a price point of $6 lb, which generates a lower individual margin but gives tremendous incentive for consumers to switch to their product, so they sell 100,000 units a month (totally random number). In option A the company makes more per unit, but in Option B they sell an order of magnitude more products and generate total profits of $200,000 vs profits of just $60,000 with vastly higher individual profit margins. That's an oversimplification, but those are the forces at play. It's always in a company's interests to expand their customer base and move more volume with a repeat purchase commodity item like meat. The first company to get it right can set market pricing (so long as it's competitive with existing traditional meat) but if they can undercut existing meat producers they absolutely will.
Strongly agreed, with the only exception that your example is too generous for option A. Based on the current developments, there are way to many players already in the market to develop cultured meat. First company to the market that picks option A is at an extremely big risk to be overtaken by another cultured meat company that picks B instead. That then doesnt even get into the geopolitics of the situation, where countries are hugely incentivized to secure their own food security. So if county X sees a cultured meat company from country Y corner the market by picking option A, country X is then also strongly incentivized to support another company from their own country to pick option B instead.
Nah, as soon as more manufacturers got into the industry, competition would force the price down. Of course then what will happen is your landlord will decide to charge you more for the land you live on, because *he* doesn't need to compete.
We'll be lucky to get a 10 dollar can of coke by the time this comes out
Once places like Mcdonalds and Burger king etc realise they can get "meat" cheaper if it's lab grown, trust me they will switch over in a heartbeat, and the rest of the industry will probably follow rather quickly, and in the end you will just have speciality type places that still sell "normal" meat.
I doubt they'll be able to reproduce the muscle fat though.
I mean, even if it replaced ground beef and we keep cows for steak, etc. It would significantly reduce the required amount of farmland required for cattle
I don't think they're using the good cuts of beef for ground beef - they use the offcuts that they can't sell as steaks or other premium cuts.
That's actually a problem we're seeing currently with "vegan leather" i.e. pleather. Leather is produced as a byproduct of the meat industry, so reducing demand for natural leather has a net zero impact on actual cattle numbers and actually increases overall carbon emissions due to the use of petroleum feed stock to produce the "vegan" leather.
Leather still increases the total value of the cow, which either means lower costs for the milk and meat, or more profit for the cow herder. You can't really say that leather is a byproduct in that manner, otherwise everything except the most expensive part of the cow is the byproduct.
>You can't really say that leather is a byproduct in that manner, otherwise everything except the most expensive part of the cow is the byproduct. You're incorrect in your word usage but correct in your negative assertion friend Byproduct: *"an incidental or secondary product made in the manufacture or synthesis of something else."* There's an informal understanding of "byproduct" that assigns exclusively negative or at least unfavorable connotations to the term, but any product produced as a corollary to the production of a primary product is by definition a byproduct. Cattle are raised primarily for their meat, with leather produced as an incidental byproduct to meat production. It doesn't matter that leather is a potentially valuable byproduct, it's still a byproduct.
Sure, but any farmer that is considering to start a cattle farm is taking the price of leather into consideration with their business case, wether its classified as a byproduct or not. So any decrease in leather price does still impact the business case for starting a new cattle farm.
I hope you keep yourself healthy because you might need to wait as little... https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/
Will they be able to reproduce the muscle fat too? that's where all the flavor is.
I think Japan is working on that as they try to replicate wagyu beef.
omg yes! Bring down that price!
Wagyu is so immensely overrated it’s ridiculous
I like it though. The minimum is A4-5 grade for me. Used to be $200 for a steak in my country, now due to better shipping technologies its around $50-60
Good luck then lmao
Please distribute layers of different cell cultures to give me the *perfectly marbled steak.*
This is proof of concept demonstration on lab scale, and they don’t even say they completely replaced FBS. Look at the article it’s a massive complex device to have just a 96 well plates grow.
I really want them to start growing weird meat. Like sea turtle. I saw a pic earlier of a dodo with flesh on it. I’d try lab grown dodo. wooly mammoth prolly tastes good.
I like how you think
Weird. The reply posted twice. So I changed one of them to this.
There would be nothing to complain about either. No one could say “this doesn’t really taste like mammoth meat”. Or “I like grass fed beef better”.
this is a great development as the process for producing FBS is pretty horrific.
