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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

#361

Post by AlecSchueler »

nemo44x wrote: post #64
AlecSchueler wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain your reasoning? The unnatural food product stickers sounds like a health warning but for what? I already buy stuff like oat milk and it never bothered me that it's not actually milk. Same with plant based butters etc

Well, it’s unnatural to begin with. Other good movements like “organic” worked hard for that label and the producers of those products work hard. I don’t believe oat milk should be allowed to use the word “milk” and if it wants to then should be prefaced with words describing it as “imitation milk” or similar.

But what's so inherently dangerous about it being "unnatural" that it should require a similar level of mandated warnings on the packaging as cigarettes?

Do you think unnatural medicines produced in a lab should carry a similar warning compared to their natural remedy counterparts?

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

#362

Post by wankle »

sokoloff wrote: post #18
deergomoo wrote: post #13

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.

We could have equally banned internal combustion engines to protect the steam engine and buggy whip industries or phase change refrigeration to protect the jobs of the ice delivery companies.

> We could have equally banned internal combustion engines to protect the steam engine

That should actually have been done or better, Stirling Engines.

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

#363

Post by burkaman »

modo_mario wrote: post #355
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.

>It's not just their bodily functions (which are very significant despite your feelings) So were the bodily functions of the wild bison, and a boatload of other species that have disappeared or shrunk togheter with their methane output in rough equivalence to the growth in livestock and it's methane output (at least in the US tho I assume such calculations would be similar elsewhere.) Additionally anything they put o…

Here are some objectively true facts:

1. Cows emit a lot of methane

2. Methane warms the planet

3. Warming the planet is bad for humans

4. We can easily replace cows with other animals and plants that warm the planet a lot less

It doesn't matter that wild bison used to do the same thing, this is the situation we're in. Unlike with wild bison, we are in full control now and we can simply stop making more cattle without any negative environmental effects. It is a factor to look at. We are not in a position to be ignoring big factors because they taste good.

> most sequestration investments and drives are often little more than a scam, copium, equivalent to the push malicious push for single use plastics recycling by plastic manufacturers

I agree but it's totally irrelevant to this conversation.

> There is one source we keep making excuses for

Counterpoint: no we don't. Who is we? I challenge you to find a single person who both advocates for less cow consumption because of the climate impact and promotes more fossil fuel consumption. I don't think such a person exists.

> Wish to reduce that ouput to buy ourselves some time [strawman removed] and you basically end up with chicken and similar animals as the acceptable solution.

Yes, exactly, I'm glad we're on the same page. Quickly phasing out cattle would buy us a LOT of time, like decades.

> I agree it's an issue. However remove it and you'll have a different one.

I mean, ok, if you want to give up I guess I can't stop you, but can you at least keep it to yourself and not try to bring everyone else down with you? "We should just stop burning oil, nothing else matters" is a) not true, and b) equivalent to giving up, unless you have some secret plan to accomplish that extremely quickly. "Go back in time and keep all the hydrocarbons in the ground" is not an option, they've already been burned and they're already warming the planet and we're in a crisis now.

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

#364

Post by fineIllregister »

xdennis wrote: post #336
fineIllregister wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unnatural You keep using that word, but you haven't explained what makes it unnatural. There are people who eat insects right now, and I'm willing to bet people have been eating insects as long as there have been people. It seems more "natural" to me than drinking another aninals lactations. I don't want to eat insects, but you've offered no explanation why it is insufficient to list the ingredients (which is alrea…

> It's the cow dairy industry that is trying to appropriate the word. The word milk can be traced back thousands of years to the indo-european form h₂melǵ- which means... milk. Your attempt to re-frame this is ridiculous. > Also, "milk" has referred to any thick, white substance for centuries now. Consider "milk of magnesia". These are called metaphors. They do not attempt to mislead and confuse people. The whole poi…

> The word milk can be traced back thousands of years to the indo-european...

Well, if you develop time travel, then this information will come in handy. That has no bearing on how the word is used now or has been used for 100s of years.

> They do not attempt to mislead and confuse people.

I'm not sure how you can accuse "Oatly" or "Almond Breeze" of trying to mislead. The biggest word on their packaging is the main ingredient. Most non-dairy milks have a picture of the main ingredient on it. If people are confused by that, then they'll just as easily confuse orange juice for milk.

> The whole point of calling almond juice "milk"...

Is because it is a milk, and people can use it like any other milk.

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

#365

Post by nemo44x »

9dev wrote: post #93
nemo44x wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My culture doesn’t consume insects and we don’t intend to start.

Why don’t you intend to? Care to explain your rationale?

My rationale is my culture doesn't do it so I don't do it as it would be an inauthentic life for me and disrespectful to those who valiantly carried my culture to the point where I get to exist. I'm connected to my culture's history and traditions due to my respect for my ancestors. You may be a rootless wanderer from a broken culture that has been made subservient to other forces and I pity you for it if so, but please do not assume we all are or want to be.

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

#366

Post by goldfeld »

paxys wrote: post #254
goldfeld wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I assume you'll also be in favor of banning all medication then? Or is "lab stuff" only bad when there is paid propaganda against it?

Lab stuff is bad when you make it a habit of daily or weekly consumption just because alternatives were never considered. I never take any medication for sleeping, for instance, but use a powerful herb as tea. Sleep drugs, allergy drugs, are factors of early senility. If there is a medical condition that requires a drug, of course it should be taken. Otherwise I treat "medication" somewhat like a drug, you know, cocaine or some such. But banning drugs that save lives or enhance conditions is not a smart thing. Lab meat will ever save zero lives and enhance no health.

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

#367

Post by Retric »

mrpopo wrote: post #263
Retric wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We are losing many basic nutrients in our food content simply because of farmers selecting their produce for taste and appearance. Even if all foods were cells (not true), even then not all cells are equal. 75% of people in the US are overweight or obese, do you really believe that we are doing a good job with what we are putting in our bodies?

I mentioned sugar in my post, but you can get fat eating excessive quantities of otherwise healthy foods.

Now, I am not saying nutrition is ignorable you need to do more than say it was alive and now it’s in my tummy so everything is fine. On the other hand eating normal foods doesn’t require min maxing 26,000 different chemicals.

Moreover, you can pick a safe organism, stick it in a growth medium, let it sit for a while, and then eat it. That’s how we get cheese, beer, bread, soy sauce etc. Calling it lab grown meat evokes an image that’s different from what’s being proposed. They aren’t synthesizing every individual molecule they are simply feeding cells. If those cells can be healthy then most of what your cells need is probably included.

I wouldn’t try to live on an all lab grown meat diet, but that’s also true of an all beef/beer/cheese/etc diet

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

#368

Post by TurkishPoptart »

deergomoo wrote: post #13

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.

>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

Sadly, it's not. It requires growing tumors based on animal cells, which need to be pumped full of antibiotics to prevent infection, because a clump of cells has no immune system.

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

#369

Post by mrguyorama »

fnimick wrote: post #298
bluGill wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 choo…

There are incentives. Selfishness isn't everyone's driving factor, unlike what extremely selfish people want you to believe. Plenty of people believe in morals and other reasons to help their neighbor at their own expense, and these feelings seem to follow a high level of education and awareness of your fellow human beings.

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

#370

Post by Gud »

phpisthebest wrote: post #299
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... 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

then how do you explain Switzerland, where people vote on referendums every quarter? What the world needs is more power to the people, not less.

Populist movements only grow because the insulated ruling class don't listen to the people(and often don't give a shit).

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