> Then, suddenly, the nausea hit... The problem was not the flavor, not the texture, but the knowing. The Knowing. Knowing about the fat tank, about the sticky white substance...
I feel like squeamish people are probably not the best ones to write about novel meat products...
I'm pretty sure it's just the taste of meat that the author didn't like. My half-sister don't eat most meat for taste reasons, and the nausea after tasting beef the author describe sound exactly like her reactions.
I once ate a dog meat stew in South Korea. It was tasty, not very different from any other red meat like beef, lamb, or horse, though the spiciness of the stew may have muted any unfamiliar tastes. However, I had to psyche myself up to eat it, and once I was full and my cultural taboos came flooding back I did start to get queasy. There's a significant mental component to what we find appetizing. Most people aren't that far removed from the stereotypical picky eater, myself included, despite having eaten balut, live shrimp, and many other "exotic" foods.
It used to be that kids as young as five year old were made to kill small animals like bunnies and chickens as a learning experience, but a bunch of people found this problematic so it isn't as common anymore.
I would be fine with that, but I don't think it would be quite as effective as you think. I don't like hurting even bugs for no reason but still grew up eating our own raised cows and hunted meat and still do to this day. Atleast half of that I had a personal hand in the entire slaughtering and packing.
If anybody has even the smallest negative thought to eating meat these days, the very first internet search they do will bombard them with pictures of slaughter houses in the most negative light and animal abuse pictures. If that doesn't stop them eating meat itself, very few are going to be turned by a legit farming and slaughter practises.
My sister is vegan and it wasn't our slaughtering of animals that pushed her away from eating meat, it was the internet showing the worst of large corporate practises. For a long while she merely didn't eat corporate meat and only local or home grown or hunted meat.
Perhaps some do eat less meat as vlan0 suggested. Perhaps some don't change their habits, trying to cope with the mental burden.
> It was found that [slaughterhouse workers] have a higher prevalence rate of mental health issues, in particular depression and anxiety, in addition to violence-supportive attitudes. Furthermore, the workers employ a variety of both adaptive and maladaptive strategies to cope with the workplace environment and associated stressors. Finally, there is some evidence that slaughterhouse work is associated with increased crime levels. The research reviewed has shown a link between slaughterhouse work and antisocial behavior generally and sexual offending specifically.
People willingly turned a blind eye to concentration camps which killed millions of human beings in their back yards. Distraction, denial, and indifference are more comfortable reactions than horror.
People tend to seek the feeling of blamelessness when they should seek the condition of blamelessness. Often doing the right thing will make a person feel guiltier than doing the wrong one.
Genuinely, how the fuck can you believe that when people have personally slaughtered the meat they consume for most of human history?
My wife grew up in a country where people would still personally slaughter pigs to roast at major holidays. Didn’t keep her or any of her family from eating meat.
We eat far more meat now at a time when far far fewer people are personally slaughtering animals than ever before in human history, so I think the claim checks out.
People who kill animals themselves regularly are probably subsistence farmers who consider meat a luxury, and what's more, the way they killed them was probably nothing like the incredibly high volume processing that goes on in a modern slaughterhouse.
I definitely think that if most people had to visit a modern factory farm and see the life cycle of one of these animals, kill it and process it, they would probably be shocked at what is legal.
This statement is thrown around a lot, but it doesn't really check out. Per-capita meat consumption in most of the west is only around 66kg/year (increasing to 100-120kg/year for meat-heavy countries like Spain, Argentina, and the USA).
That's about one pig and a handful of birds - even many peasant populations could afford to raise that much meat each year. The well-off were consuming massively more meat that this throughout history. Not to mention the incredible quantities of fish consumed by coastal populations.
Records from Durham and Westminster cathedrals suggest monks were eating in excess of 400kg/year of meat and fish. Records from Italy in a similar period show labourers and even widows receiving in excess of 80kg/year of meat. And so on...
>Records from Durham and Westminster cathedrals suggest monks were eating in excess of 400kg/year of meat and fish.
I feel like I eat quite a lot of meat. And even I find that number rather suspect. Over a kilo a day? They did also do labour, but still that sounds extremely high even for pure carnivore diet of today... Or then there is some sort of significant waste.
It sadly doesn't go back further than the 1960s. If you select Western Europe, the number seems to be falling (back from almost 100kg, though). USA, not so much.
Note though that for what your parent describes, you'd want numbers to go even further back, then you could likely see the whole effect of post-WW2 boom; though WW2 itself would obviously also extremely skew the data in the 40s.
Most people in "developed" countries do not eat whole animals, but only selected parts of them.
So the number of dead animals per year needed to sustain a typical human is much greater.
For example someone who is a much more moderate meat eater than most, might eat at least half of their protein intake from vegetables, with the remainder from healthy chicken breast meat, eating around 1 kg of raw chicken breast per week, i.e. from 2 dead chicken.
That means 100 dead chicken per human per year, though it is likely that other less choosy humans would eat the thighs and a few other parts, so the 100 chicken would actually sustain between 2 and 3 humans for a year.
Right, but that's purely reflective of a shift in meat preferences - a single pig would provide the same amount of meat as your 100 chickens. And historically, everyone ate pork and beef, not chicken (chicken doesn't become a major source of meat until after WWII).
I’ll be honest, I’d lie my ass off if I was the author.
I don’t eat meat for ethical/health/climate reasons. You bet your ass I’m singing the praises of lab grown meat if I had that kind of platform. Instead, they used their voice to say how icky pretend meat is. It honestly pisses me off lol.
That's just plain lying. And when people actually tasted the meat they'd call your bluff. In fact I have to assume that many have tasted it and have noped out.
More than just calling your bluff they would be rightfully upset with you and also with what you represent. Activisits often fail to understand this and think that their "noble" goal justifies the means.
I've seen plenty of videos from slaughter houses, mostly ones activists use to point at the cruelty going on inside, but it never made me feel uncomfortable.
It never made me feel uncomfortable, either. But my feelings don't matter. Suffering is bad and should be prevented, whether I happen to feel bad about it or now.
Can you articulate why suffering should be prevented?
Going with a religious doctrine, the existence of an all-loving, all-seeing, all-powerful God in a world full of suffering should tell you that suffering is a good thing, for if it wasn't such a God would prevent it.
I felt a bit uncomfortable seeing carrots with their tops lopped off in a totally mechanical manner on a conveyor belt, or beetroots boiledalive before their corpses were pushed through razor-sharp blades to slice them up, or corn ripped off their husks, or tomatoes... tomatoes... oh man, I feel nauseous, I think I'm going to throw up.
You joke, but plants are alive and have feelings, just like everything else that is alive. They have the ability to communicate using ultrasound and they can pick up your brainwaves and respond to them.
There's a plant that can change the shape it grows its leaf to match what other plant is around them - that includes copying artificial plants. So it has to be possible for a plant to "see".
Have you ever seen a combine harvester kill animals sheltering in a crop during harvest, or considered how many animals are killed by the pesticides used in crop production?
It always amazes me how some vegans go into a frenzy over animals being slaughtered for meat while completely ignoring the bloodbath caused by farming practices used to produce vegan-friendly crops. Not to mention the pesticides that damage ecosystems and contaminate groundwater. The selective outrage and hypocrisy are jaw-dropping.
Dairy is a legit nightmare factory for the cattle involved.
Constant rape. Constant separation from off spring. Tons of hormones and medication to keep infections down.
They are so stressed physically and emotionally that their lifespans are 50% or lower of what they should be. Dairy cattle routinely just die from stress.
Its also insanely bad for the environment.
I grew up ranching and have seen dairy operations plenty of times. They're disgusting cruelty factories.
Every time we eat a snack or food that involves dairy, remember that it is completely unnecessary to include dairy.
I am not sure I buy that. Rape is intensely upsetting to humans, but that does not imply it is so upsetting to other animals. And dairy cows aren't usually impregnated through sex to my knowledge; they are artificially inseminated. I don't see evidence that cows find this upsetting.
It's unnecessary to bring in weak arguments when we have such strong arguments. Cows are distraught beyond measure when their calves are taken away.
I don't care what word we use. I'm interested in whether or not we have clear evidence the animals find it upsetting. And if so, is it upsetting in the way my cat finds taking her medication upsetting, or it is upsetting in the way humans find rape upsetting? Just having to hold the animal proves little.
Having to forcibly restrain an animal is clear evidence that they don't like it, otherwise I don't know what clear evidence you would accept. A good proxy for whether an animal likes something is when it shows aversive behavior around that thing!
The fact that your cat needs the medicine just means that the discomfort you are inflicting on your cat is ultimately with its best interest in mind. When we hurt an animal, or even kill one with its best interest in mind, we do it out of compassion.
When we forcibly impregnate an animal repeatedly and then take away it's calf (cows being viviparous animals, this causes them suffering), that is not in their best interest. Their suffering is not benefiting them, it benefits us.
"Our Daily Bread" is a very interesting documentary on modern industrial agriculture, just shows what happens, no commentaries whatsoever.
