That's great news. I will be the last person to give up eating meat willingly but if I could happily replace 95% of the meat I eat with a good substitute I'd do it tomorrow.
And almonds don't lactate. Do you call almond milk "almond-flavoured water"?
There's a reason people use existing "technically incorrect" product names to refer to replacement products like this. It's so people who are used to consuming the original products see the replacement as a replacement, on level footing with the original.
Almost no one is going to replace dairy milk with soy bean-flavoured water, and chicken patties with chicken-flavoured burgers. The latter sound like dodgy knock-offs and people don't want to put that kind of thing in their bodies.
Also, "chicken-flavored burger" isn't really accurate to what this is. It may be lab-grown, but it's still meat. A "chicken-flavored burger" sounds like a vegetarian patty with chicken-like seasoning and flavours.
"...explains that muscle cells naturally contract when they are grown, making the fibres that result in the flakes of the burger that you would expect."
I wonder how similar these fibers are to actual chicken/beef. My understanding is that these vat-grown meats are essentially just compressed globs of cells, with no real structure
> Savir says the production cost of his chicken burger is $35, which seems high but is dramatically less than it was a few years ago. In 2013, a Dutch pharmacologist, Mark Post, made history by eating the first lab-grown beef burger. It cost about £225,000.
There may also be some differences in complexity between the process involved for cultured beef versus cultured poultry, but even if the difference is 10x, this is the kind of reduction in costs that tends to point toward a technology actually becoming feasible in the mainstream.
It's quite possible that the global meat industry will look very different another seven years from now.
All over Europe you'll see fried/grilled chicken on a bun referred to as a "chicken burger" (often in English, even where that isn't the spoken language). This is even the case in places like KFC.
I'm firmly against this nomenclature, but I suppose these places are set in their old ways for some reason :)
Because most chicken sandwiches in the US are breasts and not burgers. Most of the ground up chicken stuff ends up in things like chicken nuggets and cheap chicken fingers.
Before moving to the US I always thought it was the style of bun that made it a 'burger', whereas if you put it between two pieces of sliced bread it would be a 'sandwich'.
They mention that (in the US) pets consume a significant quantity of meat, understandably. An interesting datapoint: our dog will eat Beyond Beef, and of course my wife's actual beef, but shuns Impossible Burger. I wonder why. I've repeated the experiment across numerous dinners.
I've tried the beyond burger in two different occasions and both times it had the foulest smell, reminiscent of a burnt tire.
I wonder whether there's some genetic variation that causes some of us to be revolted by it, like some people who can't stand the taste of cilantro or Brussels sprouts.
I don't get the burnt tire smell, but Beyond has a very strange aftertaste to me, and does not sit well in my stomach at all. Impossible on the other hand is delicious and digests just fine.
Not necessarily. I'm sure there are plenty of people who have zero compunction about the practices of factory farms, so long as they get to enjoy their meat.
> I'm sure there are plenty of people who have zero compunction about the practices of factory farms
Like the people who work there. If you had compunction, you would lose it quick, or else you wouldn’t last long
Many people have shown an extraordinary lack of compunction in doing things far worse than factory farming (from the viewpoint of human-centric ethics at least), e.g Auschwitz, Srebrenica, Sinjar
Slaughterhouse workers are among the most exploited in any country, usually recruited from the lowest paid immigrants, and while some do it for 40 years without issues - or might already arrive with their own baggage -, many end up with PTSD or other psychological issues.
Agreed. Really poor conditions, here in Germany they are housed really poorly, are treated badly because of loopholes in worker rights. Some of those have been closed, because this year we had major corona outbreaks in slaughterhouses.
In the US the Food Megacorps had to weigh to shut down due to COVID related incidents in order to keep their supply chains from falling apart, and make sure meat was present when everyone was panic buying or restructure; in the end they just accepted that local poor and (mainly) immigrant labour deaths are an inherent extranality and an unavoidable part of the total calculus of getting the economics of factory farming to work [0]. Some even created a betting pool on how many would contract COVID in the processing plants, it's really fucking sick but an apt reflection of the Global Food Industry as whole. [1]
Fortunately, CSA memberships and community gardens sold out in record numbers this year, which is the only thing to take solace from and I hope it persists from now on.
I've personally reduced my protein consumption significantly to last year, and really mainly ate eggs and salmon that I had frozen from last years harvest. I ate chicken once or twice every week and usually made soup from kombu/katsubushi when I used up the bones.
While true that factory farms are a nightmare, lab grown meat is not the only alternative. There are plenty of regenerative farms out there that produce quality product in the most humane and environmentally beneficial way possible. Check out Polyface Farm in VA or Brown Ranch in ND for examples.
I think, in my life, I'll see mass-produced artificially grown meat become indistinguishable (cooking-and-eating-wise) from regular meat. Maybe they'll even taste better than regular meat, by controlling the skin/fat/muscle distribution. The current technology isn't there, yet. But it looks like that it's actually going to be feasible in the next few decades.
I'm no biologist or environmental scientist. To my naive understanding, it's going to be a good thing. It means that we'll meddle with the animals less, reduce the environmental impact, and also make high-quality, fresh meat more accessible.
No more Chef Ramsay proffering a piece of filet mignon and saying, "Now, this, is the Rolls-Royce of steak".
Not sure about the skin part, but the fat and muscle part is absolutely going to be doable right now. All you'd need to do is take the meat and lay it out with some meat glue to create the distribution you want.
Yes but, once you've introduced pathogens to the inside by slicing it up and gluing it back together, it's not longer safe to cook the inside rare like you can with a whole piece.
We're still arguing if GMOs will be toxic to humans in the long term, and now we want to grow a whole chunk of animal in a lab, and proclaim nothing's wrong with it?
Lab-grown meat should use less antibiotics. This will reduce the rate of development of new antibiotic-resistant bacteria like MRSA.
