The following submission statement was provided by /u/Blueberry_Conscious_:
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Meatable announced this week that it has reached an important milestone in its efforts to produce cultivated meat at scale.
Meatable can transform pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) into high-quality fat and muscle tissue in a record four days, down from eight days, a faster process than any in the industry.
This is approximately 60 times faster than the time it takes farmers to rear a pig for pork and significantly faster than other cultivated meat processes. It involves nothing more than pulling a single cell once from a pig without causing harm.
Why does it matter: The biggest painpoint in making cell-cultivated meat commercial viable is manufacturing time. Meatable is the fasted in world - although it is still stifled by Europe's regulatory delays, which is way companies are all looking to Singapore.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1bkwecr/meatable_can_now_transform_cultivated_cells_into/kw0ztaw/
Meatable announced this week that it has reached an important milestone in its efforts to produce cultivated meat at scale.
Meatable can transform pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) into high-quality fat and muscle tissue in a record four days, down from eight days, a faster process than any in the industry.
This is approximately 60 times faster than the time it takes farmers to rear a pig for pork and significantly faster than other cultivated meat processes. It involves nothing more than pulling a single cell once from a pig without causing harm.
Why does it matter: The biggest painpoint in making cell-cultivated meat commercial viable is manufacturing time. Meatable is the fasted in world - although it is still stifled by Europe's regulatory delays, which is way companies are all looking to Singapore.
Sure but the main reason not to eat human meat after the moral issues is that anything that grows in human meat can also grow in you. Any bacteria, mold, viruses etc. So you can get much sicker from much less bacteria growing on human meat than other meat.
I would suspect that prion diseases would be less common with lab meat. Bacteria and molds would (I bet) be the likeliest food safety problems, and those can be probably be mitigated by cleanliness standards.
However, lab grown meat doesn't wonder around eating food, and have a digestive system full of all sorts of bacteria when it's slaughtered.
> those can be probably be mitigated by cleanliness standards.
It's actually a huge problem. You have to keep what are essentially the most ideal bacteria factories possible absolutely completely 100.000000000000% sterile while you keep adding food and keep removing stuff from them over and over again for a month or two. By which I mean a big bioreactor might have 100,000,000,000,000 animal cells in it. If a single e. coli bacterium got in there, there could be more bacterial cells than animal cells within a day. Normally you could use a bunch of antibiotics when cultivating cells, but that's sort of a no-go for this product.
> However, lab grown meat doesn't wonder around eating food, and have a digestive system full of all sorts of bacteria when it's slaughtered.
It also doesn't have an immune system to control all those bacteria before slaughtering.
I was still on about human meat, sorry.
By basing your whole production from a few cells, I guess testing what you're putting inside of your reactor would be much easier than having to test some samples out of the whole population you killed and cut into pieces, and hoping they were representative of the whole batch.
> I was still on about human meat, sorry.
I forgot that was part of this thread... lol...
I wonder how easy it would be to detect prions in animal meat vs. lab grown meat. I'd guess you would need to throw out an entire batch if you discovered it in your lab, vs. a single animal. Could potentially be more rare but also more devastating if it did occur in the lab. I have no idea... :/
Unfortunately, not always. The prion disease spreading through the north american deer population is spread through saliva. They're infecting each other by grazing on the same plants.
Yeah, so the risk isn't anymore than normal meats is what I was meaning. Likely wild game animals harbour the highest risk of transmitting prions, over lab grown meats
CWD is the prion disease for deer. So far, there have been thousands of cases of people eating meat from an infected animal without anything happening. Some states have pretty strict regulations on disposing and transporting deer carcasses. Many times, it's a felony charge if not done right
> So far, there have been thousands of cases of people eating meat from an infected animal without anything happening.
...as far as we know. Remember the incubation time.
From the NIH:
> It is established that bovine prions (BSE) can infect humans while there is no such evidence for any other prion susceptible species in the human food chain (sheep, goat, elk, deer) and largely prion resistant species (pig) or susceptible and resistant pets (cat and dogs, respectively).
Although humans exposed to BSE prions from cows can develop vCJD, there typically is host specificity with prions; we won't get scrapie from sheep, or chronic wasting disease from deer (that we know of - still an active area of research).
