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

bbc.co.uk

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

#271

Post by lormayna »

wolfi008 wrote: post #242
lormayna wrote: post #229

I am Italian, so I can provide a bit of context to better understand this decision. The right-wing government won the election with few key promises: reject the immigrants coming by the sea with a naval block, a sort of victimhood against UE that want to "fight" Italian habits (like forcing us to eat worms instead of pasta), and penalize Italian companies (like force Italy to liberalize sectors like taxi licenses or…

You are calling Meloni's government "left-wing"? Italy has not had a government so far right since WW2. > like forcing us to eat worms instead of pasta Nobody is "forcing" you to anything. That's misrepresenting reality to a degree that's not even funny had you used /s tags.

> You are calling Meloni's government "left-wing"? Italy has not had a government so far right since WW2.

Sorry, just a typo. I obviously would like to say right wings.

> Nobody is "forcing" you to anything. That's misrepresenting reality to a degree that's not even funny had you used /s tags.

It seems that you don't get my points: I am not saying that EU want to force anybody to eat worms, I am saying that right wings is saying so for propaganda.

This is happened just couple of days ago: https://www.repubblica.it/politica/2023/03/25/news/ambrosi_d... For not italian speakers: a representative from FdI (Meloni's party) said that left-wing is for eating worms and taking drugs, while left-wing people are enjoying good food and wine. Just to explain the level of Italian political debate.

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

#272

Post by lormayna »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #233
lormayna wrote: post #229

I am Italian, so I can provide a bit of context to better understand this decision. The right-wing government won the election with few key promises: reject the immigrants coming by the sea with a naval block, a sort of victimhood against UE that want to "fight" Italian habits (like forcing us to eat worms instead of pasta), and penalize Italian companies (like force Italy to liberalize sectors like taxi licenses or…

Sorry which wing?

Just a typo that I corrected, of course is right-wing.

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

#273

Post by dalmo3 »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #223
stametseater wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is termed "populist" when it enacts something counter to a deeply unpopular progressive agenda, such as replacing Italian food with bugs and lab-grown abominations.

To me it seems to be when it's irrational reactionary overreach. If it's deeply unpopular why is it so threatening and why does it need to be banned before it even becomes a real thing? Won't the market quickly show that "bugs and lab-grown abominations" can't stand?

> If it's deeply unpopular why is it so threatening

Because of who is behind the unpopular thing, and who has power to make (thing) happen.

Nuclear weapons are also deeply unpopular.

> Won't the market quickly show that "bugs and lab-grown abominations" can't stand?

The market won't have a say when bureaucrats pass a law mandating every burger or sausage should contain a % of lab-grown meat, with the % increasing every year. If there's anything the recent years have showed is that slippery slope isn't a fallacy.

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

#274

Post by PurpleRamen »

Retric wrote: post #125
pella wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but if lab-grown meat is proven to be a safe We need to fully understand its safety, nutritional content, and long-term health effects. Our understanding of the full biochemical spectrum of our diets is still limited. Therefore, it's important to ensure that lab-grown meat adequately replicates the complex array of nutrients and other beneficial compounds found in conventionally produced meat. Long-term effects: Si…

That’s a wildly misleading take on nutrition. Basically all foods are cells so they contain all the normal cellular machinery like DNA. As long as lab grown meat is just normal animal cells nothing new is going on. Where you need to care about each individual molecule is if we where creating food one molecule at a time via a replicator or something so we could have wildly unusual ratios of these individual components…

> Basically all foods are cells so they contain all the normal cellular machinery like DNA. As long as lab grown meat is just normal animal cells nothing new is going on.

That's a very simplified and misleading stance. We already have problem with normal grown foods for various reasons, including unexpected and harmful outcomes of breeding. Food is complex, and handling of food is even more complex. And research is limited in what it can find, and if there are financial interests, it will limit itself even more in what it communicates.

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

#275

Post by magic_hamster »

Fragoel2 wrote: post #16

As an Italian, I can tell you this is just a move to grab some votes from their supporters. Lab meat is nowhere close to mass production so there is no real impact of this ban right now. When (and if) lab-grown meat becomes commonplace and, hence, cheaper than regular meat then the ban will be reverted as it would have negative implications on the country economy.

