Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lab-Grown Meat Is Safe to Eat, FDA Says

smithsonianmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 493 posts

Re: Lab-Grown Meat Is Safe to Eat, FDA Says

#141

Post by ncallaway »

runarberg wrote: post #112
superkuh wrote: post #33

It will be animal cells differentiated into muscle tissues on collagen scaffolds initially. The technology comes from attempts to grow functional organs (ie, liver) that are biocompatible in the body serum proper. If there aren't health effects from transplantation within the animal type you can probably eat the animal tissues just fine. It's the same thing. It's meat. It's just without the animal suffering. And hope…

> It's meat. It's just without the animal suffering Are you sure about the no suffering part. Currently this meat is grown using a growth medium most often extracted from a pregnant mare using a technique called bloodletting which is often extremely painful for the animal. EDIT: I think I’m actually wrong about the pregnant mare. Animal suffering through bloodletting from pregnant mares was a recent scandal where I’m…

> from a pregnant mare

I’m quite skeptical about this. How do they obtain and culture chicken cells from a horse?

Re: Lab-Grown Meat Is Safe to Eat, FDA Says

#142

Post by zenburnmyface »

runarberg wrote: post #112
superkuh wrote: post #33

It will be animal cells differentiated into muscle tissues on collagen scaffolds initially. The technology comes from attempts to grow functional organs (ie, liver) that are biocompatible in the body serum proper. If there aren't health effects from transplantation within the animal type you can probably eat the animal tissues just fine. It's the same thing. It's meat. It's just without the animal suffering. And hope…

> It's meat. It's just without the animal suffering Are you sure about the no suffering part. Currently this meat is grown using a growth medium most often extracted from a pregnant mare using a technique called bloodletting which is often extremely painful for the animal. EDIT: I think I’m actually wrong about the pregnant mare. Animal suffering through bloodletting from pregnant mares was a recent scandal where I’m…

It’s call FBS, and it can be grown in a lab, too (if it’s even required…). See companies like Future Fields.

Re: Lab-Grown Meat Is Safe to Eat, FDA Says

#143

Post by kikokikokiko »

d23 wrote: post #117
kikokikokiko wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And hopefully it'll eventually be cheaper than growing animals too." Just as simply planting a tree and letting the sun provide the energy for it's growth will always beat those "synthetic trees" people like to hype from time to time, I can expect to never see a synthetic process that is more cost effective to create "meat" than simply letting nature do it's thing. Down here in Brazil you basically give the animals…

> Just as simply planting a tree and letting the sun provide the energy for it's growth will always beat those "synthetic trees" people like to hype from time to time, I can expect to never see a synthetic process that is more cost effective to create "meat" than simply letting nature do it's thing. Evidence? Do you have any background in the field? It's easy as a layperson to imagine that not having to support the l…

For evidence, my extended family down here raises cattle to this day. It's hard to beat doing hardly anything other than let the beasts eat grass for a couple of years. Try to beat that for a cost of goods.

Re: Lab-Grown Meat Is Safe to Eat, FDA Says

#144

Post by mmiyer »

z33k wrote: post #79
mmiyer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

97%[0] of cows are finished on feedlots, i.e. get a substantial amount of calories from corn and other feed. Other animals like pigs are exclusively fed feed. Animal factory farming already consumes a terrifying amount of resources, using up a lot of the plant agriculture that we do. [0] https://littlecreekmontana.shop/blogs/ranch-blog/food-for-th...

86%[0] of livestock feed is inedible by humans. They consume forage, food-waste and crop residues that could otherwise become an environmental burden. 13% of animal feed consists of potentially edible low-quality grains, which make up a third of global cereal (not total crop) production. All US beef cattle spend the majority of their life on pasture and upcycle protein even when grain-finished (0.6 to 1). [0] http://…

A lot of inedible feed is going to be stuff like alfalfa, which is specifically grown as feed and whose farming has massive negative effects like starving the Colorado river of water [0].

[0]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado...

Re: Lab-Grown Meat Is Safe to Eat, FDA Says

#146

Post by lost_tourist »

kube-system wrote: post #116
aendruk wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s correct. The challenge is that ensuring purity of ingredients during production is tricky at scale. A small mistake could ruin a large batch of food, lowering total yields and raising costs. Ideally the production process would include something analogous to the immune system to make it more robust. For certain contaminants simple outcompetition by probiotics might suffice.

The alternative, natural meat, is even trickier to keep sterile at scale. This is why it is advised to cook meat fully. The presence of bacteria on natural animal meat is common.

It's more than "common" it's almost 100% guaranteed.

Re: Lab-Grown Meat Is Safe to Eat, FDA Says

#147

Post by LtWorf »

prometheus76 wrote: post #67
ncallaway wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(This isn’t a sarcastic or Socratic question, just genuine curiosity) Is there some aspect of the immune system that remains active and providing protection to an animal, or parts of an animal after it’s slaughtered?

Not being exposed to air, for one. That's why it's safe to eat a rare steak (where the surfaces exposed to air are cooked to kill bacteria) and why it's not safe to eat rare hamburger (where all the meat has been exposed to air through grinding the meat).

> That's why it's safe to eat a rare steak

The USA department of agriculture begs to differ. https://ask.usda.gov/s/article/Is-a-rare-steak-safe-to-eat

Personally I never place much trust in random comments on the internet.

Re: Lab-Grown Meat Is Safe to Eat, FDA Says

#148

Post by arsome »

gnicholas wrote: post #99

Are the companies getting costs under control? I remember reading an article last year [1] about how the cost curve isn't looking favorable. 1: https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-sca...

Getting costs down often requires preparing for mass production, prior to this, mass production was not viable, this is the necessary next step.

Re: Lab-Grown Meat Is Safe to Eat, FDA Says

#149

Post by Kuinox »

rglover wrote: post #73

Hard pass. Let's see some long-term (10 years) test data first (e.g., how does it effect things like muscle growth/retention, fat growth/loss, cell function, cancer promotion/prevention etc). I'd put this stuff on the same level as any mass-produced junk (HFCS, seed oils, etc) that has already been proven to be harmful to humans long-term as a cautious default.

But keep cooking your steak in a pan filled of PTFE

Re: Lab-Grown Meat Is Safe to Eat, FDA Says

#150

Post by Tagbert »

prometheus76 wrote: post #54
pugworthy wrote: post #42

You might argue that people will just eat whatever because they don't care what's in it, but there are definitely boundaries for that in some societies. Case in point, bugs are safe to eat, but people in some cultures just can't even imagine doing so because... bugs! McDonald's Chitin McBuggits will never be a thing.

Bugs carry parasites. Lots and lots of parasites. And parasite eggs. Cultures that eat insects also have high rates of parasitic infections.

Do you have a source for statements about getting parasites from eating cooked insects?

Cows and pigs are more closely related to humans than insects are and their parasites are more likely to be able to cross the species barrier than an insect parasite. That is why we generally cook meat to kill parasites.

Post reply on HN