Live data from Hacker News

Lab-Grown Meat Is Safe to Eat, FDA Says

smithsonianmag.com

121–130 of 493 posts

Re: Lab-Grown Meat Is Safe to Eat, FDA Says

#121

It will be animal cells differentiated into muscle tissues on collagen scaffolds initially. The technology comes from attempts to grow functional organs (ie, liver) that are biocompatible in the body serum proper. If there aren't health effects from transplantation within the animal type you can probably eat the animal tissues just fine. It's the same thing. It's meat. It's just without the animal suffering. And hope…

For context, the life of an average herbivore in the wild consists of living with no shelter in harsh weather while having to fear every sound. And it typically ends by being ripped to pieces by a predator and eaten alive while the brain still has some residual oxygen and awareness. The typical farmed animal experience where you are sheltered, vaccinated against common illnesses, provided food and slaughtered after b…

>but hardly encompasses more suffering.

I think that's hard to say. But I also think "the alternative" to farmed life is somewhat ignored by vegans/peta activists.

On the one hand, as you say, death is more painful by the claws/teeth of a predator; that is certain. But life itself with little shelter (but usualy some) is the natural state of afairs for most mammals. To say that that is suffering is to say that life itself is suffering, which I think is counterintuitive as suffering is evolutionarily a means of preasuring an animal to escape from the suffering. Not to say that isn't possible. It's hard to say if the natural resiliance (assuming it exists) that mammals have to little shelter and food carries over to say being croweded into small enclosures.

If anyone has any (scientific) articles on this topic I would be interested.

Re: Lab-Grown Meat Is Safe to Eat, FDA Says

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine thinking modern factory farming is anything as simple as “putting a cow in a field”.

Imagine thinking modern factory farming is the only way to go about things. It really can be as simple as putting a cow in a field with grass and water. My family has been doing it for 150 years.

And that scales for the 32 million cows consumed in America per year? https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/...

Re: Lab-Grown Meat Is Safe to Eat, FDA Says

#124

It will be animal cells differentiated into muscle tissues on collagen scaffolds initially. The technology comes from attempts to grow functional organs (ie, liver) that are biocompatible in the body serum proper. If there aren't health effects from transplantation within the animal type you can probably eat the animal tissues just fine. It's the same thing. It's meat. It's just without the animal suffering. And hope…

For context, the life of an average herbivore in the wild consists of living with no shelter in harsh weather while having to fear every sound. And it typically ends by being ripped to pieces by a predator and eaten alive while the brain still has some residual oxygen and awareness. The typical farmed animal experience where you are sheltered, vaccinated against common illnesses, provided food and slaughtered after b…

> living with no shelter

Maybe not up to human standards, but plenty of animals seek and find shelter as part of their normal life.

> having to fear every sound

Do you think animals fear their own species' mating calls? Or the rain and the breeze? How do you know what animals feel? If you are going to project the human emotion of "fear" onto them, you considered that they might feel humanlike emotions of elation, joy, and satisfaction as well?

> And it typically ends by being ripped to pieces by a predator and eaten alive while the brain still has some residual oxygen and awareness.

Human death, including death by common age-related ailments, is often painful and drawn out.

> sheltered, vaccinated against common illnesses, provided food

"Sheltered" in a coup filled with feces and "vaccinated" so that they do not succumb to the myre of illness in which they live. "Fed" via pellets of the cheapest food that the farm could buy while still sustaining them enough to develop tissue that is desirable for us to eat.

> being knocked out with electricity

I doubt that slaughter at factory farm is often as efficient, quick, and humane as you imagine.

> hardly encompasses more suffering.

Have you ever been, or been close to anyone, who was locked in jail or a psychiatric ward for a long period of time? The mental anguish of captivity is often described as worse than physical suffering.

Re: Lab-Grown Meat Is Safe to Eat, FDA Says

#125

It will be animal cells differentiated into muscle tissues on collagen scaffolds initially. The technology comes from attempts to grow functional organs (ie, liver) that are biocompatible in the body serum proper. If there aren't health effects from transplantation within the animal type you can probably eat the animal tissues just fine. It's the same thing. It's meat. It's just without the animal suffering. And hope…

"And hopefully it'll eventually be cheaper than growing animals too." Just as simply planting a tree and letting the sun provide the energy for it's growth will always beat those "synthetic trees" people like to hype from time to time, I can expect to never see a synthetic process that is more cost effective to create "meat" than simply letting nature do it's thing. Down here in Brazil you basically give the animals…

Soon it will only be cheaper if you're completely discounting the price paid to the ecosystem. In fact with a full accounting I'd wager it's already cheaper.

How many unique species that evolved over tens of millions of years have been lost forever, in the last 50 years alone, due to clear-cutting in Brazil?

How much clean water and topsoil has been polluted and washed away?

How much carbon has been released? How much suffering from butchered animals?

I really don't know how one can be so flippant about this.

Re: Lab-Grown Meat Is Safe to Eat, FDA Says

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain the significance of your statement? Surely the meat we all eat is dead along with the immune system and then cooked.

I'm talking about while you are growing the meat, whether it be in a natural system that is self-regulating and with an immune system, or in a vat where any contamination will spread rampantly. That's one of the biggest problems with lab-grown meat: if you make it at a scale that is economically feasible, the chance for contamination is so high that very few batches will make it through the process, and will have to…

We do large batch cheeses and beers and other things like that; which are similar enough that they'll offer useful pointers. "Meat" cultures might well be more subject to contamination because of the conditions required, but still. It's not a new problems and there's solutions that have worked for similar cases.

I do not think they will be able to compete economically with the backyard chicken, for example; but I'm not worried that they can't produce a safe product.

Re: Lab-Grown Meat Is Safe to Eat, FDA Says

#127
post #85

[flagged]

> We got told the Covid vaccines were safe and effective too

they are

> then we got told that, well, in a miniscule number of cases, people get myocarditis and die, despite no prior health risks

no, the myocarditis risk was there the pacients simply hadn't done a blood test first.

> but so many more people would die if nobody got vaccinated.

there were also multiple vaccines, many of which did not have that risk. without priors the risk of vacination is as dangerous as a pot falling from a building and hitting your head while you walk on the street, or the breaks in your car breaking in the highway.

(Actually the chance and ratio of breaks breaking in cars is about 100x higher than vaccine side effects, but I am sure you get your car with fear everyday).

Re: Lab-Grown Meat Is Safe to Eat, FDA Says

#130
post #73

Hard pass. Let's see some long-term (10 years) test data first (e.g., how does it effect things like muscle growth/retention, fat growth/loss, cell function, cancer promotion/prevention etc). I'd put this stuff on the same level as any mass-produced junk (HFCS, seed oils, etc) that has already been proven to be harmful to humans long-term as a cautious default.

Seed oils being unhealthy is quackery.

https://www.the-nutrivore.com/post/a-comprehensive-rebuttal-...

They improve health outcomes when put to the test, especially when replacing saturated fat.

Post reply on HN