81–90 of 117 posts
As a vegan, I feel the day fast approaching when I must choose whether I'll eat this "vegan" meat or not. Either way I'm rooting for them on behalf of the environment and all the animals caught up in our current industrial food system.
I'm vegan too. My reason for being vegan is entirely on the basis of sustainability. If lab meat is produced in a sustainable fashion then I'll be all for eating it.
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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.
A factory is not going to produce a states worth of meat. Possibly a small city's worth, but Americans eat 1 billion pounds of meat per year an this stuff is going to take at least hours if not weeks to grow.
214.8 lbs per capita per annum * 318 million people = ~68 billion lbs per annum
See: http://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/about-the-industry/sta...
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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.
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I'm vegan too. My reason for being vegan is entirely on the basis of sustainability. If lab meat is produced in a sustainable fashion then I'll be all for eating it.
I really doubt lab grown meat will ever be as sustainable, as a normal plant based diet.
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Economies of scale. I think the product will become financially viable faster if it has wide-spread vegan support.
One would only be on-board with that assuming they were on board with the whole of the product. So first you'd need to make the argument as to why a vegan should be behind this product, besides "more people can afford it if all vegans buy it." Also, that only works if it has competition, otherwise, if it were that popular and there were no competition the producer would have good reason to raise the price knowing the…
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>If we can centralise the production of meat Sounds like a huge disease risk.
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.
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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.
I'm looking for alternatives. If you can create something that reacts to heat like meat and provides the same or a similar flavor profile, and that contains similar macronutrient ratios, then I would jump ship. As it is, whey doesn't have the right flavors and cookability, tofu doesn't have the same flavors and has a lot of carbohydrates, and mushrooms don't have any protein in them.
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…
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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.
Yes, or human.
The ethical argument for the adoption of artificial beef is always brought out during these stories. But they forget to mention that the lab grown meat only contains lean meat cells and in order to make it taste good they need to add animal fat. As in, fat from farmed and slaughtered animals.
Human fat. Just build the meat lab next to a liposuction clinic. Problem solved. In fact, if you build a burger joint there as well, you've got a perfect Fat Cycle. People can go to the clinic to get their flab hoovered off, then head into the restaurant and eat it all back in burger form.
I decided not to watch them.