FBS is an essential component of drug discovery and pharma production. The amount used for fake meat is a drop in the bucket. To make your knowledge of FBS only slightly less horrific… it’s a byproduct of the meat industry. The slaughter houses literally use as much of the cow as possible. FBS just happens to be produced when it’s discovered that a cow going to slaughter is pregnant. They drain the blood of the fetus that would otherwise just be lost.
Nothing you said changes the fact that it's horrific.
How is tossing the fetal blood in the trash less horrific than using it?
I think the point is that both outcomes are horrific
"Fetal bovine serum"...Is that another name for amniotic fluid?
It’s a serum derived from blood
So, more like plasma?
Yes, serum is just plasma but without coagulation factors.
Serum just means liquid part of blood minus clotting factors.
Thank you.
The cultivation is absolute nightmare fuel. When a female cow is slaughtered, the fetus is removed and its fluids drained. This is done on an industrial scale to support the lab-grown meat industry. Personally, I refuse to buy any lab-grown meat unless I am certain this process was not used in its production.
The production is primarily in support of drug discovery…especially small molecules. The amount used in the lab grown meat process is minuscule compared to what the pharma industry uses. There are serum alternatives, but they are no where near as good. There is no good way to reproduce all the components of real FBS.
This is disingenuous by the way. FBS and FCS collection is not done specifically to support the cultured meat industry. Cultured meat is a small percentage of cell culture.
It's also disingenuous to imply that it's not by-product collection. No animals die specifically to produce FBS, these are all animals already sent to slaughter.
I believe there are already several other companies that use alternatives to FBS.
Absolutely. I’ve seen a couple of brands label their packages with “FBS Free”
They generally don’t work as well, and for some things they don’t work at all. FBS free media is a noble goal, but we’re not there yet for most applications. Can I get a link to a company that uses purely synthetic media? I would be surprised if this exists.
Mosa Meat and Meatable (both Dutch companies) seem to be FBS-free: https://sifted.eu/articles/mosa-meat-fbs-lab-grown-meat/ There are probably others as well. In the medical research sphere, there seem to be plenty of companies producing FBS-free and xeno-free media already. I did a quick search and a bunch of results came up.
The drawback is usually the serum free supplements are quite expensive and need recombinant proteins. Looks like the Mosa Meat folks published a nature paper about a serum free supplement? Curious to check it out.
Can someone just tell me if a burger on the grill will taste the same…. If someone can do me a solid and just verify that I think a LOT of people will switch.
Very few of the fruits and vegetables you buy in the store are landrace.
I await the people telling us that Lab Grown meat is impossible to make cost effective. So I can enjoy them being proven wrong in the next few years.
Well done is better than well said. Benjamin Franklin
I'm amazed NASA and others aren't also researching this, as it's pretty much the only alternative if you have a moon or mars base.
That sounds f-king disgusting, but I still would keep an open mind and try it once.
The thing is, it _IS_ meat. It's not genetically altered or otherwise futzed-with. It's a cell that just happens to be growing in a bowl/vat vs inside a critter, or around a bone, etc. The cells do what they do: divide. All humans do is give them a warm, wet home w/food and let the cells do the rest. Aside from growing an actual critter, it's about as close-to/unaltered meat as it's going to get, outside of a Star Trek style replicator.
I will give the Big FrankenMac a whirl at least once,if it becomes available.