The last part shows the slaughterhouse process (at least live cow to half beef carcass anyway), fair warning you can't unsee that but imo more people could benefit from knowing how their burgers are made.
From the "Dirty Jobs" TV serie: "Custom Meat Processor" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1788060/ that includes some self censorship to be able to show it in TV.
Disclaimer: I'm not a vegetarian, but I dislike wasting meat. Something like "eat what you kill" but with in the supermarket in the middle.
And it's so stupid honestly. Why is this making them queasy, but not the slaughterhouses, the industrial farms, the cattle pumped with antibiotics to prevent infections from the open wounds inflicted by their terrible environment, etc. I'd take cells grown in a vat over dead animals everyday.
This is such a stupid line, it makes me wonder if this article just wasn't paid for by a meat industry lobby. Meat industry who we know for a fact is already putting a lot of energy into fighting alternatives, like impossible meat.
Because, as the arcticle states, the author comes from the position of whether to eat meat at all, so no meat vs. lab meat, not lab meat vs. slaughterhouse meat, as you imply.
It was going to be celebrity meat. As in, genetically identical to celebrities. In some circles, it would become de rigueur to host dinner parties at which one served meat cultured from the people throwing the dinner party. I wanted to see that future.
I sampled some of Li’s unusual dish while he continued. “I had the ship take a few cells from a variety of people on Earth. Without their knowledge, of course.” He waved the sword vaguely at the table behind us. “Most of you over there will be eating either Stewed Idi Amin or General Pinochet Chilli Con Carne; here in the centre we have a combination of General Stroessner Meat Balls and Richard Nixon Burgers. The rest of you have Ferdinand Marcos Sauté and Shah of Iran Kebabs. ...”
We ate up, most of us quite amused. One or two thought the idea a little too outré, and some affected boredom because they thought Li needed discouragement not accomplices, while a few were just too full already. But the majority laughed and ate, comparing tastes and textures.
“If they could see us now,” Roghres giggled. “Cannibals from outer space!”
I always wondered why they tried to mimic "real" meat rather than just making it its own thing. Gluten free cakes are another example. I suppose you need to first penetrate the market/general consciousness first before inventing a whole novel food.
There is some confusion I think in what this article is about. It's specifically about lab grown animal cells, which was always crazy expensive and never produced a good tasting meat due to the lack of integrated fat.
That is very different from stuff like Beyond and Impossible Burgers which aim to mimic the taste of meat with plant ingredients. If anything, lab grown meat cells were at a huge disadvantage to the Beyond/Impossible crew, who could make a better meat for cheaper and was more appealing to customers (if I'm going to forego an animal product, I'd rather have a plant version than a frankenmeat version).
But to your point, I really liked Impossible Burgers specifically because they were the only plant-based alternative that really satisfied a craving for meat. There were veggie burgers for years prior, and they were "its own thing", but I'd always feel hungry after eating one. I like Impossible Burgers because it satisfies all my hunger for meat but I'm not killing an animal in the process.
> It's specifically about lab grown animal cells, which was always crazy expensive and never produced a good tasting meat due to the lack of integrated fat.
These days they are growing animal fats in bioreactors too, albeit separately from the proteins, and then sort of 3D printing them into one another to achieve a meat-like taste and texture. It's conceptually pretty cool, even if the results appear to be underwhelming.
What do you mean by meatless meats? If you meant the beyond burger type of stuff which was just soy heavily processed then there wasn’t a shot in hell it would end up getting big. It’s probably way worse for you than red meat.
You have to wait until you have actual lab grown meat and I think that will actually be really successful if they can create a real meat with all of its complexities and nerves and fat striations, etc. they’re also going to have to prove to people that it’s not gonna cause cancers and things like that but if they can pull that off, it’s going to be a massive massive industry.
I don’t enjoy Soylent as well but the mock meat Buddhist meals made from I-dont-know-what that can be found in countries like Singapore, Taiwan and hongkong are quite delicious.
If you weren’t paying attention, it quite literally tastes and feels like chicken.
Wouldn't you be able to do this with ordinary processed meat today?
I remember as a kid, we once ate some kind of filled chicken nugget thing, which would have been pulped chicken glued back together into a pouch. I thought it was pretty tasty, but in hindsight its probably good that I only got to eat it a couple times, because typing it out now it sounds disgusting and super unhealthy.
I worked in this industry for almost five years. Even the “fermented” alternative meats (bacterial, fungal cell culture) which were basically a drop-in fit with existing large scale fermentation plants were still not cost-competitive with chicken. Some were on par with beef if you made some hand-wavy assumptions about scale.
The killer was usually the downstream processing required to clean out off-flavors and colors, which was required to get even a passable product (these are just protein powder fillers at this point, not whole cuts), but ballooned CapEx and cut yield such that cost went back up to like, A5 Wagyu levels.
I’ve sat in the awkward tasting sessions the author describes, and they’re all the same. The attendees muster up a “that’s pretty good” - but we all know nobody would ever choose to buy this unless they were forced to.
Now that I’ve been out of it for a while, it’s pretty obvious to me what the problems are. Cost, obviously. Taste and texture simply aren’t there. And “the knowing” is real. I never got over imagining the whole factory process involved in the production. I’m sure vegans would say the same about animal farming, though. So my conclusion was, the only way this technology becomes relevant is if people are forced to use it. And that’s either because you’re cruelty-free by choice (small fraction of the population), or because the cost of meat suddenly skyrockets, which today, is not looking that likely. Keep in mind as well that meat costs would likely be driven by feed costs in such a scenario, which also impacts cultivated meat. So it’s ultimately a process efficiency play, and you’re competing against eons of evolution.
it is sad how the lobbying of old evil industries like tobacco and animal-killing can convince the politicians and the public to outlaw and demonize their less-evil competition like vaping and lab-grown meat to make sure to hold on to the status quo.
but why write more than 7000 words to communicate a simple point (lab-grown meat was promised 1-2 decades ago but failed to arrive and won't arrive in the foreseeable future)?
Maybe disposable vapes, but I've had the same refillable mod for a few years now. The "puff" counter is stuck at 99999. No waste except for the plastic bottle I buy the liquid in that lasts about 6 months.
Based on my local park, people like you are the exception. Recently I've been picking up the rechargeable ones with digital displays to tell you how full the battery is. I have dozens of them. I stopped collecting them because I have enough to build lots of little projects. It is so fucking wasteful.
I guess you can't stop people from being wasteful, but a device intended for continuous use is still much better from an environmental perspective than one made to be disposable.
Thanks for the anecdote though, that is interesting.
Is it just pure lobbying or perhaps also consumer preference? Because there’s plenty of money to be made across the entire agriculture and food and production spectrum in the processing of the goop that goes into these types of products. I think a lot of people honestly would rather eat a real vegetarian diet (Indian, etc) than the ultra processed soy beans and various chemical binders wearing a meat Halloween costume.
> the ultra processed soy beans and various chemical binders wearing a meat Halloween costume.
This reads like propaganda. Take tofurkey for example, it's just seitan and tofu and the same "chemical binders" you'll see in every other product in the freezer aisle.
And tofu is only as "ultra-processed" as cheese or bread is.
Yeah, tofu is not even in the same class as the synthetic burgers. Take a second and go read their ingredient lists. I’m gonna go with the Indian or falafel meal, which happens to be delicious. Which I think is the choice consumers are making.
I assume you're talking about Impossible Burger and its ilk. Stuff like methylcellulose (non-digestible fiber) and L-Tryptophan (present in meat and eggs, added here to supplement nutrition) sound scary, but they're everywhere as boring nutritional additives.
The only odd one is soy leghemoglobin, which comes from soybeans but mimics meat hemoglobin. It's just part of the legume, though.
The only troubling thing on the ingredients list is how much oil they put into it, but you can make the same complaint with 70/30 meat burgers. The macros are bad, but most burgers are.
I hope you use fresh turmeric for your Indian meal, because the powdered stuff is sometimes adulterated with lead oxide.
I dont think people who would consider a full vegetarian/vegan diet without supplementary products that look like "meat" are the target consumer base for these products. The money is in a consumer base that does not want to fully commit to a certain diet, know that the meat industry is bad for the planet and is unsure on how to go about it.
Personally I'd rather eat highly processed soy beans over parts of a dead animal.
Eating is something one does several times a day every day of their lives. It must be done regardless of how broke or in how much of a hurry you are. I applaud anyone who chooses to add this stress to their daily lives voluntarily till the end of their days, but I'm not going to demonize someone for choosing to reject the time-intensive thing in favor of an alternative that's completely normal, cheaper, and faster.
I wouldn't have an issue with consuming meat if people wouldn't neglect how wrong the state of the industry is at scale. Eating meat might have been normal throughout humanity, but the industry scale meat production is everything but normal. Its ruining peoples health, normalizes the atrocities happening in farms on a daily basis and generally treats animals horribly. If you eat meat at least do it with a consciousness.
