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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

#311

Post by [deleted] »

grishka wrote: post #225
kikokikokiko wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

The problem with growing whole animal for meat, suffering aside, is that it's extremely inefficient. Most of the energy an animal consumes is used to sustain its organism — which, for the purpose of food, is a waste.

[deleted]

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

#312

Post by 411111111111111 »

ars wrote: post #300
eloff wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When this technology finally gets there, and I see no reason to think it won't eventually, it will change the world so dramatically. The amount of land and water we won't need to raise animals or food for animals it's staggering. The amount of meat the world consumes will double by the end of the century (will it? I made that up). As the world gets richer, people eat more meat. Combine that with a rising population a…

Only if it's cheaper. They said the same thing about plant based meat - and it hasn't because it's more expensive.

Pretty sure it's not more expensive. People that are willing to buy vegan are just generally richer and more likely to be able to spend more. Thus the prices are artificially inflated by market segmentation.

At least where I'm from the companies make way more profit from their vegan substitutes then their equivalent meat products.

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

#313

Post by was_a_dev »

ars wrote: post #300
eloff wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When this technology finally gets there, and I see no reason to think it won't eventually, it will change the world so dramatically. The amount of land and water we won't need to raise animals or food for animals it's staggering. The amount of meat the world consumes will double by the end of the century (will it? I made that up). As the world gets richer, people eat more meat. Combine that with a rising population a…

Only if it's cheaper. They said the same thing about plant based meat - and it hasn't because it's more expensive.

Plant based meats are

1) Still not real meat, hence is only considered by a limited target consumer

2) Is still relatively new to the mass-market. Hence still isn't at it's lowest price point.

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

#314

Post by JumpCrisscross »

kikokikokiko wrote: post #259
dqpb wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Down here in Brazil you basically give the animals it's vaccines and let them graze for a few years Let me fix this for you: > Down here in Brazil you basically destroy a million square kilometers of old growth rainforest, give the animals it's vaccines, and let them graze for a few years

You have no idea what you are talking about. Brazil is a continental country, I'm sure you know about it. My family and I come from the southern part, it's basically pampa downn here, a green savana. That's why Argentina, Uruguai and south Brazil are the best places to raise cattle in the world, it's just grass from horizon to horizon. The average HN user is so oblivious to anything other than this idiotic 1st world…

> why Argentina, Uruguai and south Brazil are the best places to raise cattle in the world, it's just grass from horizon to horizon

Uruguay’s environment is massively altered by wide-scale cattle raising [1]. The savannahs are being destroyed, deforestation lowering water tables and effluence and run-off contaminating what groundwater remains. They’re great places to rear cattle. That doesn’t mean they have no environmental impact.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_in_Urug...

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

#315

Post by lovich »

hunterb123 wrote: post #235
darkwizard42 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating grass, producing waste, requiring space, labor, and disposal of concentrated waste (too much cow dung goes beyond fertilization) is energy intensive, which is what the parent comment was bringing up. Cost goes beyond the labor (which is what I am taking your comment to focus on)

1. Grass costs nothing, it's already there and we can't eat it. You have to shred it so it doesn't grow too high anyway. 2. Again, pastures are already there, nothing else is on them. 3. Perfect, that's more jobs, but I know small family farms with 100 head of cattle with no extra ranch hands. 4. Not really, unless they are very large farms, but at very large scales making artificial meet will have challenges too, mu…

> 1. Grass costs nothing, it's already there and we can't eat it. You have to shred it so it doesn't grow too high anyway.

> 2. Again, pastures are already there, nothing else is on them.

We’ve gone way beyond pasture just “being there” to rely on for animal agriculture at the rate we do it. Look at BLM grazing rates which are there to pay for renewing the grassland but to rate limit how many animal graze or the grassland would be destroyed. Amazon in Brazil is also being cut back constantly to create new pasture land

> 3. Perfect, that's more jobs, but I know small family farms with 100 head of cattle with no extra ranch hands.

If doing things inefficiently just to create jobs is a good idea, we might as well ban shovels and backhoes and make everyone dig with spoons

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

#316

Post by jxramos »

kikokikokiko wrote: post #259
dqpb wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Down here in Brazil you basically give the animals it's vaccines and let them graze for a few years Let me fix this for you: > Down here in Brazil you basically destroy a million square kilometers of old growth rainforest, give the animals it's vaccines, and let them graze for a few years

You have no idea what you are talking about. Brazil is a continental country, I'm sure you know about it. My family and I come from the southern part, it's basically pampa downn here, a green savana. That's why Argentina, Uruguai and south Brazil are the best places to raise cattle in the world, it's just grass from horizon to horizon. The average HN user is so oblivious to anything other than this idiotic 1st world…

yah, I always had the impression that Brazil was predominantly rain forest. I'm curious what percentage of the country's land mass is deep/tall Amazon rain forest. If we came up with some cheap threshold like at least 10 trees in 100 square meters each at least 10m tall or something, what percentage of Brazil's land mass would satisfy that constraint?

I heard of the pampas in Argentina before I think through literature from Jorge Luis Borges. I never knew that Brazil intersected with that region down at the southern tip https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pampa.

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

#317

Post by robbomacrae »

ars wrote: post #300
eloff wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When this technology finally gets there, and I see no reason to think it won't eventually, it will change the world so dramatically. The amount of land and water we won't need to raise animals or food for animals it's staggering. The amount of meat the world consumes will double by the end of the century (will it? I made that up). As the world gets richer, people eat more meat. Combine that with a rising population a…

Only if it's cheaper. They said the same thing about plant based meat - and it hasn't because it's more expensive.

To add to the other points being made... meat is subsidized and doesn't include the cost of the externalities. It's hard to imagine that in the long run, plant based meat or lab grown meat will be more expensive than growing, feeding, and looking after animals.

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

#318

Post by erispoe »

kikokikokiko wrote: post #95
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…

"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…

You can beat it because you don't need a few years, acres of land, and a large amount of water.

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

#320

Post by randomdata »

eloff wrote: post #291
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…

When this technology finally gets there, and I see no reason to think it won't eventually, it will change the world so dramatically. The amount of land and water we won't need to raise animals or food for animals it's staggering. The amount of meat the world consumes will double by the end of the century (will it? I made that up). As the world gets richer, people eat more meat. Combine that with a rising population a…

> We could rewild huge parts of the Earth

Probably not without radically changing how we grow plants for human consumption, assuming we still eat plants and don't move to an all-meat diet.

Looking over the data for the area I farm, according to government figures, 36% of the cropland is used for animal food. Most farmers here grow a rotation of soybeans, corn, edible beans, and wheat. The edible beans and wheat are intended for direct human consumption. I couldn't find an exact breakdown for soybean use, but on my farm ~60% of the soybeans are intended for direct human consumption and ~40% for animal consumption. I imagine that is not atypical. Corn is primarily intended for animal consumption.

A little back of the napkin math and you get somewhere around 35% of the output after a four year rotation on my farm being intended for animal consumption, which is effectively what the real world data also shows.

The rotation is important to maintaining soil health and keeping disease at bay. I don't see that going away, save further technical advancement, so you'd probably just see the corn shift to something like biofuels if animals weren't eating it to maintain the rotation to grow the human food.

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