And lab-grown meat should also use fewer hormones, reducing human intake of animal hormones.
Lab-produced milk will be another important product.
Our species is slowly entering the bio-tech stage. How will daily life change?
I predict engineered mites that clean your home at night, consuming or carrying away every speck of dust. They will clean furniture, beds, pillows, and mattresses. By out-competing common dust mites, they will prevent many cases of childhood asthma.
Large-scale deployment of mites will collect pollution dust from cities. They will remove the metal nanoparticles from vehicle brakes that trigger asthma in children who grow up near highways. They will collect the persistent lead dust that accumulated in cities while leaded gasoline was in use, reducing childhood exposure to lead thereby boosting intelligence and reducing crime for the next generation. They will remove the microplastics that steadily fall from our synthetic clothing, food packaging, equipment, carpets, and building materials. The health problems of microplastics are still unknown. They may be the cause of declining male fertility.
Instead of complaining about vaccines and 5G, ignorant people will complain about the pheromones used to control mites. They'll say things like, "I'm sick because of the pheromones!" as the mites remove pollution that actually would make them sick.
Clothing fibers will be grown in a lab. Cashmere will become nearly as cheap as nylon. Once you've worn a cashmere outfit, cotton will feel like something a caveman would wear.
Washing machines will have different enzyme options for different kinds of materials. For example, you will buy clothes made with fiber X and use detergent X which dissolves everything except fiber X. Washers won't need heat or mechanical abrasion, so clothes can last longer or be made more cheaply while still lasting long enough.
No more brushing, just chew a dental candy once a day. It has bacteria that consumes plaque & tartar and viruses that kill acid-producing mouth bacteria.
Dynamic balancing of intestinal fauna will solve a myriad of undiagnosed chronic health problems. Also no more farts. I also predict a pill that will make feces emerge as small smooth fragrance-free pebbles. Paper consumption will plummet, but that won't affect the environment because paper fibers will already be grown in a vat, using sugars made by algae. Sugar is the feedstock of the world's industry. Algeria becomes the world's leading producer of sugar. Climate change is reversed by the adoption of a sugar-based concrete.
Data storage will become DNA-based. All of Google's data will fit in a drop of DNA preservative. Copying data will be cheap. But reading is slow, with throughput scaling with the number of reader chips. Data theft is done with mosquito drones that literally suck data juice. Surveillance is done with "tick" robots that record their sensor data to a DNA sac.
Humans will find an ancient DNA-based data archive in a colony of sea creatures in a deep sea trench. It contains a copy of Wikipedia from a civilization that evolved from squid many millions of years ago. They reached bio-tech stage and then disappeared completely. We prepare our own data archive...
The manufacturing process is so costly normal production of meat is always going to be a better option for like the next 200 years. This is just virtue signaling BS for those who want to feel morally righteous
I thought those numbers sounded a little exaggerated and hand-wavey too. I highly doubt this takes into account things like emissions from vehicles used to transport the meats, for example.
I think those measures are orthogonal. Often cheap goods are cheap because they externalize cost onto the environment.
One example is recycling: better for the environment (at least in some cases), but costs more than just throwing everything away, often to the point that it isn't affordable.
The way these numbers usually work out is by comparing with the absolute worst possible industrial farming process (which is excessive in its pollution and waste).
"some animal rights activists argue it perpetuates an unhealthy obsession with eating animals."
Here we see a journalist in its natural habitat, trying to foster a sense of outrage where none at all exists, in the hopes of luring its prey to share the article. If it succeeds, it will be rewarded with eyeballs aplenty, which, in the cold harsh winter, will prove critical to the success of its offspring.
You sort of lose your taste for it after a while. Been a vegetarian for five years, have occasionally tried a bite of someone else's meat dish. The blood taste is really strong when you haven't grown used to it. The texture is also kinda gross.
I mean, I have no issues remaining vegetarian, but I wouldn't say that some good chicken wings don't smell appetizing to me (having enjoyed them prior to becoming vegetarian). That being said, I haven't actually tried eating meat in all these years so maybe it wouldn't taste great when I actually ate it.
I've only been vegan for about 2 year now, but my current view is that meat is just gross. Being lab-grown only solves some ethical aspects, but is still gross.
That question doesn't really work: I mean, for you perhaps all meat is now the same and "gross", but there are many people who become vegetarian because of the ethical or environment aspects. I fail to see how it is far-fetched to assume that many of them would go back to eating meat if those concerns were resolved.
The point of the question was more to address your surprise that there virtually all vegans would not eat lab-grown meat. (Sorry if I misunderstood your original post.)
Yes, agree that maybe some vegans would go back to eating meat if it was lab-grown. But my guess is that most vegans (anecdotal going from the ones that I know) would not eat lab-grown meat, just like people in general probably wouldn't eat lab-grown human meat. I mean, if human meat is 'no-go', why would animal meat be ok?
This is all from the perspective of being vegan for ethical reasons. If someone is vegan only for health or environmental reasons, then maybe they won't care so much. But my experience is that people that go vegan for health/environment quickly change to be more ethically focused.
> Cells taken from “source” chickens are cultured in a laboratory
And then there is also the discussion whether lab-grown meat actually resolves the ethical issues. I mean, in order to grow the meat the lab has to initially source some cells from animals. Any vegan for ethical reasons would oppose that.
I know many vegetarian and vegans who are so for ethical reasons, but their ethics are that this causes pain and death to animals, not that meat is inherently unethical to eat. I am sure that there are vegans that would extend their logic to “this originally came from animals at some point therefore I can’t support it” but there are many who are specifically concerned by factory farming and such, which this would alleviate.
Is lab-grown human meat 'no-go' though? I've heard that human meat doesn't taste very good and isn't healthy, so I likely wouldn't even try, but if I heard that it was the tastiest thing in the world I would certainly try a lab-grown one if I could and I don't see why I shouldn't.
