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Vegan Mayonnaise Company Starts Growing Its Own Meat In Labs, Says It Will Get To Stores First (qz.com)
Chase Purdy reports via Quartz: The maker of vegan mayonnaise has been working on getting lab-made meat onto dinner tables everywhere. It's just that nobody knew about it. Hampton Creek -- a company that built its name on plant-based condiments and vegan-friendly cookie doughs -- today revealed that, for the last year, it has been secretly developing the technology necessary for producing lab-made meat and seafood, or as the industry likes to call it, "clean meat." Perhaps even more surprising is that Hampton Creek expects to beat its closest competitor to market by more than two years. Since it was founded in 2015, Memphis Meats has raised at least $3 million from five investors for the development of its meat products, according to Crunchbase. By contrast, Hampton Creek -- just a 20-mile drive from its Silicon Valley rival -- has raised more than $120 million since 2011. It's one of Silicon Valley's unicorns -- a company that has a valuation that exceeds $1 billion.
The first vat-grown hamburger cost $325,000. The cost is now about $12 per pound. That is a decline in price by a factor of 30,000 in four years. Progress happens.
Vegan mayonnaise does not exist. By definition, mayonnaise contains egg. That's not just me speaking, it's US law.
The "A" stands for "anthropogenic" (man-made), not "anthropomorphic" (man-shaped). So the analogous word you want is "bovogenic" (cow-made).
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The problem vegans have with the egg industry are that the hens are usually severely mistreated before being butchered as soon as their productivity declines at the age of around 6. Right now roughly 50% of chicks that are born are male, and they are useless to the egg industry, so they are killed usually by being ground up alive or by being suffocated using carbon dioxide, which is fairly slow and unpleasant process. Eggs are not a victimless food.
On the other hand, we have people who are currently subjecting themselves to be lab rats, testing whether we can survive without meat.
Hardly lab rats. A sizable percent of India (the world's most populous country) have been eating a vegetarian diet for centuries. The longest lived communities in the world all share a common trait: very little meat consumption.
It's not an experiment. You can survive without eating meat, and you will probably live longer if you don't eat much of it. It's not that we can't live without meat, it's that meat is tasty and we enjoy eating it.
I know less meat and more veggies is healthy for me, but I'm not giving up meat because I love meat.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch