321–330 of 493 posts
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Only if it's cheaper. They said the same thing about plant based meat - and it hasn't because it's more expensive.
Plant based meats are 1) Still not real meat, hence is only considered by a limited target consumer 2) Is still relatively new to the mass-market. Hence still isn't at it's lowest price point.
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
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> 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.
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When this technology finally gets there, and I see no reason to think it won't eventually, it will change the world so dramatically. The amount of land and water we won't need to raise animals or food for animals it's staggering. The amount of meat the world consumes will double by the end of the century (will it? I made that up). As the world gets richer, people eat more meat. Combine that with a rising population a…
Only if it's cheaper. They said the same thing about plant based meat - and it hasn't because it's more expensive.
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Soon it will only be cheaper if you're completely discounting the price paid to the ecosystem. In fact with a full accounting I'd wager it's already cheaper. How many unique species that evolved over tens of millions of years have been lost forever, in the last 50 years alone, due to clear-cutting in Brazil? How much clean water and topsoil has been polluted and washed away? How much carbon has been released? How muc…
Modern industrial agriculture, is what you are describing. It is very efficient form the POV of $/calorie. But it is terribly inefficient from a hectare/calorie. The purpose of modern industrial agriculture was to free up labour for industry. It has been a huge success in that. Applying technology to the food production system is IMO a good idea. I think we should be sensible. Using robotics and regenerative agricult…
It's probably only efficient because farms don't have to cover the cost of their methane+CO2 emissions and water usage+pollution. I'd like to see these subsidies eliminated.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only if it's cheaper. They said the same thing about plant based meat - and it hasn't because it's more expensive.
Plant based meats are 1) Still not real meat, hence is only considered by a limited target consumer 2) Is still relatively new to the mass-market. Hence still isn't at it's lowest price point.
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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...
Then we need to reassess water-use and water rights and let the market sort itself out. Make alfalfa farmers pay for water and send the cost down the value chain. Consumers will signal how much they are willing to pay, and producers will respond by reducing their supply.
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When this technology finally gets there, and I see no reason to think it won't eventually, it will change the world so dramatically. The amount of land and water we won't need to raise animals or food for animals it's staggering. The amount of meat the world consumes will double by the end of the century (will it? I made that up). As the world gets richer, people eat more meat. Combine that with a rising population a…
Only if it's cheaper. They said the same thing about plant based meat - and it hasn't because it's more expensive.
Yeah I’m going to let other folks experiment with that for 10 or so years and see where it goes. I’m sure the meat is fine, it’s just a matter of not contaminating it during the process that I’m concerned about. The FDA is really poor at enforcing the health and safety aspects of manufacturing and processing. They simply don’t have enough inspectors and the inspectors don’t fine big offenders enough
If you put cattle on farmland, and utilize regenerative agriculture techniques, it costs a bit more, because yields aren't artificially boosted while destroying the topsoil. In return you actually capture carbon into the grasses from the atmosphere. That would normally just rot, but the herbivores digest it and make it bioavailable for the fungi and bacteria in the soil, where the carbon accumulates. The herbivores a…
I'm not entirely convinced by this argument. A lot of the ecological arguments against meat-eating is because cattle grazing requires huge swaths of land. Current practices generate this land via deforestation (I don't have statistics on how much land is generated via deforestation, but we can at least conclude that it's A Thing That Happens^{tm})[^1]. While certainly, grass captures some carbon, I'm going to guess that it's far less than a rainforest ecosystem of the same area, especially since the rainforest isn't being actively consumed. There's also the biodiversity of a forest environment.
[^1]: https://archive.ph/4pRMd <- WP article
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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.
If we go off thermodynamics there is a lot of energy being wasted in producing the meat, even if that energy isn't expended by those tending the cattle. To say nothing of the animal suffering involved, we currently expend ~10x the calories we get from the beef producing it (IIRC). If we could get even to 5x that'd be a huge environmental win. Edit: Looking it up, beef sits at 25x, and chicken 9x. So, a lot of room fo…