Also, no - vegans for ethical reasons don't necessarily have to oppose sourcing cells from animals. For some it would be enough if the sourcing was done cruelty-free. But you're right that the ethical issue is still there and I'm certain that some people will be still opposed to that.
Why not, there's no ethical reason to oppose that. There was a guy who got his limb amputated and served the meat as tacos to his friends. That was completely legal and not unethical to do.
> I’d offer that you would find that most vegetarians and virtually all vegans would not eat lab-grown meat.
Ehh, I'm not so sure after having worked at a highly acclaimed Vegetarian/Vegan restaurant; they are both so calorie and fat deficient that they devour anything highly processed with as much saturated fats.
Which when solely looking at this from a chef's lens, and not the absurd typical Silicon Valley froth money-grab that lab grown meat is, it really projects itself out as a bad solution to a problem no one really expects to solve with their product. It diverts a lot of money into certain startups and makes for good Marketing and PR, but I've had impossible burgers and never really wanted to try it again as its something that never stood out as a better product. Burgers are such low hanging fruit, too; try making a stroganoff from tempe or seitan, its horrible if you've ever had the real thing.
I can tell you you right now that Livestock Ag has a critical role that cannot be displaced when done correctly, ironically to be able to maintain soil viability in fields where heavy feeding crops like tomatoes, or brassicas have to be rotated with to maintain viable yields for organic and biodynammic farms. Something these vegans and vegetarians are entirely oblivious about since most have never worked a day on a farm in their life, yet think they're 'part of the solution.'
Lab grown meat is just another one of those panacea sounding things you'd expect would be the norm in the 21st century, like a flying car, but are entirely impractical and only used to divert resources from more impactful things, like Farmer Education outreach that tells them about the monetary gains to be had from growing sustainably/organically and using seaweed in their feed to offset CH4 emission, and how to build sheds/barns to use that for syngas production and compost.
Eat Just has raised $220 million since its inception [0], just think about the amount of progress towards those ends we could have made with just the funds that one startup has raised.
> Something these vegans and vegetarians are entirely oblivious about since most have never worked a day on a farm in their life, yet think they're 'part of the solution.'
Kind of harsh. There are a lot of vegetarian farmers in India, who I'm sure are not presumptuous enough to think they are 'part of the solution'. For some meat eaters the idea of vegetarianism brings out strong reactions. If you are guilty just deal with it. People have their own reasons for being vegetarian and most don't judge and don't care.
> People have their own reasons for being vegetarian and most don't judge and don't care.
Granted, but it must be noted how dire the situation is in India's Ag program and its why they're out there protesting in Dehli due to the Government threatening their subsidies/price guarantees to just survive. But, I agree, vegetarian diets are far more common due to poverty than ideology outside of most developed nations.
I don't have strong reactions as a carnivore (omnivore, really) I have them as a former farmer, chef and a person that has an obsession with how broken the World's food supply is and how it affects Humanity/Society and our Ecosystem as a whole.
The truth is that most vegetarianism/veganism isn't more ethical despite the rhetoric as most vegetables are grown using conventional Ag practices and tons of inputs, using migrant labour that often results in a significant maladies for them. Furthermore harvesting of anything but a small scale garden will ensure that many animals are killed in the process as Ag machinery like combines are constantly catching up animals in the process. This happened to me several times.
My first year of apprentice in Biodynamic Ag was really eye-opening and even though that is the most holistic form of sustainable Agriculture, and often a mainstay for more affluent vegetarians and vegans in the EU, you soon realize that that reliance on solely a typical person's plant based diet has its own dire consequences--massive water use, contaminated soil due to pesticide usage and soil nutrient depletion to keep up with demand.
Whereas an omnivore diet can acquire those essential amino acids, fats, and proteins from a relatively low-impact and sustainable sources like chicken eggs.
In short, their is no perfect diet and a plant based one has lots of unintended consequences that go beyond just the person who chooses to be one. Obscuring the facts behind rabid and uninformed ideology isn't going to change that.
I've been in various conversations with fellow vegans where we discussed this; to my recollection about 1/3 said they would eat it and about 2/3 said they wouldn't, and about 3/3 said it would make the world dramatically better and the people who invented it were superheroes.
(not a representative sample of vegans in any cultural, demographic, or ideological group; does not necessarily reflect all global vegan public opinion)
I'll corroborate this and add that I think most of those 2/3 would decline to eat it just because they're personally not interested in eating meat anymore, not because they think it would be unethical to do so.
However, this would depend heavily on how many animals, if any, are harmed to produce it. Lots of vegans won't eat the impossible burger and don't consider it vegan because one of the chemicals in it was tested on rats before FDA approval, even though the number of animals harmed is O(1) - i.e., the marginal amount of animals harmed from eating an impossible burger is 0. I'm vegan and think that view is idiotic but whatever.
I don't eat meat, but not a full vegetarian (I eat fish) , vbut I also fall into the category of not being interested in the lab grown meat.
I think there are two different categories of vegetarians, the one who do it for moral reasons and the ones who do it because meat is kinda icky.
For the first category, if the meat is produced in an ethical way (lab grown), then eating it is no problem. But lab grown meat is just the same as real meat so if you didn't want to eat it before, why would you want to eat the lab grown version?
A 1-3 split between the two categories seems to plausible as far as I can tell.
That’s still a net increase of meat consumption from putative vegetarians and vegans.
The story I’ve heard from CSAs with ethically raised animals is that they all have stories of former vegetarians ordering meat from them, exclusively. So there’s at least a little flex in the other direction.
Those are “meat hipsters”, just following one trend to the next. I would guess a lot of the same population followed a raw diet at some point in their past, possibly even Jain.
I’m fully vegetarian, and mostly vegan. Although I don’t have a taste for meat, I’m not opposed to eating lab-grown meat in any way, so long as no animals are harmed in the process.
