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...

[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.

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.