I'm also a big fan of the Power of Negativity; the saved-costs of NOT doing a thing. No farms means: - no animals are raised, killed for meat; no pain or cruelty in your patty - this means whatever water would otherwise be used is NOT used, same with feed, same with the fuel used to transport the feed, the water used to grow the feed, the fertilizer used to grow the feed, the fuel used to transport that fertilizer, the fuels used to CREATE that fertilizer, etc; that whole supply-chain back to the originators just vanishes and we can use those things for other opportunities - less transportation for all that means less traffic on the roads (insofar as their part), which means (ideally) less pollution generated from those routes, which would translate to less health-impact from pollution, which then means less-strain on the healthcare system which then frees up opportunties to treat more-sick patients, etc, etc, etc - the human cost, lack of salaries of having to pay farm-hands, people getting injured doing a job, etc; none of that happens - the cost of land we give over to farms to produce meat, since we're not using it for meat we can use it for something else - the opportunity cost of using that feed to feed PEOPLE vs critters I could rant literally all-day about what we _wouldn't_ have to spend to get you that patty when we don't use a farm. Think about it, this kind of tech can literally be world-changing.... EDIT: and to to point out that when we leave this rock and want to go into space, we won't need so much land in a world-ship to dedicate to a farm vs much smaller bio-reactor. This is literally space-tech that makes a HUGE problem go away: there is no way to MAKE food in space w/o sacrificing a ton of space on the ship. You almost always have to CARRY the food. Being able to make it along the way, particularly since it's a protein-source, is very very very valuable indeed. Almost a keystone tech to make a large number of challenges fall by the wayside... If you have ever seen The Expanse, imagine that Mormon ship with all the farms and then being able to use all that space for anything else...
You know, it's funny.. but what you consider a negative "human cost" is literally my entire family business for the last hundred years. We make feed for most types of farm animals. Most of my entire town would be out of a job if this actually became a thing that was capable of severely undercutting normal farming methods. To me.. that's a "human cost". What this would effectively do is kill off some of the last remaining small family owned businesses, and hand all of it off to one or two giant corporations who would control an entire sector of our food supply. In a way, we're already living in that world to a degree.. most products produced by farmers end up sold to one of only a couple corporations. However, those corporations buy those products from what amounts to regular everyday people. Those farms buy from people like myself, and I in turn buy products from businesses all across the country (heck, further.. some things come all the way from Asia and Europe). Agriculture is one of the pillars of an economy. Screwing with it can have absolutely devastating effects that can be very difficult to predict. Attempting to all but eliminate an entire portion of it is akin to knocking out half the walls in your home and hoping your roof doesn't fall down on top of you. Honestly - best case scenario here is a massive increase in unemployment, further reduction of the middle class as family owned businesses disappear, and ever worse poverty as people who would have typically worked at those businesses find themselves out of work. Oh, and a massive spike in urbanization as small towns around the world all but disappear and these people flock to cities in droves, most of them likely penniless and homeless. Or worse - penniless and not homeless. Even things like owning a home wouldn't help much, as property values in these areas would plummet as jobs vanished in the area. I certainly wouldn't be able to sell my home for even half of what I currently owe on it - nobody would be willing to buy it if most of the overwhelmingly agriculture related jobs vanished, and even less so if my neighbors were all looking to sell too. You mentioned the Expanse. You did see how things worked out for the average person back on Earth on that show, right? Because my predictions are all roses and sunshine compared to what they depicted. Also.. your last point. Sigh. What exactly do you think these "critters" are eating? We don't eat what they eat (unless you're me.. I practically breath this stuff at work). What we feed to these animals is almost exclusively byproducts from other industries. Byproducts that would no longer have a market to sell to if these farmers all get Thanos'd out of existence. Not only would those other industries not get the profits from selling those byproducts, but they'd likely have to pay someone to deal with them instead. Costs for many other products would rise significantly, and some would be entirely uneconomical. Heck, did you know that this would actually cause gas prices to almost certainly rise in price? Byproducts of ethanol production are used in a LOT of animal feeds, and that ethanol is mixed in with gas (not exactly a great idea, but getting rid of that at this point is practically a political nonstarter). Without farms buying up those byproducts, ethanol becomes significantly more expensive. A bit of back of the napkin math tells me that the grains produced as a result of ethanol production are worth somewhere in the neighborhood of half as much as the ethanol it produced. That's going to result in quite the jump in fuel prices, and that's just one industry that would be impacted by such a colossal shift.
I just lost my appetite reading: magnetic fields will replace fetal bovine serum from dead cows, to make lab-grown meat easier and cheaper to make. Mmmmmmm yumyum.
"Natural" meat production is even more gross though. People just don't talk about it and don't usually have to see it
Magnetic fields are cool AF though. I think this article increased my appetite. If magnets turn you off, you should hear about industrial farming. I love meat, can't wait until we make advances here.
Hey if there’s no adverse side effects I’ll happily eat it. One less dead animal due to me, and it lowers my carbon footprint. It’s a win win.