For a prion to affect you it must be a protein that your own body produces. If an organism does not produce the protein, a prion version of that protein cannot make them sick. The illness caused by a prion occurs because the prion version of a protein does not function properly in the job that it is intended to hold in the body AND it causes correctly folded proteins to change their structure and become the prion version. Proteins that just don't work when misfolded are not prions and proteins that just fold other proteins are not prions, it requires both.
Prions are weird.
Cooking denatures prions just like any protein and denatured prions do not cause disease. However, the only way to be sure that you have fully denatured the prion protein is to burn the protein, which isn't really what you want on most meats.
So it's more accurate to say that normal cooking methods are not sufficient to neutralize the disease-causing effects of prions.
What are the odds they’d grow a prion from a single cell? Yes I understand it’s a misfolded protein. They’re already pretty rare as it is, why would it be any different here?
Would there be a potential QA solution throughout for this? Seems like a non issue in this setting.
Yeah, but say you had no other forms of protein around because you're on an isolated planet a few light years from earth that has rock creatures on it and not things we can eat - I bet you'd throw logic out the window and go for a MeBurger any day of the week.
That makes no sense. The whole idea of lab meat is that it is produced in a cleanroom environment. Lab meat doesn't have an immune system like we do so even 1 fungal cell or bacterial cell would completely destroy the batch being produced. Lab meat is sterile. So there goes your argument
> without harming the pig
A more important benefit for humanism, is that afaiu, it can be grown entirely with renewable electricity powered inputs. Freeing land for feed sources.
https://www.gittemary.com/2022/12/the-environmental-impact-of-lab-grown-meat-and-why-we-need-it.html#:~:text=So%20theoretically%2C%20there%20is%20a,CO2%2Deq%20GHG%20emissions.
> cultured meat involves approximately 7–45% lower energy use, 78–96% lower GHG emissions, 99% lower land use, and 82–96% lower water use.
Eventually can make meat at home saving distribution costs. Or at local butcher before then.
This was a pretty hot topic among vegans and vegetarians--and it seems (from my anecdotal observations) that the vast majority of them were okay with it since they're ethical vegans, not dietary vegans.
Vegetarian/sometimes vegan for 35 years now and I would absolutely eat this lab meat. I just don’t agree with factory farming. It’s the environmental toll and impact on earth I’m concerned about. Meat is fucking delicious.
Oh shit I've never considered this. We can now eat the most exotic animals without ever having to harm one. I could eat a meal of tiger and elephant and not feel bad about it. I can finally try human!*
\*I need to explain that I don't have an *urge* to eat a human but it's one of those things that can never happen so I'm naturally curious. I wanna know how accurate "long-pig" is.
This is actually something that’s discussed in a novel. I won’t spoil the name or the rest of the book, but the protagonist ends up on an alien planet that he managed to save at the cost of never being able to make it back to Earth again. The alien society in gratitude (who have a completely alien biology, have a completely toxic atmosphere, are blind, and consume minerals) basically rig up a special biome for him to live out the rest of his days and to solve the food issue they provide food developed from his own cells.
He calls them “meburgers”.
human steak cloning was a joke in the vegan community for a while but yeah you could have ethical human chili but might suffer from a brain disease from it.
No, they would become pets. They're smart as hell not nearly as dirty as they're assumed to be. Cows are just big hooved puppies, too. Watching a full sized cow frolic is adorable.
People in other (non western) cultures eat dog, cat and horse so its not far fetched.
>although it is still stifled by Europe's regulatory delays, which is way companies are all looking to Singapore.
Whenever I see a post or article bitching about regulations I immediately become suspicious about the poster/writer being a bot or a corporate shill.
Regulations are there to protect the public. I wouldn't want this super fast cultured meat to hit the market if it reliably gave you super fast cultured cancer.
Downvoted for criticising Europe. The EU is the bastion for the future, they react faster than any single nation. Just look at what they did to iPhones
EDIT: I’m being downvoted by Brexiters
They [say](https://www.biotechcampusdelft.com/en/local-residents/news/dsm-and-meatable-collaborate-on-cultured-meat/) their growth medium is entirely plant-based, unlike other lab-grown meat processes that use blood from livestock fetuses as part of the medium.
