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> A handful of states, including Florida and Alabama, have banned or are considering bans on the creation and sale of the alternative protein.

Ouch. Red states are pro-deregulation, until laissez-faire innovation offends their beliefs.

> To make their product, the food company’s scientists collect living cells from Pacific salmon and grow them in cell cultivators that mimic the inside of a wild fish—controlling factors like temperature, pH and nutrients, per their website. After harvesting them, the team incorporates plant-based ingredients to make the hunk of cells taste, feel and look like salmon fillets.

So... Like a wild fish, but with NO IMMUNE SYSTEM WHATSOEVER, which requires your sterilization protocols to be effectively perfect.

NASA has tried and failed to get their sterilization protocols to perfection levels for Mars landers, and consistently failed despite using basically zero organic materials.

We're going to cook this stuff, yes, sure (aren't we?)... but the squick is rational. And the problem gets inherently worse at larger scale production.

From https://www.wildtypefoods.com/our-salmon :

> "We harvest the cells from our tanks and integrate them with a few plant-based ingredients..."

Gross. This should not legally be allowed to be marketed as salmon, at all.

Do you have a better name than Lab-grown salmon, that describes what this product is to the average consumer?
Hey, I just went to Kann to try it. It was very… smooth
We’ve worked hard to ensure that cultivated salmon cells are the first ingredient in our salmon saku (after water). After we harvest our cells, we integrate them with plant components to create the desired texture and flavor of a traditional salmon fillet.

In addition to water and cell-cultivated salmon, our saku contains fats derived from canola, sunflower seeds, and algae, soy (an allergen), potato starch, konjac (a root vegetable), beta-carotene and lycopene (natural colors), carrageenan (an extract from red seaweed), and natural flavors.

Hmm. They also compare their place to a microbrewery but I can't find any photos of the actual production process, generally a point of pride for a microbrewery. It sounds less like "lab grown meat" than literally "lab grown cells" + other stuff to mimic aspects of meat texture/flavor/color.

https://www.wildtypefoods.com/faqs/why-are-there-other-ingre...

Lab grown meat solves a ton of issues: animal welfare, environment (both CO2 and clearing land for agriculture), food safety, and potentially cost too. It can’t come fast enough.
I'm already picky with processed food. This takes the cake on the highest form of processed available.

Hard no from me, not even once.

This seems more akin to fermentation
Recent HN comment on "Beyond Meat headed to Chapter 11 bankruptcy", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44935141#44935280

  About 10 years ago I became more aware that reducing my consumption of meat was good for the world. This was good for Beyond Meat’s prospects.

  About 5 years ago I became more aware that reducing my consumption of ultra processed food was good for me. This was very bad for Beyond Meat’s prospects.
(comment deleted)
Educate yourself. This is nothing more than Richard Berman's propaganda to allow more bullshit in this country.

Big tobacco, drunk driving, union busting, questioning global warming, the list goes on and this man is likely responsible for some of the most detrimental misinformation campaigns in modern history.

https://sentientmedia.org/big-meat-rebrand-disinformation/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Organizational_Rese...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Berman_(musician)#Hiatus...

Salmon farming is causing huge environmental damage in Tasmania.

https://goodfish.org.au/species/atlantic-salmon-tassal/

They've taken what was a pristine harbour untouched by humans and turned it into a sewer for salmon effluent. There is a prehistoric fish, the maugean skate, that is likely to go extinct if the salmon farming continues.

Good - humans need to stop killing things, stop burning things to make money.
Isn't obvious they should first offer exotic food.

I mean, 'Whale' meat or 'Caviar' or 'Foie Gras' instead of ordinary 'Salmon' would find far more market.

Why would you think that? It's much more urgent to replace commonly eaten foods like beef, chicken and fish than foods that for most people are little more than a curiosity.

With that said, vegan caviar has existed for years make of algae, and it's honestly not far from the real thing.

I think the world would be a better place if everyone went vegan.

However, I’m not convinced that vegan activism via pointing out that many people’s behaviours are at odds with their stated ethical preferences is particularly effective.

I suspect this is because many vegan activists make the assumption that people have ethical preferences which then drive their behaviour. For many (most?) people, though, I think they act the way that feels good to them and then come up with justifications for it post-hoc, even if those justifications are illogical.

As such, I live in hope that lab-grown meat will be tasty and cheap enough that people switch across and stop consuming animal products, which will give humanity the space to look back and see the abhorrent nature of animal agriculture for what it is and ban it outright.

With any luck, we’ll view our current generation’s treatment of animals with the same confusion we feel when we consider our forebears’ tolerance of slavery.

Bring on the cultured salmon!

> As such, I live in hope that lab-grown meat will be tasty and cheap enough that people switch across and stop consuming animal products, which will give humanity the space to look back and see the abhorrent nature of animal agriculture for what it is and ban it outright.

Agreed. Replicated meat is the ideal.

"I shall try some of your burned replicated bird meat!"

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/2d56c6ef-8b4d-4d7b-926f-e6c4c47...

Salmon is next to chicken as the highest calories out: calories in for farming. They're efficient

I suspect lab grown salmon is a bad idea on those economic grounds.

A recently bought salmon meat tray revealed hundreds of parasites oozing off its surface.

K, no thanks,

It is important to not that nuts and dark chocolate usually fit the ultra processed (or sometimes just processed) food definition. This poses real problems in studies because they are roughly a net benefit health wise so authors have the choice between excluding them from the study (which misleadingly worsens claims about processed food being bad) or keeping them in (misleadingly softening how bad they are).