Is Cultivated Meat for Real?
asteriskmag.comWe currently have a restaurant here in Tel Aviv (The Chicken, https://thechicken.kitchen/), that acts as the test kitchen for a local startup called SuperMeat. This is definitely something that is happening, and even in the nearish (sub 10 year) term. The dream is that this is always around the corner, however.
How the hell does Israel do this?
Billions in foreign aid certainly helps
The foreign aid is mostly dealing with the fact that Israel is surrounded by hostile countries. Those countries are also hostile to the US, so it's really paying Israel to be its toe hold in the Middle East.
That is a deeply uncomfortable relationship for a whole lot of reasons.
But it's mainly aimed at the military. The country is otherwise pretty wealthy on its own terms. It's got a GDP per capita of $55k per person, mostly from manufacturing and tech, plus agriculture. So it generally has a European level of culture.
>European level of culture.
And European dual citizens too. And unchecked immigration quota, Based on ethinicity. The founding itself shows the effect of unchecked immigration facilitated by a colonial superpower, viz UK.
The two neighbouring countries, Jordan And Egypt has been US allies. Both have bilateral, and trilateral agreements on peace.
Regardless if there is voluntary long-term adoption of such technologies by a relatively free market vs. regulatory capture that leads politicians to arguably poorly-wastefully investing in technologies and companies pulling from the public coffers politicians have been entrusted with protecting; instead of the company and their technology, their offerings, gaining "votes" by consumers one-to-one buying the products, giving them profits and building more competent investors' confidence that the startup/technology is a actually good bet; of course the VC industrial complex has the whole hype up process for pump and dump, onto the public markets, so end consumers may become invested into bad investments if their stock broker and them aren't aligned properly incentives wise.
There's already a battle between mass produced and arguably unethical-inhumane living conditions/processes of the chicken industrial complex vs. small-organic farm raised chickens [of which overall arguably is losing and will remain suppressed even if it's what consumers prefer due to things like economies of scale and government subsidies that stack in favour to industrial complexes], and so adding a cultured "meat" into the food industrial complex landscape becomes more of a competitive battle between the existing handful of centralized incumbents and this new method of producing "food" [whether healthy or not] - which has the lowest manufacturing-distribution costs, and is policy structured to allow the general-mass population of people to have enough money to afford more than what is the cheapest.
There is also arguably a war within this industry, and perhaps foreign bad actors who may also be attempting to destroy our food production hoping for various outcomes, whether causing a reduction in supply and so an increase in price-profits, or other; I'll let your own creativity and imagination take you there, extrapolate further if you're connected to and spent much time already integrating the shadow.
P.S. The above of course isn't specific to Israel, many, if not most governments seem to do this to various degrees to "support" industrial complexes.
I like thinking about space colonization. Whether it be a the first colony on Mars or a robust space station orbiting Jupiter, what do you think their food is like? Do you think they have farms growing cows and pigs and dogs? Or do they have a bioreactor that uses substantially less water and organic inputs to output whatever meat they want without fear of zoonotic diseases and PETA?
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.
I'm doubtful of any future space colonization, but given likely resource constraints, any sort of meat would be a serious luxury. As far as I know, plants are far and away the most efficient way we have of converting energy into a format compatible with human metabolism (though now that I type that out, I wonder how plausible creating synthetic carbohydrates from in-situ resources might be).
I completely agree with you. HN is very anti-vegan, so mentioning not eating meat always comes with a torrent of downvotes. I imagine any self-sustainable colony would not have meat in their diet because there is no need for it.
Cultured foods are a huge opportunity, but meat, at least steaks etc, or even mince, probably need much more work.
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).
Talk to anyone who has real experience in biotechnology and mammalian cell culture, and they will point out that this fantasy. The epitome of ZIRP. You should regard any companies in this space with extreme scepticism, and look for signs that they are scams.
Including those that work directly on cultivated meat? There are literally companies out there selling cultivated meat right now. Regressive countries like Italy and conservative states in the US like Florida and Alabama have banned the sell of cultivated meat. Did they buy into the fantasy? Or are they scared cultivated meat will impact traditional animal farming?
