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Lab-Grown Meat Is Safe to Eat, FDA Says

smithsonianmag.com

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

#281

Post by species9606 »

runarberg wrote: post #112
superkuh wrote: post #33

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…

> It's meat. It's just without the animal suffering Are you sure about the no suffering part. Currently this meat is grown using a growth medium most often extracted from a pregnant mare using a technique called bloodletting which is often extremely painful for the animal. EDIT: I think I’m actually wrong about the pregnant mare. Animal suffering through bloodletting from pregnant mares was a recent scandal where I’m…

This is wrong. UPSIDE’s meat is grown in animal component free medium. That’s one of their key innovations.

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

#282

Post by markstos »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #183

Maybe some folks will enjoy this as a food product. It's not clear to me that there's a real upside to this though, for folks who don't mind killing and eating birds. Research I have seen (you can see it too: [1]) indicates that chicken, dairy, and legumes are all about as low-impact as it gets when it comes to protein sources for humans. As other folks have mentioned, scaling up the meat lab causes a lot of headache…

There's a chart here with the carbon footprint of protein sources.

Nuts, Peas, Beans and Tofu come out ahead of fish, eggs, chicken, pork, cheese, shrimp and beef (the worst):

https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat#:~:....

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

#283

Post by mehulkar »

runarberg wrote: post #253
coldpie wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we priced externalities at their true societal cost, the problem of animal farming becomes clear very quickly. Reducing carbon emissions from animal agriculture is one of the bigger targets for helping reduce climate change. I don't think telling people to just not eat meat will work, so lab-grown meat seems like a promising solution to explore. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

Doesn’t lab grown meat need a lot of growth serum, which is currently extracted from pregnant animals? So as it stands it is not a solution to help reduce climate change (nor animal suffering). For that we’d need a more sustainable way of producing these serums. I’m not aware of any methods which are proven to work at scale.

There are non-FBS options now https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/upside-foods-develo...

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

#284

Post by AS37 »

runarberg wrote: post #253
coldpie wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we priced externalities at their true societal cost, the problem of animal farming becomes clear very quickly. Reducing carbon emissions from animal agriculture is one of the bigger targets for helping reduce climate change. I don't think telling people to just not eat meat will work, so lab-grown meat seems like a promising solution to explore. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

Doesn’t lab grown meat need a lot of growth serum, which is currently extracted from pregnant animals? So as it stands it is not a solution to help reduce climate change (nor animal suffering). For that we’d need a more sustainable way of producing these serums. I’m not aware of any methods which are proven to work at scale.

> Doesn’t lab grown meat need a lot of growth serum, which is currently extracted from pregnant animals?

5 years ago it took ~50L of fetal bovine serum (FBS) to grow a burger, at around USD 400/L. FBS is made from the blood of unborn calves, which are taken from slaughtered cows.

All lab meat companies are obviously looking to reduce that input cost by finding a replacement.

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

#285

Post by cogman10 »

randomdata wrote: post #271
cogman10 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> technique called bloodletting The technique is called a "biopsy" and while it does hurt, the animals recover pretty quickly from it. Branding is far more painful.

Given the topic of animal suffering here, what does the full picture of an animal used for this purpose look like? Are they treated any different to animals intended for direct consumption?

My assumption is that the animals will lead the same life. While this is something that'd cut down direct consumption I doubt that's ever eliminated.

So it becomes a math game. Either this cow produces the 700lbs of meat in a normal lifetime or with lab meat it produces n tons of meat (depending on how much meat can be produced per sample).

Who knows, maybe this ends up with a few cows living long lives since it's not their meat that matters but rather the quality of the stem cells they produce. But I'm guessing it's more likely these stem cells first get extracted from animals either already butchered or destine for the butcher.

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

#286

Post by sokoloff »

JasserInicide wrote: post #260
LtWorf wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's why it's safe to eat a rare steak The USA department of agriculture begs to differ. https://ask.usda.gov/s/article/Is-a-rare-steak-safe-to-eat Personally I never place much trust in random comments on the internet.

So if the USDA recommends this, what's the reasoning behind allowing restaurants to sell rare steaks?

They recommend 145°F, which is medium-well. Experiential outcomes suggest pretty strongly to me that forcing all steak to be cooked medium-well or greater is wildly overly conservative.

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

#287

Post by l2p »

yafbum wrote: post #262
markstos wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There down in Brazil, rainforest are being cut down at alarming rate in service to animal agriculture. It will be easier to preserve the Brazilian rainforests if there was some other way to grow meat that didn't involve huge grazing pastures for animals.

I don't think deforestation is for pasture? I thought it was for animal feed crops like soy

Is there is a meaningful difference between removal of rainforest for pasture vs animal feed? They both seem to be "in service to animal agriculture" to me at first glance.

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

#288

Post by olddustytrail »

prometheus76 wrote: post #136
lr4444lr wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't we solve this at least temporarily with a sodium rich environment? It seems to be effective for safe fermentation. I have no idea whether the biochemical reactions necessary to produce the meat though would be inhibited if we did this.

Try injecting yourself with saltwater and see what happens. The osmotic effects won't just affect the undesired cells. It will also affect the desired cells.

No post body was provided.

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

#289

Post by BobbyJo »

dudeofea wrote: post #265
BobbyJo wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we go off thermodynamics there is a lot of energy being wasted in producing the meat, even if that energy isn't expended by those tending the cattle. To say nothing of the animal suffering involved, we currently expend ~10x the calories we get from the beef producing it (IIRC). If we could get even to 5x that'd be a huge environmental win. Edit: Looking it up, beef sits at 25x, and chicken 9x. So, a lot of room fo…

does that include bioavailability of those calories to humans? from this anecdotal source: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/sbfn6b/c... 1lb of grass to humans = 32kcals / lb 1lb of grass to cows = 800kcals / lb 800/32 = 25x Assuming you grow something other than grass on that pasture to eat (also assuming it isn't marginal land which makes up 2/3 of agricultural land), wouldn't that other plant ext…

First, most cows are not grass fed. They are largely fed things that have bioavailable calories for humans, like soy. Likewise, chickens mainly consume corn.

Second, farm animals are not 100% efficient in absorbing calories and converting them to meat calories, so the 25x going from grass to beef is meaningless, assuming you were attempting o make some connection to my 25x figure on beef production efficiency.

Third, agricultural land is not all used for meat, and I'd need a source for that 2/3 being marginal figure. Looking it up I see ~2/3 (60%) of ag land is used for beef, but it is not all marginal. Beef is the main cause of Amazon deforestation for example.

Forth, if we just go by land use to globally consumed calories, cows, despite using 60% of ag land, only make up 2% of consumed calories. If we make an absurd assumption that 50% of all calories come from non-farmed sources, that still leaves 40% of ag land producing 48% of the world's calories in comparison, which would include non-beef meat as well.

Finally, just because the land wouldn't have much use to humans if we didn't use it for cows, doesn't mean it wouldn't benefit the planet, and us, if we stopped using it for such.

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