run from it, dread it, beans arrive all the same
Idk if you read the article or not, but most of this can be attributed to the fact that our grid runs on emitters. Fix that and it goes down significantly.
Also, you really shouldn’t be rooting against this tech, its anti-materialist. The quickest way to solve the ethical issues of meat production is with this tech. No, you will never convince America (or any country in the world) to be 100% vegan without full replacements of all meat varieties. This line of thinking that you can persuade all people to stop eating meat is idealism, not materialism. A reduced price and easier manufacture of lab grown meat will accomplish that, however, and I think we’re likely to see this tech being more popular in places like China, as they have taken a focus on it in their 5 year plans.
This paper also ruled out altering the cells of these proteins to be more resistant to endotoxins natively… which is absurd, of course its possible that can be resolved through selecting the most fit cells, and that is another part of the bulk of CO2 emissions mentioned by this paper going away.
I’d also like to point out that this research is not lab tested and is not peer reviewed, they simply amalgamated and indexed other papers and looked for amounts reported. A proper investigation into this would require field work and consistent equipment. Its kinda wild how much of a media footprint this non-peer-reviewed article with no original research has… This is probably the cheapest kind of research paper to commission, I wouldn’t be surprised if the meat industry was astroturfing this.
Believing that this tech will solve the environmental and ethical problems of animal agriculture is anti materialist. Cultured meat is almost certainly going to be way more resource intensive to produce than plant based alternatives. There’s no way around it.
You also don’t need to convince anyone to go vegan. The world at large either has to wind down it’s reliance on animal agriculture or face the environmental devastation that comes with it. Remember culture develops as a consequence of material conditions. It’s anti materialist to think otherwise.
For the record, the CPC disagrees with you and their body consists of thousands of engineers and historically cares a lot about food production. Though they are focusing on different meat products, namely eggs and pig skin. Eggs imo are far more likely to succeed here in the near future based on the research I’ve read in China. I remember researching how much funding this is getting in each country and China was funding this research on a scale of 10-1 over the West.
I’m open to being proven wrong but I just don’t think it’s viable. It’s not as simple as throwing a few cells in a bioreactor.
To make this commercially viable you would have to develop a very efficient supply chain to produce all the complex nutrients and hormones necessary to grown animal tissues in vitro. You would have to do this without relying on the byproducts of animal agriculture as is currently the case. Most of the research I’ve read kind of hand waves away that issue.
Next, you have to culture animal tissues at an industrial scale. This is the challenge some researchers are trying to address. I think this may be possible but it’s unlikely to be very efficient. You still need to “feed” your cells over a long period of time as muscle tissue does not grow quickly, even when stimulated with hormones.
Lastly, if you somehow find solutions to all those problems I think it’s unlikely you’ll have a product that closely imitates the taste an texture of meat. Animal tissues are complex. They contain a variety of cell types and extra cellular proteins that no attempt at lab grown meat has come close to replicating. I think it’s next to impossible for them to get cells to grow into a complex tissue like they would in vivo. So instead you’ll be left trying to cobble together a cell based mush full of antibiotics and growth hormones into something that looks edible.
The alternative is just using plant protein as a basis for meat alternatives. That’s something the CPC is also supporting. Personally I’m already pretty impressed by what’s available now. Improving it to a point where people will be comfortable giving up meat seems much more viable in my opinion than lab grown meat.
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There’s no way around it.
I am not totally convinced with that part, but the rest I would critically support.
If you grow plant matter in labs or hydroponics with usage of sunlight and water nutrition enhancement you will be better than lab meat, but there are plenty of plants which in the wild are less good. However there are also plenty which are good enough and widely available in the soils we currently got.
Your point will at least for 15-30 years be totally true (since energy production for both lab meat and hydroponics is on average bad).
I really think “materialist” and “idealist” outside the concept of 19th century debates around Hegel are thought-terminating cliches.
Yeah, the common usage on this site is
good realistic idea = materialism
bad unrealistic idea = idealism
From what I see:
PR campaigns to try to “convince people with ideas” to change their ways is definitely more on the idealistic side.
Tech that fundamentally changes the means of production of a fundamental commodity in local, regional, national, and international markets seems more on the materialist side.
I agree that those would be good, commonsense ways of using those words. It’s also not what Marx meant by them. So when you throw them around on a Marxist forum, it gives a weight to what you’re saying, but without actually referencing anything Marx said.
Do you see how this could create issues?
I’m glad someone’s said it finally.
I swear you can have the worst takes and if you say “material conditions,” then hexbear will upvote you 50 times.
You want materialism? The current level of meat consumption in the US is propped up by exploitation of migrant labor and an extractive mode of agriculture which is unsustainable and relies on external inputs like fertilizer which are themselves the product of other extractive industries.
