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.

Comments

What's the point...

[ArmoredDragon]

...when you have perfectly good animals that are already made out of food?

Re:What's the point...

[godrik]

Well, it could eventually get cheaper to grow meat rather than raise the animals. It could also have implication for places were it is inconvenient to raise animals. Think in the polar region or the desert. Also, raising animal is not environmentally friendly and my not scale to a 10 billion human population at US consumption rate.

Some people object to eating animal products (7+ million in the us, 350+ million in the world) but may not object to grown meat which could be a trillion dollar industry in itself.

Re:What's the point...

[glenebob]

I do not object, per se, to eating animals. Animals are yummy, and it's not my fault. However, the very instant a passable, affordable, non-animal meat product becomes available, I'm in. I would very happily do without the killing aspect of eating delicious animal protein.

Re:What's the point...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you kill them yourself, or like most people expect others to do the dirty work?

What happens when all those immigrants Trump kicks out aren't working in the "tasty animal" processing plants?

Will "real" Americans step up to work in the slaughterhouses? Or in the feed lots? Who is going to drive the "dead truck"?

I mean if you spend any time outside of a restaurant and see where meat comes from, you might be less likely to make flippant jokes.

Re: What's the point...

[guruevi]

Unless you know what's going into the vat you can't say that for sure. Most likely something has to be done to stave off the molds, bugs and other vermin that is going to be on the factory floor and in the source product (given the source is plant material)

Keeping a lab clean is relatively easy, keeping an entire factory where food-products are grown and handled are going to attract something.

clean = fake

[geekymachoman]

> or as the industry likes to call it, "clean meat."

I mean just call it what it is... artificial or fake (shorter, and more precise) meat. So annoying this "industry", always have to imply that something they do is "better", cleaner, or moral (implying at the same time, that what we do is the opposite and wrong).

What's up with this ?

Also, if you don't eat meat, why make (or EAT) fake meat ? Why not stick to grass, nuts, carrots and potatoes and just leave it be ?
It's like mormons. Going around the world and trying to make people think same way they think (the correct way, mind you)..

Just another religion. Keep it to yourself.

No, fake = fake, meat = meat.

[skam240]

Calling it fake meat would be inaccurate. Soy deli slices are fake meat. This would be meat, just not from an anaimal.

As for "if you dont eat meat why eat this?", anyone who doesnt eat meat because they have an ethical issue with killing an animal but still enjoys the taste and values the level of nutrition provided by meat would be very interested in this.

On top of that, there are many of us who love eating meat but recognize that it's a very inefficient means of making food in a world where food and water scarcity is becoming more and more of an issue and who believe this could be a great way to get meat with less resources used.

Re:What is the meat "eating"?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a hell of a lot in there other than the bulk nutrients and those three minerals. That said, cows can produce it all from a few plants, so it's clearly not impossible to synthesise somehow. I suppose the question will be do you add the traces manually from some sort of soylent-type powder and hope you get enough of them, or use a biological feedstock (plant/algae perhaps) that is processed by some sort of pseudo-disgestion analogous to a real animal and re-use existing biological mechanisms.

On the other hand, if your diet is so unbalanced that you're relying on meat for any nutrient, you're probably doing it wrong, as you can get everything you need from a varied vegetarian or vegan diet. You might need a bit more care if you have specific protein needs, but meat is certainly not a requirement for most people. I for one wouldn't be averse to solylent-fed meat as a raw source of tasty proteins, as long as it's not actively harmful (which will take a long long time to establish). Even if it's not up to hand-reared $30+ steak, it's probably easy enough to be better than some chlorinated antibiotic-soaked, hormone-enhanced mass-market meat. For a certain level of "easy".

Even if all lab meat was a perfect nutritional, taste and texture clone of some sort of wagyu-level supermeat, it's still going to be healthier to cut down on the meat in the first place, as it's just not good for you to eat too much of it, especially cured and red meats. I'm still working on that, as it's just so tasty: quorn and tofu can only go so far.