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

bbc.co.uk

441–450 of 474 posts

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

#441
post #247
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?

Just HN things: the meat industry that serves 75% of the world population and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future is "doomed".

"this is the way it's been and it will never change" always works out well.

Factory farming is an ecological and ethical dumpster fire. Animals take up a ton of land, feed, and water, and they're pretty terrible at turning feed into meat. The grain that livestock eats can feed more people than the meat from those animals.

Factory farming is expensive and unsustainable at our current population, and it's only going to get worse as time goes on.

Once the industry around lab grown meat starts to scale, the price will fall to the point that it's no longer economically viable to farm animals at scale. The lab grown meat will be cheaper, have the same or better nutritional content, and do it with a fraction of the land, water, energy, and feedstock input.

Given equivalent mass of organic matter as input, lab processes will likely output many times more edible protein. You have the extra benefits of not needing to wait years for an animal to grow up, you don't need to maintain acres of farm or clean up after the animals. You don't have to butcher the animal and deal with the waste products.

On the scale of a generation or three, factory farming is absolutely doomed. An unsustainable process can't compete with a sustainable one that operates at a fraction of the cost while producing many times more output.

Note that we're specifically talking about industrial factory farming. Small farms will likely always exist, and you can buy "real" meat as a luxury item at an appropriately high price.

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

#442
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GMO banning is another example of protectionism masquerading as something else. The demonization of Monsanto is diagnostic of the derangement/dishonesty.

I'm not in favor of banning GMOs, incidentally. The part of the-company-formerly-known-as-Monsanto I take issue with is their predatory practices, like suing farmers for inadvertently cross-pollinating their crops from Monsanto-copyrighted seeds from a neighboring farmer's fields.

Their RoundupReady crops seem to have another poison hidden inside them (literally!)

The Roundup pesticide that those crops are sprayed with is made of Glyphosate, and testers keep finding that pesticide showing up inside corn, wheat, and oat products. Seems like those crops don't just ignore the pesticide, they actually absorb it into their grains https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/glyphosate-contaminat...

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

#444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you don't think that just because someone doesn't agree with your way of helping fellow human beings, they are necessarily uneducated or heartless. As an example, just in the last six months or so, I took considerable time and effort out of my day to help absolute strangers in two different occasions to change their flat tires. Both times I was soaked through in sweat by the time I was done, but I was happ…

Here's the problem: we can't rely on "civil society", because people love to gatekeep who is "deserving" of help and who should be left to suffer. Usually on racial or gender lines. I'm not calling you prejudiced, to be clear, but your example of "we should all rely on each other to help out" is exactly what racists use to justify cutting welfare and saying communities and churches should handle it, for example, with…

I fully admit that this country used to have that problem in the past. Here and now, I don't think nearly as much, though it seems like mass media has been doing its level best to fan the flames of a race war ever since George Floyd.

I'm not sure what part of the country you live in or what your background is, but it is my sincere belief that there are not nearly as many racists in America in this day and age as you imply. I live in a majority black city in a Deep South red state (and I myself am visibly nonwhite), and I observe nothing but pleasant interactions between people of all skin tones. It's honestly a strange difference from back when I lived in a stereotypically "coastal liberal elite" city in a blue state, where every other lawn had a BLM sign but approximately zero black people lived there. Here? Approximately zero BLM signs but people of different races being neighbors and getting along just fine.

Perhaps I'll be proven wrong, but it is my experience that outside of small pockets, there is no racism of the sort you describe, where someone may not extend private kindness to another because they're black or any other race.

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

#445
post #46
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yeah, sure. Food and drink, doomed industries. Absolutely.

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

#446
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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

It's absolutely OK. Nobody really cares about some nebulous "suffering" of animals. We want to eat and eat well.

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

#447
post #129
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?

I'm sorry but Italy produces some of my favourite foods, I find it ridiculous to call this a doomed industry. Italy has basically developed some of the best foods for humanity through hundreds of years of craftsmanship, from parmesan to mozarella to pasta, or crudo ham. If anything this should be protected just from a heritage perspective, like you protect an ancient castle or temple. This might mean that food is mor…

Absolutely agree. Italian cuisine is superb. They should protect it.

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

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the problem: we can't rely on "civil society", because people love to gatekeep who is "deserving" of help and who should be left to suffer. Usually on racial or gender lines. I'm not calling you prejudiced, to be clear, but your example of "we should all rely on each other to help out" is exactly what racists use to justify cutting welfare and saying communities and churches should handle it, for example, with…

I fully admit that this country used to have that problem in the past. Here and now, I don't think nearly as much, though it seems like mass media has been doing its level best to fan the flames of a race war ever since George Floyd. I'm not sure what part of the country you live in or what your background is, but it is my sincere belief that there are not nearly as many racists in America in this day and age as you…

Your experience is in urban areas that are predominantly liberal. You realize that in rural areas people are discriminated against regularly or even killed for being a different color?

In case you need a refresher of an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Ahmaud_Arbery

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

#449
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, just as ridiculous as anyone who would have been against the 80s push to take fat out of dairy and pour in the lab sugar! > Why not stuff our stomachs with even more lab stuff? Why not, in any case reducing actual meat consumptions is an atrocious regulatory suggestion, the robofairrmingoverlords can do whatever with the urban sheep in america. Your argument is nothing more than the Naturalistic Fallacy. In a…

I realize my tone was a bit offensive, but yes I am a naturalist by any meaning of that word. In fact if you knew me you'd call me a complete utter quack, so misaligned are my views with mainstream tech worldviews. What I know about GMOs is that the GMO variety of bananas here (the natural base called Prata, the GMO I don't remember) is tasteless and has awful texture compared to its base species, which is delicious…

I think I’m more on guard these days on HN which led me to be a bit too hasty in my judgement, I am sorry.
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