We could dramatically reduce meat consumption without any technological changes by:
–Paying meat packers a living wage
–Organize Whole Foods and Wal-Mart, driving up meat cutters’ wages
–Stop subsidizing meat
–Stop subsidizing feed crops
–Switch to permacultural farming practices
Banking on a tech breakthrough is ideological in the sense that it protects the status quo and marshals venture capital into mostly speculative assets.
Additionally, convincing people to go vegetarian is not idealist. Mass media has a huge effect, and using it to encourage vegetarianism is a material process. So either, we can take material measures to encourage vegetarianism, or you don’t believe we’ll ever wield power. Based on your defense of lab meat (a vc grift similar to tech start-ups), I think it’s the latter.
Theres a lot to break down here, but no, people like eating meat and that is a material fact. If you’re hoping to exterminate the meat industry as it exists today, then you need enhancements in technology. No one really uses horses and buggies for transporting goods anymore, that has been replaced by trains, cars, and trucks. Technological change is one of the greatest examples of material conditions being altered. And as time goes on, tech generally makes us less reliant on animals for labor. And as it stands, meat consumption is rising despite the increase in vegans.
And I’m not ‘banking on tech breakthrough’. Graphs show the price is going down and you can buy a dish of cultivated chicken in China for 15-25 USD. Its very reasonable to assume the ~2030 estimate for mass produced cultivated eggs by the CPC to be genuine. The 5 year plan even suggests the amount of cultivated meat produced will increase by 50% by 2025.
If you’re hoping to exterminate the meat industry as it exists today, then you need enhancements in technology.
Hey, I think you might want to read my post a little bit closer.
If you’re just gonna post zingers, I’m done here.
I don’t think you’ve ever met someone from a nomadic-pastoralist culture before if you think veganism/vegetarianism can be encouraged through mass media. Mongols for example have been following a version of buddhism that discourages eating meat for almost a millennial now and their modern diet still consists largely of meat. The only thing that has decreased meat consumption for them is 20th century modernization of agriculture.
Switch to permacultural farming practices
Even the biggest proponents of permaculture maintain that it’s very difficult to do at scale, and that no such large scale solution exists at the moment. Hoping for large scale switchover to permaculture is just as idealistic as hoping for lab grown meat to become economical.
Getting your average suburbanite to eat less meat is different from asking someone whose whole life centers around stock animals. I dont expect everyone to go vegan after an ad campaign, but the UK, where the mass media approach has been tried, has more than twice as many vegetarians per capita than the US.
I agree with the problem of permaculture at scale. Right now the bleak reality is that there is no scalable alternative to extractive agriculture. that said, grain and vegetable farming is far more efficient than meat farming in most cases. The exception is where you’re using animals as part of a grasslands management regime (where the grassland is either yeilding meat or nothing), and i actually do want to see an expansion of Bison farming to that end. I agree with you that that was an idealistic take on my part tho. I think my point about changing farming policy to encourage more efficient crops still stands though, do you agree?
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“hello mr us government, there are 20 bison”
but the UK, where the mass media approach has been tried, has more than twice as many vegetarians per capita than the US.
I wonder how much of this is due to immigration from South Asia, where the rates of vegetarianism are higher.
this is a really good question, and I think one that is both necessary to a proper materialist understanding of the issue, as well as a good example of how culture is a material process.
The Communist Party of China is by far the biggest funder of this research, are you saying they are a VC grift?
No, they’re the funders, they’re the mark.
If you think you’ve outsmarted the CPC I would think again
Study Finds Scaling Up Production Using Existing Processes Highly Energy-Intensive
Immature technology found to be worse than mature technology.
This paper that isn’t peer reviewed, shares none of its data and is based on a weak hypothisis says beans are bad
:cope: anti
losers, bean gang stay winningMaybe lab grown just isn’t efficient. I’d be down with Western countries stop subsidising meat and subsidising food to the poor.
Not to discredit the data, but I need to point out how gross the lead author is.
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Did u even read the article? They literally just said that lab grown stuff isn’t inherently greener than animal products, which is such a fucking nothingburger of a statement.
I did read the article. My conclusion was that I should go eat some beans.
bean up, brother
Lab grown meat is a pipedream. Fundamental chemical engineering reality prevents it from scaling to extent needed for production of commodity protein. As this article says, best case it is orders of magnitude worse than beef, which is itself orders of magnitude worse than beans or other plant based proteins. Also, it fails as a way to avoid animal exploitation because fetal bovine serum vampired out of cow fetuses is still required to make the stuff.
The real product being sold by these lab protein companies and institutes is twofold: assuaging the guilt associated with carnism, and financial speculation per anything on the stock market.
