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Beyond Meat S-1

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181–190 of 439 posts

Re: Beyond Meat S-1

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That theoretical distinction makes sense to me, but I don't see how it would be possible to support one kind of animal agriculture and not the other with purchasing habits. When most consumers don't distinguish provenance, demand for animal products is fungible.

What I did: stop purchasing meat from the supermarket. Stop eating meat at restaurants. Find a local farmer and source a whole animal to split with your friends. Visit the farm, meet the farmer. A whole beef is a few thousand dollars, and splits nicely into 8ths. We spent, I believe, ~$6.50/lb for organic, grass fed beef. It's more time and cost up front, but now we have a freezer full of meat to draw from when we ne…

Apropos of just shootin' the breeze, could you have also met the animal? I wonder if that would make a further difference. I eat meat, but I put my hand up and say that if I ordered a steak in a restaurant and they brought out the cow and gave me a rock, and I had to beat the cow to death with the rock myself, I think I'd change my order.

I'm not trying to make any points here; just freewheeling in conversation with what I know about myself.

Re: Beyond Meat S-1

#182
post #93

Not a vegetarian here, but I'm really excited about companies and products in this space. There's a lot of very poor quality meat out there that can easily be substituted by these products for cost, nutrition and environmental reasons. The way I describe the Impossible Burger to friends that haven't tried it is "If I invited you to a BBQ with decent store-brand frozen patties and randomly inserted Impossible patties,…

"Ethical cannibalism." Some med student is going to eat a surplus lab-grown kidney, and there you'll have it.

This fits the [Weirdtopia](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cWjK3SbRcLkb3gN69/building-w...) model too much to not have merit.

Re: Beyond Meat S-1

#183
post #162
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Approximately 0 English speakers use the long scale. Exactly 0 do in the US.

You're completely forgetting about non-native English speakers who use the long scale in their native language. They make mistakes or might even not be aware of the difference.

I wouldn't advocate using these abbreviations in a technical document that has safety implications, but in an S-1 it's fine. If you make a mistaken trade because you can't keep your scales straight I don't really have a lot of sympathy. If they don't know the difference in the first place they're not reading this document.

Re: Beyond Meat S-1

#184
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>His point about wild animals is very accurate, but that's not considering that animals bred in captivity ("free"-range or otherwise) would not have been if not for meat demand. It's debatable whether non-existence is preferable to being raised and then killed, but the dichotomy isn't between wild animals vs. free-range animals The idea is is as follows. Might be worth just reading the article: "If ethical vegetarian…

This article starts with a false premise: "Vegans are against the suffering of animals." But really the point, at least for myself as a vegan is that "Vegans are against the suffering of animals at the hands of humans." Often vegans are also environmentalists in that human effort has put additional major stressors on wildlife - deforestation, oil spills, human-accellerated climate change, plastic pollution, etc. Fact…

>Wildlife suffering happens with or without humans, but humans active choose to breed and kill animals when we don't necessarily need to. We could just not do that.

You don't support humane slaughter or buying meat from free-range cows, because you think not being brought into existence is better than a happy life with an abrupt ending? What if supporting humane slaughter led to less animals being factory farmed, which is agreeably relatively better conditions for the farmed animal population as a whole? That would then be lessening the suffering of animals in the hands of humans.

>Often vegans are also environmentalists in that human effort has put additional major stressors on wildlife - deforestation, oil spills, human-accellerated climate change, plastic pollution, etc. Factory farming by humans happens in addition to wildlife suffering.

That's great for keeping a clear conscience. But realistically is it believable that this will slow down the impending climate change?

It seems to me that a vegan's idea of helping animals/climate is to disconnect from the situation entirely. That might allow for avoidance of responsibility and a moral high-horse, but economically, it isn't realistically helping to lay the groundwork for lessened suffering and a cleaner environment.

Re: Beyond Meat S-1

#185
post #93

Not a vegetarian here, but I'm really excited about companies and products in this space. There's a lot of very poor quality meat out there that can easily be substituted by these products for cost, nutrition and environmental reasons. The way I describe the Impossible Burger to friends that haven't tried it is "If I invited you to a BBQ with decent store-brand frozen patties and randomly inserted Impossible patties,…

"Ethical cannibalism." Some med student is going to eat a surplus lab-grown kidney, and there you'll have it.

I expect that at some point, it will be possible to grow meat from any given set of human DNA. At this point, I see two things:

1) Lines of celebrity meat. One might be able to look forwards to, for example, an Angelina Jolie steak.

2) Middle class (well, by then the middle classes won't exist - let's just say "rich people") dinner parties in which the hostess serves her guests herself. On a plate.