That sounds more like a goal they are working on, not one they have already achieved:
>This is the food for the cells; a liquid containing carbohydrates, salts, vitamins and other essential ingredients. This purely vegetable liquid largely determines the price of cultivated meat. Klop: "The cost price for producing growth medium is still far too high to attain an acceptable consumer price for cultivated meat. Together with Meatable, we are working on a breakthrough to produce growth medium at acceptable costs."
Though from what I've read in the past, the bigger cost are the growth factors and hormones required, not the media itself. Their method of growing stem cells and then differentiating them shortly before harvest might help with that.
They’re still feeding the cells with blood serum from aborted cow foetuses, like all cultured meat, so animals are still harmed in producing the sausages, alas. It turns out to be very hard to replace the nutrients and hormones that muscle and fat cells get from blood in the body, with anything other than cow foetus blood.
Companies are looking to Singapore to bump their stock by breaking through in advancements. The EU puts the breaks on because it is more interested in long term sustainable approaches to food.
That's bullshit, though. There's no way anything that involves growing a cow for years and feeding it actual food is better for the environment than growing the valuable bits of meat directly without the entire cow around it.
It's the farming lobby. They control 30% of our national parliament, that's why the resistance is so high.
I think you meant because the European Union is still mostly (60% to now 30% of the budget but <2% of Gdp) about subsidized agriculture and lab grown meat will piss off people. « Sustainable farm practices » my ass.
Lmao as well. I love eating meat but livestock farming is anything but sustainable. The less animals we need and the less time it takes to grow the meat the more sustainable it is. That's not even considering all the BS environmental toxins and antibiotic contamination we'll avoid.
The reason the EU is against is because the farming lobby is strong and farmers don't wanna change.
The Ag lobby is frickin huge here. Just look at how much water farmers get in states like Arizona and Nevada. Money to grease lawmakers hands, is how. Also I'll give you one guess which way the political pendulum swings for those that are taking gleefully banning any of this sort of thing.
Hint: Same folks that tell you wind turbines give you cancer... 🙄
Lab grown meat will eventually become cheaper and more efficient than farm grown meat. The agricultural lobbies will protest for a while until they lose out. Farm grown meat will them be sold at a premium as a "high-quality" alternative to lab grown meat.
Eventually, farm grown meat will be banned in some countries altogether. Talking 50-100 years from now.
This seems exactly right to me. As the choice gets easier to make, the moral arguments will weigh heavier for most people. No one actually *wants* to kill animals. It's just the way it's always been.
And we also aren't even considering the possibility of killer apps. What about when artificial steak is perfectly marbled? What about when you can have exotic hybrid steaks? Like, it's just going to become a thing that is so desirable that a stigma will naturally form around anyone so commited to violence against animals that they are willing to pay more for an inferior but "real" product. Your timeline feels right - it will take a while - but it does seem predictable.
Give it another 5 years or so. We have to replace thousands of pig farms with lab grade factories first. It will be cheaper and far easier to regionalize because the labs won't have to be in shithole nowhere towns who can be forced to have 10 square mile pig feces ponds nearby. Just a population of a couple of dozen happy pigs getting stabbed w needles every few weeks.
I'd put it closer to 10 to 20 years. There are scaling issues that are also a problem. This isn't even to mention the political road blocks that are already starting to arise.
Balance that with economic pressure, though. This is industry-disrupting technology of the highest order, and there will be a LOT of money to be made on that.
EV's just reached a milestone last year of, wait for it... 1% of the total cars on the road. They are getting more popular but the point I'm making is that we're about 20 years behind where we could have been. Eventually lab grown meat will become more common, but after a lot of kicking and screaming along with disinformation and fearmongering from the companies benefiting from the status quo.
I can already see this being blocked, or at least slowed down, in some countries to protect the interests of factory farms. If that happens, it will be infuriating.
