Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lab-grown meat might be only 6 months away

blastr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 104 posts

Re: Lab-grown meat might be only 6 months away

#11

Post by sliverstorm »

DanI-S wrote: post #9

This is awesome. Presumably, at some point we'll have the process optimised to the point that it could be done in your own home, or at a local (supermarket?) level. Imagine having a kitchen appliance that produces meat from liquid feedstock. Even more speculatively, I wonder if the nutrient medium could be produced from other kitchen scraps? That's basically what animals were kept for in the past. Aside, it sounds li…

Not only do markets appreciate beef, but they will pay top dollar for fancy high-quality beef. Once someone gets growing beef down, it probably won't be much of a stretch to develop top-quality sirloin, and more repeatably.

Additionally, beef is a good target ecologically speaking. Fish and birds are much more efficient at energy conversion, so there's a much larger margin of energy and material savings to be had with beef. As yet even another bonus, I suspect the ratio of edible meat to body mass in beef is much lower than in fish.

Re: Lab-grown meat might be only 6 months away

#12

Post by windsurfer »

Sodaware wrote: post #7

I'm skeptical that this is only 6 months away (6 years sounds more reasonable), but I'm still curious about the ramifications of synthetic meat. Would it be more energy efficient to grow meat in a factory than in the fields? What are the energy requirements for a pound of lab meat vs a pound of pig meat? More importantly, what would happen if it turned out cheaper and tasted the same? How many industries depend on ea…

Some obvious answers and such:

* I believe it is 6 months away from the start of testing legal approval * it will not taste the exact same due to the different ways its grown, at least at first. It will be more easily customized to fit peoples requirements, however. * the meat industry will not collapse in a day. Animal requirements won't change overnight. The industry will adjust slowly unless they get lobbyists to ban this technology (which they will attempt to do, of course) * due to the innefficient way animals grow, lab-grown meat has the potential to be more efficient, but won't be at first

Re: Lab-grown meat might be only 6 months away

#13

Post by apostlion »

Sodaware wrote: post #7

I'm skeptical that this is only 6 months away (6 years sounds more reasonable), but I'm still curious about the ramifications of synthetic meat. Would it be more energy efficient to grow meat in a factory than in the fields? What are the energy requirements for a pound of lab meat vs a pound of pig meat? More importantly, what would happen if it turned out cheaper and tasted the same? How many industries depend on ea…

Not all of the pig/cow energy is spent on producing muscle mass/fat, essentially, it is eliminated with industrial production.

Initially, it probably will be quite expensive, but it is most certainly _potentially_ cheaper than real meat due to tech advances and economies of scale.

As for farm animals, they will be just bred less. Nobody will mass slaughter them just because there is a cheaper source of meat.

Re: Lab-grown meat might be only 6 months away

#15

Post by spacemanaki »

sliverstorm wrote: post #8
Sodaware wrote: post #7

I'm skeptical that this is only 6 months away (6 years sounds more reasonable), but I'm still curious about the ramifications of synthetic meat. Would it be more energy efficient to grow meat in a factory than in the fields? What are the energy requirements for a pound of lab meat vs a pound of pig meat? More importantly, what would happen if it turned out cheaper and tasted the same? How many industries depend on ea…

Even more interesting, at least to me- what will the vegetarians do? As for all the animals, their populations would obviously get scaled back. The transition would not happen overnight, there would be plenty of time. Though you may have a point- domestic pigs would likely become pets and little else. However, chickens still lay eggs, cows still make milk, and sheep and goats still produce milk and wool.

This vegetarian would rather eat "real" meat from a farm like Polyface (featured in Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and some documentaries) than eat lab meat, at least the first many iterations of lab meat.

I don't want anyone to think I'm spreading FUD, I'm genuinely interested and concerned. Who knows what the nutritional consequences would be? We've only just started to realize that there might be some detrimental effects due to consuming the products of a corn-soy (duo-)monoculture farms, all in the name of efficiency, what of lab-meat? Plus, I'm just creeped out by it.

I do think it's valuable work, and largely inevitable, and wouldn't suggest for a moment that we (humans) not fund this kind of research.

Re: Lab-grown meat might be only 6 months away

#17

Post by sorbus »

In vitro meat has been coming (in that it's been researched) for at least the last 16 years, and there have been edible forms since 2000. None of the other breakthroughs have lead to large-scale production, which I believe was due to the poor taste and that it's currently more expensive to produce than normal meat, per-pound. So don't get your hopes too high.

Re: Lab-grown meat might be only 6 months away

#18

Post by pavel_lishin »

apostlion wrote: post #14
sien wrote: post #4

Would it be legal to produce a product called 'Soylent Green' ?

Soylent Green is people. Seriously though, an idea of a fake meat modified to taste like human meat is both troubling and intriguing.

I'd try it. And then I'd stay up for nights on end, wondering - "Is that really what human meat tastes like?"

Re: Lab-grown meat might be only 6 months away

#19

Post by gte910h »

sliverstorm wrote: post #8
Sodaware wrote: post #7

I'm skeptical that this is only 6 months away (6 years sounds more reasonable), but I'm still curious about the ramifications of synthetic meat. Would it be more energy efficient to grow meat in a factory than in the fields? What are the energy requirements for a pound of lab meat vs a pound of pig meat? More importantly, what would happen if it turned out cheaper and tasted the same? How many industries depend on ea…

Even more interesting, at least to me- what will the vegetarians do? As for all the animals, their populations would obviously get scaled back. The transition would not happen overnight, there would be plenty of time. Though you may have a point- domestic pigs would likely become pets and little else. However, chickens still lay eggs, cows still make milk, and sheep and goats still produce milk and wool.

Your points about non-meat animal products still very much hold still. Pigs would be pets and sources of organ scaffolding for humans.

Additionally, the yearlong production of milk in animals requires contant pregnancies, so will still cause many animals to killed. For instance, goat milk products kill far more male goats than any demands for the meat.

There are multiple types of vegetarians. Ones who dislike the moral part of meat will not have an issue with the new meat. There are energy consumption vegetarians. If this new meat is considerably close to the energy requirements for a vegetarian diet, they may go for it. The health vegetarians who are afraid of adulterated food may go for this meat now, but the ones who are afraid of the general higher cancer risk from red- meat based diets, etc, will likely not be persuaded to change.

Re: Lab-grown meat might be only 6 months away

#20

Post by bartonfink »

apostlion wrote: post #14
sien wrote: post #4

Would it be legal to produce a product called 'Soylent Green' ?

Soylent Green is people. Seriously though, an idea of a fake meat modified to taste like human meat is both troubling and intriguing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hufu

It wasn't terrible, but it didn't make me want the real thing.

Post reply on HN