More just when there are sentences such as "X said Y in an interview", I want a link to the interview or when "the report concluded that X was caused by Y", I want a link to the report or study, ideally to the specific page where the claim is made. Or where they got the raw data for a table or chart.
Yeah that statement caught my eye also. It's nonsense. They've essentially created a meat-plant: a way to grow meat that does not involve a sentient life form.
Yes, but what does this have to do with anything? Except that it's vaguely futuristic and somehow people are obsessed with the idea that futurism === Mars colony.
> Here we see a journalist in its natural habitat, trying to foster a sense of outrage where none at all exists, in the hopes of luring its prey to share the article. If it succeeds, it will be rewarded with eyeballs aplenty, which, in the cold harsh winter, will prove critical to the success of its offspring.
Or, you know, the journalist did their job and contacted relevant interested parties for comment, and included their perspective for the benefit of readers who would look for that perspective.
Just because someone exists doesn’t mean you get to quote them anonymously in the article. You don’t write an article about a Mars rover and include “some geocentric societies claim that Mars is not real and space is not real”. You need to establish why those people and their opinions are in any way notable otherwise it’s pointless to include them
> Similar to other patties, such as the McChicken, the burger is not just meat but heavily supplemented with other ingredients to add texture and flavour. Roughly 50% is plant-based proteins, with added seasonings.
That sounds about right. Even chicken nuggets and chicken patties "made from chicken" are an entirely recreated textured product made from chicken slurry from a blender, soy protein, binding agents, water, and seasonings.
I'm not even remotely surprised they're able to create a lab-grown "chicken patty". I'm honestly not even sure what the difference would be between this and a 100% soy protein version, in terms of taste and texture?
This "chicken burger" is, of course, nothing like an actual chicken breast or thigh. There's a reason it has to be breaded and fried, to mask the total lack of any real meat texture whatsoever.
> I'm honestly not even sure what the difference would be between this and a 100% soy protein version, in terms of taste and texture?
In Germany Burger King sells plant based nuggets. Barely a difference, we recently ordered both Chicken and Plant based nuggets, maybe the chicken one still had a bit more structure. But to be honest, one drowns them in sauce anyway. Probably will go for plant based ones in the future.
Wouldn't it have been better to just taste the meat patty without such strong flavors to mask any weirdness? If I was eating the first lab-grown chicken burger, I think I'd want to try it as plain as possible first (i.e. bun and maybe not much else).
Either way I'm happy about the progress. Maybe lab grown meat will stand a better chance of eliminating factory farming than plant based meats.
This sounds promising as there doesn't appear to be many natural or artificial substitutes to imitate the feel or taste of the meat like there are in current no-kill red meat products.
Thing is, I just don't see the point. There's plenty enough really great tasting vegetarian food already, and meat substitutes if you need that sort of thing. From a sciencey pov it's fascinating but I'm not sure I get the need.
basically if it doesn't make you feel lethargic later then it doesnt replicate the experience of eating animals
it is the energy needed to consume it that people enjoy the distinction of, compared to substitutes which also compromise somewhat (less than in prior years) on taste and texture
lab grown meat accomplishes that alongside the taste of fat
Well it’s clear vegetarian food and the substitutes aren’t cutting it. People still want fried chicken, pork chops, meatballs, etc.
Until we get to a point where literally the only difference between a lab grown filet mignon and a grass fed one is cost, people will be raising animals for mass slaughter.
There are plenty of people who are difficult to convince to reduce their meat consumption using vegetarian food and meat substitutes alone. Providing choices like this will make it easier to get more folks to reduce meat consumption or go vegetarian.
It's also about health. Every good vegan meat replacementnis ultra processen food. It's also easier in general to have a balanced diet if you include meat.
I've been vegetarian for 2 years now but as soon as this technology is generally available I'm going to eat these products so happily.
Meat substitutes are a nice alternative to have but they're nowhere near the real thing. And you can only have lentils so many days in a row.
This technology, once improved and using a better growth medium, literally has no downside. I can understand people might not want it for themselves but I'm sure there's a sizable market in meat that doesn't come from the hell that is modern factory farming (or the abbatoirs all animals end up in irrespective of the farm).
Chickens are incredibly efficient meat production machines. The feed conversion ration on chickens is 1.6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio#Poultry – that's incredible to consider, 1.6 pounds of feed turns into 1 pound of chicken!
Chickens don't just produce meat, they are self-contained meat growing machines with components to support that growth, including the ability to extract and filter nutrients from food with limited processing, a built-in enclosure for the process with self-healing abilities, a control system to deliver nutrients periodically and maintain system temperature, control systems to create a balance of nutrients at the cellular level, resilient systems to deliver those nutrients, and on and on.
No lab will be as efficient in making chicken meat as a chicken is. And it's not because God got it right the first time around: chickens are human products, but a chicken is product that leverages all of the resilience, complexity, and power of a full organism.
(There are ethical questions about factory farming... but it should be noted that those are not environmental questions.)
Upvoted even if I strongly disagree because your provided so much good detailed info. Really should be different votes for agreement, interest, quality of argument etc.
That's like arguing hydroponics will never be more cosy-efficient than a greenhouse which will never be more cost-efficient than a garden. Because the former each uses more energy and speciality materials while the latter each can offer a more integrated ecosystem.
I'd you see it purely economically, the question is just a matter of inputs vs outputs. If you can take grain and circumvent the inefficiencies of a chicken (gets sick, grows feathers, grows bones, produces excrement, ...) and instead get the same nutrients more directly to produce meat of course it's more efficient. The question is just how much else is needed - energy, space, cost of producing the initial materials, harvesting time, ...
Not to mention moral implications that a vegetarian might care about or practical elements (can you grow it with flavour?; do you need less space?; ...).
That said, obviously its not going to touch the ubiquity of chickens anytime soon - eapecially in poorer countries - as the tech is high cost while you can start your own chicken coop with two eggs or chicka. But heated greenhouses are also not replacing tomato fields and yet they have a huge role in some regions of the world.