This article discusses the immense practical challenges of scaling up lab meat production https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/
I have actually discussed this paper at length before on this site, but I think I’ll go for the simple punch. Wood was the director for Pfizer in their Animal Health division, which supplies the American meat industry with antibiotics and is actively creating a major crisis for global health (antibiotic resistant bacteria) for the sake of profit. Perhaps that is why he likes writing negatively about something that could slash his bottom line
And being the director for a division this big and important in a pharma company means you are, very strictly, a shithead ghoul. If you look into him further, he has significant investments in anything beef-farming related.
http://lifesciencessummit.co.nz/speaker/paul-wood-ao/ more info on this guy, who is a literal ghoul
This argument isn’t convincing. By that guy’s own bio, he supports the CSIRO protein mission in Australia. Read the bio you linked and follow up - there are a whole bunch of non beef, non conventional proteins listed in his resume.
Anyway, the whole problem with lab grown meat from a chemical engineering perspective is that it has to be grown under clean room conditions like a pharmaceutical. Companies and people with pharmaceutical experience, precursor products, bioreactors would all benefit from lab grown meat taking off.
Find a bean salesman that is worried about the advent of lab meat and I’ll buy this line of argument. If you’ve discussed the substance of that article elsewhere please link.
The team used the emerging ‘net protein contribution’ concept to measure the quality and quantity of protein created by cattle compared to the protein they eat, looking at both grain-fed cattle and grass-fed cattle that may eat small amounts of grain.
They found typical Australian grain-fed beef production systems contribute almost twice the human- edible protein they consume, while grass-fed systems produce almost 1600 times.
It means the beef sector now has benchmark figures for the protein it contributes to the food supply, which will help track improvements and compare efficiency to other protein production systems when they are assessed using the method.
Red meat is often criticised as having a very large footprint, taking up land that could be used to grow crops for human food, or eating grain that humans could be eating instead, otherwise known as the ‘feed versus food debate’.
However, CSIRO livestock systems scientist Dr Dean Thomas said Australian beef production is efficient at converting both low quality protein in grains that humans can eat, as well as protein in grass that humans can’t eat, into high quality protein for human nutrition.
“Cattle are efficient upcyclers of grass and other feedstuffs not just in terms of the quality of protein they create. They contribute a greater amount of protein to our food system than is used in their production as well,” Dr Thomas said.
re: supporting beef farming
https://www.csiro.au/en/news/All/News/2021/December/CSIRO-sets-beef-benchmark-for-protein-production
their own roadmap even has a disproportionate increase in meat production, and much of their plant based funding is going straight into the mouths of that cattle
if you want to read my previous posts, you can search it, im not going to research everything for you.
Yes he is a shithead ghoul. But the people financing cultivated meat are also ghouls (effective altruists). I would also agree with what he’s saying here, having worked in a cultivatedeat company. The problem is we’re trying to grow single cells that don’t want to grow by themselves. They have no immune system, and no hormone production. So you have to supply those things exogenously, and run it in a sterile process. The Humbird report mentioned in the article on The Counter linked above does a good job of explaining it, I also tried to explain it in my own article, which is a top level comment.
More than 90% of the funding for lab grown meat comes from China not effective altruists. Similar to green energy, the effective altruists are just following in the wake of China
I apologize, I was not actually aware of China’s research into CM, my viewpoint thus far was mainly constrained to a western one.
But the people financing cultivated meat are also ghouls
And the Communist Party of China
I apologize, I was not actually aware of China’s research into CM, my viewpoint thus far was mainly constrained to a western one.
Yeah you can get a relatively small plate of cultivated chicken in hong kong/shenzhen area for 15-25 usd.
Even when you have single cells that want to grow by themselves like yeast its very hard to mantain a sterile process. Thats why lager became the most common beer type. It alows you to run bio reactors at very cold temperatures to give the desired yeast time to outcompete the others. And thus you need to spend less efort mantaining a sterile situation.
I cant imagine how hard is to mantain a sterile enviorment with meat cells.
Fundamental chemical engineering reality prevents it from scaling to extent needed for production of commodity protein
Some people I know in the general field and a PhD chemist and a factory process engineer I talked with do disagree with that a bit.
Something I do see as chance are future generation bioreactors in any case.
it fails as a way to avoid animal exploitation because fetal bovine serum vampired out of cow fetuses is still required to make the stuff.
That is true but can be substituted in the future.
The main points that help us now are changes in consumption, resilience and an end of capitalism.
Some people I know in the general field and a PhD chemist and a factory process engineer
For what it’s worth, I have a PhD in chemical engineering
I do hope it is worth a good deal. I know that the field is too far away from my expertise for me to really get what is and isn’t possible so I have to heavily lean on people who do.
