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

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

#151

Post by shafyy » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 3:48 PM UTC

thehappypm wrote: post #129

i_haz_rabies wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of course there are amino acids that don't exist in plants, but they are not essential (i.e. can be synthesized in the human body and don't need to be taken from external sources).

From first principles, it's possible because e.g. cows could make amino acids that are not found in plants, but those are not essential (I don't know if cows make any non essential amino acids that are not found in plants, this is just an example)

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

#152

Post by MontyCarloHall » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 3:48 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #96

WJW wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems fairly straightforward to predict, since this has happened dozens of times before as technology marched on: with no more business for them, they'll go bankrupt and the workers will eventually be assimilated into other professions. Maybe there will be a small remaining industry tending to hobbyists, similar to how horse shoeing and buggy whip manufacturing are very much a niche professions these days.

Have we had one of these "industry extinctions" in the last quarter century, particularly one at the scale of the meat industry? Our economy and workplaces are significantly different from what they were when horses were replaced by cars.

The fraction of the population employed in agriculture has continued to decline precipitously over the last few decades as automation technology improves, continuing the trend that began with the industrial revolution.

https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in-agriculture

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

#153

Post by Retric » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 3:49 PM UTC

airhead969 wrote: post #15

Retric wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overproduction is based on assumptions around how variable farm output is. Climate change increases variability.

Climate change isn't the weather. Climate is the average. We are in a global warming emergency and no one is doing enough about it.

Climate isn’t the average weather it’s the expected weather. X hurricanes every Y years for example doesn’t change the average significantly, but their a major climate concern in areas at risk from them.

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

#154

Post by nmz » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 3:50 PM UTC

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #140

paulirwin wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is spot on. (I'm a long time vegetarian, so I've thought a lot about this.) Hunting, fishing, and even specialty slaughterhouses will likely continue. The economics will cause mass meat production to go out of business, though. Beef first, probably. Engineering can evolve much faster than cows and chickens and fish can. No politician, at least in the U.S. mainstream, is going to commit political self-destruction…

The ironic counter-ads will be viscious: "Be a real man! Risk getting sick from one of our real burgers! Each one is made from the hormone-pumped flesh of a real baby cow that never knew its real mom!"

So basically White Castle?

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

#155

Post by vidarh » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 3:50 PM UTC

thehappypm wrote: post #127

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 altogeth…

Lab-grown meat can exceed that thought.

You can make cuts that are bigger than they currently can be. You can adjust composition, fat content, potentially embed flavourings directly into the meat, or combine types of meat, or create types of meat that doesn't even exist today.

So I'm sure it will take time, but there's also a fairly good chance what will win people over will be that it'll be possible to provide products that just doesn't exist from "natural" sources.

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

#156

Post by eloff » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 3:50 PM UTC

iammisc wrote: post #136

wcoenen wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect reality will be a lot more boring. Animals are a low efficiency method of converting plant material into meat, both in terms of calories and protein mass input/output. So with scale, eventually lab-grown meat should become much cheaper than traditional meat. At the same time, it will be higher quality. Sterile production will eliminate E. Coli, salmonella, antibiotics... Input nutrients will be tightly cont…

Animals are extremely efficient at converting inedible food to edible nutrition. For example, goats eat almost any plant, including many natives. Unless you think humans are going to be able to eat chaparral. The fact is that modern edible agriculture is heavily dependent on fossil fuel and mined fertilizers. Until we solve that problem, it's better to stop growing too many plants, let native vegetation regrow and se…

This is a laudable goal, but it can't scale to the level we require today, nevermind when we have 10 billion people later in the century.

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

#157

Post by rglover » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 3:51 PM UTC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eCeX0oN4uw

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

#158

Post by Jeff_Brown » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 3:52 PM UTC

mildavw wrote: post #107

wcoenen wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect reality will be a lot more boring. Animals are a low efficiency method of converting plant material into meat, both in terms of calories and protein mass input/output. So with scale, eventually lab-grown meat should become much cheaper than traditional meat. At the same time, it will be higher quality. Sterile production will eliminate E. Coli, salmonella, antibiotics... Input nutrients will be tightly cont…

Don’t forget that the flavors and textures will also be optimized along the way. It will taste better to more people than animal meat.

And nutritional profiles! I read last year that beef engineered to have more B-vitamins starts to taste like fish.

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

#159

Post by vidarh » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 3:54 PM UTC

baud147258 wrote: post #111

tomp wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with a warped sense of ickiness or masculinity, or we can choose protein security indefinitely into the future I think you're confusing a few things. I'm very pro lab-grown meat, and I don't see why it would be either "icky" (if anything, it could be much more "pure", able to grow in controlled conditions without any pesticides, hormones or antibiotics) nor less "masculine" (a steak is a steak is a steak). I'm very…

> a steak is a steak is a steak would lab-grown steak be remotely similar to a good cut of steak? I'd guess for sausage (and other processes meat) lab-grown won't be different, but I don't think lab-grown will be able to reach real-steak level anytime soon

It's more complex, but it's a matter of how soon, not if. And how soon, not if, lab-grown steak will be better than real ones, because you'll be able to tinker with the composition in ways you simply can't currently.

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

#160

Post by iammisc » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 3:54 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #156

iammisc wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Animals are extremely efficient at converting inedible food to edible nutrition. For example, goats eat almost any plant, including many natives. Unless you think humans are going to be able to eat chaparral. The fact is that modern edible agriculture is heavily dependent on fossil fuel and mined fertilizers. Until we solve that problem, it's better to stop growing too many plants, let native vegetation regrow and se…

This is a laudable goal, but it can't scale to the level we require today, nevermind when we have 10 billion people later in the century.

Um okay... Wel then we better get ethically okay with crowded pigs fed our food scraps.

Humans eat like 5% of the actual plant matter we harvest. The rest is composted which just releases more greenhouse gases. If you feed it to a pig, then you at least get that car on released after feeding a human.

The 'plant based' push is once again feelings without science.