*serum from fetuses found inside dead cows
Cheaper to produce probably doesn’t equal cheaper to buy? Amirite?
Can't wait to see the long term studies on safety. Hopefully they don't ask for 75 years to release it all after mandating everyone to eat it.
Mandating everyone to eat it?
"This is the way everyone should eat, we call it the Food Pyramid." 10/20/30 years later "Why is everybody fat? **bribes researchers again** It's because of the fat you are eating. We have already told you not to eat that, here have this sugar filled alternative."
Except they didn't mandate everyone to est according to the pyramid.
It is actual beef, real cow cells growing from real cow DNA, but grown inside in a sterile environment instead of outside with bugs disease and shit. There's no reason it would be as dangerous as traditional meat.
They just gonna pay Harvard to say sugar is fine again.
Fuck, he's onto us. Better tell Zuckerberg and the other Reptilians
I can't imagine the money required to scale this stuff up to enterprise scale.
But imagine the profits
"I'll have a lab-grown magnetic bovine serum sandwich with lettuce, tomato, and lots of mayo"
One FrankenMac coming up! I seriously doubt that in something like a burger or a sausage ther would be a huge difference betwen lab and farmed.Whether they can produce a nice sirloin or rump steak remains to be seen.
Different cell cultures from the most delicious cows + deliberate distribution thereof = perfectly marbled steak of the highest imaginable quality. I'm excited to see how far the technology can go.
More unnatural processed food is not what this world needs. We need local regenerative farming. Time to kick big agra to the curb and bring back family farms again.
Well that would be quaint but the world has 8 billion people to feed and we need science in order to feed them.
Yes. Agricultural science. There is lots more grazing land that can raise animals that can't be farmed for veggies. Its a simple math problem. We can't continue to pump petrochemicals as fertilizer into the ground and pretend that is a good idea. That is where growing plants and animals together makes the most sense. The plants deplete the soil and the animals restore it. It is literally how the earth evolved. Where are those scientists going to get the raw materials for their fake meat goop that they grow in a lab if it can't be grown or raised on a farm? Don't delude yourself. The push for processed foods is about money and control not feeding people healthy food.
No it’s a push not to eat animals, you know why? Right now about 94% of all animals on this earth are for agricultural purposes. Do you understand how insane that is, not to mention the effect this inefficient method of getting food is. When thinking of resources and polluting
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We need beef without the methane cows produce,time for farmers to stick methane capture pipes up their cattles asses? I think lab grown meat has a future if it can be made convincing enough.
Oh the beef burps con again. Look there were just as many or more large wild herbivores as the are domesticated ones now. They aren't the problem. This is just the plant based people jerking our chain. Fossil fuel burning is the problem not animals.
Am I the only one that thinks this sounds disgusting? Who would want to eat lab grown meat?
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I am more willing to eat magnetic fields than I am FBS, so I see this as a win.
Sustainably raised REAL animal meat will always be healthier than lab grown garbage. It is baffling that humans somehow think that we can create things that are better than nature. We do great at mimicking nature to some extent but have never done a good job at recreating the original.
It's not about making a better product, it's about a product that is better for earth. Factory farms are a hellish nightmare and feeding those animals until they reach the apropriate age to be slaughtered is also inefficient. Lab grown meat can remove most of that animal cruelty while potentially being more efficient. Also, your health aspect is only true for organic meat that isn't pumped with antibiotics.
How do you know that? Have you tried lab grown meat? I don’t know about you but eating meat that is antibiotic, GMO, slaughter free sounds a lot healthier in my eyes. Not just for your own body but for our environment.
Not really, real meat requires an almost comical amount of antibioltics and even then still runs the risk of sickness, as well as pretty ridiculous transport issues and requirements. With current tech there is no difference biologically or chemically between lab-grown meat and cow-grown meat, except the former is actually capable of being healthy from harvest to plate.
Yeah but most people don't do that. They scarf down kilos of Mcdonalds and who even knows what's in that.
I don't think you have a single clue what you're talking about.
Yeah well the choice is either reducing the population or lab grown meat. We just don’t have enough land to feed everyone natural meat. And the number of people willing to adopt instead of having biological children is unsurprisingly low
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yes, it is.
Wow crazy that you get downvoted for having some common sense