> but it should be noted that those are not environmental questions.
Aren’t some of the ethical questions connected to environmental ones? Instead of chicken feed could one produce something better?
industrial chicken farming also produces waste and consumes water. Together with noise and smell there are surely environmental impacts.
Also an investment in labgrown meats could bring the cost down and is potentially a good driver for innovation. Not only growing meat for consumption, but maybe skin or other more complex cell structures for transplants or other medical purposes.
Thanks for the introduction to the concept of Feed Conversion Ratio; that's a useful measure.
That led me to look for comparisons between FCR for poultry and cultured meat, and so far this report[1] seems informative.
Selected quotes from the report, as relevant to the topic of (land-use) efficiency:
"These results suggest that alternatives to the current mix of livestock production systems could substitute current animal products and substantially reduce the current agricultural land use footprint from food production."
"Although, the two most efficient products considered, i.e. imitation meat and insects, both come with consumer perception barriers, a shift towards poultry meat, eggs and milk was also found to offer land use and associated environmental benefits, of only slightly smaller magnitudes."
> that's incredible to consider, 1.6 pounds of feed turns into 1 pound of chicken!
I find that hard to believe. Corn is 86kcal/100g while chicken breast is 165kcal/100g (according to a quick Google search). So you're saying that a chicken is a machine that converts 137kcal from corn to 165kcal of meat, while ... living?
It doesn't just eat, it also drinks water. And while water is not something that has calories, by using it will break down, oxidize and produce different compounds that can hold an even bigger kcal than the initial compound (corn in this example) it started with. Isn't organic chemistry amazing?
I think that water is already accounted for in calorie calculations. 100g of corn is 19g of carbs (76kcal), 3g of protein (12kcal) and 1g of fat (9kcal - honestly I thought it was more fat). 100g of chicken breast is 3g of fat (30kcal) and 31g protein (124kcal) - and that's not even the most calorie-dense part of chicken (not a lot of fat)! I realize there's some discrepancy here (I guess nutrition isn't an exact science, there's variation in living beings, and different counting techniques (count fiber or not)), but the numbers roughly match.
Animal feed is a bit more complicated than just "corn". For example, the below source indicates poultry food is around 20% protein and 5% fat - significantly more than the numbers you cite for generic corn (which I assume is the sort of corn people eat, not animal feed).
They can also convert insects, maggots, grass, and a lot of other inedible things into food. That’s why we started keeping all of these animals in the first place. It’s just along the way we started using feed corn instead.
Feed conversion ratio is the wrong metric since you're forgetting about the energy required to grow the feed and transport it. The proper metric would be Joules in per gram of chicken out.
Since the lab grown chicken doesn't need bones or organs, there is already an efficiency gain there. You also don't don't need to maintain a chicken for months since this burger only takes a few days to grow.
Real chickens are currently more efficient, but that won't last forever as lab technology improves. Ideally, you just need a vertical farm that takes in electricity, organic feedstock, and some minerals and you should be able to get a better energy to meat conversion than an inefficient chicken that was cobbled together by blind luck.
It is nonsense. You can raise chicken on just grass/insects/leftovers. It's pretty much the most carbon neutral animal you can grow. Heck it's probably more carbon neutral than growing plants as you need fertilizer. It serve as pest control, source of eggs and meat.
The conversion ratio is under 1.0 for energy and feed if you live on a small piece of land and the chickens can free range and forage for bugs plus table scraps.
Sounds great! While I have been gradually reducing my meat intake. I still love it too much to totally give it up. This sounds like a great solution.
I don’t think eating animals is unethical but I am not a fan of how industrial agriculture works. Especially how animals are treated.
This approach could solve all the problems. It is better for the animals and we don’t have to listen to the most crazy animals rights activists anymore.
> Perhaps the biggest hurdle, however, is the “yuck” factor. For many, the idea of lab-grown flesh remains unenticing, or even blasphemous.
I mean, cleanly grown in a nice lab: yuck! Damn it, I want mine from a chicken that wallowed in shit all its life in some tiny box together with thousands of others.
I personally feel better when I eat animal protein, however I try to supplement with a lot of plant-based protein. These are exciting developments in the food industry. I welcome a future in which meat can be eaten with lower environmental and ethical consequences.
Does the process use "chicken stem cells" or presumably cells from eggs as the input to the reaction? Wonder what is the ratio of stem cells to nutrients to make this chicken? For economic feasibility, I would guess it needs to be mostly nutrients.
Seems like there's another SF based company in this space too - Just Eat[1]
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 193 ms ] threadChickens come from eggs, which come from other chickens.
Chickens do not come from a laboratory.
Although, that is exactly what Perdue would do
There's a reason people use existing "technically incorrect" product names to refer to replacement products like this. It's so people who are used to consuming the original products see the replacement as a replacement, on level footing with the original.
Almost no one is going to replace dairy milk with soy bean-flavoured water, and chicken patties with chicken-flavoured burgers. The latter sound like dodgy knock-offs and people don't want to put that kind of thing in their bodies.
Also, "chicken-flavored burger" isn't really accurate to what this is. It may be lab-grown, but it's still meat. A "chicken-flavored burger" sounds like a vegetarian patty with chicken-like seasoning and flavours.
I wonder how similar these fibers are to actual chicken/beef. My understanding is that these vat-grown meats are essentially just compressed globs of cells, with no real structure
There may also be some differences in complexity between the process involved for cultured beef versus cultured poultry, but even if the difference is 10x, this is the kind of reduction in costs that tends to point toward a technology actually becoming feasible in the mainstream.
It's quite possible that the global meat industry will look very different another seven years from now.
I have seen ground chicken, griddled or grilled, called a chicken burger.