Lab grown red meat is actually closer than you think. Factories are being set up around the world. My guess is that in around a year, two years tops, you'd be able to see some general availability.

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

#276

Post by burkaman »

nashashmi wrote: post #211
burkaman wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just their bodily functions (which are very significant despite your feelings), it's the enormous amount of land we clearcut and leave basically empty so they can graze. Also, it's not about the planet, it's about us. The planet obviously will be fine, but a lot of humans won't be.

The land consumption is enormous, hence why I mentioned it (farming of livestock). There are different opportunities for optimizations here. But I don't think it falls in line with cultures of industrialization.

Ok, why do you think this? Transport needs to be decarbonized, but it's a very tiny portion of our food system's climate impact. Land use is a major portion, but it's still not as significant as cows themselves. Maybe you're underestimating the scale? There are a billion cows on earth that simply wouldn't exist if we stopped eating them and drinking their milk. It's not like a normal natural resource that we're just tapping into. They do not exist in the wild, and basically any other food (even other animals) could give us the calories and nutrients we need with far fewer emissions.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/food-emissions-supply-cha...

https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/

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

#277

Post by ben_w »

stametseater wrote: post #171
dangwhy wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> populist vote-grabbing sorry but how is this different from just democracy ? we have democracy here in USA that allows NIMBY homeowners opposing any new development. Is that also just 'populist vote-grabbbing'

Democracy is termed "populist" when it enacts something counter to a deeply unpopular progressive agenda, such as replacing Italian food with bugs and lab-grown abominations.

"Lab grown abominations" are the only way I, as a vegetarian, get to enjoy hard cheese.

GM bacteria rennet.

Of course, part of why I'm vegetarian is that the idea of scraping off the stomach lining of a baby cow in order to turn milk into a convenient solid is, to me, also an abomination…

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

#278

Post by 9dev »

thanatropism wrote: post #209
fnmron wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's many adjacent practices to bull fighting that are legal. So for consistency sake we will need to look into farming, we will need to look into carnivorous animals, we will need to look into supplying air conditioning to animals in a hot day for the sake of their welfare

Tauromachy isn't "bullfighting". It's circus and drama; it's adjacent to religious sacrifice (rather, than, as some seem to think, betting on dogfights). But it's not religion either. Animals have to die. The bulls in tauromachy are of a special type that's bred out in the open; they live lives that no other bovine lives -- not even in India, where sacred cows are still beasts of burden. There's a kind of carefree ri…

I don't quite know where you're going with this. Are you saying killing those bulls is okay if it's for circus and drama, and those bulls live a few nice years before being hunted through the streets and stabbed to death, because animals die all the time anyway?

There's a kind of carefree righteous kind of person that thinks they are reacting at events rather than systems. So they're agitated by other perspectives than their own, because they alone can see how the world works, and this automatically makes them good people. Isn't it good to be a good person?

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

#279

Post by pella »

illiarian wrote: post #227
pella wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://necsi.edu/the-precautionary-principle "Our analysis makes clear that the PP is essential for a limited set of contexts and can be used to justify only a limited set of actions. We discuss the implications for nuclear energy and GMOs. GMOs represent a public risk of global harm, while harm from nuclear energy is comparatively limited and better characterized. PP should be used to prescribe severe limits on GMO…

I wonder what their answer would be to Green Revolution in the 60s... Also, I can't get past random graphs with random numbers with zero explanation of the axes. There are valid concerns expressed, but they are buried underneath an avalanche of demagoguery.

just read a PDF .. https://arxiv.org/abs/1410.5787

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

#280

Post by giraffe_lady »

lormayna wrote: post #272
giraffe_lady wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry which wing?

Just a typo that I corrected, of course is right-wing.

Sorry I wasn't trying to be shitty, I'm just moderately ignorant of italian politics but aware that internal political vocabulary doesn't always line up with external expectations.

Also, idk, maybe there is a much more right party I'd never heard of. Or like, I would describe the US as having a center-right party and a far-right party, could be a rhetorical choice like that.

Anyway thanks for the clarification.

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