It could turn into evil quite fast. Just imagine that average joes are forbidden to keep pigs, poultry and the like. Instead you have to buy a zillion dollar lab that creates artificial meat for you.... and pay license fees.
Rational compassion being perhaps a distinctively human trait, needless animal slaughter and suffering is far more ruinous to my humanity.
Also the small farmers you are romanticizing hardly exist anymore precisely because of the returns to scale that lead large resource efficient factory farms to dominate.
Yeah, you are partially right, but you still have the option to keep and raise animals.. That's freedom. When the artificial meat starts to take over it will be the death knell of the livestock industry and part of your freedom.
you've never purchased something, then had someone question that purchase? the reflex to defend yourself, even knowing an action is morally wrong, is very strong, and we need to find a better way to help these people divest without losing "face"
People love to judge others, and people hate being judged. But it's possible to stop looking down on people, while I don't think it's possible to stop feeling bad when people look down on you. The solution is stop judging people, not to tell people to toughen up.
Just as a matter of what's more effective, even aside from the fact that judging people is inherently wrong.
I'm a bit surprised that we got disembodied intelligence before we got deathless meat. If you'd told me in the year 2000 that one of these would happen, I'd have put my money on the meat.
Because there is much less demand for deathless meat. Milk + eggs + legumes are good enough for many vegetarians. They're even cheaper than real meat in most places. On the other hand, human intelligence, by definition, can't be affordable for someone on a middle income.
Also we still don't really know what we mean by intelligence, even though we've now invented a version of it. You'd have thought that question would need some more investigation before we could build it, but here we are.
I had long given up on lab-grown meat. It started feeling like fusion, always around the corner, but never there (or at least not in an affordable way).
What replaced almost all ground beef (except in burgers) for me, was Jackfruit. More specifically, the combination 90% pea protein, 10% jackfruit. Granules that can be rehydrated with boiling water in 2 minutes, price competitive with discounter mince, no extra ingredients, no high carb count. It has a good texture and tastes mostly like whatever you season it with.
For me I eat similar thing from eatplanted.com, when they have discounts, otherwise it's still too expensive, but if price was lower I'd eat it all the time, it's that delicious.
You should specify an example of what you're talking about maybe? I see a lotao brand jackfruit 'mince' - not sure there's a US equivalent with those macro characteristics.
Lotao is the one I use, DM has a house-brand with the same percentages. I thought the US would have something similar, but at least ChatGPT didn’t find anything.
Its literally the least efficient way of producing calories when we factor in all the costs, especially to the environment and health.
The entire point of meat in 2026(since industrialization of meat) is excess and waste. Its a rich people food that was introduced to the masses to make a profit.
Would it make the meat industry more ethical if happy drugs were made available to animals? If I had to choose between a meaningful (even if I didn’t know it when living), blissful unnatural life and none at all, I’d choose the former.
It’s the negative affect and suffering (stress, pain, boredom etc) that is the bad part of eating animals.
(I think— I know others have thought more than I on this topic)
It just seems like an easier tech solution might be promising
What I find interesting about this whole discourse is that the lived experience of animals matters to people. At all.
Just a hundred, two hundred years ago we made the Elephant rifle, because a normal gun couldn't bring it down, but it was a fun sport to go out and kill just for the heck of it. No one cared about the animals.
It seems like we are living in an age of suicidal empathy and I'm not sure how we got here.
Throughout history there have always been people who were vegan or plant based who cared about animals.
We live in a society which has traditionally silenced those voices. The USA, especially, screams about how killing and stealing is a righteous/earned right. Not exercising that right is leaving much on the table. Americans gotta keep up with the Joneses, and that historically included excess cruelty to animals(this includes "savage" people like blacks and browns).
Lots of religious groups advocate for less animal cruelty and consumption.
> We live in a society which has traditionally silenced those voices. The USA, especially
It's a fascinating point of view, especially since it seems to me that this suicidal empathy originates from the USA. South Korea only recently stopped torturing and eating dogs due to international pressure. Japan still hunts whales. So does Norway. The Chinese couldn't care less, neither does anyone on the African continent. Muslims outright refuse to eat any meat that isn't "halal", which is a short way of saying torturing animals to death. There's this rumor going around the USA that India is full of vegetarians, which gets vehemently denied by Indians each time it gets brought up.
Of course, you can find a bunch of nutjobs talking about all kinds of nonsense in any society, see for example Scientology. But institutionally we didn't care for animals hundred of years ago. Cowboys used spores, which is kinda like using a blunt knife. Horses and elephants were used in wars. Dogs had to stay outside in their little dog house and weren't allowed inside. The list goes on and on.
Also South Korea didn't end their dog meat industry because of international pressure, it's because incomes have been steadily rising and more households are purchasing dogs as companion animals and developing moral concern for them.
Compassion for animals isn't some U.S. conspiracy. There are animal rights activists all over the world.
And Halal slaughter is not humane by any means, but neither is slaughtering an animal with western stunning methods. 90%+ of pigs in the UK for example are stunned using C02 gas. I encourage you to watch undercover footage of this happening.
The bible also encourages sacrificing animals. It's a book full of contradictions, so no matter what you want to argue, you can find some choice quotes supporting your position.
This corroborate therealdrag0's point: animals (human and non-human) always has been abused and cared.
Books like the bible narrates multiples points of views, read them as an history book and you'll catch a glimpse an era lifestyle. Read every line as a single thesis and you get messy pack of contradictory ideas.
I'm not sure where you find "encourages", most sacrifices are depicted to show Jesus's fury about it. Perhaps the old testament? In any case that doesn't contradict the point of "we always had ideals".
Considering starving yourself to death on a deserted island rather than eating meat an acceptable moral choice and not mental illness. Sacrificing your life to save an animal. Taking actions detrimental to your own well being for the benefit of animals.
Suicidal empathy is when your feelings hurt more than your body, so you sacrifice yourself to feel good.
Ok, what does that have to do with reality? Nobody is starving to death looking at an animal they could have eaten. This seems like a blatant strawman.
In fact, our addiction to beef seems straight suicidal. Hesitation to eat beef would improve our fitness as a species.
It's not about reality, it's about moral philosophy.
Not eating meat, eggs and honey because you feel sad about animals is now considered a valid moral position called veganism instead of mental illness.
I'm not talking about science (which still seems undecided on whether eating eggs is good or bad), I've observed shifting attitudes that originated from the USA and wonder why people feeling sad for animals is now considered a good reason to not eat various types of food.
In many ways, veganism seems like a budding religion that is trying to get off the ground, but instead of asking whether you are ready to accept Jesus as your savior they ask if you are ready to feel sad for animals.
The strawman dying in the island shows your low understanding of what is empathy. It’s not about sacrifice and putting others before yourself, but being nice to others in the range of feasibility.
> Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation[…]
Anyone would kill a fish if that’s the only way to survive on a desert island. Meanwhile avoiding animal exploitation of our moderne age isn’t particularly dangerous.
He's referencing the common conservative notion that "too much" empathy for certain groups (in this case animals) is at the detriment to ourselves... somehow. This, of course, makes no sense when you look back at the long historical strides taken with animal rights in just western societies. You'll find very old philosophical vegetarian and vegan thoughts in other non-western societies.
I too could, theoretically be thrilled to be drugged to the gills when I'm killed. I however, can consent. Animals cannot. But we know that animals can think. Regardless of debating the ethics of consuming them, this adds an additional ethical quagmire of is it ethically sound to drug non-consenting, thinking species.
Something like 70% of all antibiotics used worldwide go to farm animals, so in a sense, they are already pumped full of drugs keeping them happy because the drugs prevent them from dying at higher rates from disease.
Not really. Similar to giving drugs to lower class people so they can bear the unbearable life. For an indiviual, sure, life probably feels better in a narrow sense, but is it more ethical? No.
Interesting, the question for me is why eat ultra-processed meat simulacra, that don't taste particularly nice, like impossible and beyond burgers? It is possible to home cook far healthier and more delicious veggie burgers with seitan, mushrooms, lentils, etcetera. Ultimately, this whole meat substitute market is targeting a niche that doesn't exist at anything like the scale envisioned, because it competes with low cost meat on the one hand and low cost plant-based burgers on the other, and is worse than both on all relevant metrics.
This comparison seems to suggest they are very similar. The fact that impossible burgers are vastly less resource intensive to produce and don't involve killing an animal for no good reason is an incredible deal.
Like, they're close enough for a vegetarian/vegan to get something that reminds them of the taste, but for a frequent meat eater it's not even close sadly. I keep trying from time to time.
As for why, it's much easier to replace the product than it is to replace the need.
I never understood exactly who is the target audience.
If I were a vegan/vegetarian for ethical or religious reasons I don’t think I would want food that reminds me of meat.
As an occasional meat eater that also enjoys the many natural options for plant-based protein, why would I want something that replicates taste/texture of something I can already eat?
What about the health nastiness that comes along with ultra processed food? Why not just go full blown veggie or vegan? Theres some amazing recipes out there that are healthy as well.
