Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef • Hacker News Board

Re: Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef

#91

Post by jlgreco » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 3:28 PM UTC

rsl7 wrote: post #66

rorrr2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the opposite, I love meat, but hate the animal suffering. Even if it tastes half as good and costs around the same, I will switch.

As someone who eats an entirely plant-based diet, it sounds like a terrible idea. If it tastes half as good as actual meat, then it will be much worse than even the cheapest, overprocessed soy protein 'burgers' in the frozen food section of the grocery store. Seriously.

Low quality meat can get a hell of a lot of milage, if you know how to use it. Obviously you aren't going to be sitting down in front of a plate of vat-meat and veggies for a candlelit dinner anytime soon, but as one ingredient of many in a cheap but serviceable lasagna? Sure!

Don't get me wrong, soy products are great and I eat a ton of them, but they aren't meat. They are a different food in their own right.

Re: Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef

#92

Post by psuter » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 3:29 PM UTC

mistercow wrote: post #84

mapleoin wrote: post #20

This is awesome, but I'd really hate to be a beta-customer for synthetic beef. It might cause a lot of really bad side-effects while the whole industry matures, figures out what standards it should set and implements them.

I'm pretty sure they will have to test it by feeding it to animals for a long time before they can even think about selling it to humans.

You gotta love the irony in that approach :)

Re: Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef

#93

Post by tomjen3 » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 3:31 PM UTC

wprl wrote: post #77

How about a return to traditional agriculture, which would provide more jobs, cleaner food, and decentralization and localization of food infrastructure? Why the relentless pursuit of industrialization and homogeneity at any cost?

Because some of us have heard about the conditions subsitense farmers (and that is really what you are talking about) lived under. Industrializations biggest contribution to mankinds improvement of life is to get us away from the farm.

The farm you imagine will never and can never be. If we can't used modern farming methods then we have to work with hard back-breaking labor 14+ hours a day from childhood and until we die, likely around 60 years old.

If you want to, keep your job but plant a garden and grow some food in it - then you will get the connection to nature that it appears some people need, without destroying your life.

Re: Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef

#94

Post by freehunter » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 3:31 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #88

freehunter wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? That's the same as labeling food made with GMOs. If there's no provable difference between the two, putting it on the label is just spreading FUD about the product.

I'm pretty sure you could taste the provable difference were you unfortunate enough to buy it.

That all depends on how it tastes when it comes to market.

Re: Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef

#95

Post by tomjen3 » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 3:33 PM UTC

prawn wrote: post #30

scld wrote: post #11

I think the synthetic food market is going to be the biggest emerging market by 2020, coming out of relatively nowhere. I know that there is development around it but with all the talk about energy, privatized space, mobile computing, clean environment, etc., I think synthetic meat will be the dark horse for next big business.

I've wondered about insects too. I'm aware of at least one contemporary restaurant in Australia serving crickets, mealworms, ants, etc. I suspect more will follow. UN seems keen too. Apparently there are prototype factories growing insects to be crushed and used in a powdered form, and/or used as feed for livestock.

I believe the market for that will grow, certainly for life stock but I personally can't see myself eat insects and frankly I don't believe I am alone in that. Besides it is mostly whitemeat and red meat is better.

Re: Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef

#96

Post by tomjen3 » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 3:39 PM UTC

jere wrote: post #40

pdelgallego wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to another BBC article the environmental impact is significantly smaller. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23576143

>An independent study found that lab-grown beef uses 45% less energy than the average global representative figure for farming cattle. It also produces 96% fewer greenhouse gas emissions and requires 99% less land. I'd really like to know how something that is 200,000 times more expensive could currently have less of an environmental impact. I just don't see how you move that much money and don't make an impact.

It is currently far more expensive. Currently. Look at the prize to synthesise DNA, which has crashed like there is no tomorrow. If these prizes follow that then in a decade or two this will be cheaper than real meat.

Re: Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef

#97

Post by api » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 3:47 PM UTC

I can't wait to see the cognitive dissonance from the "natural" people.

On one hand, it could quite possibly replace factory farming and eliminate a huge amount of waste, pollution, and animal cruelty.

On the other hand, it's GMO.

I love seeing True Believers in Movementarianism squirm.

I'm equal opportunity here. I like pointing out the philosophical inconsistencies of dogmatic positivism to your typical Reddit /r/atheist type, or pointing out the failures and corruption of the pharmaceutical industry to the rabidly anti-alt-med people you find in skeptic circles...

Ideology: n.: from the root words "idiot" and "ology," the science and art of becoming an idiot by confusing a model of reality with reality itself.

Re: Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef

#98

Post by ignostic » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 3:48 PM UTC

brianbreslin wrote: post #78

I've been following this topic for a while, and the interesting thing is that synthetic beef still has to be "fed". What its fed is stem cells and cow fetal materials. So its not "vegan" per-se. One of the synthetic meat companies switched to leather products as they found out no one wants to eat bio-engineered lab grown steak (also it didn't taste very good)

You may be right in this case (I couldn't find their methodology online yet), but it's just a MVP. They could easily make it without touching a cow beyond the initial cell sample.

It's possible to feed the cells a synthetic culture medium, or something that doesn't come from the cow. I don't know what was done in this case.

We also don't need to continually re-harvest stem cells from the cow. Depending on when they differentiate, there would no doubt be a bunch of growing pluripotent cells, including enough backup cells to start over if batches are somehow contaminated.

I'm no expert in growing meat, but I'm sure the vision is beef without reliance on cows, and the vision seems scientifically possible.

I know about a dozen vegans, and none would complain about small samples being taken from a cow somewhere - potentially thousands of burgers - down the line. Those vegans who have a problem with ANY sample are an unattainable and insignificant target group.

Re: Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef

#99

Post by philwelch » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 3:49 PM UTC

wprl wrote: post #90

philwelch wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it doesn't scale to feeding 7 billion people for one. Because most people in industrialized countries don't want to be farm labor for two.

Perhaps it's true that you can't feed the whole world without industrialized food, but you could feed the vast majority of people who live in cooperative climates. It's debatable whether the rest couldn't be fed as well. Also, it wouldn't take "most people" to support small-farm agriculture. Many would gladly raise organic produce and livestock, and sell locally if the food economy were not stacked against them. It a…

Creating jobs that people don't want and won't show up for, more like. With unemployment where it is now, you'd think Americans would sign up to pick fruit. But they don't, and we're dependent on migrant labor. More labor also means more expensive food.

In the whole spectrum of human existence, farming sucks. It sucked so much that people remained hunter-gatherers as long as they could to avoid it, and it sucks so much that people leapt at the chance to become industrial wage slaves to avoid it. Turning more people into farmers out of some crazy left wing ideology sounds like a bad idea to me. I think Cambodia tried it once.

Re: Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef

#100

Post by bayesianhorse » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 3:50 PM UTC

deveac wrote: post #65

3825 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not surprised. I'd expect the "jewellery-grade" synthetic diamonds to have the same artificial inflation of price that we see in natural diamonds. I would imagine industrial diamond dust has a different cost.

When researching lab-made, I found them to be 70% - 80% of the cost of nats across the board. My jeweler told me that (at least for the brand he carried) DeBeers bought the company that had the technology and patents for creating them in the lab, and thus the prices will remain close to nats as they will not set them at a point where they erode pricing on nats. Based off my research, if the poster above you got his/h…

Actually it's not a humane alternative. The profits from the lab-made diamonds flow into the holding company owning all those mines.

The prices would be a lot lower if not for the identical owners.

While I normally try not to judge corporations, DeBeers looks, to me at least, like the ultimate prototype for "evil monopolist manipulating the masses".