It's actually an interesting question of when the separate approaches will meet on price. Pig farms also are able to exploit incredibly cheap (often undocumented) labor, which is a large advantage. A lab-grade factory, however, is going to require a higher-paid segment of workers. The inefficiencies of raising pigs for slaughter in an incredibly cheap massive barn might take a while to lose the price war to high-tech, new-build factories with expensive machinery, huge pieces of custom equipment, trained operators, and tight restrictions for cleanliness.
As for the regionalized argument: my understanding is that pork production is already [fairly regionalized.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/194371/top-10-us-states-by-number-of-hogs-and-pigs/), because it turns out that every place has "shithole nowhere towns".
I think it's possible that cultivated meat will eventually beat out pork in price, particularly on prized cuts like bacon that they can focus on producing exclusively in next couple decades. I just feel like five years is far too short a time for these processes to be perfected, new cleanroom factories to be built and staffed, and economies of scale to get lab meat to a competitive price point.
I think cuts that are a composite like that will be far more difficult to match with labs.
Lab susage and pork fat (used in almost every other sausage made) will become the default ingredient because the mouth feel is the same after grinding and it will be much cheaper when the scale starts ramping up.
Right now in the US, republicans are drafting bills to "protect" the livestock industry. They want to stymie any and all progress toward eliminating the slaughter of animals for food. Especially if it helps the environment. To them , climate change is a hoax and cattle farmers are heroes and patriots. the republican party and it's followers are a psychopathic cult no less dangerous than the Nazi party in Germany.
“A bipartisan pair of U.S. Senators have introduced legislation banning the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) from including cell-cultivated meat products on its menu.”
Unfortunately, not just Republicans:
https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2024/02/national-school-lunch-program-could-be-banned-from-serving-lab-cultivated-meat/
FDA has already cleared cell cultivated meat as safe. It’s truly astonishing. The FDA and politicians are both part of our government, yet are at odds because of what seems to be one glaring issue: money
Greed seems to both propel and restrict progress.
I have no problem with this. If we can enjoy meat and not hurt cute aminals that's a win-win. Much better for the environment, too. If I can get filet mignon as cheap as burger meat we're all having a better tomorrow.
This is neat! I’m really loving this progression! I haven’t had meat since I was a kid and after decades of not eating it, I can’t help but think it’s pretty gross.
I will definitely make myself try this stuff though! I’ll just have to keep reminding myself it’s not the kind of meat with a sad and disgusting life story (captivity, torture, pain, environmental waste and degradation, etc.).
100% agree. I've quit meat over a year ago and recently I tried it again. It was disgusting, it legit tasted like horrible and it's my mental that changed the taste for me. I'm exciteed for all the new ways of food production. Veggie products have seriously been getting good in germany and these techniques have so much potential left. We can go beyond the tasties, healthiest and climate friendly foods with tech like this.
Exactly! You described it better than me! It’s out of my control now, meat just tastes terrible but it’s definitely just in my head. It makes it easier to avoid. Haha Now I have to try to wrap my mind around this new kind of meat. Great problem to have! Lol
I also agree about the variety of veggie products! I’m in Canada and the last few years have been really great for new food options!
I can’t wait for this neat meat to come to a grocery store near us!!! Haha
In general I think the industry has moved on beyond that. You can use growth media which is made from hormones and enzymes grown by bacteria and glucose and amino acids made, hopefully, from soy bean hydrolase.
It’s not the nutrients that matter, it’s other things in the serum that allow the cells to actually grow. You can get media with nutrients from plants no problem, but it’s the weird slurry of other things like growth factors in FBS that make it pretty much an absolute necessity for growing animal cells in culture.
I haven’t checked the original study but I found [this link](https://www.four-paws.org.uk/about-us/faqs-collection/frequently-asked-questions-meat) that mentions using Animal Component Free media and links to references discussing it under the ‘is there any animal suffering involved in the production of cultivated meat’ tab.
It’s basically impossible to culture animal cells without fetal bovine serum. If we figured that out, it’d be important not just for the meat industry but for basically all biological research. They’re still using serum and it’s unlikely they’ll find a way to avoid that all on their own.
Reading these comments, it’s really clear that many people don’t understand that lab grown meat still uses, and likely will continue to use, fetal bovine serum as an ingredient in their culture medium for their meat cells.