Those are pretty good in their own right, but they really aren’t much like meat in my opinion. They’re similar, but they are quite obviously not meat within the first few bites.
There might not be much of a market for it. Vegetarians and vegans are used to industrially processed protein substitutes but most of them don't really want meat and its flavor. In contrast, many non-vegetarians want natural high-quality products from real animals, they don't want to eat industrially processed lab meat. A market would have been low-cost ultra-processed meat products but for that it seems that lab grown meat is too expensive.
This can still change though, if the products of animal farming were to become more expensive and with higher mandatory quality standards, as they in my opinion should be.
I think the dream will never die, but it might go underground for another turn.
Problem was that broadly there's two categories to compete in. "Superior product" , and "cheaper". the last round of artificial meat was neither.
I genuinely believe that eventually we'll have a proper "biological revolution". much like many inorganic technical revolutions have shaped the world (AI being one of the most recent) I think we'll have a breakthrough that opens the doors to the kinds of biological technologies from science fiction.
At that stage I would anticipate an assault on both categories. Ground beef/chicken/pork of sufficient quality that undercuts factory farmed meat. But also superior products. the best wagyu in the world is just tissue, a collection of cells. I can certainly imagine a future where chunks of meat at that quality or even better roll out of vats. softer and more marbled than any real meat because it's not limited by the conditions of being grown within a functional animal.
And when it's better or cheaper people will buy it, and squeamishness will abate as it becomes normalized. that the meat may be more humane will be a nice value add but never enough to prop up the product itself.
People have fetishized animals so much that creating synthetic goop in the form of flesh somehow got billions in founding. Omnivores eat meat, even herbivores do it sometimes, get over it.
Eh, I eat meat almost daily (chicken breast) and I'm fully aware of what entails the butchering of animals. Even had a pet rabbit at my grandfather's when I was a kid, that one day disappeared and the next day we ate rabbit meat. Just like when I cleaned up the squirrel that was torn in half by my cats, I see it all as a part of life.
Doesn't mean that I wouldn't prefer if it all came from grown meat, rather than the entire industry that we have now. If the taste, texture and looks are the same, why shouldn't we switch (if those 3 factors are the only important ones)?
Because every second super processed food is reveled to be carcinogenic or harmful in the long term, why would you take the risk if there is a good alternative? Btw I am also against industrial scale animal farms, those are problematic too, not from a morale but health perspective.
afaik most people who don't eat meat or would consider synthetic alternatives do so because of moral considerations. We are already super efficient in farming meat, to such degree when that transportation is a bigger factor.
Even if I very much hope to live to see a profitable production of animal proteins without growing and killing animals, I do not believe that there is the slightest chance that this approach, of the "lab-grown meat" will ever succeed to produce meat that is tasty and cheaper than e.g. chicken breast.
In the long term, the only way to produce artificial meat that looks like natural meat, but is cheaper, would be to create a a genetically-engineered multicellular organism, derived from some fungus, which would feed like a fungus, but which would grow some parts containing muscle tissue, instead of growing mushrooms.
In the short term, there already exists the technology to produce protein powder with the same composition as natural whey protein concentrate or as egg-white powder, but obtained from a culture of some genetically-modified strains of the fungus Trichoderma, which have been modified to secrete the desired animal protein, instead of an enzyme that is secreted by the unmodified strains.
There exist some startups that hope to eventually sell such fungus-produced animal protein powders, initially as ingredients for industrial food processing. Unlike "lab-grown meat", this technology has the potential to achieve a lower cost than the protein powders made from cow milk or chicken eggs.
For some people, like myself, the availability of such a protein powder as a cooking ingredient would be enough to eliminate their dependency of any natural animal protein sources.
I have eaten only proteins from vegetable sources for about 4 years, but eventually I gave up, because that forced too rigid constraints in what I could eat without exceeding the calories threshold that would make me gain weight rapidly and without exceeding the cost of a diet including meat, while also taking too much of my time with plant protein extraction at home, because the commercial plant protein concentrates are much more expensive than meat, so I do not consider their use acceptable.
So now I still eat vegan food that I cook myself, but when cooking certain dishes I enhance their protein content with whey protein.
Thus for me whey protein from a fungal culture would already be enough, but for those who want the taste of meat without killing an animal, that is much farther in the future, after we will understand much better the relationship between genome and multicellular growth and morphogenesis.
(This reminded me why I stopped reading magazines: they have low information density. They are more creative writing, journaling rather than terse and factual)
My take away on the answer to the headline question is:
Currently the lab grown meat is too expensive and not good tasting enough to compete with real meat and plant based alternatives exist so - not it’s time yet.
I eat meat and like it, but I also feel kind of sorry for cows, sheep, pigs, chickens etc.
I was initially positive about lab grown meat, but then you realise that Kraft Foods or someone will get hold of it and turn it into the most unhealthy slop you could imagine.
There are plenty of things to dislike about beef, but the hunks of it found at the meat counter are one of most unaltered, natural state food items in the store. The sea salt wins that competition but not much else does. Compared to broccoli or an apple, even feed lot beef is pristine. The nutrient difference between an ancient auroch and a modern steer is mostly the proportion of fat.
Living in country with proper standards helps a lot. Hormones are not used at all and antibiotics involved prevent butchering for certain period when they are used to medicate individual animals. Testing shows that regulations work on these areas.
> Then, suddenly, the nausea hit... The problem was not the flavor, not the texture, but the knowing. The Knowing. Knowing about the fat tank, about the sticky white substance...
I feel like squeamish people are probably not the best ones to write about novel meat products...
I'm pretty sure it's just the taste of meat that the author didn't like. My half-sister don't eat most meat for taste reasons, and the nausea after tasting beef the author describe sound exactly like her reactions.
I once ate a dog meat stew in South Korea. It was tasty, not very different from any other red meat like beef, lamb, or horse, though the spiciness of the stew may have muted any unfamiliar tastes. However, I had to psyche myself up to eat it, and once I was full and my cultural taboos came flooding back I did start to get queasy. There's a significant mental component to what we find appetizing. Most people aren't that far removed from the stereotypical picky eater, myself included, despite having eaten balut, live shrimp, and many other "exotic" foods.
Doesn’t
So a tank is problematic, but a slaughter house is fine?
Nah, these are the same folks that have never watched earthlings.
If we made it so before one could eat meat of the animal, it had to personally kill and watch the animal die, we’d eat less meat.
It should be a requirement
It used to be that pretty much everyone who ate meat butchered it themselves. They still ate as much meat as they could.
It used to be that kids as young as five year old were made to kill small animals like bunnies and chickens as a learning experience, but a bunch of people found this problematic so it isn't as common anymore.
I grew up this way. Did you?
I would be fine with that, but I don't think it would be quite as effective as you think. I don't like hurting even bugs for no reason but still grew up eating our own raised cows and hunted meat and still do to this day. Atleast half of that I had a personal hand in the entire slaughtering and packing.
If anybody has even the smallest negative thought to eating meat these days, the very first internet search they do will bombard them with pictures of slaughter houses in the most negative light and animal abuse pictures. If that doesn't stop them eating meat itself, very few are going to be turned by a legit farming and slaughter practises.
My sister is vegan and it wasn't our slaughtering of animals that pushed her away from eating meat, it was the internet showing the worst of large corporate practises. For a long while she merely didn't eat corporate meat and only local or home grown or hunted meat.
Slaughterhouse staff must all be vegans by now.
Perhaps some do eat less meat as vlan0 suggested. Perhaps some don't change their habits, trying to cope with the mental burden.
> It was found that [slaughterhouse workers] have a higher prevalence rate of mental health issues, in particular depression and anxiety, in addition to violence-supportive attitudes. Furthermore, the workers employ a variety of both adaptive and maladaptive strategies to cope with the workplace environment and associated stressors. Finally, there is some evidence that slaughterhouse work is associated with increased crime levels. The research reviewed has shown a link between slaughterhouse work and antisocial behavior generally and sexual offending specifically.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15248380211030...
People willingly turned a blind eye to concentration camps which killed millions of human beings in their back yards. Distraction, denial, and indifference are more comfortable reactions than horror.
People tend to seek the feeling of blamelessness when they should seek the condition of blamelessness. Often doing the right thing will make a person feel guiltier than doing the wrong one.
Depends how it is done, but can also have the opposite effect of making people more used to cruel behavior.
I do like what they did for example:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/13/world/europe/norway-schoo...
Genuinely, how the fuck can you believe that when people have personally slaughtered the meat they consume for most of human history?
My wife grew up in a country where people would still personally slaughter pigs to roast at major holidays. Didn’t keep her or any of her family from eating meat.
We eat far more meat now at a time when far far fewer people are personally slaughtering animals than ever before in human history, so I think the claim checks out.
People who kill animals themselves regularly are probably subsistence farmers who consider meat a luxury, and what's more, the way they killed them was probably nothing like the incredibly high volume processing that goes on in a modern slaughterhouse.
I definitely think that if most people had to visit a modern factory farm and see the life cycle of one of these animals, kill it and process it, they would probably be shocked at what is legal.
