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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

#291

Post by ben_w »

xdennis wrote: post #285
ben_w wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

It's not an abomination to eat natural food. Any carnivore/omnivore would eat a cow if it could. The fact that you perceive something natural as an abomination is a symptom of a society that's too successful and needs to invent problems where there are none.

> It's not an abomination to eat natural food. Any carnivore/omnivore would eat a cow if it could.

If the cow could speak, I believe their opinion would be otherwise.

Humans don't generally appreciate it when lions, tigers, and bears beat them to the top of the food chain.

Perfectly natural, that hypocrisy; as natural as your face being eaten by leopards.

> The fact that you perceive something natural as an abomination is a symptom of a society that's too successful and needs to invent problems where there are none.

Lots of natural stuff has been "an abomination" to one group or another since writing existed, regardless of how successful the societies have been.

Examples in Leviticus, amongst other ancient texts.

Shellfish are natural.

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

#292

Post by 9dev »

orangepurple wrote: post #268
9dev wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole insect flour debate is so braindead. We have billions of people to feed. Dried and shredded insects provide a great protein yield, can be produced incredibly efficient, and aren’t as destructive to the planet as lifestock. Many cultures have been consuming insects for ages. There is nothing unsafe, unnatural, or otherwise „bad“ about using insects for food - other than an embarrassing, unreflective revulsi…

> We have billions of people to feed. I was not aware that you have billions of people to feed.

Try to assume a responsible perspective for once, and not limit your thinking horizon to yourself. It works wonders.

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

#293

Post by nashashmi »

burkaman wrote: post #276
nashashmi wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem is not cows take up a lot of resources. The problem is their upkeep is too intensive that the economies of scale contribute to large scale destruction of resource.

I don't buy the future decarbonization transport argument. It is a mirage. But put that aside.

Cows are incredibly powerful creatures. Their uses were in not just taking up a lot of land but also moving lots of farm equipment and cultivating land. With machinery, they are displaced and no parallel uses are found.

The huge consumption of meat has incentivized capitalist industries to destruct land for profit. Blaming this on cows is like blaming a worker instead of the boss. Blame the overly large consumers who cannot forgo meat, and blame the capitalists for feeding that frenzy. How despicable have we become if our arguments are now based on “lab grown meat" being a solution. Like we refuse to see our own feces as a stinker.

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

#294

Post by lormayna »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #280
lormayna wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Also, idk, maybe there is a much more right party I'd never heard of.

There are, but luckily they are not relevant and outside of Parliament.

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

#295

Post by yamtaddle »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #71
epolanski wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't be serious, it's obvious that EVs curb oil and gas consumption and profits.

How is that obvious? At least in the U.S., there is a pretty high chance that nonrenewables are charging your battery.

It's pretty fucking obvious that more electric cars will mean, overall, less gasoline and oil use, yes.

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

#296

Post by 9dev »

_zpij wrote: post #269
9dev wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't demand anything, but merely ask if you'd like to provide a little more detail. I see that you're not open for intellectual discussions that question your beliefs though, so I guess we can cut this thread here.

I don't understand this need to push eating insects onto people. The "intellectual" point of view makes it even funnier. Food is not just the sum of proteins and carbohydrates. It is wrong on so many levels to suggest that because insects are protein rich then they must be good. I was honestly shocked by Americans not being aware of the quality of their food - it's horrible. Even in Whole Foods, or more expensive sup…

Jokes a bit on you, though, for I'm no American, and I certainly value good cuisine. But reflexively excluding insects from your meal options just because they "look scary" is just... not that smart. I suppose you eat shrimps just as fine as anyone, don't you?

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

#297

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

xdennis wrote: post #285
ben_w wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

It's not an abomination to eat natural food. Any carnivore/omnivore would eat a cow if it could. The fact that you perceive something natural as an abomination is a symptom of a society that's too successful and needs to invent problems where there are none.

The term "abomination" is not useful at all in this conversation. It's 100% up to individual interpretation. To be fair, so is "natural". Many of the traditional things we do to food is hard to frame as natural.

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

#298

Post by fnimick »

bluGill wrote: post #168
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'

Yes. If you live in any form of democracy this is a real problem and you need to watch out for it. Make sure you watch out for it in yourself - there are a lot of things that make your life better at the expense of society has a whole. There are also a lot of unintended effects of things that should be good that can make them worse than the alternative that feels evil. Democracy is still the best form of government I…

> there are a lot of things that make your life better at the expense of society has a whole

There's no better example of this than the discussion on health insurance here on HN a few days ago, where people with health insurance were opposing universal healthcare because they'd have to "compete with the general public for treatment access".

How do you fight it though? There's no incentive for anyone to willingly choose to have a worse personal situation for a greater good.

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

#299

Post by phpisthebest »

dangwhy wrote: post #135
epolanski wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 righ…

> 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'

Yes...

That is why many rational people do not support this idea of unlimited democracy. The founders of he US knew very well the perils of unlimited democracy and that is why they not only attempted to check government power, but check the power of the majority

I dont want to be ruled by either a government in washington, nor a majority of my neighbors

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

#300

Post by modo_mario »

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.

We managed to fuck this up without going that far for vegetables and there's no considering additives or lab grown differences there. It's definitely all cells and dna.

https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conserv...

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