All that is required for the skeptics to be right is for the selectively bred cow to be the most efficient bioreactor for beef, wasteful as it is, and I nevertheless consider that to be a very realistic possibility.
I think the most important part of getting "real" engineered meat to market, even if it's hella expensive is it again shifts the conversation.
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 economy of scale is a problem, I look forward to seeing home-tanks that sit on the counter top like slow cookers and produce the meat-alike overnight. Go to the store and buy bags of concentrate just like any other grocery ingredient.
You can make Tempeh at home: the colonisation is ~24/72h. Super nutritious and if well cooked strong umami taste like wild/farm meat, compared to sweetysweet nugget.
Soy products contain high levels of plant-based estrogen, not something you want to pump your body with continuously. Or does the process of creating Tempeh somehow removes/inactivates this?
My understanding is there isn't much evidence of a link between soy an almost anything positive or negative (unless you have an allergy). "Plant estrogen" is different enough from human estrogen to be at most a weak form of the same.
Consider for example that it's highly popular in China, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan, and Japan has one of the highest life expectancies, second only to an autonomous region of China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...
They do, but are mostly armless if consumed reasonably: don’t eat the same meal every meal!
A sheep got complications in the 40´s although no strong adverse effect have been found off human despite many studies and big consumption in Asia since a long time : 40mg/d in Japan/China while 3mg/d in EU/US (1): you may safely x13 your soy consumption if you live in the west.
Don’t worry either if you’re a men, you’ll be just fine (2)
1 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002231662...
2 https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(09)00966-2/full...
Post scriptum: you can make Tempe with a variety of grains, not only soy.
We could call it soylent red, maybe?
I'm not convinced lab grown meat will ever be economical because real meat is subsidized, but not in the way you think (ie government subsidies).
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.
There’s not enough land for cows eating grass to make enough meat to satisfy humanity. Net result you get feedlots where cows consume the majority of the calories in their lifetime from optimized crops. That involves a great deal of labor and 80% of global agricultural land, but results in more meat from the same land.
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.
The land requirement for cows you refer to is probably the US-centric one. That's not universal. For example, Australian cattle pretty much roams arid land not suitable for crop production. The food is supplemented but still the carbon footprint of Australian cattle is very different to US cattle.
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].
> 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.
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.
That's certainly why it used to be important, but it's no indication of future importance.
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.
The idea of cultured meat sounds wonderful. Its real meat, but without the guilt.
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.
For the sake of completeness : one also have the choice to not eating meat, with sub choices of various nutriments sources from wholegrain to heavily industrial processed stuff.
Yes indeed. There are many choices. One is to switch to a different meat, one is to cut down, one is to give it up.
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.
> But there is the cold reality...
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".
Funny. I share your skepticism somewhat but I was thinking about cultured meat as the solution to those problems. I'd imagine no need for antibiotics. Cynically, they probably would still have to bleach the meat or something. Though the US does that to chicken now.
Cultured meat is the ultimate processed food. It is to meat what a pop tart is to bread and fruit.
But when 95% of animal products are factory farmed globally, the processes already take away from the nutrition and heavily harm the environment.
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?!
Where do you think the nutrients for cultivated meat are going to come from? Where do you think the byproducts are going to go?
Sustainably raised meat is the most environmentally friendly way to feed people.
> Where do you think the nutrients for cultivated meat are going to come from? Where do you think the byproducts are going to go?
Most likely the same places they already do.
Ideally, GM the cell lines and make them photovores or electrovores, have them synthesise their own nutrients from air and rock — but that's a way off.
> Sustainably raised meat is the most environmentally friendly way to feed people.
Not even today.
Right now, a lot of livestock is a middle-man between plants and us, and we could feed more people for less money just by eating a fraction of the crops that are used to feed the animals.
Meat is a preference, widely chosen as people get richer, it's not a "best option" in terms of health or economics.
I'm pretty certain the current processes require a growth medium that comes, partially, from other animals. That's not a hard requirement, however, and the answer "farmed algae" is a reasonable target as the process is refined.
For that you need sustainably grown plants, which are even more environnemental friendly if directly fed to human. They are possible at scale of present humanity, witch grass fed meat is not.
The most environmentally friendly is to not eat meat.