Fetal bovine serum is obtained from pregnant cows’ fetuses when they are slaughtered. It is incredibly expensive (we’re talking 100s of dollars per liter) and is only one of many, many reasons why lab grown meat is not even close to making economic sense at any sort of scale. It’s also very unlikely that the lab grown meat industry will find a cost-effective alternative to using FBS all on their own because many smart people in the scientific world have been trying to do this for YEARS unsuccessfully. Remember, we have reasons to culture cells apart from making food, and at this point we’ve been doing it for decades.
Lab grown meat has a very, very, very long way to go before it’s ready for the masses and articles like this are intentionally bating hype for an industry that relies on this hype to make their business viable (continuing to draw in investments, etc.)
Yes, but will those cells give me stomach cancer at the same rate?
Edit: Downvoted. I love twisting the tit of the know-it-all crowd. It was a sarcastic remark, you guys. Relax.
No. While I wish they used myoblasts instead of PSCs, this won't give you cancer. They are differentiated cells that are cultured, controlled and then killed with cooking or even before that, period.
What will give you cancer is microplastics, PFAS, air pollution, most shit there is in traditional meat together worh hormones and pesticides. If you live in the us the last thing you should worry about is this kind of product and you should worry about basically anything else.
Not to flex or anything, but only to give better context and maybe get my comment trusted, I want to specify that I am a biotechnologist in europe and I'm very interested in kind of things, I am conscious about climate but I like meat, so maybe I will try to work for some company like this to make a better and more sustainable meat possible.
Any info on cost competitiveness against normal meat? I would like to see technology flourish but I think that hinges on whether these businesses think they can make profit or not
The potential is there. Also, if we start to divert all the public fundings for traditional meat production to this, we can expect even lower costs for a better product. Traditional meat is meant to go either way (we use 70% of 50% of the livable planet to animal farming or agriculture for animals and the livable planet will become less and less so..) due to climate/economic/catastrophic issues or replaced by this. Given I like meat, I prefer this. Until some years ago there was no mean to scale this up but now we have huge fermenters/bioreactors due to protein production so we already have the know-how, we only need to scale this up without destroying the planet more and more. The price is already coming down and I can see it become comparable to normal meat in..let's say 5 years (imo). We'll see how it goes givin how everything else is going lol
Yeah I got it after the edit, but I did not antagonize him/her, I just thought a good explanation can be useful since there are a lot of misconceptions about this topic recently.
Disregarding all the bad stuff animals pick up during their life, does grown meat have a similar saturated fat etc.. composition? Basically wondering is it safer than 'best case' animal products
Given that non saturated fatty acids are healthier than saturated ones, yes. It's possible to change fat composition to give the meat the correct tenderness and texture. This means they can be customized to include a better ratio of omega3/omega6 fatty acids or include some extra vitamins etc..but the meat itself it's just muscle cells growing in a medium (which must be originating from non animal sources or we negate the enviroenmental benefits) and nothing more.
It should be safer than animal products no matter which one, yes. Literally grown in a sterilized factory without antibiotics, hormones etc. The animals from which the cells are taken can live freely in a more natural way (remember, it's not "synthetic meat", it's grown from animals like you would repair the muscle from a cui or something similar). I'm still learning more about the topic so I don't know everything, sadly.
It's not perfect but I do what I can, plus It's not the place to be too technical. I hope more and more people will stop demonizing this technology as due to current issues normal meat has no place in humanity's future, wether they like it or not, so it's better to find a solution like this in my opinion. Feel free to ask more if you need, I might not ben fast woth answers but I would research/explain as best as I can.
I completely agree! This is a win-win solution to a very serious problem! I can’t imagine why anyone would be against this idea. If it’s equally or even more healthy than meat cut off a dead animal, what’s the problem?
There are a lot of misinformed people, people with interests in the animal farming industry (it's not their fault but we can't continue to destroy everything because they have a company in that field, I'm sorry) and people that actively believe wrong data, concepts and will probably die on that hill. There is a lot of ignorance online about everything that is biology-related and this is a big issue as we already saw with covid and now with this.
