"In the year, 2025....if mankind can survive...if chicken might be alive, they may find....."

[TheMaster666]

https://archive.is/20240921094608/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/21/climate/lab-grown-meat-future.html

This is a fascinating article from the New York Times on the future of the meat industry. With the significant environmental costs of meat production, and an ever-rapidly growing human population across the globe, the leading meat manufacturers and billionaires are exploring the option of lab-grown, or "cultivated" meat. There is no animal ever born or killed. Cells from a living organism are simply fostered in a lab environment, soaking up amino acids, sugars, etc. Two weeks later, they've created flesh, about the same as real animal flesh.

This creates the peculiar scenario of, "No animals were harmed in the production of this meat." I wonder if vegans would eat meat that came at no price of animal suffering.

As a meat-lover myself, I don't think I would have any trouble eating lab-grown meat vs. natural meat. It may just become tomorrow's equivalent of GMO's and processing plants vs. organic, free-range.

I do have a lot of questions about the health effects of such meat. What, if anything, is missing from foregoing a diet of actual animals? Are there long-term detriments to this new kind of meat?

Nevertheless, I think this is a positive development. Anything that will drastically increase the food supply will make it more affordable, more accessible in impoverished countries, and this new method may significantly reduce the greenhouse emissions output.

P.S. the title is a song reference. I thank Futurama's parody for discovering the song, 'In the Year 2525" by Zager and Evans

 

[Ethan Reigns]

It is an interesting idea, but the cost of such meat is going to be much higher than ordinary animal meat. After all, an animal can live in relatively primitive surroundings whereas the factory meat must be processed in clean, sanitary conditions throughout its growth. And you can bet that since few manufacturers can pony up the initial investment, you will have a monopoly or oligopoly situation where one or several manufacturers have complete control of the market. And their market will have to compete with normal meat, so they would have to see whether there was enough interest so they didn't price themselves out of the market. I doubt there could be a 3rd world market simply due to the cost.

There would be similar concerns about manufactured meat that many people have about GMO products. Does it have the long-term potential to cause diseases that we have not foreseen? The factory could add things like vitamin B-12 and D3 that are missing from a vegan diet, but these would come from animal sources, a fact they would prefer to hide.

Not many people turn vegetarian or vegan because of animal welfare considerations. Most are convinced that meat is inherently bad from a nutritional point of view. They consider fats from meat to be more likely to cause dietary trouble. Many just want to restrict their diet for health and weight reasons. They are supported by the perceived health of vegetarian/vegan people. I worked on the seventh floor of an office one time and just to get some exercise, I used to walk up the stairs (64 steps - I counted). The first time I did it, I felt off for about half an hour. By doing it daily, I developed some degree of stamina. I challenged some other people to do the same thing and I could beat out other people that I should have no right to because they were younger or fitter. The only person who climbed effortlessly was a Buddhist scientist I worked with. He said for the first 22 years of his life (he was 48), he never ate meat but he thought he would not be able to live in our climate without meat, so he had some scarce amounts of meat after moving to Canada. Tibetan Buddhists have a different view of animals - they are raised for their milk but if a yak is being moved from one pasture to another in the mountains and he falls off a mountain pass, the yak herders can immediately cook it and eat it, because they did not kill it.

 

[NotASlayer]

Initially, yes, the cost will be higher, because it is new tech. Once it matures, it will become a lot cheaper. Households might even end up with their own Eternachickens (TM) that they can harvest meat from.

Of course, there will be a lot of claims about how eating it leads to health problems. With probably a lot less justification than those for GM foods. And I can imagine scare stories about how the Eternachicken is actually Soylent Green-based...

I really should watch that film some time.

 

[Stake fodder]

It's a good idea to start with fake chicken, since all exotic meat already tastes like it!

This creates the peculiar scenario of, "No animals were harmed in the production of this meat." I wonder if vegans would eat meat that came at no price of animal suffering.

It said the meat would be started from cells of living organisms. Even if they weren't harmed, that might still put off vegans. Plus, lab meat would still presumably have some of the same health downsides as real meat. Sure, they could engineer it to remove those elements, but then it would probably taste less like real.

I do have a lot of questions about the health effects of such meat. What, if anything, is missing from foregoing a diet of actual animals? Are there long-term detriments to this new kind of meat?

I agree with @Ethan Reigns that the GMO aspect would be off-putting to many. There may also be chemicals involved that we wouldn't understand the effect of. Finally, there may be elements of real meat that are currently unknown. They keep retooling baby formula because they find new vitamins and other nutritional aspects of breast milk that they previously weren't aware of.

But hey, people eat hot dogs! If it's cheap enough, it will surpass real meat, I feel sure.

 

[November]

Yeah its not going to be cheaper to produce. Nor better for the environment. What makes crops grow? Fertilizer. Whats a natural and easy source of fertilizer? Sheep poop.

The farmers here are in crisis because they dont have a market for their sheep once live trade ends. They grow their grain, harvest, sheep graze on the stubble. Next year, next crop. Without the sheep they will return to burning stubble, and using more man made fertilizers, which are not cheap and not abundant. These changes are huge changes for the whole chain. The world is still going to want grain.