> We eat far more meat now
This statement is thrown around a lot, but it doesn't really check out. Per-capita meat consumption in most of the west is only around 66kg/year (increasing to 100-120kg/year for meat-heavy countries like Spain, Argentina, and the USA).
That's about one pig and a handful of birds - even many peasant populations could afford to raise that much meat each year. The well-off were consuming massively more meat that this throughout history. Not to mention the incredible quantities of fish consumed by coastal populations.
Records from Durham and Westminster cathedrals suggest monks were eating in excess of 400kg/year of meat and fish. Records from Italy in a similar period show labourers and even widows receiving in excess of 80kg/year of meat. And so on...
>Records from Durham and Westminster cathedrals suggest monks were eating in excess of 400kg/year of meat and fish.
I feel like I eat quite a lot of meat. And even I find that number rather suspect. Over a kilo a day? They did also do labour, but still that sounds extremely high even for pure carnivore diet of today... Or then there is some sort of significant waste.
Interesting to poke around in: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-meat-consumpti...
It sadly doesn't go back further than the 1960s. If you select Western Europe, the number seems to be falling (back from almost 100kg, though). USA, not so much.
Note though that for what your parent describes, you'd want numbers to go even further back, then you could likely see the whole effect of post-WW2 boom; though WW2 itself would obviously also extremely skew the data in the 40s.
Most people in "developed" countries do not eat whole animals, but only selected parts of them.
So the number of dead animals per year needed to sustain a typical human is much greater.
For example someone who is a much more moderate meat eater than most, might eat at least half of their protein intake from vegetables, with the remainder from healthy chicken breast meat, eating around 1 kg of raw chicken breast per week, i.e. from 2 dead chicken.
That means 100 dead chicken per human per year, though it is likely that other less choosy humans would eat the thighs and a few other parts, so the 100 chicken would actually sustain between 2 and 3 humans for a year.
That is not a "handful" of birds.
Right, but that's purely reflective of a shift in meat preferences - a single pig would provide the same amount of meat as your 100 chickens. And historically, everyone ate pork and beef, not chicken (chicken doesn't become a major source of meat until after WWII).
The rest of the chicken isn't just thrown away.
Yea.. like.. look into the sheeps eyes as you cut it's throat and then tell me again how a lab is "icky".
I guess it depens on the preson. The author claims they haven't eaten meat since 2007.
I’ll be honest, I’d lie my ass off if I was the author.
I don’t eat meat for ethical/health/climate reasons. You bet your ass I’m singing the praises of lab grown meat if I had that kind of platform. Instead, they used their voice to say how icky pretend meat is. It honestly pisses me off lol.
Why? Vegetables are cheaper, tastier and overall less icky.
Some people may not agree. The more options the better.
Really you feel like a vegetable grown in shit and most likely sprayed with copious amounts of harmful chemicals is less icky than lab grown meat?
Yes ans so will most normal human beings.
Why what? I feel like you didn’t read my comment.
>tastier
Lmao god damn veggies are delusional.
That's just plain lying. And when people actually tasted the meat they'd call your bluff. In fact I have to assume that many have tasted it and have noped out.
More than just calling your bluff they would be rightfully upset with you and also with what you represent. Activisits often fail to understand this and think that their "noble" goal justifies the means.
> And when people actually tasted the meat they'd call your bluff
Per the article, all the other folk seemed to enjoy the lab grown meat just fine
> that’s just plain lying
Yeah I said that.
Honestly speaking, yes.
I've seen plenty of videos from slaughter houses, mostly ones activists use to point at the cruelty going on inside, but it never made me feel uncomfortable.
It never made me feel uncomfortable, either. But my feelings don't matter. Suffering is bad and should be prevented, whether I happen to feel bad about it or now.
Can you articulate why suffering should be prevented?
Going with a religious doctrine, the existence of an all-loving, all-seeing, all-powerful God in a world full of suffering should tell you that suffering is a good thing, for if it wasn't such a God would prevent it.
~Are you just having a fun convo or do you think suffering is good and should not be prevented?~
~Whatever your take is can you articulate it so we dont have to wait for parent to respond and then your response too?~
Nevermind, saw your other comments. Dont feed the trolls.
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I felt a bit uncomfortable seeing carrots with their tops lopped off in a totally mechanical manner on a conveyor belt, or beetroots boiled alive before their corpses were pushed through razor-sharp blades to slice them up, or corn ripped off their husks, or tomatoes... tomatoes... oh man, I feel nauseous, I think I'm going to throw up.
You joke, but plants are alive and have feelings, just like everything else that is alive. They have the ability to communicate using ultrasound and they can pick up your brainwaves and respond to them.
There's a plant that can change the shape it grows its leaf to match what other plant is around them - that includes copying artificial plants. So it has to be possible for a plant to "see".
Have you ever seen a combine harvester kill animals sheltering in a crop during harvest, or considered how many animals are killed by the pesticides used in crop production?
It always amazes me how some vegans go into a frenzy over animals being slaughtered for meat while completely ignoring the bloodbath caused by farming practices used to produce vegan-friendly crops. Not to mention the pesticides that damage ecosystems and contaminate groundwater. The selective outrage and hypocrisy are jaw-dropping.
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Need to make these people visit a slaughterhouse.
Me, having recently moved to rural Ireland: “the cows were mooing and wailing horribly last night, were they being slaughtered?”
Farmer Neighbor (not the one with the cows): “oh, no that’s just when they take the calves away for veal”
As a parent I feel worse about dairy than beef…
I eat meat, although less then what I grew up with. I know what goes on in a slaughterhouse.
I cut out dairy about a decade ago. This is another level.
Dairy is a legit nightmare factory for the cattle involved.
Constant rape. Constant separation from off spring. Tons of hormones and medication to keep infections down.
They are so stressed physically and emotionally that their lifespans are 50% or lower of what they should be. Dairy cattle routinely just die from stress.
Its also insanely bad for the environment.
I grew up ranching and have seen dairy operations plenty of times. They're disgusting cruelty factories.
Every time we eat a snack or food that involves dairy, remember that it is completely unnecessary to include dairy.
>Constant rape.
I am not sure I buy that. Rape is intensely upsetting to humans, but that does not imply it is so upsetting to other animals. And dairy cows aren't usually impregnated through sex to my knowledge; they are artificially inseminated. I don't see evidence that cows find this upsetting.
It's unnecessary to bring in weak arguments when we have such strong arguments. Cows are distraught beyond measure when their calves are taken away.
They have to forcibly hold them in place. You have to do this with pretty much all artificially inseminated animals.
Rape is not a terrible word to describe forcible penetration.
I don't care what word we use. I'm interested in whether or not we have clear evidence the animals find it upsetting. And if so, is it upsetting in the way my cat finds taking her medication upsetting, or it is upsetting in the way humans find rape upsetting? Just having to hold the animal proves little.
Having to forcibly restrain an animal is clear evidence that they don't like it, otherwise I don't know what clear evidence you would accept. A good proxy for whether an animal likes something is when it shows aversive behavior around that thing!
The fact that your cat needs the medicine just means that the discomfort you are inflicting on your cat is ultimately with its best interest in mind. When we hurt an animal, or even kill one with its best interest in mind, we do it out of compassion.
When we forcibly impregnate an animal repeatedly and then take away it's calf (cows being viviparous animals, this causes them suffering), that is not in their best interest. Their suffering is not benefiting them, it benefits us.
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> Every time we eat a snack or food that involves dairy, remember that it is completely unnecessary to include dairy.
You're preaching to the lactose-intolerant choir here, man.
"Our Daily Bread" is a very interesting documentary on modern industrial agriculture, just shows what happens, no commentaries whatsoever.
The last part shows the slaughterhouse process (at least live cow to half beef carcass anyway), fair warning you can't unsee that but imo more people could benefit from knowing how their burgers are made.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbkKITF_7SE&t=5196s
From the "Dirty Jobs" TV serie: "Custom Meat Processor" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1788060/ that includes some self censorship to be able to show it in TV.
Disclaimer: I'm not a vegetarian, but I dislike wasting meat. Something like "eat what you kill" but with in the supermarket in the middle.
And it's so stupid honestly. Why is this making them queasy, but not the slaughterhouses, the industrial farms, the cattle pumped with antibiotics to prevent infections from the open wounds inflicted by their terrible environment, etc. I'd take cells grown in a vat over dead animals everyday.
This is such a stupid line, it makes me wonder if this article just wasn't paid for by a meat industry lobby. Meat industry who we know for a fact is already putting a lot of energy into fighting alternatives, like impossible meat.
Because, as the arcticle states, the author comes from the position of whether to eat meat at all, so no meat vs. lab meat, not lab meat vs. slaughterhouse meat, as you imply.
Man, I'm so glad I don't trade stocks.
I was so convinced that these meatless meats were going to be the next big thing.
One thing I think they missed out on was getting to 'close enough' and 'much cheaper' and then just pivoting.
