New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2 • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by TrispusAttucks » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 4:48 PM UTC

mtalantikite wrote: post #124

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,…

Anytime you mention to people that maybe we shouldn't eat as many animals as we do you're going to get down-voted or politely scolded or yelled at. It's like any addiction, people won't admit there's a problem until they have some sort of break through of clarity.

It's not an addiction it's a matter of human biology. We are meat eaters. Shall we regulate the CO2 we exhale?

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

#172

Post by TrispusAttucks » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 4:51 PM UTC

dmbche wrote: post #119

baremetal wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#173

Post by jfengel » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 4:56 PM UTC

slowmovintarget wrote: post #168

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?

Opinion: They are trying to optimize profit and control. Don't mess with food. We know what works, we've almost always made it worse: less nutritious (rolled oats instead of steel cut), less tasty (tomatoes, chicken), more vulnerable to die-out (bananas), or worse. Now you get Bill Gates and Monsanto advocating GMO / lab-grown foods for the masses. The market plan for the long-term on this is terrifying though. Just.…

We've already optimized meat production in ways which are worse. It is very bad for the environment and extremely cruel to the animals. Part of the optimization is removing the processes far from consumers so that they're unaware of the downsides.

The solution is to eat more real food, which includes a higher proportion of vegetables and a much lower proportion of meat. But a lot of people are resistant to that, for a variety of reasons. If lab-grown meat can at least reduce the animal cruelty, it's an optimization I'd prefer.

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

#174

Post by abeppu » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 4:56 PM UTC

thebigwinning wrote: post #131

abeppu wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

... did you just call someone a communist for daring to disagree with you?

My problem is unnecessarily destructive practices which are causing giant and totally avoidable crises.

If we were running the same meat production system in a centrally planned economy under some "the proletariat deserves meat" party plan with the same concentrated waste from feedlots, reckless use of antibiotics, clearing of the Amazon for ranch land, feeding a large portion of crops like corn and soy to animals that we then slaughter, the resource allocation system would be different but the destruction would be the same, and my objections would be unchanged.

But the "I paid for it and I enjoy it so what's wrong" response seems in bad faith and will not die. Suppose I enjoy the aesthetic experience of seeing oil on ocean waves; it catches the light in such a unique way. On weekends, I buy a barrel of crude, head out in a boat and dump my barrel and just spend the day watching the sun glisten on struggling seabirds. I think most people would not accept the "I paid for the oil; what's the problem" response, because _obviously_ the problem is I'm wreaking unnecessary destruction, and while I owned the oil, I don't own the ocean, the sea-life etc. You might like meat, and you might exchange money for meat, but that doesn't mean you're paying for the problems that meat production is creating.

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

#175

Post by saiya-jin » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 4:59 PM UTC

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 every meat producing shop aims for the lowest operating costs, ie in Western Europe meat from free range animals are extremely popular, we don't buy any meat (+ eggs) that isn't at least that (for kids it would be great to buy all time bio meat but that's not always available).

Its not BS and lies either, where we live farm animals roam the grass fields or mountain pastures constantly, to the point where it may be tricky to hike some parts of mountains.

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

#176

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 5:03 PM UTC

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #117

hombre_fatal wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Did the typical American work and lifestyle change? I could definitely see eating more carbs back when most people worked manual labor.

> a major food group component consists of sugars and fats.

How many servings of sugar and fat does it say?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/USDA_Foo...

This one doesn't even give servings, it says to use sparingly.

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

#177

Post by vegetablepotpie » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 5:09 PM UTC

I’m trying to unpack the energy use of lab grown meat, it seems that it comes from the following sources

1. filtering the growth medium for toxins (subject of this paper)

2. Powering the bio reactors (heating them and stirring)

3. Transportation of the materials

#3 Is going to be present regardless of whether you’re doing lab growth or traditional animal ag. From what I can tell, #1 will produce 25 times the emissions of traditional animal ag. What I don’t know is does #1 strictly require hydrocarbons as a material input, or does it require energy that could be provided by renewables.

In the later case, you might be able to make lab grown meat more sustainable than traditional animal ag, but to make it economically viable vs traditional animal ag, you would need a sufficiently high price on carbon/methane.

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

#178

Post by red-iron-pine » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 5:25 PM UTC

probablypower wrote: post #166

eimrine wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you may not care about possible future when I can not grow some chicken legally for my own consuming, but I appreciate eating animals as one of the most natural and beautiful things in my life.

How is the legality of residential chicken breeding relevant to this discussion on the environmental impact of lab-grown meat?

It's not, but the bots are out in force

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

#179

Post by red-iron-pine » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 5:26 PM UTC

plaidfuji wrote: post #147

ImHereToVote wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the fundamental problem is keeping the huge bio tanks hermetically clean. The cleaning process is very energy intensive as is the medium growing process. One way to cut cost would be to introduce small cells that seek out and destroy pathogens. We could design a bio tank organ that creates these cells by eating some of the growth medium. Also instead of using a medicine grade medium we could use organic sacks…

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted but your satirical take is kind of exactly what I’m talking about. We might end up reverse engineering an immune system to make it work at scale, because contamination resistance actually is one of, if not the primary problem at large scale.

"nanomachines, son"

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

#180

Post by dmbche » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 5:28 PM UTC

TrispusAttucks wrote: post #172

dmbche wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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Do you have experience raising animals? I do.

The sheer amount of excrement that you have to handle is absurd, and it's a well documented problem that the nitrogen leaks into aquifers and nearby water, causing massive problems (including the dead zone in the gulf of mexico). This is without commenting on how removing trees in the pasture reduces absorbtion of the nutrients on location and helps with the leaking into water.

What is done to animals in farms is also far from what most people would consider acceptable.

You might be out of touch with what this industry actually comprises.

Esit: And it's impossible to enforce anything on farmers regarding this, there are barely inspections every couple years of the state of the building, enforcing waste management and animal welfare is a pipe dream.