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Team wants to sell lab grown meat in five years (2015)

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Re: Team wants to sell lab grown meat in five years (2015)

#51

Post by toomuchtodo »

dilemma wrote: post #48
toomuchtodo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should tour a factory farming operation. Lab grown meat could be as safe as vaccine production; both done in controlled, sterile environments. EDIT: Seriously though, don't do the tour if you ever want to eat meat again. Doubly so for walking a slaughterhouse floor. There are some things you cannot unsee.

I don't doubt that the factory is going to be a grim sight. I was more thinking about the centralization aspect, which would cause massive damage if the lab covering an entire state or country was contaminated.

My point was that they're both centralized, but you have far more control over a lab setting (http://i.imgur.com/KW1LrLg.jpg) than something like this: http://i.imgur.com/SDUbUBQ.jpg

Re: Team wants to sell lab grown meat in five years (2015)

#52

Post by greeneggs »

grzm wrote: post #39
jholman wrote: post #35

This is year-old blogspam. bigthink.com spins every article out into nine self-linked articles, and also leaves out all the interesting details. Also they don't source the $11.36 figure, and all the other sources I've read give prices to about 1 significant figure, not to four, so I suspect that's made up. If you're interested in this subject, read this WP piece from 18 months ago, or this BBC piece that was the actu…

"Also they don't source the $11.36 figure" And did I miss it, but are we to assume that's $11.36/lb? Some other unit?

Generally, random numbers like this come from unit conversion. My guess is that it started at $100/kg.

$100 per kg = $11.34 per 1/4 lb burger

You get $11.36 per 1/4 lb if you use 2.2 lb = 1 kg, instead of the exact conversion.

Re: Team wants to sell lab grown meat in five years (2015)

#53

Post by grzm »

greeneggs wrote: post #52
grzm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Also they don't source the $11.36 figure" And did I miss it, but are we to assume that's $11.36/lb? Some other unit?

Generally, random numbers like this come from unit conversion. My guess is that it started at $100/kg. $100 per kg = $11.34 per 1/4 lb burger You get $11.36 per 1/4 lb if you use 2.2 lb = 1 kg, instead of the exact conversion.

Wow. That's pretty good speculation! Respect!

All I know is I would have been marked off on any exam if I would have left something like that.

Re: Team wants to sell lab grown meat in five years (2015)

#54

Post by taneq »

xbmcuser wrote: post #9

Ethical considerations won't take this far. Need it to become cheaper than real meat the day that happens it will take off on its own. Meat or cattle raising plays a big role in the worlds methane production decreasing that would be huge achievement as with more people getting out of poverty every year meat production and consumption is increasing.

Ethical considerations have all but removed cage eggs from supermarkets where I live, despite them now being around a third the price of free range eggs. If an issue gets enough visibility and there's a halfway viable alternative, don't discount slacktivism and squick factor as a significant economic force.

Re: Team wants to sell lab grown meat in five years (2015)

#55

Post by solotronics »

xbmcuser wrote: post #9

Ethical considerations won't take this far. Need it to become cheaper than real meat the day that happens it will take off on its own. Meat or cattle raising plays a big role in the worlds methane production decreasing that would be huge achievement as with more people getting out of poverty every year meat production and consumption is increasing.

you claim this but personally I am a big meat eater but I find the factory farming system disturbing. I would definitely only buy lab meat if it was available for even double the price of animal meat.

Re: Team wants to sell lab grown meat in five years (2015)

#56

Post by taneq »

woofyman wrote: post #38

Reminds me of Frederik Pohls "The Space Merchants" published 1952 where he describes a huge mass of cultured chicken breast cells fed with algae http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1002

Interestingly, the original experiment that spawned these stories (Alexis Carrel allegedly kept a culture of chicken heart alive for 20 years) was never replicated, and it's suspected that fresh cells were added to the mass to keep it going.

Attempts to replicate it lead to the discovery of the Hayflick Limit, which observes that most animal cells can only divide a limited number of times before dying.

Re: Team wants to sell lab grown meat in five years (2015)

#57

Post by PerfectElement »

charlesdm wrote: post #50
CamperBob2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll probably change your mind. If/when synthmeat becomes both economical and palatable, it will rapidly become socially unacceptable to eat real meat.

Just like it has become socially unacceptable for the wealthy avoid tax? Or to burn coal for energy? I'm not sure I believe that. Might be good for the planet, but it very much sounds like wishful thinking to me. If there are two products, one being the original and the other being artificial, I assume there will always be a market for the original. It'll just lead to a price increase.

I would compare it to how it became socially unacceptable to own slaves. The number of individuals who think it is unacceptable to treat animals as commodities, and use them for palate pleasure or convenience is rapidly increasing, and I believe it will hit critical mass in the coming decades; specially as alternatives become more accessible.

Re: Team wants to sell lab grown meat in five years (2015)

#58

Post by molloy »

dan1234 wrote: post #22
tootie wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's animal fat. Which is his complaint that this will still require raising cows.

Traditional butter is made by churning milk, so while a cow is still required, it doesn't need to be slaughtered to make the burger. I wonder if it would be possible to cook it in soy butter?

Dairy cows are typically slaughtered before 5 years of age and are sold as beef; at that age they are considered 'spent' and no longer meet production standards. Also, they must be forcibly impregnated in order to produce milk, and their male calves are either slaughtered for veal or raised and slaughtered for beef. Supporting the dairy industry is supporting the slaughter of cows.

Re: Team wants to sell lab grown meat in five years (2015)

#59

Post by 6502nerdface »

tootie wrote: post #47
dan1234 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditional butter is made by churning milk, so while a cow is still required, it doesn't need to be slaughtered to make the burger. I wonder if it would be possible to cook it in soy butter?

I know it's culinary heresy, but unless you're eating it raw (like spread on a piece of baguette) it doesn't matter much what kind of fat you cook with in most preparations. If you were to take 99% lean ground beef right now and soak it with a few spoons of olive oil or canola, it would probably be pretty rich and moist.

The kind of fat does matter for cooking and flavor. Different smoke points, water contents, caramels, etc. Much as crisco was developed in the early 20th c as a vegetable-based substitute for lard, someone could develop something crisco-like but specifically formulated to be marbled together with vat meat, and to sizzle within roughly the same parameters as steak fat.

Re: Team wants to sell lab grown meat in five years (2015)

#60

Post by Declanomous »

greeneggs wrote: post #52
grzm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Also they don't source the $11.36 figure" And did I miss it, but are we to assume that's $11.36/lb? Some other unit?

Generally, random numbers like this come from unit conversion. My guess is that it started at $100/kg. $100 per kg = $11.34 per 1/4 lb burger You get $11.36 per 1/4 lb if you use 2.2 lb = 1 kg, instead of the exact conversion.

I assumed 1/4 lb burger, just because it's the common burger size that provides the most favorable comparison. It's a bullshit comparison though. A burger is more than just a patty, and upscale burgers (which they are targeting with prices like that) rarely are just a 1/4 lb of meat. I initially thought the $11.34 price was pretty good, because I eat $10 burgers all the time, but a 1/3 or 1/2 pound burger made with this meat would cost about $50 in a restaurant.

The best argument for this burger is that the moral cost of killing a cow is much higher than the added price of the artificial meat. I'd find that argument pretty convincing, but I don't make enough money to be that moral.

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