The cells still need to be supplied with growth factors, whether that comes from FBS or not. Producing growth factors in vitro also requires sterile, pharmaceutical grade production systems.
Chemical engineering or not, my belief is that fundamental biological reality will prevent it from being scalable, especially the problem of sterility.
That is a very good article, thanks for sharing. The humbird report was also what opened my eyes to the real situation, it’s a good read for anyone interested
This one you mean? https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bit.27848
Here is the full report: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348009195_Scale-Up_Economics_for_Cultured_Meat_Techno-Economic_Analysis_and_Due_Diligence/link/615c95df5a481543a887556f/download
Here is The GFIs response to humbird also, worth considering: https://gfi.org/cultivated/preliminary-review-of-humbird-report/
Thank you
Yes, I think that is the abridged version for publication, I’ll try and find the full version too
I wrote an article on my thoughts here: https://bim.boats/flaws-of-cm/ In short, I believe it’s basically impossible to do it at the right scale to make it cheap enough due to the requirement for growth factors (or cancerous cells) and for sterility.
Yeah I mean I don’t know why it wouldn’t be honestly. Mfers just don’t want to eat a damned bean huh
no more half measures walter
It probably would be if we just scaled up existing production methods but that’d seem unlikely because it’s just too expensive and difficult regardless of environmental impact. The goal has always been to find out how to do this in a cheap and scalable manner. That has proved very elusive though to my outsider’s understanding, certainly doesn’t seem to be an easy task. I hope they eventually do.
Yeah, if we can eventually get the carbon footprint down then great. I’m not against lab-meat in principle, but it’s probably not going to be the overnight climate savior that people are hoping for. Meanwhile there’s plenty of plant-based protein available in the here and now.
the lab grown meat thing is still so bizarre to me. Does meat actually taste good to people? I guess it must but it’s always been disgusting to me.
Just give me a bean patty on my dumb american burger, it’s fine and better than anything resembling meat
Meat is tasty, but a black bean burger piled high with fried onions, cheese and mayo is also a winner in my book.
yeah something must be wrong in my brain then. I can’t consume meat without feeling gross and it’s been like that since I was a child.
Eh, we’re all a little different. I honestly. I like carbs and oils, myself. Pastas, breads, rice. Granted, I’ve been cutting down on that myself. It would be nice to see a world where meat consumption would be drastically down. Heck, I keep waffling about going pescatarian within a few years.
If you talk to people, there are a lot of folks who grew up hating meat and get used to it because their parents make them or because it’s so ubiquitous that your “alternative” meals are often “bread and a juice box”
I enjoy vegetarian and bean based items, but they don’t taste like meat. Which makes sense since you don’t like meat. Still, what you’re portraying is a gross indifference(gross as in mass, not any judgement) to the fact that people have differences from your opinions/tastes.
I don’t like the taste of: celery, blue cheese, pickles, some other pickled items, a lot of sweet stuff, tabasco sauce, surcalose, sweet coconut (I like savory coconut though) and a number of other edible items. Do I think it’s crazy other people enjoy that stuff? No, because I realize other people exist, have different opinions, tastes, and priorities than I do.
My tastes do not make me superior to others; simply different. Stopped being shok0ed people aren’t you. You are neither the only person to exist, nor are you more important than others who exist. You are you, and I am me. And they are them. I am also not more important than any other existence, and neither are they.
oh my tastes make me inferior. I wish I could be like everyone else and it’s caused me immense distress my entire life
My apologies, I misinterpreted your tone. I didn’t want to give anyone a sense of isolation, but rather an acceptance of inclusion. We’re all weird in different ways, but we’re all weird togther in different ways.
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I’ve never had lab grown meat. I’ve had the normal sort of meat and I hate it, that’s what I meant.
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For me at least, there are very few foods that approach tasting as good as bacon or smoked beef.
Wow how surprising, it’s not like I’ve been saying for years that lab-grown meat is a gimmick or anything.
Mfers here on hexbear were even getting mad at me for saying that. This bazinga shit is never going to help. Just stop harming animals.
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Yeah whatever, let me know when they do it.
In the meantime, stop murdering animals.
‘I’ll eat lab-grown meat when it’s available’ is pretty much the ‘future carbon capture technology will solve climate change’ of animal welfare anyway (actually climate change too because it definitely affects that too)
It also reminds me of “if I won the lottery, I’d still come into work. You know, to keep busy”
Immediately I can see this was written by the comms director for the UC Davis ag/vet sciences department. UC Davis has one of the largest and most aggressive research programs oriented towards industrial livestock.
Please
and think about the basic logic behind this claim and who benefits from making it a story.