I'm firmly against this nomenclature, but I suppose these places are set in their old ways for some reason :)
Before moving to the US I always thought it was the style of bun that made it a 'burger', whereas if you put it between two pieces of sliced bread it would be a 'sandwich'.
I wonder whether there's some genetic variation that causes some of us to be revolted by it, like some people who can't stand the taste of cilantro or Brussels sprouts.
Like the people who work there. If you had compunction, you would lose it quick, or else you wouldn’t last long
Many people have shown an extraordinary lack of compunction in doing things far worse than factory farming (from the viewpoint of human-centric ethics at least), e.g Auschwitz, Srebrenica, Sinjar
See e.g. this review:
https://yaleglobalhealthreview.com/2016/01/25/a-call-to-acti...
- https://m.dw.com/en/europes-meat-industry-is-a-coronavirus-h...
- https://m.dw.com/en/germany-meat-industry-conditions/a-54033...
- https://m.dw.com/en/germanys-exploited-foreign-workers-amid-...
In the US the Food Megacorps had to weigh to shut down due to COVID related incidents in order to keep their supply chains from falling apart, and make sure meat was present when everyone was panic buying or restructure; in the end they just accepted that local poor and (mainly) immigrant labour deaths are an inherent extranality and an unavoidable part of the total calculus of getting the economics of factory farming to work [0]. Some even created a betting pool on how many would contract COVID in the processing plants, it's really fucking sick but an apt reflection of the Global Food Industry as whole. [1]
Fortunately, CSA memberships and community gardens sold out in record numbers this year, which is the only thing to take solace from and I hope it persists from now on.
I've personally reduced my protein consumption significantly to last year, and really mainly ate eggs and salmon that I had frozen from last years harvest. I ate chicken once or twice every week and usually made soup from kombu/katsubushi when I used up the bones.
0: https://modernfarmer.com/2020/06/families-of-covid-19-meatpa...
1: https://www.salon.com/2020/11/21/tyson-foods-managers-bet-on...
I'm no biologist or environmental scientist. To my naive understanding, it's going to be a good thing. It means that we'll meddle with the animals less, reduce the environmental impact, and also make high-quality, fresh meat more accessible.
No more Chef Ramsay proffering a piece of filet mignon and saying, "Now, this, is the Rolls-Royce of steak".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1oSqI4jnTM
We're still arguing if GMOs will be toxic to humans in the long term, and now we want to grow a whole chunk of animal in a lab, and proclaim nothing's wrong with it?
And lab-grown meat should also use fewer hormones, reducing human intake of animal hormones.
Lab-produced milk will be another important product.
Our species is slowly entering the bio-tech stage. How will daily life change?
I predict engineered mites that clean your home at night, consuming or carrying away every speck of dust. They will clean furniture, beds, pillows, and mattresses. By out-competing common dust mites, they will prevent many cases of childhood asthma.
Large-scale deployment of mites will collect pollution dust from cities. They will remove the metal nanoparticles from vehicle brakes that trigger asthma in children who grow up near highways. They will collect the persistent lead dust that accumulated in cities while leaded gasoline was in use, reducing childhood exposure to lead thereby boosting intelligence and reducing crime for the next generation. They will remove the microplastics that steadily fall from our synthetic clothing, food packaging, equipment, carpets, and building materials. The health problems of microplastics are still unknown. They may be the cause of declining male fertility.
Instead of complaining about vaccines and 5G, ignorant people will complain about the pheromones used to control mites. They'll say things like, "I'm sick because of the pheromones!" as the mites remove pollution that actually would make them sick.
Clothing fibers will be grown in a lab. Cashmere will become nearly as cheap as nylon. Once you've worn a cashmere outfit, cotton will feel like something a caveman would wear.
Washing machines will have different enzyme options for different kinds of materials. For example, you will buy clothes made with fiber X and use detergent X which dissolves everything except fiber X. Washers won't need heat or mechanical abrasion, so clothes can last longer or be made more cheaply while still lasting long enough.
No more brushing, just chew a dental candy once a day. It has bacteria that consumes plaque & tartar and viruses that kill acid-producing mouth bacteria.
Dynamic balancing of intestinal fauna will solve a myriad of undiagnosed chronic health problems. Also no more farts. I also predict a pill that will make feces emerge as small smooth fragrance-free pebbles. Paper consumption will plummet, but that won't affect the environment because paper fibers will already be grown in a vat, using sugars made by algae. Sugar is the feedstock of the world's industry. Algeria becomes the world's leading producer of sugar. Climate change is reversed by the adoption of a sugar-based concrete.
Data storage will become DNA-based. All of Google's data will fit in a drop of DNA preservative. Copying data will be cheap. But reading is slow, with throughput scaling with the number of reader chips. Data theft is done with mosquito drones that literally suck data juice. Surveillance is done with "tick" robots that record their sensor data to a DNA sac.
Humans will find an ancient DNA-based data archive in a colony of sea creatures in a deep sea trench. It contains a copy of Wikipedia from a civilization that evolved from squid many millions of years ago. They reached bio-tech stage and then disappeared completely. We prepare our own data archive...
Edit: it says in the article: “ 96% lower greenhouse gas emissions “
Here we see a journalist in its natural habitat, trying to foster a sense of outrage where none at all exists, in the hopes of luring its prey to share the article. If it succeeds, it will be rewarded with eyeballs aplenty, which, in the cold harsh winter, will prove critical to the success of its offspring.
"some animal rights activists[who?] argue it perpetuates an unhealthy obsession with eating animals."
I'd like to see a source on which "animal rights activists" this journalist is referring to. PETA? Random Twitter users?
You can find a small minority against literally anything if you go scrounging.
I've only been vegan for about 2 year now, but my current view is that meat is just gross. Being lab-grown only solves some ethical aspects, but is still gross.