Is it cannibalism if it was never part of a whole human, but was instead grown in a vat?

Re: Beyond Meat S-1

#186
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think lacking life has ever been an argument vegetarians use. Once consciousness emerges, there is an innate desire to remain alive and to be free from suffering. Even if we could give animals a wonderful life in our current capitalist system, and then kill them without their awareness, we'd still need to justify (from a philosophical standpoint) why it would be immoral to do the same with a human animal.

> I don't think lacking life has ever been an argument vegetarians use. That would make sense, since GP said: > If lacking life is what's cruel, then vegetarianism doesn't really solve that problem. So if vegetarians used the argument that lacking life is cruel, then vegetarianism would be cruel, right? It makes perfect sense (given GP's point) that they don't use that argument. You're the third replyer that writes a…

The GP implied that vegetarians use the logic "ending life is cruel" as a basis for their stance.

Re: Beyond Meat S-1

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I did: stop purchasing meat from the supermarket. Stop eating meat at restaurants. Find a local farmer and source a whole animal to split with your friends. Visit the farm, meet the farmer. A whole beef is a few thousand dollars, and splits nicely into 8ths. We spent, I believe, ~$6.50/lb for organic, grass fed beef. It's more time and cost up front, but now we have a freezer full of meat to draw from when we ne…

Apropos of just shootin' the breeze, could you have also met the animal? I wonder if that would make a further difference. I eat meat, but I put my hand up and say that if I ordered a steak in a restaurant and they brought out the cow and gave me a rock, and I had to beat the cow to death with the rock myself, I think I'd change my order. I'm not trying to make any points here; just freewheeling in conversation with…

Totally. Not every farmer will let you, but I definitely had the opportunity. (My farmer gave me the choice between three animals.)

I think the 'bashing it with a rock' is sort of the thing I'm trying to avoid. My farmer brings a USDA butcher to his site to kill the animal (the kills are done away from the pasture space). The offal is removed there. If you want the tongue, heart, liver, etc. you show up on slaughter day and cart them away.

The carcass was then taken to a local butcher shop, where it was processed into steaks, ground beef, roasts, etc. at my direction -- how thick did you want steaks, how big did you want roasts, etc.

Being involved in this way is surprisingly intimate -- seeing the animal, being on the farm the day of it's slaughter (though I did not witness the slaughter), and working with the butcher to define how it will be broken down taught me so much more about how my food is prepared than anything you'd get from the grocery store.

Re: Beyond Meat S-1

#188
post #174
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well no it isn't.. > MM would be 2 thousands - as in the representation of the year 2019 as MMXIX (2x1000 + 10 + (10-1)) > Anyway, MM is clearly man-month or 2 digit month of the year when you stringify a date... we don't need more. Tell that to the entire practice of accountancy.

Sorry - I wasn't saying accountants "didn't do it" - just that "they shouldn't" My pedantic (and massively down-voted post I now notice) was just an expression of my annoyance at mixing syntax. I'd also have accepted "M" as "a million" and therefore MM being 1,000,000,000,000... but they didn't do that either..

Why shouldn't they? What makes one standard more viable than the next?

Re: Beyond Meat S-1

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There aren't any "synthetic meat" products. These are plant proteins; and my understanding of the related Impossible burger co. uses a GMO to produce an animal protein within a plant.

No, heme is naturally found in all plants but in tiny quantities, they put the gene for heme into yeast to mass produce it. Read more here: https://impossiblefoods.com/heme/

In other words, it's not gmo, but syn-bio.

(Of course, pretty much everything in the US without an organic label is an unholy mishmash of gmos, pesticides approved by captive regulators, and untold gallons of antibiotics. So probably doesn't make much of a difference anyways...)

Re: Beyond Meat S-1

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you. I haven't eaten red meat or birds for going on 25 years now and though I do enjoy a good salmon burger, I honestly prefer a beyond burger when I can find one (trying to cut down on the fish, for health and over-fishing reasons).

I wouldn't worry about over fishing Salmon, the vast majority are farmed now. You will know when you pay for wild Salmon. Same is true for a number of other staples: Tilapia, Shrimp, Catfish, etc. That said, similar to land based CAFO's you don't really want to know what they're fed (o;

Most farmed salmon eat a diet heavy in fish meal, derived from wild caught but "undesirable" fish. Eating farmed salmon may not harm wild salmon populations directly, but they still have an impact on wild fish stock. Eventually, there could very well be food competition between wild salmon and farmed if fisheries continue to seek fish meal from wild sources to feed an increasing population of farmed fish.
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