Im not on either side, I dont know enough about the live sheep trade. But I am definitely against lab grown meat. Its not just a fun little experiment. It will force change on the entire agriculture industry.

There are very strict standards of animal husbandry in Australia. Without the industry, people will do their own thing. Unethical breeding, hunting and suffering will return (as we have seen with the puppy industry). Cattle and sheep are important bushfire prevention tools. They are useful for more than just their meat.

Its not saving animals in the long run. It has the potential to wipe out entire breed lines of animals. Once these animals are gone, there is far more lab work to do to get them back.

One of the farmers has a slogan on his ute - Food doesn't grow in the fridge.

 

[NotASlayer]

I think one advantage that lab-grown meat will have is space, which could be vitally important to regions that have little enough land that what they do have needs to be set aside for raising crops. If you have moorland and highlands as we have here that aren't any use for anything but sheep, then space for such is less important.

I would not be surprised if lab-grown meat becomes more popular, but I think we are more likely to end up with personal 3D food printers first.

 

[Plasma]

It’s interesting, in a dystopian sort of way.

I’ve seen some people here mention the price of the Magic Meat, which is likely true. When the process is new, it will be expensive and billed as a premium option. If it’s successful and eventually the process can be streamlined, I can actually see the inverse happening. Whereas the Magic Meat will become cheaper and more affordable, genuine livestock meat will be far more expensive and be treated as a luxury. There will be less of it, but it would no doubt still be sold and billed as “100% REAL meat!” on the package, just at astronomical prices.

Personally, I don’t know if I’m for or against this, but I’m leaning more towards “against”. It’s a fundamental law of the universe that no one thing can be created out of nothing. There has to be a precedent. Some sort of origin components that make up whatever is being created. To not really have a definitive origin point for the meat beyond what essentially sounds like fungal growth makes me vastly uncomfortable. If the manufacturer can’t tell me where something came from or what animal it is derived from beyond “living cells”, I’m not sure I really trust that product.

 

[Stake fodder]

But I am definitely against lab grown meat. Its not just a fun little experiment. It will force change on the entire agriculture industry.

That's a good point. A lot of ranch land here is not good for growing crops, so what would become of those people?

I’ve seen some people here mention the price of the Magic Meat, which is likely true.

Call it Magic Meat and people will think it has cannabis in it!

Personally, I don’t know if I’m for or against this, but I’m leaning more towards “against”. It’s a fundamental law of the universe that no one thing can be created out of nothing. There has to be a precedent. Some sort of origin components that make up whatever is being created. To not really have a definitive origin point for the meat beyond what essentially sounds like fungal growth makes me vastly uncomfortable. If the manufacturer can’t tell me where something came from or what animal it is derived from beyond “living cells”, I’m not sure I really trust that product.

I feel the same way!

 

[November]

Call it Magic Meat and people will think it has cannabis in it!

Or a strip show!

 

[Ethan Reigns]

We currently have vegan meat substitutes that may be a lot closer to a reasonable cost than the factory-grown meat, so any factory meat product would have to compete with the current meat substitutes. I have had vegan cheese, vegan burgers, vegan sausage and most other vegan "meat" products. I think this will be the main competition for factory meat and although it comes at a price premium currently, it is still likely to be cheaper than factory meat. If you have a meat factory, it will have to be planned so that the product price and availability will be competitive. Unless there is a spectacular breakthrough, I don't see this happening in the near term.

 

[NotASlayer]

I think space will be the most important factor. As long as you have enough space to grow non-meat based ingredients for a meat substitute, there is not a lot of reason to concentrate on a meat-based meat substitute. But the latter will probably require less space than any plant- or fungi-based meat replacement.

I imagine for the time being we will just see experiments on growing it, gradually bringing the cost down, like 3D printers. I think 3D printers were invented decades ago, and probably only a decade or so ago you would be looking at an outlay of thousands of dollarpounds for a decent one. Now you can buy one for your home for a couple of hundred dollarpounds, and what you can get for your money is constantly increasing.

 

[Plasma]

I think space will be the most important factor. As long as you have enough space to grow non-meat based ingredients for a meat substitute, there is not a lot of reason to concentrate on a meat-based meat substitute. But the latter will probably require less space than any plant- or fungi-based meat replacement.

I feel like once we finally manage to nail interstellar travel/living (something that is possible, but will just take significant time), space will cease to be an issue. Whether we’re talking a hundred, five hundred, a thousand or more years on that is still up in the air, but I do feel like this sort of food could be the future of mankind, given that we only know of one planet that has actual consumable entities on it (currently).

 

[NotASlayer]

I feel like once we finally manage to nail interstellar travel/living (something that is possible, but will just take significant time), space will cease to be an issue. Whether we’re talking a hundred, five hundred, a thousand or more years on that is still up in the air, but I do feel like this sort of food could be the future of mankind, given that we only know of one planet that has actual consumable entities on it (currently).

I read a moderately old - 90s? - SF novel called Illegal Alien. The aliens in that had a tubular piece of meat on their starship, and they just sliced pieces off when they wanted to eat some. It grew back.

 

[nightshade]

I think rather than trying to create new foods, we should be going back to eating more seasonally and eating less imported foods.

No one needs asparagus or strawberries all year round.