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."

Comments

Now dawns the age

[Ukab the Great]

Of ethical bondage equipment.

Re:Now dawns the age

[jythie]

Actually there are already a number of suppliers for vegan kinksters.

For many it will not matter since it is all about imagery, thus the fact the leather comes from particular animals is 'important'. Others will probably be happy to have more options in alternatives.

Re:Now dawns the age

[gstoddart]

Actually there are already a number of suppliers for vegan kinksters.

Wow, that's the fastest I've seen rule #34 apply to a thread in a while. :-P

Re:Now dawns the age

[gstoddart]

Which is suddenly making me wonder ... do vegan chicks swallow? Seems it would be an animal byproduct.

OK, I'm a bad bad person, I know. ;-)

Re:Now dawns the age

[OhSoLaMeow]

do vegan chicks swallow?

Only until they marry.

And much more expensive than real or fake

[crazyjj]

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.

Headline-Generating Verbage

[AttillaTheNun]

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.

Re:Headline-Generating Verbage

[tnk1]

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.

I already have discovered it. It works perfectly and solves all the energy issues we might have for a few hundred years of constant growth.

The only obstacle that is in front of me is just finding the right lobbyist to help get a repeal for certain regressive laws of nature currently on the books.

Re:Leather is a wonderful material.

[WillAdams]

Leather is constrained in size by how large a cow will grow, in thickness by the thickest point available for a given area (if you want to work really large, you can't get hides as thick as if you're willing to work smaller) and in quality by how pampered the creature was in its life (Rolls Royce uses cows raised in special pastures w/ wooden fencing (no barbed wire) and the hides which they reject would be top quality elsewhere).

Also, presumably this material won't require the tanning process, so one will get material equivalent to vegetable tanned w/o the nasty chemicals of chrome tanned.

Moreover, even though leather can be considered a by-product of the meat industry, it's not cheap --- a full hide is well over $100.

William