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Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat

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Re: Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat

#61

Post by maxerickson »

yellowapple wrote: post #56
maxerickson wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would probably be illegal to market a product that wasn't butter as "Clean Butter", because there are rules about labeling things as butter. So I won't be surprised if the animal products industry lobbies for rules about what can be called meat (or if such rules already exist). Of course such labeling concerns don't apply to an internet discussion, but they do indicate that people care about what's in a name.

Usually, though, lab-grown meat is actually meat. It's possible that it'd have to be labeled "synthetic" or "lab-grown" (similar to how synthetic diamonds are named), but claiming that meat is not meat is nonsensical.

Well what's the definition of meat?

A typical simple one is "animal flesh". Cells grown in a vat aren't flesh, they are a tissue culture.

Note that I'm not particularly animated by the issue, I just don't agree that it is as simple as "claiming that meat is not meat".

Re: Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat

#62

Post by hliyan »

edison85 wrote: post #41

This, crispr, and self driving cars are my favorite up and coming innovations that just seem mind boggling and that will make a profound impact in our lives. I think it is realistic to see widespread use of all 3 in the next decade. The social media, apps, cloud, big data, and phone innovations have been neat but I'm looking forward to disruptions in non tech arenas. Space, electric and hydrogen fuel cell cars, so ma…

Don't forget super cheap solar

Re: Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat

#63

Post by boznz »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #39
dsego wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's safer, probably harder to get mad cow disease or salmonella, don't you think? Also, today we get it from animals pumped full of antibiotics, hormones living in their own excrement.

Yeah, but that’s only true if you are buying shitty bargain-basement meat.

.. or any kind of processed food which contains "meat"

Re: Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat

#64

Post by drcross »

mmisu wrote: post #8

Highly processed food made in a lab has a big chance to have hidden side effects. I would not eat this until it is tested in the wild for a few years.

I think it's incredibly naive of people to assume that we can artificially replicate a food natural source. So much is unknown about the stomach microbiome and such things that I will be staying far away from this and the likes of Soylent for a long time.

Re: Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat

#65

Post by L_Rahman »

jonknee wrote: post #57
nkkollaw wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a dumb idea to base one's argument regarding these things on price. As a new tech it will cost a lot (like computers once did, now you can get one for $5), but the price will eventually go down. Perhaps my generation won't enjoy fake meat like a real steak just because of the idea, but younger people won't mind. Personally, I'll take anything that can stop killing all those animals to then throw away huge quanti…

Well the Impossible CEO has a good point in that if we can grow tissues on demand in a reliable and efficient process the first use will not be for food but for healthcare. Why grow quarter pounders when you could save lives and grow organs?

The bar for something that roughly has the right muscle and fat blend for you to throw on a hot fire and eat is very different from the one that has to be biocompatible with a living being.

That being said, I do favor the Impossible Foods approach to this. My position is that non-animal products like Impossible Foods can incrementally replace low-to-mid end meat consumption while the high end will continue to be served by actual living animals.

Re: Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat

#66

Post by adventured »

aswanson wrote: post #55
edison85 wrote: post #41

This, crispr, and self driving cars are my favorite up and coming innovations that just seem mind boggling and that will make a profound impact in our lives. I think it is realistic to see widespread use of all 3 in the next decade. The social media, apps, cloud, big data, and phone innovations have been neat but I'm looking forward to disruptions in non tech arenas. Space, electric and hydrogen fuel cell cars, so ma…

It's telling that space, electricity generation, crispr, self-driving cars, and this are thought of as 'non tech', but messaging apps and phones are.

Where in the world did you get that obviously false notion?

CRISPR is bio-tech.

Self driving cars are overwhelmingly regarded as tech in every possible corner of the media universe. Apple, Google, Tesla, nVidia are among the frequent discussion points on self-driving, and it all ties in to AI which is another obvious tech subject.

There's a reason all of those topics are regularly discussed on HN.

Re: Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat

#67

Post by fish_fan »

emmp wrote: post #25
mmisu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it disingenous to call meat grown in a lab clean meat . Would you call Margarine clean butter ?

Why not? As long as its vegan margarine. Its clean of at least a subset of ethical concerns that many foods are not. Clean is a very overloaded word though so I certainly see where you're coming from, but it works just fine for me.

Well, butter is a well-defined substance; there's a reason why "I can't believe it's not butter" isn't called "better butter".

Furthermore margarine is associated with health risks that butter is not; clean is just disingenuous.

Re: Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat

#68

Post by aswanson »

adventured wrote: post #66
aswanson wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's telling that space, electricity generation, crispr, self-driving cars, and this are thought of as 'non tech', but messaging apps and phones are.

Where in the world did you get that obviously false notion? CRISPR is bio- tech . Self driving cars are overwhelmingly regarded as tech in every possible corner of the media universe. Apple, Google, Tesla, nVidia are among the frequent discussion points on self-driving, and it all ties in to AI which is another obvious tech subject. There's a reason all of those topics are regularly discussed on HN.

I got that notion from the grandparent comment characterization of tech.

Re: Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat

#69

Post by tstactplsignore »

Danihan wrote: post #4
jseliger wrote: post #3

Beyond Meat gets name-checked in the article, but I want to emphasize that their burgers are pretty good: https://jakeseliger.com/2017/08/23/beyond-meat-burgers-are-p... and in my view underappreciated right now. If you've not tried them yet, you ought to.

I love how highly, highly processed foods are suddenly A-OK to many people here once it's a fake meat product. Whatever happened to the concept of, "Eat real food?" Full Ingredient List: >Water, Textured Wheat Protein, Coconut Oil, Potato Protein, Natural Flavors, 2% or less of: Leghemoglobin (soy), Yeast Extract, Salt, Soy Protein Isolate, Konjac Gum, Xanthan Gum, Thiamin (Vitamin B1), Zinc, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Ribo…

This is just one part pseudoscience, one part nonsequitor. There's zero accepted nutritional scientific evidence that plant protein cannot completely adequately replace meat sources. Yes, of course someone who literally just eats soy burgers will experience some nutrient deficiency, but so would someone who just ate real burgers (plus the extra cholesterol and fats!). Millions of people completely replace meat with processed plant protein, with no evidence for any ill-effect. There is nothing inherently wrong with processing a food source, and to suggest such is nothing more than marketing quackery.

It is extremely frustrating gow you spread confusion and conflate concepts that have nothing to do with each other, with the end result being that all you accomplish is to spread propaganda about efforts that will literally save the planet from environmentally destructive, excessive meat production.

Re: Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat

#70

Post by fish_fan »

ggreer wrote: post #52
dasil003 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's foolish to assume that some novel and highly processed food item is going to be safer than something which we've been eating for thousands of generations. Basing the conclusion of safety based on a piecemeal analysis of the components hand-waves away the entire complexity of digestion and metabolization.

> I think it's foolish to assume that some novel and highly processed food item is going to be safer than something which we've been eating for thousands of generations. It's not that processed foods are particularly safe, but that meat is unsafe in a way we're accustomed to. Again: every year, meat-borne pathogens kill 5,000 Americans and cause illnesses in 1% of the population. Fake meats simply don't cause those r…

I think you are crazily optimistic about both the FDA and the ability to see any significant health effects from fake meat. Even my vegan friends have only been eating it for about a decade, and that doesn't strike me as enough time for e.g. discerning whether it is carcinogenic.

Among other things, sodium nitrate (included in the above description of fake meat) is, by itself, known to be more carcinogenic than red meat itself. But you don't see the FDA ensuring new foods don't use it.

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