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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

#421

Post by phpisthebest »

Gud wrote: post #370
phpisthebest wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

>>then how do you explain Switzerland

Isolated nation of small population that is largely a monoculture with very low rate of poverty...

That model does not scale to a large culturally diverse population with widely disparate income levels.

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

#422

Post by kmeisthax »

briandear wrote: post #179
illiarian wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those name protections also tend to protect established players and regions even if they ultimately may produce utter garbage. I come from a small wine-producing country of Moldova. It produces or produced anything from wine to classical champagne to port to cognacs to... Now it's only wine that can be called wine (thankfully it's been around for longer than most civilizations). And for the rest they had to come up w…

Cognac is literally the name of a region. As is Champagne. It misleads the public when Moldovan Cognac is being sold as Cognac. Cognac is a subset of brandy anyway. Champagne is a subset of sparkling wine. And Port is named for the town in Portugal Oporto and is a subset of fortified wine. If the Moldovan spirits industry has a superior product, why can’t they call it a relevant name that protects the integrity of th…

Ok, so... are you buying the wine or are you buying the place it came from?

Like, there's nothing magical about the towns of Champagne or Cognac that makes the wine they produce different. It's all in the process and expertise used to produce the wine. If you brought the brewers and growers to another part of the world with the same soil and climate, and told them to make the same thing they make in Champagne and Cognac, they would produce identical[0] wine.

And the current regime of "terroir makes the trademark" leads to suitably absurd results. Like, if a Champagne producer wants to expand their operations, they can't, because there's only 75,000 acres of land you can legally make Champagne on. France has been trying to add new villages to Champagne's terroir since 2008 and the process still isn't done, even though the villages being added are literally just in between other Champagne villages. People still clutched their pearls about France diluting the brand purely by just allowing more of it to be made.

Ok, so maybe it's silly, but it shouldn't matter, because Champagne is a luxury product and I'm a [1]smelly American neoliberal that thinks you shouldn't be able to trademark a whole town. Fine. What about a staple food like rice? You see, India saw the EU PDO system and realized they could use it as a weapon to beat Pakistan with. So they're going to the EU and crying bloody murder about how poor Indian rice farmers are being crushed by evil Pakistani rice counterfeits[2]. Defining any sort of terroir here is a political statement not backed up by reality: both countries are either perfectly capable of making basmati rice, or we need to look at micro-climates and other things that would probably exclude a large portion of both countries' rice farms.

>If the Moldovan spirits industry has a superior product, why can’t they call it a relevant name that protects the integrity of their creation?

So, the thing is, often times there isn't really a generic equivalent name. We have "sparkling wine" for Champagne, but that seems to be rare. For example, I've no idea what you'd call non-terroir - but still otherwise well-made - Parmesan or Mozzarella cheese.

[0] As determined by a double-blind taste test with a suitably experienced sommelier.

[1] Two of the following words are true while the other one is trash. Can you spot the fake?

[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/7/india-pakistan-take-...

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

#423

Post by kubb »

BrotherBisquick wrote: post #349
kubb wrote: 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.

Europeans are always going on about how their right wing is to the left of America's left wing (as if any American should care). So when I hear "soandso European is far-right!" then shouldn't I be forgiven for thinking, "well, then it's no big deal." If Mussolini III is indeed to the left of Joe Biden (as they keep telling me over and over and over and over and over) then...nothing to worry about, right?

There are more than 40 countries in Europe, each with its own constitution, electoral system and political landscape. If you don't like nuance, stay with your republican=right, democrat=left and feel safe.

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

#424

Post by 9dev »

mrguyorama wrote: post #396
9dev wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you are conveniently ignoring that lots of things are called flour that aren't necessarily wheat flour, but nobody bats an eye. For that matter, nobody ever suggested replacing wheat flour with insect flour because it has none of the properties required for baking stuff, but rationality was never really relevant on that topic...

What are you actually supposed to use insect flour for anyway? What's the point?

Have a look at the following page (which is in German, but translate should help). It gives some inspiration on using insects for great food!

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

#425

Post by prottog »

phpisthebest wrote: post #421
Gud wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

>>then how do you explain Switzerland Isolated nation of small population that is largely a monoculture with very low rate of poverty... That model does not scale to a large culturally diverse population with widely disparate income levels.