Yes, agree that maybe some vegans would go back to eating meat if it was lab-grown. But my guess is that most vegans (anecdotal going from the ones that I know) would not eat lab-grown meat, just like people in general probably wouldn't eat lab-grown human meat. I mean, if human meat is 'no-go', why would animal meat be ok?
This is all from the perspective of being vegan for ethical reasons. If someone is vegan only for health or environmental reasons, then maybe they won't care so much. But my experience is that people that go vegan for health/environment quickly change to be more ethically focused.
> Cells taken from “source” chickens are cultured in a laboratory
And then there is also the discussion whether lab-grown meat actually resolves the ethical issues. I mean, in order to grow the meat the lab has to initially source some cells from animals. Any vegan for ethical reasons would oppose that.
Also, no - vegans for ethical reasons don't necessarily have to oppose sourcing cells from animals. For some it would be enough if the sourcing was done cruelty-free. But you're right that the ethical issue is still there and I'm certain that some people will be still opposed to that.
Ehh, I'm not so sure after having worked at a highly acclaimed Vegetarian/Vegan restaurant; they are both so calorie and fat deficient that they devour anything highly processed with as much saturated fats.
Which when solely looking at this from a chef's lens, and not the absurd typical Silicon Valley froth money-grab that lab grown meat is, it really projects itself out as a bad solution to a problem no one really expects to solve with their product. It diverts a lot of money into certain startups and makes for good Marketing and PR, but I've had impossible burgers and never really wanted to try it again as its something that never stood out as a better product. Burgers are such low hanging fruit, too; try making a stroganoff from tempe or seitan, its horrible if you've ever had the real thing.
I can tell you you right now that Livestock Ag has a critical role that cannot be displaced when done correctly, ironically to be able to maintain soil viability in fields where heavy feeding crops like tomatoes, or brassicas have to be rotated with to maintain viable yields for organic and biodynammic farms. Something these vegans and vegetarians are entirely oblivious about since most have never worked a day on a farm in their life, yet think they're 'part of the solution.'
Lab grown meat is just another one of those panacea sounding things you'd expect would be the norm in the 21st century, like a flying car, but are entirely impractical and only used to divert resources from more impactful things, like Farmer Education outreach that tells them about the monetary gains to be had from growing sustainably/organically and using seaweed in their feed to offset CH4 emission, and how to build sheds/barns to use that for syngas production and compost.
Eat Just has raised $220 million since its inception [0], just think about the amount of progress towards those ends we could have made with just the funds that one startup has raised.
0: https://agfundernews.com/singapore-grants-eat-just-worlds-fi...
Kind of harsh. There are a lot of vegetarian farmers in India, who I'm sure are not presumptuous enough to think they are 'part of the solution'. For some meat eaters the idea of vegetarianism brings out strong reactions. If you are guilty just deal with it. People have their own reasons for being vegetarian and most don't judge and don't care.
Granted, but it must be noted how dire the situation is in India's Ag program and its why they're out there protesting in Dehli due to the Government threatening their subsidies/price guarantees to just survive. But, I agree, vegetarian diets are far more common due to poverty than ideology outside of most developed nations.
I don't have strong reactions as a carnivore (omnivore, really) I have them as a former farmer, chef and a person that has an obsession with how broken the World's food supply is and how it affects Humanity/Society and our Ecosystem as a whole.
The truth is that most vegetarianism/veganism isn't more ethical despite the rhetoric as most vegetables are grown using conventional Ag practices and tons of inputs, using migrant labour that often results in a significant maladies for them. Furthermore harvesting of anything but a small scale garden will ensure that many animals are killed in the process as Ag machinery like combines are constantly catching up animals in the process. This happened to me several times.
My first year of apprentice in Biodynamic Ag was really eye-opening and even though that is the most holistic form of sustainable Agriculture, and often a mainstay for more affluent vegetarians and vegans in the EU, you soon realize that that reliance on solely a typical person's plant based diet has its own dire consequences--massive water use, contaminated soil due to pesticide usage and soil nutrient depletion to keep up with demand.
Whereas an omnivore diet can acquire those essential amino acids, fats, and proteins from a relatively low-impact and sustainable sources like chicken eggs.
In short, their is no perfect diet and a plant based one has lots of unintended consequences that go beyond just the person who chooses to be one. Obscuring the facts behind rabid and uninformed ideology isn't going to change that.
(not a representative sample of vegans in any cultural, demographic, or ideological group; does not necessarily reflect all global vegan public opinion)
However, this would depend heavily on how many animals, if any, are harmed to produce it. Lots of vegans won't eat the impossible burger and don't consider it vegan because one of the chemicals in it was tested on rats before FDA approval, even though the number of animals harmed is O(1) - i.e., the marginal amount of animals harmed from eating an impossible burger is 0. I'm vegan and think that view is idiotic but whatever.
I think there are two different categories of vegetarians, the one who do it for moral reasons and the ones who do it because meat is kinda icky.
For the first category, if the meat is produced in an ethical way (lab grown), then eating it is no problem. But lab grown meat is just the same as real meat so if you didn't want to eat it before, why would you want to eat the lab grown version?
A 1-3 split between the two categories seems to plausible as far as I can tell.
What are fish made of where you live?
The story I’ve heard from CSAs with ethically raised animals is that they all have stories of former vegetarians ordering meat from them, exclusively. So there’s at least a little flex in the other direction.
Or, you know, the journalist did their job and contacted relevant interested parties for comment, and included their perspective for the benefit of readers who would look for that perspective.
That sounds about right. Even chicken nuggets and chicken patties "made from chicken" are an entirely recreated textured product made from chicken slurry from a blender, soy protein, binding agents, water, and seasonings.
I'm not even remotely surprised they're able to create a lab-grown "chicken patty". I'm honestly not even sure what the difference would be between this and a 100% soy protein version, in terms of taste and texture?
This "chicken burger" is, of course, nothing like an actual chicken breast or thigh. There's a reason it has to be breaded and fried, to mask the total lack of any real meat texture whatsoever.
