Molecular gastronomy should converge with this. Imagine the wacky tastes and textures that we would be able to create.
Lab-grown meat might be only 6 months away
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Re: Lab-grown meat might be only 6 months away
#52This 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…
Duplicating the taste of fish would be more important, especially if it could get to sushi-grade. Fishing many larger fish is becoming unsustainable. It's also more difficult because not only does texture matter, but the meat filters through sea water to get its taste.
It will be fun to see how the environmental movement takes this. I bet some pragmatists will love it, some will go ballistic due to the GM nature of it, and some will maintain that we shouldn't be eating any meat, even the humanely grown substitutes.
Re: Lab-grown meat might be only 6 months away
#53Molecular gastronomy should converge with this. Imagine the wacky tastes and textures that we would be able to create.
Molecular gastronomy is technology taken from the industrial food sciences, so they're probably one step ahead of you already.
Re: Lab-grown meat might be only 6 months away
#54This 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…
Personally, I'm looking forward to lab-grown fur coats more than anything edible. I wore a fox-fur coat once and it was amazingly warm and light. I'd far prefer such a coat to down or synthetic if it could be made without killing the fox.
I think people who write about the ethical or taste issues are missing the boat. Peoples tastes and ethics will change as the technology does and the meat improves.
The most interesting perspective, in my opinion, are the entrepreneurial opportunities. Lab grown meat is the starting point. Lab grown fur, animal fats, leather, etc and so on are only a matter of time. The potential markets are colossal and can revolutionize many industries.
Here's a post on a vegetarian entrepreneur's (me) take on lab grown meat -- http://joshuaspodek.com/vegetarian-entrepreneurs-test -- from after the recent New Yorker article.
Re: Lab-grown meat might be only 6 months away
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Duplicating the taste of fish would be more important, especially if it could get to sushi-grade. Fishing many larger fish is becoming unsustainable. It's also more difficult because not only does texture matter, but the meat filters through sea water to get its taste.
'Fishing many larger fish is becoming unsustainable.' IT IS unsustainable. Many fisheries have already collapsed with many more collapses looming on the horizon.
Also note, Math for Industry 201 always uses fish stocks as an example.
Catch too many fish, and you get a suboptimal population growth - the babies that do get born do well (due to a lack of competition), but there's so few born that this doesn't really matter.
It's more true for slow growing fish, like salmon, and tuna.
Fun fact, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) was not formed to stop whaling, but because it was obvious that whale stocks had collapsed, and international co-ordination was needed to allow them to grow back to an economic level. The whaling industry collapsed slowly, got a second wind as steam ships made fast-moving blue whales a feasible target, then collapsed again as the blue whales ran out. The IWC was formed in 1946, and it wasn't until the 70s that the anti-whaling movement gained any steam.
Re: Lab-grown meat might be only 6 months away
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 mor…
As a vegetarian, I'd eat it, but hold off for a while atleast to look for potential health consequences. I'm not too worried about nutritional imbalance because I don't think this will ever be my primary source of nutrition.
There is also the "Eeew, ick" vegetarians, they're unlikely to change.
Re: Lab-grown meat might be only 6 months away
#57Apparently nobody was paying attention when Meat Tube won Best New GMO in 08. http://www.ilovemeattube.com/about.html
I'm not sure if you are joking but that looks like a parody site.
Re: Lab-grown meat might be only 6 months away
#58This is gross! Can they guarantee that the synthetic meat is healthy? Like, will it contain CLA, B-12, Omega-3s (found in grass-fed cows, and well-raised pigs), B-12, and so on? We get a lot of important nutrients from animal meat and fat that are harder to process from plant or synthetic sources.
Grosser than eating something that was once a living, breathing, feeling animal? Probably not. (I'm a meat eater but still acknowledge how horrible it is.)
Our subjective opinions on how "gross" this is won't get us anywhere. I don't find killing and eating animals to be gross—eating something that literally wasn't alive (I don't find cells reproducing in that way to meet my definition of "living") is repulsive to me.
I source all my meat possible from local farms that raise the animals in free-range methods, and slaughter them in ethical ways (IE, no shocking or killing them when they're in a panic, like a CAFO would). And that's as ethical and as kind as a meat eater can get, with no exceptions.
But the nutritional point I raise isn't a light issue. These are animal cells coaxed into growing in foreign conditions. Just like hydroponic tomatoes have no taste, and possibly poor nutrition too, the "flesh vats" of the future will have nutritional problems too.
Re: Lab-grown meat might be only 6 months away
#59I'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.
Vegetarians are pretty diverse and really can't be considered as a single group. Some vegetarians eat fish, some sneak pepperoni pizza, some eat dairy, some will eat anything but steak, some extend the definition beyond food to clothing and furniture. The addition of test tube meat will just add one more variable to further diversify people under the "the vegetarians" label.
In a similar vein, would someone who identifies as Jewish or a Muslim eat test tube bacon? Well, some already eat real pork and don't get worked up about it. It just depends on how you interpret and practice your beliefs. And we've all got different beliefs that make us do different things.
Re: Lab-grown meat might be only 6 months away
#60This is gross! Can they guarantee that the synthetic meat is healthy? Like, will it contain CLA, B-12, Omega-3s (found in grass-fed cows, and well-raised pigs), B-12, and so on? We get a lot of important nutrients from animal meat and fat that are harder to process from plant or synthetic sources.
Grosser than eating something that was once a living, breathing, feeling animal? Probably not. (I'm a meat eater but still acknowledge how horrible it is.)
I'll feed the worms one day too.