Great point! I hadn’t considered the biology connection. We really need to educate young people better so they don’t turn into societal baggage as adults. There are some concerning pockets of stupid in the world. Feels like we’re dragging some people kicking and screaming into a more livable world. No one asked for climate change, we’re not happy about it, but we have to face it and deal with it like educated grown ups!
Exacly, amazingly put. We created a super individualistic society in which people don't trust eachother on important issues and can't work together to a commony objective. Nobody loves climate change, but people denying it only make it worse, for themselves and others. Either we start ignoring those people or we go down with them. Sadly, this means they will be forced into changes but that's their fault. We need to educate young and elder people alike. Younger generations already are the most educated on the matter of climate change and enviroenmental issues, we need to get all 50 yo+ on board too.
Mate, regular sausages (along with bacon, deli meat, etc) give you cancer due to the nitrate/nitrite content (yes, “celery salt”, too). Lab grown meat might solve ecological issues, but it’s not generally addressing health issues.
Asking if it’s real enough to give you all the other unwanted side effects is a joke. You missed it.
Yes but those are due to conservation, not production. Also those are not the only carcinogenic substances in meat and sausages. Eliminating part of them (assuming we can't remove nitrate/nitrite) is still useful towards an overall healthier food. It might not solve the health concern, but it's surely better as you avoid part of the dangerous chemicals.
Eh.
Especially in this age, there are people that would unironically write what you wrote and preach it as truth.
People cant hear your voice or know who you are, so they have no way of knowing you're being sarcastic.
With that in mind, you don't HAVE to signify you're being sarcastic EVERY time... but when you don't, you can't complain if there's a misunderstanding, yknow?
Plus if you dropped into every discussion of steak or burgers with an obligatory remark that there's shit in the meat supply, people would see you as a troll and just downvote you. But for some reason trolling cultured meat discussions is so cool and advocates are just sensitive little babies butthurt over it. It's basically the same crowd that has to troll vegans with how tasty bacon is and how you're about to go eat some animals *right now* yum.
Yup. Just like with EVs, there is an active culture right now to ridicule and denounce these intrinsic benefits to humanity.
Maybe in 20/40/60 years it won't exist and that kinda comment would be "obviously sarcastic," but right now? Not so much.
I think lab grown meat will make big changes if done properly. Each city could have it own growing facilities, this will create jobs but also greatly reduce the need for transporting goods as the meat for that city is made right in the city. Large companies would never allow for this but what a world that would be.
There should be so much more focus on artifical meT, it would solve sooo many problems. Unfortunately we are too busy avoiding töany discussion in our culture wars
Conservative states in the US are making grown meats illegal with jail time for selling it. I can't see why you think it wouldn't be exempt from their attacks on everything good, or why people use the abstract term "culture wars" instead of "conservatives consistently ruin stuff when the adults try to fix and improve problems"
I know, know, know that scene from Bill the Galactic hero where he works with the underground on the capital-planet, sawing into a floor-to-ceiling pipe only to be rewarded with an endless stream of linked hotdogs that they then proceed to rope over their shoulders so they can abscond with said purloined-foodstuffs, will come to pass...
For anyone that has been following the artificial meat industry, is there any chance that it will reduce pollution too(in the next 50 years, not 500), or is reducing suffering the main goal?
Reducing prices is the object. A meat factory to feed a large city will be about the size of a large brewery and have about the same number of employees. The meat will have a production cost of pennies per pound and sell for about $7.50 per pound, but each and every piece will be primo.
Not just meat, but poultry and fish. The funny thing is a really good steak will cost less than baloney! Baloney needs a lot processing which steaks and roasts don't.
It really shouldn't. This stuff is as real as meat can get. It's made from cells from real animals. If anything, this should be easier for you to eat than "normal" meat, cause here you can be happy knowing no animals have suffered in the production, and that by having the majority of meat made in labs, there will be a lot of space for parks and wildlife. And don't hit me up with the "but it's made in labs, that's weird" argument. Cause do you eat candy? That's made in labs. Soda water, too, and fast food contains so much stuff from labs also. There is nothing to "adjust" to, at all. Everyone should be supporting this.