Like, why stay with simulating the 5 or so animals we harvest? Just go off and make up new ones!
Like, here's a jackalope burger, or a unicorn burger or something. Tie into marketing!
"Exclusive to BurgerKing, the Iron Man 5 burger! Now through August 29th only!"
Put in some strange spices, vary the texture, give it a red and gold swirl, let the imagination run wild.
Can you imagine what business a Spiderman burger patty or sausage link would do? K-Pop demon hunters branded chicken-ish nugget like things?
It was going to be celebrity meat. As in, genetically identical to celebrities. In some circles, it would become de rigueur to host dinner parties at which one served meat cultured from the people throwing the dinner party. I wanted to see that future.
I always wondered why they tried to mimic "real" meat rather than just making it its own thing. Gluten free cakes are another example. I suppose you need to first penetrate the market/general consciousness first before inventing a whole novel food.
There is some confusion I think in what this article is about. It's specifically about lab grown animal cells, which was always crazy expensive and never produced a good tasting meat due to the lack of integrated fat.
That is very different from stuff like Beyond and Impossible Burgers which aim to mimic the taste of meat with plant ingredients. If anything, lab grown meat cells were at a huge disadvantage to the Beyond/Impossible crew, who could make a better meat for cheaper and was more appealing to customers (if I'm going to forego an animal product, I'd rather have a plant version than a frankenmeat version).
But to your point, I really liked Impossible Burgers specifically because they were the only plant-based alternative that really satisfied a craving for meat. There were veggie burgers for years prior, and they were "its own thing", but I'd always feel hungry after eating one. I like Impossible Burgers because it satisfies all my hunger for meat but I'm not killing an animal in the process.
> It's specifically about lab grown animal cells, which was always crazy expensive and never produced a good tasting meat due to the lack of integrated fat.
These days they are growing animal fats in bioreactors too, albeit separately from the proteins, and then sort of 3D printing them into one another to achieve a meat-like taste and texture. It's conceptually pretty cool, even if the results appear to be underwhelming.
What do you mean by meatless meats? If you meant the beyond burger type of stuff which was just soy heavily processed then there wasn’t a shot in hell it would end up getting big. It’s probably way worse for you than red meat.
You have to wait until you have actual lab grown meat and I think that will actually be really successful if they can create a real meat with all of its complexities and nerves and fat striations, etc. they’re also going to have to prove to people that it’s not gonna cause cancers and things like that but if they can pull that off, it’s going to be a massive massive industry.
Red meat is good for you actually.
People are generally not interested in eating soylent no matter what you color it or what cute name you market it as.
I don’t enjoy Soylent as well but the mock meat Buddhist meals made from I-dont-know-what that can be found in countries like Singapore, Taiwan and hongkong are quite delicious.
If you weren’t paying attention, it quite literally tastes and feels like chicken.
https://www.foodadvisor.com.sg/eatery/mock-meat/
Wouldn't you be able to do this with ordinary processed meat today?
I remember as a kid, we once ate some kind of filled chicken nugget thing, which would have been pulped chicken glued back together into a pouch. I thought it was pretty tasty, but in hindsight its probably good that I only got to eat it a couple times, because typing it out now it sounds disgusting and super unhealthy.
I worked in this industry for almost five years. Even the “fermented” alternative meats (bacterial, fungal cell culture) which were basically a drop-in fit with existing large scale fermentation plants were still not cost-competitive with chicken. Some were on par with beef if you made some hand-wavy assumptions about scale.
The killer was usually the downstream processing required to clean out off-flavors and colors, which was required to get even a passable product (these are just protein powder fillers at this point, not whole cuts), but ballooned CapEx and cut yield such that cost went back up to like, A5 Wagyu levels.
I’ve sat in the awkward tasting sessions the author describes, and they’re all the same. The attendees muster up a “that’s pretty good” - but we all know nobody would ever choose to buy this unless they were forced to.
Now that I’ve been out of it for a while, it’s pretty obvious to me what the problems are. Cost, obviously. Taste and texture simply aren’t there. And “the knowing” is real. I never got over imagining the whole factory process involved in the production. I’m sure vegans would say the same about animal farming, though. So my conclusion was, the only way this technology becomes relevant is if people are forced to use it. And that’s either because you’re cruelty-free by choice (small fraction of the population), or because the cost of meat suddenly skyrockets, which today, is not looking that likely. Keep in mind as well that meat costs would likely be driven by feed costs in such a scenario, which also impacts cultivated meat. So it’s ultimately a process efficiency play, and you’re competing against eons of evolution.
it is sad how the lobbying of old evil industries like tobacco and animal-killing can convince the politicians and the public to outlaw and demonize their less-evil competition like vaping and lab-grown meat to make sure to hold on to the status quo.
but why write more than 7000 words to communicate a simple point (lab-grown meat was promised 1-2 decades ago but failed to arrive and won't arrive in the foreseeable future)?
> less-evil competition like vaping
You mean the e-waste generating companies that actively target children with their highly addictive products?
Maybe disposable vapes, but I've had the same refillable mod for a few years now. The "puff" counter is stuck at 99999. No waste except for the plastic bottle I buy the liquid in that lasts about 6 months.
Based on my local park, people like you are the exception. Recently I've been picking up the rechargeable ones with digital displays to tell you how full the battery is. I have dozens of them. I stopped collecting them because I have enough to build lots of little projects. It is so fucking wasteful.
I guess you can't stop people from being wasteful, but a device intended for continuous use is still much better from an environmental perspective than one made to be disposable.
Thanks for the anecdote though, that is interesting.
It doesn't seem like there's this finished product ready to go that's just cost-prohibitive because of malicious regulation.
So at this point it's not even clear that anyone is actually losing their grip on the status quo...
Is it just pure lobbying or perhaps also consumer preference? Because there’s plenty of money to be made across the entire agriculture and food and production spectrum in the processing of the goop that goes into these types of products. I think a lot of people honestly would rather eat a real vegetarian diet (Indian, etc) than the ultra processed soy beans and various chemical binders wearing a meat Halloween costume.
> the ultra processed soy beans and various chemical binders wearing a meat Halloween costume.
This reads like propaganda. Take tofurkey for example, it's just seitan and tofu and the same "chemical binders" you'll see in every other product in the freezer aisle.
And tofu is only as "ultra-processed" as cheese or bread is.
Yeah, tofu is not even in the same class as the synthetic burgers. Take a second and go read their ingredient lists. I’m gonna go with the Indian or falafel meal, which happens to be delicious. Which I think is the choice consumers are making.
I assume you're talking about Impossible Burger and its ilk. Stuff like methylcellulose (non-digestible fiber) and L-Tryptophan (present in meat and eggs, added here to supplement nutrition) sound scary, but they're everywhere as boring nutritional additives.
The only odd one is soy leghemoglobin, which comes from soybeans but mimics meat hemoglobin. It's just part of the legume, though.
The only troubling thing on the ingredients list is how much oil they put into it, but you can make the same complaint with 70/30 meat burgers. The macros are bad, but most burgers are.
I hope you use fresh turmeric for your Indian meal, because the powdered stuff is sometimes adulterated with lead oxide.
I dont think people who would consider a full vegetarian/vegan diet without supplementary products that look like "meat" are the target consumer base for these products. The money is in a consumer base that does not want to fully commit to a certain diet, know that the meat industry is bad for the planet and is unsure on how to go about it.
Personally I'd rather eat highly processed soy beans over parts of a dead animal.
Not that simple, about 5% of the world population has G6PD deficiency and can get sick or die from a diet based on many kind of beans.
I would consider a vegetarian diet, but I can't eat lentils, hummus and beans every day without getting sick (ant my case is quite mild)
So they could just buy supplements and other vegetables?
"Just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Eating is something one does several times a day every day of their lives. It must be done regardless of how broke or in how much of a hurry you are. I applaud anyone who chooses to add this stress to their daily lives voluntarily till the end of their days, but I'm not going to demonize someone for choosing to reject the time-intensive thing in favor of an alternative that's completely normal, cheaper, and faster.
I wouldn't have an issue with consuming meat if people wouldn't neglect how wrong the state of the industry is at scale. Eating meat might have been normal throughout humanity, but the industry scale meat production is everything but normal. Its ruining peoples health, normalizes the atrocities happening in farms on a daily basis and generally treats animals horribly. If you eat meat at least do it with a consciousness.
It could turn into evil quite fast. Just imagine that average joes are forbidden to keep pigs, poultry and the like. Instead you have to buy a zillion dollar lab that creates artificial meat for you.... and pay license fees.
You mean no more raising tens of millions of pigs and billions of chickens in intense confinement?
Don't threaten me with a good time!
Yeah, imagine AI, but for your food. How tasty, right?
Eternal dependence, and applauding the way they destroy your humanity down to the very last cell. Go on, applaud it.
Rational compassion being perhaps a distinctively human trait, needless animal slaughter and suffering is far more ruinous to my humanity.
Also the small farmers you are romanticizing hardly exist anymore precisely because of the returns to scale that lead large resource efficient factory farms to dominate.
