World’s first lab-grown meat facility pumps out 5k burgers per day • Hacker News Board

Re: World’s first lab-grown meat facility pumps out 5k burgers per day

#101

Post by Cthulhu_ » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

toxik wrote: post #67

gwbas1c wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "meat from animals" will quickly become considered higher quality, or luxury. We can kind-of see this now with seafood, where "wild caught" is more expensive than farmed.

I'm not so sure about that. Lab grown meat has the potential of offering consistent quality at consistent prices, something that's hard to do in fish farms. You're still breeding animals, but far from their natural habitat and far from their natural diet -- with lab grown meat, the equation changes in that sense.

That's the theory, but in practice, lab/factory meat will become (much?) cheaper than 'natural' meat, so even if in terms of flavor and consistency there is no difference (which I doubt), 'organic' meat will be positioned as the luxury product.

Re: World’s first lab-grown meat facility pumps out 5k burgers per day

#102

Post by bronzeage » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:41 PM UTC

Another interesting part of it is that it might be able to produce kosher pork meat. The reason pork is forbidden is because it's not possible to slaughter pork in a kosher way, but if no animal dies, it might be kosher.

Re: World’s first lab-grown meat facility pumps out 5k burgers per day

#103

Post by datavirtue » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #42

I always wonder about the morality questions. This is like a lab experiment for subjective morality. For the sake of the experiment, let's assume the sci-fi writers are right, and eating animals will eventually be considered immoral. This is an extreme stance at the moment (hello PETA) but let's assume it will eventually be accepted as the only moral stance. How long will it be between the introduction of lab-grown m…

Cancel culture will always exist. I learned that Hitler identified it as an essential method for success in establishing a political party (Rise and Fall of the Third Reich). He employed it extensively and discovered it through analyzing the success of the socialists--which he hated and was seeking to displace.

Whatever you call it, it is just highly obnoxious behavior that uses rethoric to defame the target. It works and people will use it until it doesn't.

Re: World’s first lab-grown meat facility pumps out 5k burgers per day

#104

Post by yboris » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

paraschopra wrote: post #31

I'm surprised at the claim that it does 80-percent fewer greenhouse emissions. The recent research suggests that lab-grown meat may not be better than conventional meat (at least for beef) because a part of cows emissions are methane related that dissipates fast while majority of emissions for lab grown meat is CO2 that stays in the atmosphere for long. From https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2019.000…

How do you reconcile your claim that "methane ... dissipates fast" with this:

> Methane is more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

https://www.epa.gov/gmi/importance-methane

Re: World’s first lab-grown meat facility pumps out 5k burgers per day

#105

Post by bayesian_horse » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

The problem with most lab-grown meat currently is that it still requires fetal bovine serum, which you need to kill cows for...

Re: World’s first lab-grown meat facility pumps out 5k burgers per day

#106

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

ethanbond wrote: post #2

> Future Meat Technologies says this facility requires 96-percent less freshwater than livestock production, as well as using 99-percent less land and producing 80-percent fewer greenhouse emissions. Even accounting for PR hyperbole, it is so apparent at this point that any country who chooses not to board this train will be at the mercy of those who do. This is a national security issue. We can choose to curse our y…

[deleted]

Re: World’s first lab-grown meat facility pumps out 5k burgers per day

#107

Post by mildavw » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

wcoenen wrote: post #75

marcus_holmes wrote: post #42

I always wonder about the morality questions. This is like a lab experiment for subjective morality. For the sake of the experiment, let's assume the sci-fi writers are right, and eating animals will eventually be considered immoral. This is an extreme stance at the moment (hello PETA) but let's assume it will eventually be accepted as the only moral stance. How long will it be between the introduction of lab-grown m…

I suspect reality will be a lot more boring. Animals are a low efficiency method of converting plant material into meat, both in terms of calories and protein mass input/output. So with scale, eventually lab-grown meat should become much cheaper than traditional meat. At the same time, it will be higher quality. Sterile production will eliminate E. Coli, salmonella, antibiotics... Input nutrients will be tightly cont…

Don’t forget that the flavors and textures will also be optimized along the way. It will taste better to more people than animal meat.

Re: World’s first lab-grown meat facility pumps out 5k burgers per day

#108

Post by datavirtue » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

wcoenen wrote: post #75

marcus_holmes wrote: post #42

I always wonder about the morality questions. This is like a lab experiment for subjective morality. For the sake of the experiment, let's assume the sci-fi writers are right, and eating animals will eventually be considered immoral. This is an extreme stance at the moment (hello PETA) but let's assume it will eventually be accepted as the only moral stance. How long will it be between the introduction of lab-grown m…

I suspect reality will be a lot more boring. Animals are a low efficiency method of converting plant material into meat, both in terms of calories and protein mass input/output. So with scale, eventually lab-grown meat should become much cheaper than traditional meat. At the same time, it will be higher quality. Sterile production will eliminate E. Coli, salmonella, antibiotics... Input nutrients will be tightly cont…

Now it is less efficient but when we needed a hedge against crop failure it was essential. One large beast can be kept alive by eating scrub and can subsist a large number of people.

What we have going on right now is killing us.

Re: World’s first lab-grown meat facility pumps out 5k burgers per day

#109

Post by nicoburns » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

detritus wrote: post #19

I know we've got to start somewhere and I'm all for this direction, but wake me up when we're making synthetic meat products based on beef or pork cell lines. Chicken's the one meat I don't feel too guilty about eating, especially in emission terms. Yet, anyway...

Have you seen the conditions that (most) farmed chickens are raised in?

Re: World’s first lab-grown meat facility pumps out 5k burgers per day

#110

Post by i_haz_rabies » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

shafyy wrote: post #30

Note that they are not yet "pumping" out anything. Their plan is to start selling next year, which means that it probably will take another few years. I think that it makes much more sense to make meat and cheese directly from plant proteins, without going through the trouble of growing meat in bioreactors. Assuming that both will have a similar endproduct (and Impossible shows that it's possible), making from plant…

There are amino acids you can't get from plant protein.