Lab-Grown Meat Is In Your Future, and It May Be Healthier Than the Real Stuff (smh.com.au)

An anonymous reader shares an article on The Sydney Morning Herald:Scientists and businesses working full steam to produce lab-created meat claim it will be healthier than conventional meat and more environmentally friendly. But how much can they improve on old-school pork or beef? In August 2013, a team of Dutch scientists showed off their lab-grown burger (cost: $435,000) and even provided a taste test. Two months ago, the American company Memphis Meats fried the first-ever lab meatball (cost: $23,700 per pound). Those who have tasted these items say they barely differ from the real deal. The Dutch and the Americans claim that within a few years lab-produced meats will start appearing in supermarkets and restaurants. And these are not the only teams working on cultured meat (as they prefer to call it). Another company, Modern Meadow, promises that lab-grown "steak chips" -- something between a potato chip and beef jerky -- will hit the stores in the near future, too.

Comments

And better for the enviroment

[JoshuaZ]

If they can get this to work it will also be better for the environment in terms of energy use, CO2 and methane production. Right now, my wife and I are both not complete vegetarians but very rarely eat any form of meat. This is for ethical, environmental and financial reasons. In her case, she'd be probably pretty happy never eating meat, whereas I've got a strong craving for it generally that is a little annoying. I'm really looking forward to vat meat.

Re:And better for the enviroment

[Nidi62]

Right now, my wife and I are both not complete vegetarians but very rarely eat any form of meat. This is for...financial reasons.

Really? With a membership to a warehouse store like Sam's Club, I am currently getting 90/10 ground beef for under $3 per pound (80/20 is even cheaper) and can get frozen chicken breasts for around $2 per pound. At the local grocery store we can get fresh chicken breasts for a little over $2 per pound. Me and my wife go through a bag of chicken every 2 weeks and a 5 pound case of ground beef in 3-4 weeks. Unless you live in a place where meat is very scarce, you only eat filet or ribeye every night, or insist on grass fed free range low stress hand massaged beef the financial impact of meat vs no meat is very minimal.

Re:And better for the enviroment

[StikyPad]

I'm not a vegetarian, and I don't necessarily have any ethical qualms with killing and eating animals, but if I could eat meat without killing an animal most of the time and save energy in the process, I'm good with that.

Re:And better for the enviroment

[jeremyp]

From TFA

a 2011 study calculated that growing meat in labs would cut down on the land required to produce steaks, sausages and bacon by 99 per cent and reduce the associated need for water by 90 per cent. What's more, it found that a pound of lab-created meat would produce much less polluting greenhouse-gas emissions than is produced by cows and pigs, even poultry.

Who to believe? An AC on Slashdot or a proper scientific study?

Re:And better for the enviroment

[Maxo-Texas]

While I agree with your basic point keep in mind it's more like:

a [untitled, unreferenced] 2011 study [probably funded by the industry] calculated [based on a bunch of wildly optimistic, untestable assumptions made in almost total ignorance and inexperience] that growing meat in labs would cut down on the land required to produce steaks, sausages and bacon by 99 per cent and reduce the associated need for water by 90 per cent. What's more, it found that a pound of lab-created meat would produce much less polluting greenhouse-gas emissions than is produced by cows and pigs, even poultry.

A more recent article 2014
http://modernfarmer.com/2014/0...

"One tissue-engineering researcher I spoke with scoffed at claims that cell culture techniques could deliver an edible hamburger for a reasonable cost, with a lower environmental footprint, than a cow.

âoeIf you ask anyone who has actually worked in a lab,â he says, âoewho has seen how cells are grown in a lab and how artificial tissue is made, the amount of energy and resources that go into it â" theyâ(TM)ll tell you, itâ(TM)s never going to happen.â

Post, the scientist whose cultured cells went into the celebrity burger, disagreed, but he acknowledged that there are still unanswered questions about the production process. The largest one is this: What will we feed animal tissue cells, cultured in a lab? ...

Of the researchers I spoke with, Post was the most optimistic, and even he admitted that it hasnâ(TM)t been done yet, and that âoewe canâ(TM)t be 100 percent sure that cells, in culture, can be more efficient than a cow. That is something that needs to be proven.â

For now, Post and others in the industry feed their burgers fetal bovine serum, which currently is produced from blood collected in slaughterhouses and processed in a lab. Footprint analysis hasnâ(TM)t been done on that method, but even the scientists involved say they donâ(TM)t think the numbers would look good â" and itâ(TM)s not a sustainable, animal-free solution in the long run."

Re: And better for the enviroment

[ljw1004]

Vegetarianism a current fad?

I'm not sure how to reconcile your claim with it being the dominant diet in the Indian subcontinent for millennia....

Re:And better for the enviroment

[HornWumpus]

I eat lots of meat to help end the legume holocaust.