Yeah, you are partially right, but you still have the option to keep and raise animals.. That's freedom. When the artificial meat starts to take over it will be the death knell of the livestock industry and part of your freedom.
you've never purchased something, then had someone question that purchase? the reflex to defend yourself, even knowing an action is morally wrong, is very strong, and we need to find a better way to help these people divest without losing "face"
People love to judge others, and people hate being judged. But it's possible to stop looking down on people, while I don't think it's possible to stop feeling bad when people look down on you. The solution is stop judging people, not to tell people to toughen up.
Just as a matter of what's more effective, even aside from the fact that judging people is inherently wrong.
We need to raise people to stop blaming others and just accept responsibility for our actions.
Plenty of folks can take criticism.
none of them seem to be shareholders :(
I'm a bit surprised that we got disembodied intelligence before we got deathless meat. If you'd told me in the year 2000 that one of these would happen, I'd have put my money on the meat.
Hardware is harder than software.
But "disembodied" intelligence is also built on top of massive amounts of hardware advances and infrastructure investment.
Right, but photoengraving is hardware at its easiest—which is not to say that it's easy at the level the industry has now taken it to.
Because there is much less demand for deathless meat. Milk + eggs + legumes are good enough for many vegetarians. They're even cheaper than real meat in most places. On the other hand, human intelligence, by definition, can't be affordable for someone on a middle income.
Also we still don't really know what we mean by intelligence, even though we've now invented a version of it. You'd have thought that question would need some more investigation before we could build it, but here we are.
Lol milk is not deathless in the least.
This is a great example of how the propaganda is working.
Nobody said it was
I had long given up on lab-grown meat. It started feeling like fusion, always around the corner, but never there (or at least not in an affordable way).
What replaced almost all ground beef (except in burgers) for me, was Jackfruit. More specifically, the combination 90% pea protein, 10% jackfruit. Granules that can be rehydrated with boiling water in 2 minutes, price competitive with discounter mince, no extra ingredients, no high carb count. It has a good texture and tastes mostly like whatever you season it with.
For me I eat similar thing from eatplanted.com, when they have discounts, otherwise it's still too expensive, but if price was lower I'd eat it all the time, it's that delicious.
Planted has the issues most meat replacements have, a lot of ingredients, and a higher carb count. Not an issue for everyone, but it is for me.
Planted: 10 ingredients, 5.6g/100g carbs in the finished product
Pea/Jackfruit granules: 2 ingredients, 1.9g/100g carbs in the dry product (so roughly 0.8g/100g in the finished product)
You should specify an example of what you're talking about maybe? I see a lotao brand jackfruit 'mince' - not sure there's a US equivalent with those macro characteristics.
Lotao is the one I use, DM has a house-brand with the same percentages. I thought the US would have something similar, but at least ChatGPT didn’t find anything.
Turns out that nature is a lot more efficient at producing meat; I don’t think this will change for a while, if ever.
Bugs for chickens, grasses/grains for cattle and omnivorous pigs are their own kind of bio-reactor…
Calling meat production "efficient" is hilarious.
Its literally the least efficient way of producing calories when we factor in all the costs, especially to the environment and health.
The entire point of meat in 2026(since industrialization of meat) is excess and waste. Its a rich people food that was introduced to the masses to make a profit.
It’s been going on since well before recorded human history :-)
Would it make the meat industry more ethical if happy drugs were made available to animals? If I had to choose between a meaningful (even if I didn’t know it when living), blissful unnatural life and none at all, I’d choose the former.
It’s the negative affect and suffering (stress, pain, boredom etc) that is the bad part of eating animals.
(I think— I know others have thought more than I on this topic)
It just seems like an easier tech solution might be promising
What I find interesting about this whole discourse is that the lived experience of animals matters to people. At all.
Just a hundred, two hundred years ago we made the Elephant rifle, because a normal gun couldn't bring it down, but it was a fun sport to go out and kill just for the heck of it. No one cared about the animals.
It seems like we are living in an age of suicidal empathy and I'm not sure how we got here.
You're mistaken that nobody cared about animals.
Throughout history there have always been people who were vegan or plant based who cared about animals.
We live in a society which has traditionally silenced those voices. The USA, especially, screams about how killing and stealing is a righteous/earned right. Not exercising that right is leaving much on the table. Americans gotta keep up with the Joneses, and that historically included excess cruelty to animals(this includes "savage" people like blacks and browns).
Lots of religious groups advocate for less animal cruelty and consumption.
> We live in a society which has traditionally silenced those voices. The USA, especially
It's a fascinating point of view, especially since it seems to me that this suicidal empathy originates from the USA. South Korea only recently stopped torturing and eating dogs due to international pressure. Japan still hunts whales. So does Norway. The Chinese couldn't care less, neither does anyone on the African continent. Muslims outright refuse to eat any meat that isn't "halal", which is a short way of saying torturing animals to death. There's this rumor going around the USA that India is full of vegetarians, which gets vehemently denied by Indians each time it gets brought up.
Of course, you can find a bunch of nutjobs talking about all kinds of nonsense in any society, see for example Scientology. But institutionally we didn't care for animals hundred of years ago. Cowboys used spores, which is kinda like using a blunt knife. Horses and elephants were used in wars. Dogs had to stay outside in their little dog house and weren't allowed inside. The list goes on and on.
This is called moral progress.
Also South Korea didn't end their dog meat industry because of international pressure, it's because incomes have been steadily rising and more households are purchasing dogs as companion animals and developing moral concern for them.
Compassion for animals isn't some U.S. conspiracy. There are animal rights activists all over the world.
And Halal slaughter is not humane by any means, but neither is slaughtering an animal with western stunning methods. 90%+ of pigs in the UK for example are stunned using C02 gas. I encourage you to watch undercover footage of this happening.
The median used to be worse, but we always had ideals. Iirc the Bible comments of donky abuse.
The bible also encourages sacrificing animals. It's a book full of contradictions, so no matter what you want to argue, you can find some choice quotes supporting your position.
This corroborate therealdrag0's point: animals (human and non-human) always has been abused and cared.
Books like the bible narrates multiples points of views, read them as an history book and you'll catch a glimpse an era lifestyle. Read every line as a single thesis and you get messy pack of contradictory ideas.
I'm not sure where you find "encourages", most sacrifices are depicted to show Jesus's fury about it. Perhaps the old testament? In any case that doesn't contradict the point of "we always had ideals".
What do you mean by suicidal?
Considering starving yourself to death on a deserted island rather than eating meat an acceptable moral choice and not mental illness. Sacrificing your life to save an animal. Taking actions detrimental to your own well being for the benefit of animals.
Suicidal empathy is when your feelings hurt more than your body, so you sacrifice yourself to feel good.
Ok, what does that have to do with reality? Nobody is starving to death looking at an animal they could have eaten. This seems like a blatant strawman.
In fact, our addiction to beef seems straight suicidal. Hesitation to eat beef would improve our fitness as a species.
It's not about reality, it's about moral philosophy.
Not eating meat, eggs and honey because you feel sad about animals is now considered a valid moral position called veganism instead of mental illness.
I'm not talking about science (which still seems undecided on whether eating eggs is good or bad), I've observed shifting attitudes that originated from the USA and wonder why people feeling sad for animals is now considered a good reason to not eat various types of food.
In many ways, veganism seems like a budding religion that is trying to get off the ground, but instead of asking whether you are ready to accept Jesus as your savior they ask if you are ready to feel sad for animals.
To be clear, I am emphatically a meat-eater; I raise goats and chickens. I just don't understand your mindset at all.
It seems almost like you view domination of animals as an end rather than a means.
The strawman dying in the island shows your low understanding of what is empathy. It’s not about sacrifice and putting others before yourself, but being nice to others in the range of feasibility.
> Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation[…]
Anyone would kill a fish if that’s the only way to survive on a desert island. Meanwhile avoiding animal exploitation of our moderne age isn’t particularly dangerous.
https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism
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He's referencing the common conservative notion that "too much" empathy for certain groups (in this case animals) is at the detriment to ourselves... somehow. This, of course, makes no sense when you look back at the long historical strides taken with animal rights in just western societies. You'll find very old philosophical vegetarian and vegan thoughts in other non-western societies.
I too could, theoretically be thrilled to be drugged to the gills when I'm killed. I however, can consent. Animals cannot. But we know that animals can think. Regardless of debating the ethics of consuming them, this adds an additional ethical quagmire of is it ethically sound to drug non-consenting, thinking species.
The problem is that the happy drugs will, in some detectable concentrations, end up in meat.
(A smaller problem is that humans will start using the drugs if the distribution is not tightly controlled.)
Bonus, like all those tall Dutch kids from the milk hormones.
Something like 70% of all antibiotics used worldwide go to farm animals, so in a sense, they are already pumped full of drugs keeping them happy because the drugs prevent them from dying at higher rates from disease.
https://ourworldindata.org/antibiotics-livestock
Ha yes the blissful experience of drug addiction
solve the land use problem for growing cattle feed if you want it to be maximally ethical.
