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World's Second Largest Meat Processor Invests In Lab-Grown Meat Startup (foxbusiness.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the clean-meat dept.

Tyson Foods, the world's second largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef, and pork, announced it has invested in Silicon Valley startup Memphis Meats, a company that makes lab-grown meat using animal cells. The investment amount was not disclosed, but it follows a slew of other high-profile backers including Cargill Inc., Bill Gates and Richard Branson. Fox Business reports: Last December, Tyson made a similar investment in another meatless startup called Beyond Meat, investing a roughly 5% stake in the company that produces plant-based meat alternatives. Tyson CEO Tom Hayes told FOX Business in March of last year that he sees plant-based protein as a big part of the company's future. "If you take a look at the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) stats, protein consumption is growing around the world -- and it continues to grow. It's not just hot in the U.S.; it's hot everywhere, people want protein, so whether it's animal-based protein or plant-based protein, they have an appetite for it. Plant-based protein is growing almost, at this point, a little faster than animal-based, so I think the migration may continue in that direction," Hayes told FOX Business. Memphis Meats, which debuted its first animal-free meatball in 2016, followed by the world's first chicken strip in 2017, said customers should expect to see these products on store shelves by 2021 or 2022.

11 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Meat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    Without slaughter stress hormones, antibiotic abuse/resistance, animal suffering, etc.? Sign me up.

  2. Have we seen Peak Meat? by rmdingler · · Score: 2

    With the resources necessary to raise a pound of beef (1799 gal water) and pork (576 gal water), I suppose the world may indeed hold a future in which only the ultra rich can afford the pleasure of meat on the hoof.

    How lucky are we, that we got to live during the time of Peak Meat, and know the savory explosion of juices biting into a medium rare, perfectly prepared, prime ribeye.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

    1. Re:Have we seen Peak Meat? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I suppose the world may indeed hold a future in which only the ultra rich can afford the pleasure of meat on the hoof.

      Globally, the rich eat more meat, but in America meat consumption is negatively correlated with income. Higher income Americans eat less.

      The type of meat varies widely around the world. Americans eat as much chicken as they do pork and beef combined. In the EU and in China, pork is number one. South America eats the most beef.

    2. Re:Have we seen Peak Meat? by rmdingler · · Score: 2

      Chicken meat, per pound, is reportedly about one-tenth the water expenditure of of beef; not a bad outcome but there are production anomalies that seem to account for the eat mor chickn phenomenon.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    3. Re:Have we seen Peak Meat? by SlaveToTheGrind · · Score: 4, Informative

      Moving water around takes energy, which mostly comes from fossil fuels. . . . Purifying water and disposing of waste water also takes a lot of energy.

      The shock-and-awe water consumption numbers like the ones OP threw out are mostly water to grow the grass/grain the animals eat. Nearly all of that comes straight from the sky or from local wells, with no purification or disposal required.

    4. Re: Have we seen Peak Meat? by careysub · · Score: 2

      We hit peak oil in 2009 exactly as Hubbert predicted. And yes, the world underwent some very important readjustments as a result.

      Hubbert analyzed oil extraction histories from oil fields, and regions, around the world and devised a model that is both descriptive and predictive of how oil production (and resources production in general) changes over time with intensive extraction efforts. Though initially applied to oil, it is general in nature. Hubbert modelling correctly predicted peak oil arriving in the U.S. in 1970.

      So how is that U.S. oil production has climbed back up to nearly (but not quite) the same peak as before, 45 years later? Because what is now being produced is not the same resource that Hubbert modeled. Hubbert was talking about conventional oil, from conventional oil fields. What is now being produced in the U.S. is "oil" not oil. When the world hit peak oil in 2009 (an event blunted by the Great Recession) oil prices sky-rocketed and commodities that were not conventional oil (natural gas condensates, tar sands, shale oil) started being reformed, or produced and pushed into the supply line to replace it. These are substitute commodities, made possible by the high price brought about by the lack of sufficient conventional oil - which is what Hubbert predicted. Oil prices hit their all time peak just before the Great Recession hit, and then climbed back nearly as high as soon as recovery commenced. Only the combination of alternative "oil" production, and Saudi deliberate over-production, brought the price back down to a lower stable, but still historically high, level.

      Farmers pumping the Ogallala Aquifer dry are welcome to try to come up with a (much higher priced) substitute water that still allows them to raise cows profitably.

      --
      Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
    5. Re:Have we seen Peak Meat? by careysub · · Score: 2

      I expect that cultured meat has the same potential to bring down the cost of meat.

      Thanks to the cyanobacteria that provide the food, it looks like cultured meat has a very good environmental footprint, the only rival is poultry.

      But that does not mean it will be cheap. There is a lot more expensive high tech involved in this that raising cows. I'm not seeing any predictions right now that it will even reach the price of real beef.

      However, while I can't recall what it's called right now, there is an effect known in economics that making a product more efficient actually ends up using even more energy because more efficiency means cheaper cost to the consumer and that in turn drives more consumer use.

      Jevons "Paradox". I put that in quotes because it has been hard to find good demonstrations of its existence, and no a priori reason to believe it is any sort of "law". Lower prices (from efficiency gains) will increase use, but the prediction that it will always, or usually, or even often, exceed efficiency gains is not well founded, nor well documented. It glaringly fails with domestic refrigerators for example (a five fold improvement in energy efficiency did not lead to a six fold increase in the number of refrigerators).

      --
      Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
    6. Re:Have we seen Peak Meat? by SlaveToTheGrind · · Score: 3, Informative

      From your own link, the average farm in America spends $17,000 annually on energy for pumping water.

      Actually, my link says the average farm in America that irrigates spent $17,238 in 2012 (though if you divide the $2.7 billion total pumping costs against the 229,237 farms that irrigate, that comes out to $11,778 by my calculator -- close enough for government work, I suppose).

      There are just over 900 million acres of farmland in the U.S. That means the ~55 million acres that irrigate are ~6% of total farmland . The other 94% use only water from the sky.

      Another way to look at it is that $2.7 billion total irrigation costs across 900 million total acres comes out to $3 per acre . Taking corn as an example, the national average yield of 175 bushels per acre at an exceptionally conservative spot price of $3/bushel (it was about twice that in the same time frame as the above irrigation numbers, and is still higher today) means your $3/acre irrigation expenses are just over one half of one percent of your $525/acre revenue.

      Irrigation in the U.S. is minuscule any way you slice it. The only way to make it look even remotely scary is to throw out misleading numbers in a vacuum.

  3. Animal cruelty and not being a vegan asshole by sg_oneill · · Score: 2

    I've always felt uncomfortable about meat, and animal suffering. In the past we where able to console ourself that animals are not conscious, dont have feelings, etc, but as science progresses we're realising that this isn't the case.

    BUT, I absolutely detest vegans and vegetarians who insist on forcing their shitty diet on us using moral blackmail and abusive insinuation that meat eaters are murderers , etc. And anyway, I really like meat.

    So this might be the way forward. Tasty tasty cowflesh, without the dead cow.

    Im sure the vegan holier than though folks will still think up some reason to hate it. Fuck em

    --
    Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
    1. Re:Animal cruelty and not being a vegan asshole by PoopJuggler · · Score: 2

      So despite your moral apprehension to killing animals, you're going to kill animals just to spite those who stand against it.

    2. Re:Animal cruelty and not being a vegan asshole by Khashishi · · Score: 2

      I'm a vegan, and I think this is great news. Not everybody is going to go vegan, so giving people an alternative is a net benefit to the world.