> largely a monoculture

I'm no expert on Switzerland, but can it really be described as a monoculture? There are four language groups, after all. I cannot speak to the existence of an overriding Swiss ethos that people identify with.

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

#426

Post by 9dev »

stametseater wrote: post #393
9dev wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I always forget that billions of animals suffering is somehow okay if it's about reputation or tasty food. My bad.

> billions of animals suffering is somehow okay if it's about reputation or tasty food. Billions of humans concur, including an overwhelming majority of Italians. But since when have progressive reformers cared about democracy? You want to impose your ideology on everybody else, even though you don't have popular support. If you did have popular support, the issue would be settled already in your favor, but you don't…

I somehow missed the point where I tried to overthrow the government?

Au countraire, mom ami! I use my democratic right of arguing for my opinion. You may very well disagree, but that won’t make me or the growing number of like-minded individuals go away.

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

#427

Post by Recursing »

zvmaz wrote: post #338
kubb wrote: 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.

> BBC journos have a specific editorial style, and no doubt it influenced this headline, but this isn't to "protect food heritage". I roughly checked the french press (I don't read italian): there is no account of the "food heritage" argument, but I wouldn't be surprised if the right did put forth the argument.

I read italian, it's a main argument in the Italian press.

https://www-ilsole24ore-com.translate.goog/art/carne-sinteti... Ctrl+F for "food culture"

Plenty of other bad takes though, the worst imho is: "[lab-grown meat] is anything but natural, and is therefore an enemy of the environment"

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

#428

Post by 9dev »

PM_me_your_math wrote: post #411
9dev wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't have to burn everything good and old to the ground to make way for tech bros of HN creating fake meat. No. But maybe we can become a species smart enough to avoid the suffering of other beings just for the joy of eating something that tastes nice.

I'll think about that over my steak & eggs breakfast tomorrow. I thought about it over bacon this morning, but it seems almost too dumb an idea to give more than a passing thought. In the spirit of considering the opposing viewpoint, I will add a healthy amount of sausage gravy to my breakfast on the following day during contemplation, however I make no promises that my conclusions will skew in favor of seasoned inse…

Maybe actually try to think about it once, neutrally. If you spend any time around animals like dogs, cats, horses or even cattle, you’ll notice they exhibit signs of a character: they show affection, have bad mornings, nightmares, favourite foods and care for their offspring with what you’d call love in humans.

This pretty clearly indicates some kind of sentience, meaning a feeling of subjectivity (all of this is solidly backed science-wise, by the way) and emotions. Now those animals might experience reality very differently from us, but that doesn’t even matter. What matters is that they experience some kind of subjective reality.

Is it really too foreign of a thought to try and minimise the number of animals that have to live in agony until they are killed, just for that tasty steak on your table?

I don’t want to control your life. I believe this is a logical conclusion thinking will eventually get anyone to, given the effort - and moral integrity.

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

#429

Post by neuralRiot »

lm28469 wrote: post #68
9dev wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Every industry is doomed when developing countries can do the same for half the price... Which is exactly why Europe delocalised a lot of industries in the first place and is now mostly stuck with services, tourism and tech. And it's exactly what we should stop doing if we want to have anything of value left I know it's hard to believe for a lot of people on HN but not every country wants to become yet another soulle…

If we want to leave an habitable planet for future generations we should focus more in lab meat and less in “traditions” not everything traditional is good. HN is mostly a science oriented public which is accustomed to change its views when enough proof is shown, this is the way should be.

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

#430

Post by TrispusAttucks »

mrguyorama wrote: post #398
TrispusAttucks wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true. There are valid health concerns of insect based "meat" and insect derived flour. Including: higher baseline contamination of harmful bacteria, high levels of arsenic, questionable nutritional value, digestive issues with the hardshells common to the types of insects used for these products.

What does that have to do with whether it should legally be called "Flour" or not? Nobody here is arguing that you should replace your preferred baking and thickening substance with it.

This is a nonsensical response. I never argued anything about legally calling anything flour or not.

OP said: > There is nothing unsafe, unnatural, or otherwise „bad“ about using insects for food

I'm refuting that statement.

There are safety concerns with insect based protein. There are aspects that could be considered "bad".

I'll assume you incorrectly replied to the wrong post because that makes more sense.

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