Not really. Similar to giving drugs to lower class people so they can bear the unbearable life. For an indiviual, sure, life probably feels better in a narrow sense, but is it more ethical? No.
Why eat meat at all is the big question? Impossible and Beyond satisfy the taste and craving without the nastiness.
Interesting, the question for me is why eat ultra-processed meat simulacra, that don't taste particularly nice, like impossible and beyond burgers? It is possible to home cook far healthier and more delicious veggie burgers with seitan, mushrooms, lentils, etcetera. Ultimately, this whole meat substitute market is targeting a niche that doesn't exist at anything like the scale envisioned, because it competes with low cost meat on the one hand and low cost plant-based burgers on the other, and is worse than both on all relevant metrics.
What metrics?
https://nutritionfacts.org/blog/how-healthy-are-the-impossib...
This comparison seems to suggest they are very similar. The fact that impossible burgers are vastly less resource intensive to produce and don't involve killing an animal for no good reason is an incredible deal.
They really don't.
Like, they're close enough for a vegetarian/vegan to get something that reminds them of the taste, but for a frequent meat eater it's not even close sadly. I keep trying from time to time.
As for why, it's much easier to replace the product than it is to replace the need.
These statements remind me of fitness influencer's showcasing their healthy brownies which "totally taste like the real thing".
I never understood exactly who is the target audience.
If I were a vegan/vegetarian for ethical or religious reasons I don’t think I would want food that reminds me of meat.
As an occasional meat eater that also enjoys the many natural options for plant-based protein, why would I want something that replicates taste/texture of something I can already eat?
I am a meat lover that understands that eating real meat is way too large a drain on our planet's resources.
To me, the progress vegan meat has made is an absolute godsend.
I used to eagerly anticipate the lab-grown meat revolution, but with the quality of current vegan alternatives, it just seems no longer necessary.
As someone ethically against the Mafia killing people, why would I want to watch a TV show that reminds me of the Mafia killing people?
Vegetarian for 10+ years. Love the odd impossible burger, otherwise I don’t miss meat or fish at all - the thought doesn’t enter my mind
Costs more, tastes worse and is ultra-processed.
They don't taste the same, they're much more expensive, and I worry what sort of negative health effects all the ingredients may have.
What about the health nastiness that comes along with ultra processed food? Why not just go full blown veggie or vegan? Theres some amazing recipes out there that are healthy as well.
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Yes, I want to murder all the little animals because I enjoy a real burger or vegetation Indian meal over highly processed fake meat...
Those are pretty good in their own right, but they really aren’t much like meat in my opinion. They’re similar, but they are quite obviously not meat within the first few bites.
> satisfy the taste and craving without the nastiness
I have tried, but I disagree with that assessment. It just tastes like peas for me.
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There might not be much of a market for it. Vegetarians and vegans are used to industrially processed protein substitutes but most of them don't really want meat and its flavor. In contrast, many non-vegetarians want natural high-quality products from real animals, they don't want to eat industrially processed lab meat. A market would have been low-cost ultra-processed meat products but for that it seems that lab grown meat is too expensive.
This can still change though, if the products of animal farming were to become more expensive and with higher mandatory quality standards, as they in my opinion should be.
I think the dream will never die, but it might go underground for another turn.
Problem was that broadly there's two categories to compete in. "Superior product" , and "cheaper". the last round of artificial meat was neither.
I genuinely believe that eventually we'll have a proper "biological revolution". much like many inorganic technical revolutions have shaped the world (AI being one of the most recent) I think we'll have a breakthrough that opens the doors to the kinds of biological technologies from science fiction.
At that stage I would anticipate an assault on both categories. Ground beef/chicken/pork of sufficient quality that undercuts factory farmed meat. But also superior products. the best wagyu in the world is just tissue, a collection of cells. I can certainly imagine a future where chunks of meat at that quality or even better roll out of vats. softer and more marbled than any real meat because it's not limited by the conditions of being grown within a functional animal.
And when it's better or cheaper people will buy it, and squeamishness will abate as it becomes normalized. that the meat may be more humane will be a nice value add but never enough to prop up the product itself.
People have fetishized animals so much that creating synthetic goop in the form of flesh somehow got billions in founding. Omnivores eat meat, even herbivores do it sometimes, get over it.
It’s not the meat eating that’s the problem. It’s the industrial farming that we’ve instituted in the last 75 years.
Cows can be treated nicely, given a field to romp in, fun toys, and then euthanized quickly without causing them fear.
But that means leaving wide open space that’s not making the shareholders enough extra money and therefore we don’t do it. Instead, we torture them.
It also destroys that land and the environment.
The land we use for ranching isn't empty or useless. That's just what resource extractors always say.
Eh, I eat meat almost daily (chicken breast) and I'm fully aware of what entails the butchering of animals. Even had a pet rabbit at my grandfather's when I was a kid, that one day disappeared and the next day we ate rabbit meat. Just like when I cleaned up the squirrel that was torn in half by my cats, I see it all as a part of life.
Doesn't mean that I wouldn't prefer if it all came from grown meat, rather than the entire industry that we have now. If the taste, texture and looks are the same, why shouldn't we switch (if those 3 factors are the only important ones)?
Because every second super processed food is reveled to be carcinogenic or harmful in the long term, why would you take the risk if there is a good alternative? Btw I am also against industrial scale animal farms, those are problematic too, not from a morale but health perspective.
You're fixating on the emotional issues of eating meat, but that's not even the primary interest in the technology.
afaik most people who don't eat meat or would consider synthetic alternatives do so because of moral considerations. We are already super efficient in farming meat, to such degree when that transportation is a bigger factor.
To a large extent it's probably explainable through meat industry lobbyism and shadow campaigns over the years.
Even if I very much hope to live to see a profitable production of animal proteins without growing and killing animals, I do not believe that there is the slightest chance that this approach, of the "lab-grown meat" will ever succeed to produce meat that is tasty and cheaper than e.g. chicken breast.
In the long term, the only way to produce artificial meat that looks like natural meat, but is cheaper, would be to create a a genetically-engineered multicellular organism, derived from some fungus, which would feed like a fungus, but which would grow some parts containing muscle tissue, instead of growing mushrooms.
In the short term, there already exists the technology to produce protein powder with the same composition as natural whey protein concentrate or as egg-white powder, but obtained from a culture of some genetically-modified strains of the fungus Trichoderma, which have been modified to secrete the desired animal protein, instead of an enzyme that is secreted by the unmodified strains.
There exist some startups that hope to eventually sell such fungus-produced animal protein powders, initially as ingredients for industrial food processing. Unlike "lab-grown meat", this technology has the potential to achieve a lower cost than the protein powders made from cow milk or chicken eggs.
For some people, like myself, the availability of such a protein powder as a cooking ingredient would be enough to eliminate their dependency of any natural animal protein sources.
I have eaten only proteins from vegetable sources for about 4 years, but eventually I gave up, because that forced too rigid constraints in what I could eat without exceeding the calories threshold that would make me gain weight rapidly and without exceeding the cost of a diet including meat, while also taking too much of my time with plant protein extraction at home, because the commercial plant protein concentrates are much more expensive than meat, so I do not consider their use acceptable.
So now I still eat vegan food that I cook myself, but when cooking certain dishes I enhance their protein content with whey protein.
Thus for me whey protein from a fungal culture would already be enough, but for those who want the taste of meat without killing an animal, that is much farther in the future, after we will understand much better the relationship between genome and multicellular growth and morphogenesis.
I was hoping for Deathless Meat [1] Looks like this does not happen anytime soon.
[1] see https://www.daniel-suarez.com/changeagentsynopsis.html
(This reminded me why I stopped reading magazines: they have low information density. They are more creative writing, journaling rather than terse and factual)
My take away on the answer to the headline question is:
Currently the lab grown meat is too expensive and not good tasting enough to compete with real meat and plant based alternatives exist so - not it’s time yet.
- you can thank tyson foods and their allies for crushing the entire industry
I eat meat and like it, but I also feel kind of sorry for cows, sheep, pigs, chickens etc.
I was initially positive about lab grown meat, but then you realise that Kraft Foods or someone will get hold of it and turn it into the most unhealthy slop you could imagine.
I think like you, but they have managed to turned non-lab grown meat into unhealthy slop, too.
There are plenty of things to dislike about beef, but the hunks of it found at the meat counter are one of most unaltered, natural state food items in the store. The sea salt wins that competition but not much else does. Compared to broccoli or an apple, even feed lot beef is pristine. The nutrient difference between an ancient auroch and a modern steer is mostly the proportion of fat.
I would very much like to believe you, but what about hormones and antibiotics in livestock's diet?
Living in country with proper standards helps a lot. Hormones are not used at all and antibiotics involved prevent butchering for certain period when they are used to medicate individual animals. Testing shows that regulations work on these areas.
What about all the fake red stuff to simulate freshness and meat glue?
Fair. You do need to pick your sources carefully.
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