Team wants to sell lab grown meat in five years (2015) • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by stale2002 » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 4:55 AM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #40

charlesdm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one here who probably wouldn't buy artificial meat? I'm not a massive meat eater, but when I go shopping, I tend to buy better quality stuff without caring too much for the price. I'd give it a try, but would probably still buy "the real deal". > Suddenly we have huge swathes of land that, perhaps naively, I hope can be reforested. Those plots would still be owned by farmers, and planting trees on them…

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

You don't need to go all the way to "socially unacceptable".

All that needs to happen is for the synthetic meat to test better than regular meat.

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

#72

Post by Dove » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 4:59 AM UTC

x1798DE wrote: post #13

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.

I could see another angle in the meantime, which is exotic lab grown meats. I'd be interested in trying bald eagle meat or polar bear or any number of animal meats where it's either illegal or impractical to culture full animals. Presumably you can also make meats that scale disproportionately with the size of the animal, like sparrow burger or lobster steak.

I see another advantage: it may be safe to do things with lab-grown meat that aren't safe with farm-grown. Tuna without overfishing concerns. Swordfish without the mercury. Chicken that can be served medium rare. Or ground beef for that matter.

On top of that, this approach to meat offers extreme customizability. Imitating what comes out of a cow in terms of fat, protein, flavor, is where they've got to start. And the first cars had fake horse heads. Eventually they can optimize for health or taste in a way nature can't. Fois gras times ten.

If this approach becomes truly economical, I would expect it to destroy traditional meat the way cars destroyed horse-drawn carriages: through sheer superiority of performance options.

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

#73

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 5:21 AM UTC

Declanomous wrote: post #65

dragonwriter wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a 1/3 or 1/2 pound burger made with this meat would cost about $50 in a restaurant. More than that. A 1/2 burger would cost, using the 30% food cost rule of thumb for restaurant pricing, nearly $80 assuming that everything other than the patty had no food cost.

I didn't realize the rule of thumb was 30% for a restaurant. I've always worked in retail, where a 100% markup is always a good rule of thumb.

Restaurants aren't reselling packaged goods, they are also assembling from raw, so there is both amortized cost of production equipment and labor costs associated with production that retail lacks.

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

#74

Post by greggman » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 5:29 AM UTC

charlesdm wrote: post #23

VelNZ wrote: post #8

I am really really excited about lab grown meat making it into the mass market and ultimately becoming cheaper than traditional meat. The environmental benefits will be insane; how much of the earth is currently devoted to either raising animals or growing feed to feed animals? If we can centralise the production of meat, suddenly we have huge swathes of land that, perhaps naively, I hope can be reforested.

Am I the only one here who probably wouldn't buy artificial meat? I'm not a massive meat eater, but when I go shopping, I tend to buy better quality stuff without caring too much for the price. I'd give it a try, but would probably still buy "the real deal". > Suddenly we have huge swathes of land that, perhaps naively, I hope can be reforested. Those plots would still be owned by farmers, and planting trees on them…

I will eat whatever is delicious. For example I find "The Loving Hut" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_Hut) pretty yummy and even though I'm a meat eater if I'm near a Loving Hut I'm happy to choose it because of taste.

If fake meat is yummy and doesn't have any bad side effects (gas) I'll be happy to eat it. If I can't tell the difference between it and a real burger I'll be happy to switch. If I can tell the difference, if it's yummy I'll still eat it, just as a separate type of food.

As an example fishballs, meatballs, and various kinds of things made from ground meat of all kinds are common.

https://www.google.com/search?q=fishballs&tbm=isch

https://www.google.com/search?q=%E3%81%8A%E3%81%A7%E3%82%93&...

Heck, other processed meats are very common throughout western cuisine as well. Just walk into any deli section and look 100s of them.

My point being even if they never get the burger a 100% the same as real if it's delicious they can sell it to me as yet another processed product and like sausage/pâté/terrine/galantine/ham I'll eat it.

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

#75

Post by dang » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 5:31 AM UTC

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…

Yes, that's bad. We've changed the URL from http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/answering-how-a-sausage-gets-ma..., which points to the BBC piece.

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

#76

Post by roel_v » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 6:19 AM UTC

molloy wrote: post #58

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?

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.

There are plenty of choices for more 'organic' and 'animal friendly' and 'cruelty free' and what have you milk. While the cheap milk is indeed farmed at high intensity and not very animal-friendly to put it mildly, it doesn't have to be that way. Whereas a burger - well you have to kill the cow to get one.

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

#77

Post by _Wintermute » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 6:26 AM UTC

truth_sentinell wrote: post #10

entee wrote: post #7

It's unclear what methods they're using to make these burgers, but often you need many animal-derived products to culture cells. Fetal bovine serum, growth media, all of these have animal products in them. If they make an ethical argument, then they'll have to solve that too. They might have, but it's not clear in the article.

I saw in a documentary that with only a sample of the skin they can grow like 10k burguers, and the animal won't even notice, it's like an injection. I don't remember the doc but it seems pretty ethical IMO.

It's not just the initial cells, the growth medium contains a lot of animal products - even culturing human cells for research uses lots of bovine products.

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

#78

Post by xbmcuser » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 6:40 AM UTC

solotronics wrote: post #55

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.

You are rich enough to pay more for healthy food. You probably come in the 1% of the richest people in the world this comment is for the other 7 billion people that cant afford to pay more for food.

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

#79

Post by xbmcuser » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 6:44 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #54

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.

Solar was the ethical choice but it didn't really take off till it reached parity with other sources of electricity production. Electricity cars are the more ethical choice and last few years people are paying more for it but it will only take off when it comes into parity with gasoline cars.

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

#80

Post by cyphar » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 6:54 AM UTC

Declanomous wrote: post #60

greeneggs wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> 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.

There's also the effect of cattle on the environment. They are the largest producer of greenhouse gasses by far. I personally have no moral issue with killing animals, but the effects on the environment have made me switch to Chicken (which is better for the environment and leaner) but I would gladly switch to biocattle.