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Lab-Grown Leather Could Be a Reality In 5 Years
fangmcgee writes "Lab-grown leather apparel could hit the runways in as little as five years—all without harming a hair on a single animal's head, according to Andras Forgacs, co-founder and CEO of Modern Meadow, a Missouri-based startup that's approaching meat-and-leather production from a tissue-bioengineering, rather than farming, point of view. Backed by Breakout Labs, the grant-awarding foundation headed by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Modern Meadow seeks to combine regenerative medicine with three-dimensional printing to synthesize leather and ultimately meat."
Of ethical bondage equipment.
If you have a moral objection to real leather, buy fake.
If you don't have any moral objection, buy real.
Or, if you don't like leather, buy neither.
Any one of these three options will be a LOT cheaper than anything grown in a lab. And I seriously doubt this will ever be able to scale.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
I could discover sustainable cold fusion in as little as 5 years. Of course, there is always the chance it may take me longer, or forever.
Leather is fine, but this could lead to new synthetic materials that improve on leather.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Leather as a material is actually very interesting.
Light, Flexible, Sturdy, Tough, and a great insulator.
Still there isn't a replacement for it in a lot of protective gear. Such as Motorcycle jackets, they are not to make you look bad-ass but if you fall off your bike as an armor so you don't scrape yourself all up. Metal and Plastic is too ridgid, or too flimsy. Leather has the perfect use.
However I don't see much of a market for artificial leather, only because we are still eating cows. Most farms don't produce leather only cattle, but beef cattle what use the hides for leather.
Now if this technology makes affordable meat like it thinks it could, then perhaps artifical leather can come in.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants :)
I can't read about synthetic animal parts without thinking about the enormous mass of chicken, referred to as "Chicken Little" that is used in the book as a source of protein by continually slicing off hunks from the always growing mass of chicken heart cells.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Bioengineered Leather (PETBL) Because the bioengineered leather has rights too...
Martin - Dattabank
... to the skins of all those cows we eat? The beef industry is not going to stop killing the cows, but now they will have to throw away the skins rather than turn them into leather. We will have to pay more for our beef, pork etc. to cover this cost and then pay for the fake leather as well...
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
How about a cosmetic skingraft industry to leatherize your skin? I can hear the tv commercials now "You could spend a decade suntanning to achieve the trendy new leatherskin(tm) look but now after a simple operation at your doctors office...". You could pick your leatherized skin color, maybe even fake alligator...
Never underestimate the ability of young people to spend large amounts of money to do stupid things in the name of "rebellion". This could be the next "tattoo" or the next "piercing". We're getting close to the point where the early adopters of those fads have kids who need to rebel against them... Leatherskin could be the answer.... Hmm you could look like a Dune stillsuit when you're naked or motorcycle leathers... this could work and make a lot of money for people who invest early...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
So, the business part is the only thing missing here.
Dog is my co-pilot.
After all, as the Arrogant Worms pointed out, Carrot Juice is Murder.
I am officially gone from
Uh, really? Since most micronutrients are elements or minerals, perhaps you could explain what an artificial version is. Vitamins, the only other class of micronutrients, are easily added to lab-grown biologicals.
I didn't see anything in TFA about adding teratogenics to the mix. On the contrary, it's the four-legged "real cow" version which is chock full of antibiotics and feed additives.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Not to mention the cosmetic industry.
And auto industry - Rich Corinthian Leather* could actually be grown in labs in Corinth!
Tip o' the propeller beanie to Ricardo Montalban
It'll also save the hides of thousands of Naugas annually!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
As a motorcyclist, I'm really interested in this.
Although amazing progress has been made in synthetics, for heavy duty use (read, racing, trackdays, etc.) leather is still king. We've known for a while that there are benefits to the way cows are cared for. The most protective leather comes from cows that aren't kept in barbed wire fences, and raised above the mosquito lines; there is less damage to the hide that way, making for fewer potential points of failure.
Large sheets of leather are also valuable, as they reduce the number of seams in the leather, and permit them to be moved away from common abrasion zones.
Type of leather is also important to us... Good cow leather is usually at least 1.4mm thick, and a full leather suit can be quite heavy (>10lbs.) Kangaroo leather is desirable for this application, since it's lighter and often stronger than cow leather.
I'll be interested seeing what comes of these materials.
Your references only discuss carbon emission. In my post, I refer to nasty chemicals that are likely involved in the production of vatmeat. These are different topics. We can reduce our carbon emissions to zero and still destroy the world by inappropriate handling of chemical, biological, and radioactive products.
Please read before jumping to conclusions, and avoid ad hominem* attacks.
Of course factory farms cause environmental harm. Like all other large-scale production, we need to carefully capture and recycle products which are wasted. Personally, I'd love to see ecologically friendly production of healthy, nutritious, tasty vatmeat. However, I have concerns about the ecological impact, and about the safety of these products.
Finally, inhibiting progress can be a good thing. Monsanto GM corn / roundup have been linked to significant increase of cancer in rats. If we'd inhibited Monsanto's progress, we wouldn't be finding this out a full decade after they started selling this for human consumption.
*(oh... this is truly sad: Mozilla's spellchecker wants to correct 'hominem' to 'Eminem'... I like Eminem and all, but what has this world come to?)
I am an omnivore, and I maintain that it is no more unethical for me to kill and eat animals than it is for chimps,bear, dogs, racoons, or any other omnivore to kill and eat animals.