Re:And better for the enviroment

[AthanasiusKircher]

Unless you live in a place where meat is very scarce, you only eat filet or ribeye every night, or insist on grass fed free range low stress hand massaged beef the financial impact of meat vs no meat is very minimal.

I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm not sure you're familiar with what it takes to live on an extremely low budget. If you're looking for cheap protein sources, the amount of protein per dollar you get with dried beans or lentils is generally anywhere from 50% more to double the amount of protein per dollar you'd get from the cheapest chicken. For other meats, that disparity is generally quite a bit more.

And of course that's only protein. If you take into account calories per dollar, meat is incredibly expensive compared to legumes, not to mention bulk grains, flour, etc.

There's a very good reason the poor in the past generally lived on bread and other starches (often supplemented with legumes for protein) as their staples for calories -- they're incredibly cheap... much cheaper even that the cheapest factory farm meat you can buy in the U.S. today.

And if you're at all concerned about source of meat, welfare, sustainability, quality, etc., then the premium for "better" meat goes WAY up compared to the added cost for "better" legumes/grains.

(If you want to start a response by noting the high cost of vegetables, note that you should be eating vegetables for a balanced diet regardless of whether you're eating meat or not. The replacement for meat in a diet is other protein, not more vegetables. And vegetable protein sources are simply a LOT cheaper than animal protein sources overall.)

Re:And better for the enviroment

[Solandri]

it's not a peaceful, painless death. In many instances it could only be described as torture.

You're comparing to a nonexistent zero base state. 99% of animals left alone by humans die a painful, tortuous death - usually in the jaws of a predator. I've seen them swallowed alive and struggling inside the belly of a predator, cut in half, skinned alive, limbs gnawed off while still alive, attempting to flee with entrails hanging out, all without any human nearby. It is extraordinarily rare for a wild animal to die of old age. The methods humans have developed to slaughter livestock do not purport to be peaceful or painless, they just needed to be less painful than the death most wild animals would experience naturally to justify the killing as an improvement (from the animal's perspective) from a wild death.

I've killed (and continue to kill) my share of animals for meat. It is not the cold, emotionless process we've developed in slaughterhouses hidden from view of the supermarket shelves. You become intimately aware that this is a living thing struggling to survive, and you're ending its life so you can eat. You gain a tremendous respect for the creature that gave its life to become your dinner, and are less likely to do things like dump a half-eaten burger into the trash.

That's the question I raise to people (non-vegetarians) I meet who are offended that I "enjoy killing wild animals" for meat (fishing). The animals I catch spend their entire lives free in the sea to do as they wish, except for the last 5 minutes before I kill them and make a best effort to eat as much of the meat as I can. The animals they eat spend their entire lives penned up in captivity, basically as part of a meat assembly line, until they're slaughtered, and they probably throw away unused meat simply because it's inconvenient or doesn't taste good anymore. Yet somehow in their minds, I am the bad guy because I make the animal suffer more?
,br> If "cultivated meat" becomes affordable, I will probably eat it most of the time for convenience and to decrease my environmental impact. But I will still catch the occasional fish and eat it myself, to remind myself what the natural ecosystem is and to respect it, and not live completely isolated from it within the artificial biosphere that modern humans have created.

No GMO but FrankenBeef OK?

[Registered Coward v2]

It will be interesting to see how this plays out with the public, especially in areas such as the EU that have come out strongly against GMO foodstuffs. Will they accept completely synthetically produced food? I would imagine farmers would oppose this simply because it threatens their very existence; with some producing "real" food at expensive prices so that having a real steak becomes a luxury item.

Taste is subjetive.

[Nyder]

Pretty sure in the future we will probably be eating each other. Human will be the cheapest & readiest available meat to be found.

If it tastes the same

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

If it tastes the same, I'd probably eat it.

But at $435,000 per burger, I might have to go for the combo-meal deal.

Pseudo-meat?

[erp_consultant]

No thanks. I'll stick with the real thing. I'm not eating anything that was born in a petri dish. How many times have we heard over the years that this or that man made thing (ex. margarine) is supposed to be better for you only to find out the opposite? Yeah....gimme a grass fed steak any day.

Not necessarily good for the planet, though

[BoRegardless]

Numbers of real world tests have shown the need for real world herbivores to inhabit valleys to keep the vegetation growing properly on the land. Introducing herds of sheep roaming a rather vegetation depleted land resulted in dramatic vegetation growth.

Of course, when you fence off, kill off and replace herbivores with chemical agents for plant growth, fungicides, herbicides, etc, then you don't need the herbivores.

Life is increasingly becoming 'artificial.'

Re:Cultured meat

[SeriousTube]

Culture isn't important. Ask Charlie the tuna. People don't want tuna with good taste, they want tuna that tastes good.