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World’s first lab-grown meat facility pumps out 5k burgers per day

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Re: World’s first lab-grown meat facility pumps out 5k burgers per day

#121

Post by psychometry »

Clewza313 wrote: post #84
smogcutter wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Will we get to the point where statues of now-famous people are pulled down because they ate animals? Assuming some variant of "cancel culture" exists then, will that act retroactively and currently-lionised people get cancelled because they are carnivores, even though the current culture that they exist in considers it acceptable? Perhaps, if those statues were originally erected in honor of their diet, and to rem…

We're busily pulling down statues of various slave owners, none of which were erected to honor their slave ownership.

Well, no. Many of those (Confederate "heroes") were more principally known for treason, sedition, and waging war in defense of slave ownership rather than their personal predilection toward owning slaves.

Re: World’s first lab-grown meat facility pumps out 5k burgers per day

#122

Post by zazen »

EForEndeavour wrote: post #71
justinmchase wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another question is, if its banned to kill an animal for meat, for various animals, how long until they go extinct? Many are co-dependent on humanity for their survival at the species level... Or at the very least how will it affect their evolution?

I would expect to see pockets of domesticated animals survive in captivity across the world for various non-meat purposes. Even if all captive breeding is banned, I would still expect allowances for governments or organizations to maintain breeding populations as a living reminder of where our civilization came from.

Right. I've seen some zoos that already have a little "farm" section showing off some local heritage livestock breeds. I'd expect that sort of thing to take right off if it started to look like there was real risk of extinctions.

Re: World’s first lab-grown meat facility pumps out 5k burgers per day

#123

Post by kwere »

justinmchase wrote: post #48
devy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The greenest protein factory is the one that we don't have to build - even if it's 99% less land or 80% fewer greenhouse emissions than the traditional farming of cows, sheep and poultry. It's actually this: https://interestingengineering.com/the-explosion-of-insect-p...

Just eat the bugs...

dont forget to be happy...

Re: World’s first lab-grown meat facility pumps out 5k burgers per day

#124

Post by EForEndeavour »

JohnWhigham wrote: post #115
hcknwscommenter wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is of course impossible to verify either way, but I am very sure these statistics of 96% savings in freshwater are total nonsense. Anyone who has ever cultured cells on any scale can attest to the amount of water needed at any scale in terms of washing, rinsing, diluting, sterilizing, feeding, etc. Moreover, we have seen time and time again, the reporting of extremely high numbers for water usage in beef and milk…

Regarding the weasel-worded "less land usage", most of the land that livestock use for grazing is unsuitable for conventional farming anyway. Only ruminants can properly utilize it.

> most of the land that livestock use for grazing is unsuitable for conventional farming anyway

Ah, but are most cows in the world actually grazing on pasture unsuitable for arable farming? I wasn't able to find an estimate of that number, but am willing to bet good money it's pretty low, considering that the number one driver of tropical deforestation is converting land to raise cattle, and the number two driver is soybean production mostly to feed said cattle: https://www.worldwildlife.org/magazine/issues/summer-2018/ar...

Re: World’s first lab-grown meat facility pumps out 5k burgers per day

#126

Post by jalk »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #42

I always wonder about the morality questions. This is like a lab experiment for subjective morality. For the sake of the experiment, let's assume the sci-fi writers are right, and eating animals will eventually be considered immoral. This is an extreme stance at the moment (hello PETA) but let's assume it will eventually be accepted as the only moral stance. How long will it be between the introduction of lab-grown m…

And then the Synthianians will appear - that’s the ones only eating lab grown food, since plants are living beings as well

Re: World’s first lab-grown meat facility pumps out 5k burgers per day

#127

Post by thehappypm »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #101
toxik wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure about that. Lab grown meat has the potential of offering consistent quality at consistent prices, something that's hard to do in fish farms. You're still breeding animals, but far from their natural habitat and far from their natural diet -- with lab grown meat, the equation changes in that sense.

That's the theory, but in practice, lab/factory meat will become (much?) cheaper than 'natural' meat, so even if in terms of flavor and consistency there is no difference (which I doubt), 'organic' meat will be positioned as the luxury product.

It will take a while for lab-grown meat to match the variety available for regular meat, especially on the high-end market. Consider a steak, and how many cuts of steak there are from the same animal: T-bone, filet mignon, ribeye, flank, brisket.. the list goes on and on. Then within that, there are different breeds and styles of beef, like veal or Wagyu. Then on top of that you even have alternative species altogether, like lamb, which also have different styles and cuts. Lab-grown might eventually catch up but there's a lot of ground to cover.

Re: World’s first lab-grown meat facility pumps out 5k burgers per day

#128

Post by buu700 »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #92
esens wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How long will it be between the introduction of lab-grown meat until killing animals for food is banned? Is this a generational thing (so older people still consider eating animals to be acceptable, while younger people do not), or is it a country-wide thing (countries move to ban eating animals one by one, driven by a general shift in moral attitude), or what? How does this change in morality propagate through soc…

True. We tend to cancel slave traders rather than slave owners, because if we were to cancel the slave owners then we'd have to cancel a lot of people. I should clarify. I'm not criticising cancel culture. I'm interested in how the shift in morality happens and how it propagates, and what that means for us now. Is morality retroactive? Am I an immoral person because I eat meat, even though it's common practise now?

I wouldn't be surprised if this nuance were lost in the hypothetical future cancel culture, but I think anyone giving careful consideration to present circumstances would realize the terrible choice we all have to make.

It's easy to judge someone for complicity in the mass murder of countless animals when you have the luxury of having been saved from that choice by more advanced technology.

Re: World’s first lab-grown meat facility pumps out 5k burgers per day

#129

Post by thehappypm »

i_haz_rabies wrote: post #110
shafyy wrote: post #30

Note that they are not yet "pumping" out anything. Their plan is to start selling next year, which means that it probably will take another few years. I think that it makes much more sense to make meat and cheese directly from plant proteins, without going through the trouble of growing meat in bioreactors. Assuming that both will have a similar endproduct (and Impossible shows that it's possible), making from plant…

There are amino acids you can't get from plant protein.

From first principles, how is this possible? Food animals get their amino acids from eating plants.

Re: World’s first lab-grown meat facility pumps out 5k burgers per day

#130

Post by EForEndeavour »

watertom wrote: post #46

This still won't fix the fundamental problem facing the environment, which is over population, it also won't fix the problem that the environment is already locked into a number of positive feedback loops driving climate change.

Although global population is still increasing, the rate of increase has been declining since the 1960s, so that's acceleration in the right direction: https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth
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