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

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

#111

Post by baud147258 »

tomp wrote: post #37
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…

> with a warped sense of ickiness or masculinity, or we can choose protein security indefinitely into the future I think you're confusing a few things. I'm very pro lab-grown meat, and I don't see why it would be either "icky" (if anything, it could be much more "pure", able to grow in controlled conditions without any pesticides, hormones or antibiotics) nor less "masculine" (a steak is a steak is a steak). I'm very…

> a steak is a steak is a steak

would lab-grown steak be remotely similar to a good cut of steak? I'd guess for sausage (and other processes meat) lab-grown won't be different, but I don't think lab-grown will be able to reach real-steak level anytime soon

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

#112

Post by ben_w »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #70
airhead969 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate change isn't the weather. Climate is the average. We are in a global warming emergency and no one is doing enough about it.

Climate change is literally the weather.

Long term average weather. But yes, IIRC, climate change is causing more extreme variability, and that variability itself is a problem.

Though I do disagree with @airhead969, as the literally exponential growth of PV by itself looks to me to be enough to make us net zero in a decade or two (probably two, given exponentials are often sigmoids in disguise).

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

#113

Post by nicoburns »

starfallg wrote: post #18
aurora72 wrote: post #3

A key benefit of cultured meat is its minimized impact on the environment => And the key danger is its maximized impact on the body.

Implying that natural products are always good for us, while synthetic ones are always bad is intellectual laziness. There is an abundance of toxic compounds found in nature that are unequivocally bad for us. Take bracken for example, a ubiquitous plant containing the carcinogen ptaquiloside, which is used in cooking in different parts of the world traditionally. It can also be absorbed up the food chain affecting mi…

Perhaps, but suggesting that processed foods (which factory produced meats essentially are) tend to contain less (potentially important - we have no idea) micronutrients is not, and is a very reasonable concern to have.

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

#114

Post by nicoburns »

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…

> 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.

Methane "dissipates" into CO2. It's strictly worse in terms of its affect on the climate.

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

#115

Post by JohnWhigham »

hcknwscommenter wrote: post #29
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…

It is of course impossible to verify either way, but I am very sure these statistics of 96% savings in freshwater are total nonsense. Anyone who has ever cultured cells on any scale can attest to the amount of water needed at any scale in terms of washing, rinsing, diluting, sterilizing, feeding, etc. Moreover, we have seen time and time again, the reporting of extremely high numbers for water usage in beef and milk…

Regarding the weasel-worded "less land usage", most of the land that livestock use for grazing is unsuitable for conventional farming anyway. Only ruminants can properly utilize it.

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

#116

Post by paulirwin »

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…

This is spot on. (I'm a long time vegetarian, so I've thought a lot about this.) Hunting, fishing, and even specialty slaughterhouses will likely continue. The economics will cause mass meat production to go out of business, though. Beef first, probably. Engineering can evolve much faster than cows and chickens and fish can.

No politician, at least in the U.S. mainstream, is going to commit political self-destruction by going after farmers and making animal meat illegal. What will likely happen though is once the big restaurant chains and grocery stores start selling lab-grown meat that is better quality and cheaper than animal meat, the market for cheap animal meat will dry up. We'll have politicians trying to "save beef jobs" just like they are trying to save coal jobs today, due to more efficient and environmentally-friendly alternatives taking over the market. But unlike coal, consumers can still choose animal meat (you can't exactly choose your power plant), so it might be a long transition due to that market demand. Expect the Arby's and ilk to continue to tout how they use "real meat" with hypermasculine advertising for a long time to come.

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

#117

Post by InitialLastName »

erwald wrote: post #62
justinmchase wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another question is, if its banned to kill an animal for meat, for various animals, how long until they go extinct? Many are co-dependent on humanity for their survival at the species level... Or at the very least how will it affect their evolution?

humans have kept dogs and cats and horses around even though many of them aren’t used for their original purposes anymore, so I’d be surprised if some sentimental folks didn’t keep a few cows or sheep or whatnot around just for fun.

Especially with cows, sheep and chickens, I suspect the market for their non-meat goods (milk, wool, eggs) will persist (perhaps in a progressively more artisanal market) for far longer than the killing-animals version of the meat industry.

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

#118

Post by sharikous »

watertom wrote: post #46

This still won't fix the fundamental problem facing the environment, which is over population, it also won't fix the problem that the environment is already locked into a number of positive feedback loops driving climate change.

Actually it fixes exactly that. A more efficient way to get food allows for a larger population with less strain on the Earth's resources.

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

#119

Post by ericmcer »

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…

There will also be a visual sterility on top of the practical one. For some of my friends, the idea of eating a chicken drumstick with its bone and dark veins and bits of cartilage makes them shudder, but they will put away a dozen processed sterile looking chicken nuggets with no hesitation.

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

#120

Post by jkelleyrtp »

falcolas wrote: post #96
WJW wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems fairly straightforward to predict, since this has happened dozens of times before as technology marched on: with no more business for them, they'll go bankrupt and the workers will eventually be assimilated into other professions. Maybe there will be a small remaining industry tending to hobbyists, similar to how horse shoeing and buggy whip manufacturing are very much a niche professions these days.

Have we had one of these "industry extinctions" in the last quarter century, particularly one at the scale of the meat industry? Our economy and workplaces are significantly different from what they were when horses were replaced by cars.

Manufacturing and textiles, though they might have happened slightly more than 25 years ago.
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