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Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

bbc.co.uk

41–50 of 474 posts

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#41
post #31
post #12

BBC journos have a specific editorial style, and no doubt it influenced this headline, but this isn't to "protect food heritage". Food and drink accounts for a quarter of Italy's GDP. It's about money. Italy has a far-right government, which is extremely open to lobbying from that sector, and "heritage" is aligned with their nationalistic stance. Try to look a bit deeper.

You don't have to be "far right" or "nationalistic" to not want to destroy your economy

Liking your country and not wanting to be poor are bad things nowadays

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#42
post #24

This seems no different than the ridiculous laws proposed in some US states recently that would ban EV sales to protect the oil and gas industries. I’m sorry that people could one day lose jobs over this, but if lab-grown meat is proven to be a safe and cost/energy/carbon efficient alternative to raising and killing animals, then it would be insane to not pursue that.

Sure, but that’s a huge if — especially regarding safety and nutrition.

Then regulating criteria for determining that would be reasonable.

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#43
post #34

I was reading somewhere that Poland will overtake Italy in GDP pro capita in 10-20 years. True or not Poland is doing much better than Italy already. I think it’s interesting that a country that was 50 years under a dictatorship was able to take over on a country that has not only had freedom and democracy, but also help and financial support from US and EU. Italy is not hungry for growth and it keeps consuming whate…

It's one data point, sure. But it would take more than a passing resistance to lab-grown meat to convince me of some national character flaw. Maybe overstated?

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#44

Unpopular opinion: some controversial cultural heritages need protection. I single out tauromachy, which is incomprehensible to most, moreso the younger generations. The world is a tangle of Chesterton fences, and our righteous moral clariy is our own's worst enemy.

Why do they need protection? What's the difference between one morally repugnant cultural heritage like bullfighting and another morally repugnant cultural heritage like dog fighting or cockfighting? How about footbinding? Eating sea turtles? Female circumcision?

Doing something shitty for a long time doesn't affect how bad it is, just how hard it will be to stop.

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#45
post #12

BBC journos have a specific editorial style, and no doubt it influenced this headline, but this isn't to "protect food heritage". Food and drink accounts for a quarter of Italy's GDP. It's about money. Italy has a far-right government, which is extremely open to lobbying from that sector, and "heritage" is aligned with their nationalistic stance. Try to look a bit deeper.

[flagged]

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#46
post #31
post #12

BBC journos have a specific editorial style, and no doubt it influenced this headline, but this isn't to "protect food heritage". Food and drink accounts for a quarter of Italy's GDP. It's about money. Italy has a far-right government, which is extremely open to lobbying from that sector, and "heritage" is aligned with their nationalistic stance. Try to look a bit deeper.

You don't have to be "far right" or "nationalistic" to not want to destroy your economy

If your economy is entirely dependent on a doomed industry, maybe, instead of artificially keeping it alive, focus on modernising that economy instead?

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#47

This seems no different than the ridiculous laws proposed in some US states recently that would ban EV sales to protect the oil and gas industries. I’m sorry that people could one day lose jobs over this, but if lab-grown meat is proven to be a safe and cost/energy/carbon efficient alternative to raising and killing animals, then it would be insane to not pursue that.

There's no "protection" of anything, this is populist vote-grabbing. Lab-grown meat isn't even a reality and won't be for like a decade at least on supermarket shelves.

Also, that's not even the worse of the things introduced by our government yesterday, administrations do not need to publish a public contract for works up to 150k euros.

Now every single administration can spend and gift corrupted money left and right without any need for any accountability and rules.

Disgusting.

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#49
post #37

Good idea. Europe has enough fertile land to feed itself without GMO or lab grown stuff. No need to take long tail risks.

Ok, but then Europe should expect the rest of the world to neither conduct free trade with it, nor subsidize its defense. You want those benefits? You don't block out the products of our highly productive agriculture.

Banning a whole class of product is not protectionism. Especially ones with dubious safety and unknown long term effects.

You are totally free to raise cattle and grains the normal way and ship them to Europe. We love black angus steaks here.

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#50
exactly the laws a rightwing government would create, protectionism at its best. meanwhile many countries around will build up the new high-tech industries and once surpassing the "traditional" thing in price/quality/quantity/coolness/... leave the protectionist in the dust.

short term populism, long term damages, as always

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