I'm willing to bet Star Trek rings true here in that there are no farms on spaceships growing animals, therefore, this is the future we should be working for. Why waste time tearing down the rain forest to make room for cattle and the soybeans the cows will eat when we could instead use our resources to bring about cultivated meat faster? Few people say cultivated meat is impossible. It is only a matter of research which means time and money. But given the benefits, we should be all in on this research.
In the meantime, oils, juices, dairy, pulps and perhaps flours seem like prime candidates for cultured production, either biologically by fermentation, tissue culture etc, or just direct synthesis (esp. oils, fats).
Once people consider an engineered meat, they might consider an enhanced mycelium for a tenth the price for their daily protein requirements.
I think all these products will develop over time but engineered meat will always have cost against it. Too many sensitive processes.
If you think about the Earth, it receives a large amount of solar energy. While it makes the world habitable it does a lot of other things. A big one is that the Earth stores this energy in various ways. Plants are an example of this. Photosynthesizing plants, in particular, convert solar energy into sugars.
Animals come along and eat those plants and convert the plant's stored energy into protein. You can think of the plant and animal kingdom as just a massive funnel that converts solar energy into the smallest organisms that successively collects into the largest animals and plants.
Traditionally, we would eat wild animals that were essentially "free". So if you have to create that much proetein and energy from scratch in a lab, you're suddenly paying for all the steps leading up to that that being a grown animal. Obviously we have farm-raised cows that do require inputs but they're still largely eating grown feed.
It's oddly similar to creating people to work. If you had to pay for and build a person it would be incredibly expensive and time-consuming. Like imagine if Amazon had to "farm" people to work in their warehouses. They'd be spending millions of dollars for one person and it would take 18+ years. It just wouldn't be economical or make any sense.
Butinstead we create new humans all by ourselves, pay for their eduction (either directly or indirectly), pay for their food and shelter and so on. So by the time that person becomes an adult, Amazon can pay them $15/hour to work in their warehouse.
So while we create new humans for reasons of our own, from the perspective of a company who really only views you as a labor unit to create value for them, we're "subsidizing' the creation of those new labor units.
That means it's really difficult for an AI/ML system or a robot to compete with a human because that human is "subsidized". Obviously automation happens but, so far at least, it's only really for the most menial of tasks.
You can buy a calf for like $100-500 IIRC. Put it in on some land with somne grass and fresh water and in a small number of years, it'll be a cow that will produce hundres of pounds of meat. It's taken a lot of energy to get there but most of that energy is free.
Lab-grown meat will have to pay that energy cost. That's why I think it'll have a difficult time competing.
The ~10 billion people in 2060 who will on average be better off than we are today are going to want a great deal more meat than we can produce using current methods because land is ultimately finite. Lab grown meat is simply the next stage of industrial agriculture where you need less feedstock and thus less land to produce the same amount of meat.
Cost is currently a major issue, but supply and demand means it’s not going to compete with current meat prices but where prices end up when scarcity becomes an issue.
My main point is that if we ignore the tragedy of the commons of land use (which we do), the energy cost of growing a cow is largely free.
Lab grown meat requires probably a sterile environment and you'll be paying for that energy. Where is that energy coming from? What is the footprint of that? Now maybe that density of lab meat production is really high but I'd be surprised. Large herbivores can gain hundresd of pounds a year just grazing.
I do believe in the future of industrial farming. I just don't think it'll be meat. It's more likely automated greenhouses of likely hydroponics. It's entirely feasible that this way can easily support a trillion people on EArth [1].
The land and water are very much not free, and under serious pressure in lots of parts of the world. The energy cost of lab-grown is real, but if it can be fed by other foodstock waste or some kind of cheap renewable source, it starts to look more competitive.
After all, a similar argument can be made about transitioning from hunting to livestock: we have to take on the responsibility for an extra part of their life cycle, and we do so willingly for the economic benefits.
But there is the cold reality of enshittification and the numerous sketchy practices of the industrial food industry. So one has to make a choice: the traditional "Iowa" meat industrial complex or the new "valley bro" meat industrial one? For now at least I feel safer with the former.
My point is only that if one chooses to continue to eat meat, then one has to decide which of the two industrial complexes, neither exactly known for their transparency and honesty, is the better choice. The cliff or the abyss. Vegetarianism or veganism will be the only rational choice for some, but not all.
THIS. Plus, so far, it's looking like both the dollar cost and total carbon footprint of a pound of cultured beef are far higher than what is easily accomplished with sustainable old-fashioned cattle farming.
And if the real (vs. VC-subsidized-'till-bankrupt) costs of cultured meat stay extremely high - then it's just another ultra-luxury good for the 0.01%. With an added dose of "reassure yourself that the 99% are moral degenerates, who deserve whatever you do to them".
Surely reducing the harm to the environment and animals is worth it...Not to mention the horrible conditions for the people who's job it is to kill animals all day in abattoirs?!
Sustainably raised meat is the most environmentally friendly way to feed people.
I wish for this to be cheap effective replacement just like next Joe, but having former GF microbiologist I know how hard is to keep these things sterile even for few days. If there are nutrients for muscle cells, they are useful also for other microbes/fungus. And you literally need 1 tiny microscopic spore to get in, there is no immune system to weed it out, just chemicals that then permeate everything.
A better comparaison IMO would be a seedless/peelless GMO fruit compared to the original stuff that can survive in the wild.
I have incisor teeth passed down to me from generation upon generation of my previous kin all the way back to my stoneage ancestors.
Incisors are specifically designed for tearing and ripping meat.
I eat real meat!
Even if it were true - it isn't, incisors are for cutting grass and fruits too - humans are more than anything, adaptable, and our survival and evolution sits on the top of that adaptability.
We are who we are because, between other things, we eat whatever is available and plenty.
If meat becomes a luxury product, and/or becomes even more dangerous to the environment to the point it's even less sustainable, the proper naturalist argument would be we shall need to adapt and stop eating meat altogether.
Às I said, though, I'm quite fond of my Picanha, and sincerely hope I can get to eat a sustainable version of it at some point in my life so I can do it with a bit less of a guilt.
Cultivated meat IS real meat from meat cells, it is not a meat imitation based on soy, wheat or whatever. Potentially much safer. Think of dead zombie disease or suspected cancer risk of beef.
https://www.gesundheitsindustrie-bw.de/en/article/news/new-p...
https://publichealth.gmu.edu/news/2024-03/should-you-be-worr...
Why do animals have to suffer for our meat supply?
“As long as there are slaughter houses there will always be battlefields.” ― Leo Tolstoy
(The quote sounds batter in other languages, since battlefields are "slaughter fields")
Best, Beijinger, not a vegetarian
If you want to direct your rage somewhere, direct it at the people who force these animals into concentration camp like environments to maximize production. That's the true evil, not eating meat.
I would give cultivated meat a try but I don't see it becoming a staple of my diet. A hamburger sounds good about now.
And i see at some point convergence of technologies - human transplant growing would be pretty much the same tech, just the options in the app would be different, like how much kevlar to add into the heart muscle.
;)
Kept one and turned it into a necklace.
It's the wonderful confection of oppositional defiant disorder and performative assholery that attempts to piss off the performer's mental model of some other person, usually for influencer points and political point-scoring.
