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New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

interestingengineering.com

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Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#111

Post by hombre_fatal »

asciimov wrote: post #47
myshpa wrote: post #18

Or we could switch to eating plants now. We already get 82% calories and 63% proteins from plants. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets We could stay on our 1% of habitable earth, lower our agricultural footprint from 48% of land to 15%, use quarter of pesticides,…

Even plant farming isn't without issues. Plant farming eventually strips the nutrients from the soil, and then they end up having to use lots of man made chemicals to "fix" the problem. We have to find a way to be more sustainable in our agriculture.

That's fine and all, but you're not accounting for the fact that we'd need much fewer crops if we fed those crops directly to humans.

All of the problems you perceive about crops apply even more to animal agriculture due to trophic level efficiency loss. You're inadvertently making the case against animal ag.

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#112

Post by thebigwinning »

dmbche wrote: post #101
thebigwinning wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every activity and product has a cost and contributes to waste. If I enjoy that food and pay for the cost then whats the problem? Are we suggesting it's virtuous for its own sake to have a lower standard of living?

Yeah - kind of like leaded gas and DDT, or BPA plastics, no one pays the costs when they are externalised to the environnement/population. No one paid for the damages caused by DDT - YOU are paying for it by having a crippled biosphere. If the costs were brought down to you, the meat in a burger would be 20-25$ easy - not thibking about steaks and the like. This would cripple the economy - but it's heavily subsidised

So you agree that if I pay the cost it's not a problem? You just disagree about what that price is?

In other words, a plant based diet is primarily about your budget?

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#113

Post by daneel_w »

pkphilip wrote: post #9

Livestock is grown in parts of the world on stuff which cannot be sold or which grows on its own - example: grass etc. How in the world is lab grown meat going to compete with that in terms of efficiency, CO2 emissions etc?

Most livestock in the west is kept in poor conditions and fed grains. Fully grass-fed meat is not common here. Also, it takes about 4 years for a cow to be fully grown and ready for slaughter. How little CO2 and methane do you imagine a cow produces during that time?!

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#114

Post by x86x87 »

user3939382 wrote: post #91

I want to eat meat from chickens and cows that had good, happy lives, eating the healthiest most natural form of their diet possible. I don't want lab grown meat, the concept is disgusting. As it is our food is too processed and industrial. Maybe we can focus on mixed farming instead https://www.earth.com/news/mixed-farming-could-increase-food...

The question to ask is: can everyone eat meat from animals that had good happy, lives? Does that scale to everyone?

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#115

Post by yashap »

plaidfuji wrote: post #69

This is an expected result if you extrapolate from an early R&D stage process to a global scale, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not worth pursuing more sustainable routes to the mass production of animal muscle. And that’s really what the underlying goal is here - don’t fall for the false dichotomy of “farmed” vs “lab-grown” - factory farms are essentially process development labs. How efficiently can you convert land…

They even talk about this in the article:

> “The environmental impact of near-term ACBM production is likely to be orders of magnitude higher than median beef production if a highly refined growth medium is utilized for ACBM production,” concluded the study.

> The authors propose a solution, suggesting the creation of cell lines that can withstand higher amounts of endotoxins. This would decrease the necessity for energy-intensive purification procedures and ultimately reduce the environmental impact of lab-grown meat.

It’s new, “alpha” stage tech, proving that it’s possible to grow meat in a lab, without yet being optimized for efficiency/scale. Not a reason to be bearish on the tech - it’s a problem that needs to be solved, but also one that seems solvable.

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#116

Post by baremetal »

melling wrote: post #86
myshpa wrote: post #18

Or we could switch to eating plants now. We already get 82% calories and 63% proteins from plants. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets We could stay on our 1% of habitable earth, lower our agricultural footprint from 48% of land to 15%, use quarter of pesticides,…

Yeah, I blogged about that 4 years ago and classified that under “stupid ideas” Have we made any progress on the coal problem? https://h4labs.org/ive-got-another-stupid-idea-to-deal-with-... Nope. Maybe we can limit these silly discussions to one day a year to avoid these “Groundhog Day” discussions. In other news, 1.5C is guaranteed within a decade. To keep it interesting, Let’s come up with a few more miracles that…

China is permitting 2 new coal plants a week[1]. Yet it's cow flatulence that is the problem.

