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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

#471
post #185
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I buy your argument. For example, pigs have an average lifespan of 15-20 years but in a farm setting are slaughtered at 6 months old. Also I suspect a pig is more adapted to its natural environment than living in a confined shelter (often less than a square metre). In fact, in the UK, less than 1 in 20 pigs are allowed to go outside - hardly a good life! This is just pigs.

This visualisation was an eye opener. https://justone.earth/food/ Perhaps an individual animal suffering is less compared to a wild death, but the sheer volume has to count for something.

It's a neat visualization, but it's really missing a domain. They present the counts over time, and nothing else.

There are ~8 billion people living. While some are starving, most of us are eating every day, if not several times per day.

If we assume the average person is eating 2 meals per day, that means 5,840 billion meals per year, or ~185,185 meals per second.

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

#472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK what they're talking about but I could imagine a pathogen that evolved on real animals having a field day at a meat farm without an immune system to fight back it would be reliant on the human operators cleanliness and other procedures. Granted it might be much harder to have the initial infection happen in the first place since it's just a chunk of meat in a lab (no animal to walk around and get injured or other…

That's not that much different from existing industrial environments like brewing, or making mayonnaise or other things. I don't think that's much of a hurdle to have to overcome.

Mayonnaise as an example is interesting, although the time that the mayonnaise exists for is probably shorter than meat.

With beer and other fermented stuff, the fermentation is a disinfecting process. For example people used to make really weak beer to drink instead of potentially drinking dirty water with something in it that would make you sick.

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

#474
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…

> As the world gets richer, people eat more meat. Living in central Berlin (Mitte), one of the most expensive parts of the city, it feels the opposite is happening. Everything here is vegan or vegetarian at least. Even a steak place next door to where I live has vegan plates. On that note: it made me sad that all the dramatic changes you listed omitted the suffering of animals.

There is no suffering necessarily involved in the raising of animals for meat. A cow raised for beef does not suffer, for instance.

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

#475
post #351
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…

I doubt it, considering the demographic problems and the end of globalization, we’re likely to see about two billion people starve in most of our lifetimes, mostly in East Asia. It’s going to be a rough ride.

People have been predicting this mass starvation of poor people in X parts of the world since before even Paul R. Ehrlich opened his mouth. In his book "the population bomb" he claimed it would be because of overpopulation. Now that we've seen trends indicating all the opposite on that front, the new fad is apparently blaming it on climate change.

Either way, forgive me for being extremely doubtful. While its true that past catastrophes averted are no guarantee of future catastrophes averted, modern history has shown a remarkable tendency towards people heading off the worst of a given doom scenario before it becomes reality. Add to that the observable tendency of people to emotionally be attracted to particularly awful predictions even if their behavior indicates them as believing otherwise in practice, and the the skepticism about most doom scenarios like the one you mention is a good idea.

All data in our world today across the board indicates improving human standards of living and this has been going on for a long time. No concrete evidence shows a trend in the opposite direction to anywhere near a severe enough degree to assert the starvation of billions, or even millions. Problems exist, sure, and there are many dangerous environmental trends, but even these don't concretely establish anything like what you describe.

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

#476
post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is ... simply deforest more land for our animals ... we could fatten ourselves so much more ;) https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

Your own link suggests that only 23% of agricultural lands are suitable for cropland.

Not suitable, but used for plant-based food.

Other arable land is used for animal feed production, and together with grazing land represents the other 77% of agriculture land (37 mil. km2), which supplies only 18% of global calories and 37% of proteins.

Those 23% (11 mil. km2) of agriculture land, crop land, is currently producing 82% of global calories and 63% of proteins.

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-g...

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

#477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I eat meat, but I think it's fair to say bringing living/feeling/thinking things into existence for the express purpose of being killed and consumed is grim. This feels particularly true if the circumstances they're raised in are horrific, which seems to be pretty common in factory farms. Wouldn't the logical conclusion than be to eat less and higher quality meat? I mean I have worked on Biodynamic farms with lives…

>when most Asian diets are mainly vegetarian and have fed populations in the billions for millennia (eg India, China, Japan). The modern Japanese diet is very, very far from vegetarian. In fact, you'll have a very hard time eating in restaurants if you're a vegetarian in Japan. I guess if you consider fish to somehow be "not an animal", though, it's much easier.

> The modern Japanese diet is very, very far from vegetarian. In fact, you'll have a very hard time eating in restaurants if you're a vegetarian in Japan. I guess if you consider fish to somehow be "not an animal", though, it's much easier.

Granted, but Modern anything will often reflect a more meat based diet due to convenience (Lawson's bentos and snacks are amazing!) and despite several lost generations and the rise of the freeta generation(s) an over all higher standard of living as made meat consumption a norm rater tan an exception.

As a fomer cook/chef I can assure I can easily make 5 days our of 7 wit just tasty vegetarian meals rather easily because Japanese is my repertoire, and plant based dashi can be just as good as it's fish based variants (I onsider it a meat protein, albeit a more naturally sustainable one wen done properly/seasonally) thus can build flavour tat way.

By contrast I ave a harder time to do so with Italian which is my other cuisine despite having a more immersed culture experience--I lived and worked in Emilia Romagna wit its abundance of meat based parma options.

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

#478
post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your own link suggests that only 23% of agricultural lands are suitable for cropland.

Not suitable , but used for plant-based food. Other arable land is used for animal feed production, and together with grazing land represents the other 77% of agriculture land (37 mil. km2), which supplies only 18% of global calories and 37% of proteins. Those 23% (11 mil. km2) of agriculture land, crop land, is currently producing 82% of global calories and 63% of proteins. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/01…

> Other arable land is used for animal feed production, and together with grazing land represents the other 77% of agriculture land

Right, and since we're only talking about cropland, that 77% has no relevance to the discussion. That it keeps coming up is rather bizarre. Indeed, if you keep pounding a square peg into a round hold hard enough it may eventually go in, but one sure does look silly for doing it in the first place.

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

#479
post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not suitable , but used for plant-based food. Other arable land is used for animal feed production, and together with grazing land represents the other 77% of agriculture land (37 mil. km2), which supplies only 18% of global calories and 37% of proteins. Those 23% (11 mil. km2) of agriculture land, crop land, is currently producing 82% of global calories and 63% of proteins. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/01…

> Other arable land is used for animal feed production, and together with grazing land represents the other 77% of agriculture land Right, and since we're only talking about cropland, that 77% has no relevance to the discussion. That it keeps coming up is rather bizarre. Indeed, if you keep pounding a square peg into a round hold hard enough it may eventually go in, but one sure does look silly for doing it in the fi…

That 77% CONTAINS crop land.

https://www.renewmethod.com/post/what-is-arable-land

"Arable land is classified as land that can be plowed for the purpose of growing crops."

Please, look at the graph one more time.

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

#480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll give it a read but a quick look at this fella and his "thing" and he's clearly on a crusade: https://www.the-nutrivore.com/blog . Not outright dismissing this (I will read it because I'd like to be better informed and wrap my head around his stance) but that his main offering is debate training and not targeted health guidance/planning, it seems highly suspect.

For context, why I added "seed oils" in there. Once I saw the difference between Canola Oil (what I used the most up until I learned) production [1] and Olive Oil production [2], I never went back. For those interested, I also use tallow and coconut oil. I found/find it deeply disturbing that they say stuff like Canola is "healthy" when the production process sounds/looks like something you'd expect to describe the p…

I hear avocado oil is supposed to be good as well. What are your thoughts on butter/ghee?
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