In Germany Burger King sells plant based nuggets. Barely a difference, we recently ordered both Chicken and Plant based nuggets, maybe the chicken one still had a bit more structure. But to be honest, one drowns them in sauce anyway. Probably will go for plant based ones in the future.
Wouldn't it have been better to just taste the meat patty without such strong flavors to mask any weirdness? If I was eating the first lab-grown chicken burger, I think I'd want to try it as plain as possible first (i.e. bun and maybe not much else).
Either way I'm happy about the progress. Maybe lab grown meat will stand a better chance of eliminating factory farming than plant based meats.
it is the energy needed to consume it that people enjoy the distinction of, compared to substitutes which also compromise somewhat (less than in prior years) on taste and texture
lab grown meat accomplishes that alongside the taste of fat
Until we get to a point where literally the only difference between a lab grown filet mignon and a grass fed one is cost, people will be raising animals for mass slaughter.
Meat substitutes are a nice alternative to have but they're nowhere near the real thing. And you can only have lentils so many days in a row.
This technology, once improved and using a better growth medium, literally has no downside. I can understand people might not want it for themselves but I'm sure there's a sizable market in meat that doesn't come from the hell that is modern factory farming (or the abbatoirs all animals end up in irrespective of the farm).
Chickens are incredibly efficient meat production machines. The feed conversion ration on chickens is 1.6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio#Poultry – that's incredible to consider, 1.6 pounds of feed turns into 1 pound of chicken!
Chickens don't just produce meat, they are self-contained meat growing machines with components to support that growth, including the ability to extract and filter nutrients from food with limited processing, a built-in enclosure for the process with self-healing abilities, a control system to deliver nutrients periodically and maintain system temperature, control systems to create a balance of nutrients at the cellular level, resilient systems to deliver those nutrients, and on and on.
No lab will be as efficient in making chicken meat as a chicken is. And it's not because God got it right the first time around: chickens are human products, but a chicken is product that leverages all of the resilience, complexity, and power of a full organism.
(There are ethical questions about factory farming... but it should be noted that those are not environmental questions.)
I'd you see it purely economically, the question is just a matter of inputs vs outputs. If you can take grain and circumvent the inefficiencies of a chicken (gets sick, grows feathers, grows bones, produces excrement, ...) and instead get the same nutrients more directly to produce meat of course it's more efficient. The question is just how much else is needed - energy, space, cost of producing the initial materials, harvesting time, ...
Not to mention moral implications that a vegetarian might care about or practical elements (can you grow it with flavour?; do you need less space?; ...).
That said, obviously its not going to touch the ubiquity of chickens anytime soon - eapecially in poorer countries - as the tech is high cost while you can start your own chicken coop with two eggs or chicka. But heated greenhouses are also not replacing tomato fields and yet they have a huge role in some regions of the world.
Just add some garlic and rosemary genes and voila, herb flavored chicken that needs no marinating!
Aren’t some of the ethical questions connected to environmental ones? Instead of chicken feed could one produce something better?
industrial chicken farming also produces waste and consumes water. Together with noise and smell there are surely environmental impacts.
Also an investment in labgrown meats could bring the cost down and is potentially a good driver for innovation. Not only growing meat for consumption, but maybe skin or other more complex cell structures for transplants or other medical purposes.
That led me to look for comparisons between FCR for poultry and cultured meat, and so far this report[1] seems informative.
Selected quotes from the report, as relevant to the topic of (land-use) efficiency:
"These results suggest that alternatives to the current mix of livestock production systems could substitute current animal products and substantially reduce the current agricultural land use footprint from food production."
"Although, the two most efficient products considered, i.e. imitation meat and insects, both come with consumer perception barriers, a shift towards poultry meat, eggs and milk was also found to offer land use and associated environmental benefits, of only slightly smaller magnitudes."
[1] - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221191241...
I find that hard to believe. Corn is 86kcal/100g while chicken breast is 165kcal/100g (according to a quick Google search). So you're saying that a chicken is a machine that converts 137kcal from corn to 165kcal of meat, while ... living?
I think that water is already accounted for in calorie calculations. 100g of corn is 19g of carbs (76kcal), 3g of protein (12kcal) and 1g of fat (9kcal - honestly I thought it was more fat). 100g of chicken breast is 3g of fat (30kcal) and 31g protein (124kcal) - and that's not even the most calorie-dense part of chicken (not a lot of fat)! I realize there's some discrepancy here (I guess nutrition isn't an exact science, there's variation in living beings, and different counting techniques (count fiber or not)), but the numbers roughly match.
https://extension.uga.edu/publications/detail.html?number=C9...
Yes, I can. Try to have a chicken raised only with corn, and don't give it water. See how long it will last.
Since the lab grown chicken doesn't need bones or organs, there is already an efficiency gain there. You also don't don't need to maintain a chicken for months since this burger only takes a few days to grow.
Real chickens are currently more efficient, but that won't last forever as lab technology improves. Ideally, you just need a vertical farm that takes in electricity, organic feedstock, and some minerals and you should be able to get a better energy to meat conversion than an inefficient chicken that was cobbled together by blind luck.
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1559
I don’t think eating animals is unethical but I am not a fan of how industrial agriculture works. Especially how animals are treated.
This approach could solve all the problems. It is better for the animals and we don’t have to listen to the most crazy animals rights activists anymore.
I struggle to imagine a more disgusting way to obtain meat than getting it off a dead animal.
Would much rather eat that than the alternative
That's what nobody mentions about this. Until FBS is replaced in the culture medium, this method will be much worse than farming chickens.
I mean, cleanly grown in a nice lab: yuck! Damn it, I want mine from a chicken that wallowed in shit all its life in some tiny box together with thousands of others.
Seems like there's another SF based company in this space too - Just Eat[1]
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/12/02/eat-jus... -