If you continue this ad absurdum, the only logical step would be to perform a variant of seppuku. I see relatively little sepukkus performed around me.
Your morbid sarcasm does not add anything to this conversation. GP doesn’t bring arguments neither but at least stays courteous.
That's because people don't get that absurd and just go vegetarian or vegan, or generally just try to eat a little less meat
As a vegan of four and a half year, I can confidently say being vegan is not similar to killing oneself.
I would be seriously concerned about sanitary situation where they grow meat, what kind of we-discover-in-future-it-increases-cancerXYZ-chance chemicals are used to keep it sterile enough.
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.
How is it more processed than cultured fungi cells, yeast, cheese…?
A better comparaison IMO would be a seedless/peelless GMO fruit compared to the original stuff that can survive in the wild.
Do you feel the same way about yoghurt?
I sincerely hope not.
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!
I'm a carnivore, but that's a very weak argument.
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.
"I eat real meat!"
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
Animals are part of this thing called the cycle of life that has been going on since near the beginning of the earth and will go on long after humanity has faded to dust. Being eaten is normal, it's part of how ecosystems are regulated, and everything dies anyhow so why not be a meal on the way out so that something else can live.
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.
True, but I hoped we could become more than animals in the future.
Why? I like food and sex and raising my children. I _am_ an animal, even if I have mastered fire and language and agriculture.
Well, what has this to do with killing animals?
How did someone say? To kill someone, cut off his head and build a nice vase out of it is called culture. To have to go to prison for it is called civilization.
Besides that, raising animals for meat is terrible energy inefficient.
There is quite the difference between slaughtering an animal for food, and murder. Do you disagree?
Given the existence of delicious foods not made of meat, the difference is one of law, and of which of the major world religions' ethical norms you follow.
Well now that you've clearly stated that this is a religious issue for you, I see little opportunity in actually having a protective conversation. Have a great day.
> for you
No, not for me, for Bhuddists (I think they regard all life as sacred), and (depending on the animal and if mere prohibition rather than the justification for that prohibition is important) Jews, Muslims, and Hindus.
Hence saying "which".
Raising animals for meat is not energy inefficient. Those cows control the grasses and help with natural succession of trees and shrubs, while fertilizing the soil and providing nutrients for many animals. It costs literally nothing to leave a cow in a field, and it makes the field better.
What's energy inefficient is trying to grow a thousand cows in a feedlot.
In this thread: angry vegans trying to force their opinions on others with bad logic and downvotes.
Proverbs that rely on word play are fun, but not profound.
My dad preferably (to meat) eats cartilage, collagene, etc... off the bones (using a knife)... his dog then eats whatever is left. Anyone working on that?
Cows have incisors, should cows also eat real meat? Incisors are more for cutting than tearing, canines do the tearing but human canines are too short to effectively tear. Cows also have canines.
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.
Don't kid yourself Jimmy, if a cow ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you care about.
aren't they bred to be very docile?
Troy McClure - Simpsons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAxjqAfwfyI
why do you think that cultivated meat would ultimately be different? It will definitely be more customizable - Kobe, Angus, Wagyu - just select the corresponding option in the app.
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.
Oh, yes, look at the incisors on a rabbit for instance. Huge, clearly rabbits are terrifying predators.
I remember that documentary. The one with the Famous Historian.
;)
I've had five teeth removed because my mouth is too small.
Kept one and turned it into a necklace.
Tell that to gorillas.
Cool. The strongest argument for a boring diet is your teeth.
"Boring"? Small lapsus, maybe? I mean, I know veganism is quite fashionable in some circles, but still.
No, the strongest argument is a mix of "DON'T WANNA!" and "U Mad, Bro?"
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.
Yeah, the people who have a more diverse diet are the ones with a "boring" diet. Interesting logic there friend.
(1) Are meat diets really any more diverse? If you 1-1 substituted chicken for quorn, beef for soy, etc., that seems basically the same to me.
(2) If cultivated meat becomes affordable, it's actually made of meat. The same stuff, just from a vat rather than a body.
This can easily be much more diverse, because suddenly all the endangered species, a few extinct species, and human flesh(!) legally get on the menu.