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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

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want meat at the scale we eat it at now, let alone the one we'll eat it at when China and India have twice their current incomes, free range isn't going to cut it.

I don't disagree. I understand arguments for less meat. What I don't understand is abolition...that's just silly and a huge environmental catastrophe.

How is it a catastrophe? Why does the environment need domesticated livestock? Why does the food chain need us to be a predator?

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

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sense of ickiness or masculinity If they can keep the cost lower (2/3 or better 1/2 price) than animal meat, all of the stigma will just poof out of existence. This is very exiting, but its a not solution to global warming (only small factor). >> Methane has a large effect but for a relatively brief period, having an estimated mean half-life of 9.1 years in the atmosphere, whereas carbon dioxide is currently given…

Totally agreed - competitive flavor at superior price will make those other arguments disappear. That’s why I think we should view this as a foregone conclusion and get positioned to simply own the future, or at least not have our future owned by someone else.

...sure, like Carob was a foregone conclusion to replace chocolate:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/how-c...

As someone who actually had to eat Tiger's Milk bars as a kid, good luck at it.

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

#263

This is kind of a weird question, but how exactly does anyone prove that this is actually lab grown meat and isn't just normal meat that has been turned into meat paste and then sold for twice as much as normal meat? I mean, obviously, they wouldn't do this at first. They would wait until everyone was complacent and used to eating lab grown meat before they started supplementing their production. As long as creating…

What is lab grown meat? Is it alive? Are there any nerves? Does it just absorb nutrients in a pasty vat? Is there skin? Does it get cancer if you left it too long on there? Can you get it to soak up extra nutrients or make new meat types?

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

#264
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ironic counter-ads will be viscious: "Be a real man! Risk getting sick from one of our real burgers! Each one is made from the hormone-pumped flesh of a real baby cow that never knew its real mom!"

Meat advertisting/propaganda uses "Eat natural whole foods (ignoring all the unnaural things they do to the animals and meat), not processed fake meat foods". And to some extent, they have a point. But of course they don't invite you to eat natural whole plant foods instead of meat.

Here's where I'd like to insert the friendly reminder that all plants are living beings. You, as a living being must eat other living beings. Plants are intelligent and pass information to eachother via the web of mycelium and other unknown ways. Morality about eating only living plants, vs eating meats has always been flawed. As were the arguments about eating pescatarian and only eating fish because they "are not intelligent and can't feel pain." Don't fool yourself. You are eating living beings and you are not on some goofy moral high horse.

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

#266
post #56

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 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.

Maybe for the near term.

For the longer term I'd think it would be more like cannibalism which humanity likely widely engaged in early on but very few would even consider today.

Just gross and icky and "you'd eat an animal!!!??" (disclaimer, I eat lots of meat).

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

#267
post #25

The price seems to be ~$3.90 to produce chicken breast. Given that I regularly find chicken breast in a store for $1.99, I'll assume that's still ~3x as costly as just farm raising chickens. It will be interesting if subsidies can change this though. The negative externalities of raising animals must be huge. The jobs tied up in these industries are enormous as well though.

I'm pretty sure that the poultry industry is already receiving major agricultural subsidies to get to that price.

That's almost certainly true, in the very least in the form of corn subsidies for feed. My point was more that there are millions of jobs in the poultry industry alone. This is an existential threat to an enormous job market. One that is likely to become very messy. I think the US will struggle greatly to embrace this quickly, but nations that don't have large farming populations have a huge incentive to create a strong lab grown meat industry and export it. Very big economic opportunity, as well as another impending wave of poverty and irrelevance for traditional players.

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

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know about wool, but outside of artisanal situations the industry for milk and eggs is cruel from birth to death, not just at death.

For sure, my thinking is that those industries are likely to survive more in the "I have a coop with a dozen chickens in my back yard" sense.

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

#269

The price seems to be ~$3.90 to produce chicken breast. Given that I regularly find chicken breast in a store for $1.99, I'll assume that's still ~3x as costly as just farm raising chickens. It will be interesting if subsidies can change this though. The negative externalities of raising animals must be huge. The jobs tied up in these industries are enormous as well though.

I see free range chicken breasts for way more than that. If they’re targeting the consumers who buy based on ethics, they’ve already reached a not-unreasonable price.

It's possible, but I think that is a very difficult market to compete in. I'd wager most ethically minded buyers are wealthy enough to prefer buying free range organic chicken breast than lab grown meat, if they're purchasing meat at all. The long term play for this is almost certainly at beating factory farms on price, which has an added benefit of ethical and environmental gains.

If economies of scale exist, this is a no brainer investment opportunity. I wouldn't be concerned at all about their current price dynamics and need to earn a short term return.

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

#270
post #264
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meat advertisting/propaganda uses "Eat natural whole foods (ignoring all the unnaural things they do to the animals and meat), not processed fake meat foods". And to some extent, they have a point. But of course they don't invite you to eat natural whole plant foods instead of meat.

Here's where I'd like to insert the friendly reminder that all plants are living beings. You, as a living being must eat other living beings. Plants are intelligent and pass information to eachother via the web of mycelium and other unknown ways. Morality about eating only living plants, vs eating meats has always been flawed. As were the arguments about eating pescatarian and only eating fish because they "are not i…

While I agree that not eating meat for moral reasons is pretty low on the list, (environmental and health reasons are so much more important) your argument reads like a pro-life argument. There is a clear distinction between having a nervous system and “passing information” with regards to intelligence. There’s a reason why we send people to jail for murder and not mowing their lawns.
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