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What If You Could Eat Chicken Without Killing a Chicken? (theoutline.com)
From a report on The Outline: San Francisco-based startup Memphis Meats announced this week that it had grown chicken in a lab -- chicken strips, to be precise. The strips, which were grown using self-reproducing cells, are technically "meat," but because the cells were not from an animal, the process by which this "meat" was "raised" is much cleaner, resulting in animal food that has the potential to sate both environmental groups as well as animal rights activists and vegetarians. Memphis Meats says it's hoping the product is ready for commercial sale by 2021. The company is part of an ever-increasing horde of Silicon Valley startups trying to solve the complicated problems of the meat industry, which range from cultural ideas about food to industrial and environmental issues to, increasingly, discussions about animal cruelty. [...] About 99 percent of animals raised for slaughter in the U.S. come from factory farms, and about a third of the land mass of the Earth is used in raising livestock. More so than chicken, livestock is incredibly inefficient to raise: It takes about 2,500 gallons of water to produce just a pound of beef.
There's still no chicken in chicken nuggets.
...can they cross the road?
Table-ized A.I.
I don't really care much about Peta's talking points. I would gladly eat cheaper meat, though.
While technically chicken muscle cells, the texture of the meat comes from being attached to a skeleton. Once the texture of the muscle striations is solved, then it can be a proper replacement.
Just go to Subway!
I think lab meat would have a hard time being marketed except to a select amount of people for a very long time. A large portion of people are against GMO food, regardless of it's benefit to the environment or society, regardless of the lack of scientific proof to negative claims. People will gladly, ignorantly, eat things that are "natural" even though they've been bred and scientifically modified over hundreds of years to be something that shouldn't exist naturally on earth. That's pretty much everything in the produce department. Put a labcoat on and make something though, and then you've become some mad scientist bent on ruining the world with your hubris. insert mad scientist laugh here.
It takes about 2,500 gallons of water to produce just a pound of beef.
Water that is released by the animal into the environment, and flows back into the ocean. Where sunlight evaporates the water, they form into clouds and it rains down again.
Main concerns are if you try to raise beef in the desert and have to divert rivers in order to support your operation. Or if you are emptying natural aquifers faster than they are replenished. But in many areas of the midwest and south there is sufficient surface water to operate a farm, and coming up with the 36 - 40 gallons of water per head you need is not such a big deal.
An olympic sized swimming pool has enough water to supply 200 head of cattle for 3 months. That can cover you for summer, and you need significantly less water per head for the rest of the year.
A large portion of people are against GMO food
A tiny handful of people are against GMO food, they are just exceedingly loud and annoying.
Do you think anyone eating at McDonalds or Burger King gives a rats ass (ironically one of the many ingredients they are probably consuming) about GMO? Those are some of the largest food joints on earth...
Most people do not care that much about GMO, nor conditions in which animals are treated. Most people want food and don't really care who or what had to die or suffer to obtain it, so long as it is readily at hand. As long as the lab meat does not taste disgusting and chewing it is similar, I think it will be accepted.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I can't wait for the day in which it will be possible to buy meat surrogate, for all meats, at a reasonable price, and with a reasonable similarity to the real thing in texture, flavor, smell and taste.
Am I the only reminded of Azimov's The Martian Way? I mean the part, where an Earth's politician is explaining to electorate, how much water (used as reaction mass) it takes for a spaceship to get into space. The book's main characters observe, that most of the water so used falls right back onto the planet. But at least, in that novel some amount of water, however minuscule compared to Earth's vast oceans, does leave...
Well, in case of meat production — or indeed any other Earth-bound activity — no water is lost. Zero. Nada. So, what is the quoted statement supposed to mean?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Not really sure how this matters. How much is taken up growing crops? How much is taken up by roads, buildings, etc?
That's like saying my garage takes up X% of my slab. Ya? And?
The idea that humans need to be this fly on the wall, not interacting with the environment to "save" it is ridiculous.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
There is a device called a fence. You may have heard of it.
There is this thing called a bird. It flies. Wild chickens fly quite well. Even a stray domestic chicken would be able to get over any fence you're allowed to build on your property if it cared to.
to raise one walnut and about a gallon to make a almond. Should we stop growing nut trees?
Less environmental damage done by your pizza toppings. Safer pizza toppings for you. Cheaper pizza toppings for you. More variety of pizza toppings for you. Less killing for your your pizza toppings. More land available to grow pizza toppings.
Eventually.
Right now, IVM is about at the stage the integrated circuit was in circa 1958. So nothing to worry about; but still, interesting.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Yes, but the chickens don't believe in it.
The whole water thing is a dumb argument environmentalists dreamed up to make us feel bad about being alive. It's not like water from a stream in Minnesota is being diverted to livestock instead of irrigating poor farmers in the Sahara.
For the most part the water isn't coming out of a stream in Minnesota either. It's being pumped out of an aquifer in Kansas to irrigate the alfalfa and corn that we are feeding to the livestock. Those aquifers were built up over millions of years and are being drained over the course of decades. Just like we need to get off of fossilized fuels for our energy supply, we need to stop or reduce our reliance on fossil water for our agriculture. We can do this either by eating lower on the food chain, or finding ways to produce animal protein more efficiently.
>> It takes about 2,500 gallons of water to produce just a pound of beef.
So what? Water is an effectively infinite global resource and it isn't ever actually consumed (i.e. lost). It all ultimately passes through the cow/human back into the environment where it evaporates then falls as rain.
Wait? Is there someone wrong with killing a chicken? They are bred and exist to be eaten. It's equivalent to pulling a turnip out of the ground. Things die, we live.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It takes half a million gallons of water to raise a baby to adulthood. We need to stop having babies.