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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

#321

Post by rendang »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #176
iammisc wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Animals are extremely efficient at converting inedible food to edible nutrition. For example, goats eat almost any plant, including many natives. Unless you think humans are going to be able to eat chaparral. The fact is that modern edible agriculture is heavily dependent on fossil fuel and mined fertilizers. Until we solve that problem, it's better to stop growing too many plants, let native vegetation regrow and se…

Most steaks come from cows than never tasted grass.

Citation for this??

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

#322

Post by mmazing »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #205
mmazing wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does everything have to be a slippery slope?

It's a pretty binary decision (eat animals or not). What does the slope look like?

Your version: Lab grown meat -> everyone agrees eating animals is immoral -> various extreme examples of society completely changing

It's also entirely possible that lab grown meat becomes prevalent and simply coexists with raising animals for food for the foreseeable future.

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

#323

Post by rapind »

iammisc wrote: post #314
tfehring wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that most of the food consumed by livestock isn't edible by humans - [0] says 86% - but livestock are so inefficient at converting food to edible nutrition that they still generally consume more than 1 human-edible Calorie per Calorie of meat produced. For cattle, Diet for a Small Planet [1] cites 16 Calories per edible Calorie of meat and 8 grams of protein per edible gram of protein produced, other source…

> cites 16 Calories per edible Calorie of meat and 8 grams of protein per edible gram of protein produced. Two things. Firstly, those are 16 Calories that would otherwise quite literally go to waste. They would be metabolized by bacteria, used to grow a bacterial mat in a compost bin, and then be released into the air in the form of CO2. Secondly, I'm not sure what 8g of protein per edible gram of protein produced me…

Don’t we grow food specifically for livestock though? That must consume a lot of resources (oil, water, etc). I think the argument is the cut out the middle man (beef / chicken) due to inefficiencies.

I personally suspect the real ratio is less than what’s being cited just because I’m a cynic, but there seems to be some logic to it no?

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

#324

Post by frankus »

bttrfl wrote: post #36
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…

Every time I read stats like this I wonder what are the externalities the PR team decided to omit. One day you hear that farmed fish are eco, the next day you find out that gigantic trawlers are depleting Antarctic oceans for feed. I tried to google the possible environmental downsides of lab-meat (taste/health aside), but couldn't find anything. Any suggestions?

There’s the question of what sort of feedstocks they’re using and where they come from.

I would assume that it’s something like what the animals they’re replacing eat, but presumably in smaller quantities since they’re only growing muscle tissue and not an entire animal.

There’s something to be said for a device that transports itself around marginally-arable land eating grass and pumping out fertilizer while creating edible protein. Especially if the alternative is intensively-farmed row crops like corn and soy that tend to require tons of fertilizer and herbicides.

IMO an equally exciting area of research is taking something like algae that only need water, sunlight, and some minerals to produce food. Which could then be further processed into lab-grown meat or be eaten as is.

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

#325

Post by zaptheimpaler »

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…

Given the concerted media push for lab-grown meat over the recent years, i think the powers that be have made the decision already.

There is no need to fight a culture/moral war - they will simply raise the prices of meat and add some nice marketing around the benefits of lab-grown alternatives.

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

#326

Post by frankus »

rapind wrote: post #323
iammisc wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cites 16 Calories per edible Calorie of meat and 8 grams of protein per edible gram of protein produced. Two things. Firstly, those are 16 Calories that would otherwise quite literally go to waste. They would be metabolized by bacteria, used to grow a bacterial mat in a compost bin, and then be released into the air in the form of CO2. Secondly, I'm not sure what 8g of protein per edible gram of protein produced me…

Don’t we grow food specifically for livestock though? That must consume a lot of resources (oil, water, etc). I think the argument is the cut out the middle man (beef / chicken) due to inefficiencies. I personally suspect the real ratio is less than what’s being cited just because I’m a cynic, but there seems to be some logic to it no?

> Don’t we grow food specifically for livestock though?

I think that’s the central point of this thread where folks are talking past one a other.

In a hypothetical scenario where animals are more or less only eating food that humans can’t, it makes a lot of sense (from an environmental if not ethical standpoint) to include animals in the mix of foods people eat.

The impression I get is that in reality, animals grown for meat consume quite a bit of human-edible food (or food that could be trivially replaced with human-edible varieties), although I have no idea of the actual percentage.

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

#327

Post by yboris »

wavefunction wrote: post #221
yboris wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It seems like a faulty way to analyze the problem in any case. Atmospheric methane devolves into CO2 in about eight years, "on average." CO2 emitted into the atmosphere appears to stick around for 300-1000 years. The heat-trapping of methane is obviously much greater during that eight years but then it devolves into CO2. I guess the only way to draw a real conclusion would be comparing the amount of Methane+subsequen…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane

> The 20-year global warming potential of methane is 84. That is, over a 20-year period, it traps 84 times more heat per mass unit than carbon dioxide (CO2).

For us, the well-off HN folks, there is no reason to consume meat other than to have a meal that tastes different than another meal we could have instead. We individually could choose to make choices that result in less methane (and CO2 as well) produced, by simply eating more plant-based meals.

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

#328

Post by mbrodersen »

eloff wrote: post #156
iammisc wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Animals are extremely efficient at converting inedible food to edible nutrition. For example, goats eat almost any plant, including many natives. Unless you think humans are going to be able to eat chaparral. The fact is that modern edible agriculture is heavily dependent on fossil fuel and mined fertilizers. Until we solve that problem, it's better to stop growing too many plants, let native vegetation regrow and se…

This is a laudable goal, but it can't scale to the level we require today, nevermind when we have 10 billion people later in the century.

Don’t ever bet against the advancement of technology. People were saying the same about electric cars for example.

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

#329

Post by eloff »

mbrodersen wrote: post #328
eloff wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a laudable goal, but it can't scale to the level we require today, nevermind when we have 10 billion people later in the century.

Don’t ever bet against the advancement of technology. People were saying the same about electric cars for example.

How do you advance technology with free range livestock? There is no technology, that's the point of it.

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

#330

Post by smogcutter »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #85
smogcutter wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Will we get to the point where statues of now-famous people are pulled down because they ate animals? Assuming some variant of "cancel culture" exists then, will that act retroactively and currently-lionised people get cancelled because they are carnivores, even though the current culture that they exist in considers it acceptable? Perhaps, if those statues were originally erected in honor of their diet, and to rem…

I wasn't really referencing the US statue-pulling-down because that's a lot more fraught and convoluted. It was more the thing with Cabot in my home town of Bristol (UK). But fair criticism, it's not an equivalence. I was struggling to find a decent example. Though I can totally see a PETA stunt of pulling down a statue of Elvis because he ate meat.

> Though I can totally see a PETA stunt of pulling down a statue of Elvis because he ate meat.

Oh most definitely.

I get it, and I really debated whether it was worth posting and opening the whole can of worms. From an American POV, I figured the can was already cracked and it was worth airing it out all the way rather than let it sit. It’s a sore spot.

Gotta say I think the wider point about how things we take for granted today may be viewed in the future is a good one, and can be applied across our social/economic relations. I for one hope to be considered a barbarian by our ancestors.

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