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

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

#131

Post by thebigwinning »

abeppu wrote: post #82
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?

But you don't pay for the cost. Our continual struggle with environmental issues are substantially that (a) very meaningful externalities mean that costs are foisted onto others, either the public at large or specific unlucky communities and (b) industrial lobbyists get public policy to actively subsidize their behavior, so again, everyone pays to support destructive behavior. In the case of meat production, apart fr…

It sounds like your issue is with our resources allocation system and meat is just a proxy for it that you don't care for.

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

#132

Post by baremetal »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #35
TrispusAttucks wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corn would like to have a talk with your meat subsidizes.

Corn subsidies provide animal ag with cheap feed. Cut the corn subsidies and prices for meat will better reflect the cost of producing it.

Corn subsidies also go to producing ethanol. Which is arguable a gigantic waste when compared to using it for animal feed. Roughly 40% of corn is used to produce ethanol[1]

[1]https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-c...

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

#133

Post by 93po »

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...

Cows and chickens are butchered only a couple years into a life that could extend a decade or longer. I wouldn’t call this a good life. Additionally, unless you’re buying from a local rancher who puts a ton of time and money and space into his animals, you’re universally buying meat from an animal that spent its entire life in crappy conditions.

I find the idea of an animal corpse that’s slowly decaying in my fridge to be disgusting. I’m totally fine with the idea of lab grown proteins and fats in my fridge, though I’d still probably only eat it in small amounts bc it feels too similar to the corpses that disgust me.

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

#134

Post by refulgentis »

x86x87 wrote: post #104
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…

Not disagreeing with you, but ultimately you have to ask the question: does this make sense? And look at the "why". What are you trying to optimize?

Cost

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

#135

Post by hombre_fatal »

baremetal wrote: post #123
hombre_fatal wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Chickens turn kitchen waste and other garbage into nutrient dense eggs. I raise chickens and feed them my kitchen and yard waste. They also eat bugs. Two chicken eggs can power me all day. Reason about that "trophic energy loss [gain]".

I'm not sure what your "not muh eggs!" story has anything to do with a discussion about animal ag industry and scaling meat production to global levels.

For example, how much do your backyard chickens contribute to global egg consumption, and what would the egg market look like if all eggs came from chickens living like yours? That's the kind of topic going on here.

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

#136

Post by kevincox »

coryfklein wrote: post #127
x86x87 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not disagreeing with you, but ultimately you have to ask the question: does this make sense? And look at the "why". What are you trying to optimize?

Of course it makes sense. People like to eat meat. Meat is expensive to produce, particularly including externalities like CO2, animal suffering, etc. Making meat less expensive to produce across some or all of those dimensions seems like a no brainer.

Exactly. And yes, starting with new technologies, but if we try to optimize our existing process for obtaining meat we will likely not get far before hitting a local maximum. So it makes sense to try to make dramatic leaps to other areas of the solution space to see if we can fine a new maximum. It will take a lot of resources until the new technologies are better (by various metrics) than the old ones, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth trying. With the scale of meat consumption the potential payoff for better methods is huge.

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

#137

Post by 93po »

aplummer wrote: post #31

I’m surprised at the skepticism here on HN. Was everyone this skeptical / glib when the (insert technology) was useless when it was invented? Anyone seen the efficiency of a solar panel in 1970? Factory farming is a real problem to solve.

The people who comment on stuff like this are people with something to say. So yeah there’s being to be a tint of negativity.

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

#138

Post by awb »

thebigwinning wrote: post #112
dmbche wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

Not OC, but I don’t think that’s quite right.

When you create any good, like converting a tree into a piece of paper, you convert a natural state into a productive state. No amount of money can reverse this transformation. You can only attempt to offset the conversion. In this example people plant new trees to offset, but the forest remains altered. Then we argue about to what degree it’s been altered and if that’s better or worse.

So I think the debate is more like: Can we offset our consumption of A by doing B? Because B never equals A, some people will naturally always say no and advocate against consuming A in the first place. Others will debate the price/effectiveness of B.

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

#139

Post by dmbche »

thebigwinning wrote: post #112
dmbche wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Oh no - not my point at all.

You can't pay the price. If the subsidies are stopped, the farmers have to sell their animals to slaughterhouses order of magnitude more, the slaughterhouses have to do the same with distributors, and those guys do the same to restaurants/grocery stores.

No restaurant/grocery store would buy meat at that price (edit: restaurants and grocery stores make 1-4% profits on their sales) this is a PERISHABLE good. It's way too much risk - and what consumer would buy that?

Not forgetting that everything else remains the same price - McDonalds makes money off of dollar meals - that's not gonna work if a quarter pounder is 20$+.

So no - it's not about budget. This is to explain that the "status quo" is heavily supported and is more akin to a sinking ship that is being propped up by subsidies.

A plant based diet is justified many ways by many individuals. To me, sentient animals are not food and have the right to freedom, so that's why I eat plants. Some are motivated by the environnement, some budget, some health benefits, some other reasons.

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

#140

Post by callalex »

x86x87 wrote: post #104
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…

Not disagreeing with you, but ultimately you have to ask the question: does this make sense? And look at the "why". What are you trying to optimize?

You may not care about the widespread cruelty to animals in meat production, but many people do.
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