How people get convinced to act against their own self interest I'll never understand.

[1] https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/china-permits-two-...

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#117

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #95
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salads carry a huge profit margin at restaurants. Everyone loves to eat healthy or at least believe that they're doing so. A salad is a great healthy choice (until you slather it with dressing, which is nutritionally awful stuff.) But a house salad is composed of the cheapest ingredients ever: you've got tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, shredded carrots, cucumbers, a little shredded cheese and croutons. But you can charge…

I don't understand talking about salads for 50% of your comment unless you think iceberg lettuce salads are the one alternative to meat or that you think restaurant vegetarian food is just salad rather than any combo of things like beans and grains. Also, https://www.myplate.gov is very reasonable. The problem with food guidelines aren't that they're wrong. It's that nobody adheres to them the same way they don't adh…

USDA guidelines are designed to benefit those who produce processed food.

My source here is 10 years old, so it does not have up-to-date information on whatever MyPlate is pushing. But it says: "[the pyramid] no longer gives any clear recommendations whatsoever. It is fairly open to artistic interpretation."

Previous food pyramids were demonstrably "perverted", such as one where a major food group component consists of sugars and fats. Carbohydrates were the base of that pyramid.

Luise Light, Ed.D., explained that "3-4 daily servings of whole grains were changed to 6-11 at the base" as a concession to the processed wheat and corn industries. The processed white-flour, low-nutrient products which she had placed at the peak, were moved to the base, encouraging a foundation of sugars, fats, and highly-processed sweets. The wording was changed from "eat less" to "avoid too much".

The food industries and their allies in Congress were pissed because they said the USDA shouldn't be telling citizens to "eat less" of anything!

Many health guides are written by pharmaceutical companies, and therefore everyone in hospitals here gets Jell-O. Cool stuff.

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#118

Post by mattnewton »

user3939382 wrote: post #91

I want to eat meat from chickens and cows that had good, happy lives, eating the healthiest most natural form of their diet possible. I don't want lab grown meat, the concept is disgusting. As it is our food is too processed and industrial. Maybe we can focus on mixed farming instead https://www.earth.com/news/mixed-farming-could-increase-food...

I can’t share your disgust and I’m surprised really. Modern farms are horrifyingly efficient, unnatural, and hellish; and that’s the alternative if we want everyone who wants to, to be able to eat meat. Mixed farming at scale seems like just tells you what to do with the lakes of manure the caged animals produce, not the feed or unnatural conditions of those beings

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#119

Post by dmbche »

baremetal wrote: post #102
dmbche wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think you might be onto a slippery slope here? Eating animals is not a cornerstone of modern society, and none of the experience/ benefits of eating animals cannot be reproduced. Just like using lead in the gas, at some point as a society we might decide that the costs overweight the benefits. I think we're waaaaaaay past the discussion - it's self evident that animal exploitation is a blight on the earth and…

I bought farmland and raise my own beef because of this type of thinking. Absolutely, _no one_ is gonna control whether I eat beef or not.

See what I mean? " No one is gonna stop me from spraying DDT" no one is gonna stop me from dumping this chemical waste in this river" "No one will stop me from doing what I want to sentient animals"

Anyway. Enjoy the highest level of depression in any industry and the shit smell all around your house.

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#120

Post by cpeterso »

user3939382 wrote: post #91

I want to eat meat from chickens and cows that had good, happy lives, eating the healthiest most natural form of their diet possible. I don't want lab grown meat, the concept is disgusting. As it is our food is too processed and industrial. Maybe we can focus on mixed farming instead https://www.earth.com/news/mixed-farming-could-increase-food...

I wonder who the market for lab-grown meat would be. I bet that 99% of vegetarians (myself included) and maybe 90% of meat eaters would never eat it. Meat eaters will insist on “real meat” and vegetarians don’t want any meat.
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