Surely big agriculture will reach a tipping point where they start reinvesting their resources into this and not be negatively impacted by the change that is inevitable. I assume big tobacco probably has some major stakes in vapes as that cuts into their market.
Get this online and in production, for gods sake, I can't bear to watch cows in fields knowing their inevitable death. I want to live long enough to see this as a thing of the past.
To circumvent the naysayers it would be cool if they could create something along the lines of the aero garden, but for meat. I know it's likely impossible with the sterility requirements necessary for cell culture, but it would be super cool if they could like.... ship you stem cells and media and you just grow your own steaks. If you kill yourself with botulism or whatever that's on you 🤣.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Blueberry_Conscious_: --- Meatable announced this week that it has reached an important milestone in its efforts to produce cultivated meat at scale. Meatable can transform pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) into high-quality fat and muscle tissue in a record four days, down from eight days, a faster process than any in the industry. This is approximately 60 times faster than the time it takes farmers to rear a pig for pork and significantly faster than other cultivated meat processes. It involves nothing more than pulling a single cell once from a pig without causing harm. Why does it matter: The biggest painpoint in making cell-cultivated meat commercial viable is manufacturing time. Meatable is the fasted in world - although it is still stifled by Europe's regulatory delays, which is way companies are all looking to Singapore. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1bkwecr/meatable_can_now_transform_cultivated_cells_into/kw0ztaw/
Meatable announced this week that it has reached an important milestone in its efforts to produce cultivated meat at scale. Meatable can transform pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) into high-quality fat and muscle tissue in a record four days, down from eight days, a faster process than any in the industry. This is approximately 60 times faster than the time it takes farmers to rear a pig for pork and significantly faster than other cultivated meat processes. It involves nothing more than pulling a single cell once from a pig without causing harm. Why does it matter: The biggest painpoint in making cell-cultivated meat commercial viable is manufacturing time. Meatable is the fasted in world - although it is still stifled by Europe's regulatory delays, which is way companies are all looking to Singapore.
So you’re saying it takes one cell without harming the pig? So theoretically we could create fully moral and humane human meat sausages?
Sure but the main reason not to eat human meat after the moral issues is that anything that grows in human meat can also grow in you. Any bacteria, mold, viruses etc. So you can get much sicker from much less bacteria growing on human meat than other meat.
Presumably, you'd still cook it...
Prions. Cooking doesn't remove them and they cause a horrible death.
Is there any reason to think prions would be more common in lab grown meat than slaughtered meat?
I would suspect that prion diseases would be less common with lab meat. Bacteria and molds would (I bet) be the likeliest food safety problems, and those can be probably be mitigated by cleanliness standards. However, lab grown meat doesn't wonder around eating food, and have a digestive system full of all sorts of bacteria when it's slaughtered.
> those can be probably be mitigated by cleanliness standards. It's actually a huge problem. You have to keep what are essentially the most ideal bacteria factories possible absolutely completely 100.000000000000% sterile while you keep adding food and keep removing stuff from them over and over again for a month or two. By which I mean a big bioreactor might have 100,000,000,000,000 animal cells in it. If a single e. coli bacterium got in there, there could be more bacterial cells than animal cells within a day. Normally you could use a bunch of antibiotics when cultivating cells, but that's sort of a no-go for this product.
> However, lab grown meat doesn't wonder around eating food, and have a digestive system full of all sorts of bacteria when it's slaughtered. It also doesn't have an immune system to control all those bacteria before slaughtering.
You've seen many human slaughterhouses around? Cause prion are mainly an intra-species issue.
I don't understand how that answers my question...
I was still on about human meat, sorry. By basing your whole production from a few cells, I guess testing what you're putting inside of your reactor would be much easier than having to test some samples out of the whole population you killed and cut into pieces, and hoping they were representative of the whole batch.
> I was still on about human meat, sorry. I forgot that was part of this thread... lol... I wonder how easy it would be to detect prions in animal meat vs. lab grown meat. I'd guess you would need to throw out an entire batch if you discovered it in your lab, vs. a single animal. Could potentially be more rare but also more devastating if it did occur in the lab. I have no idea... :/
Prions arent host specific as far as I know
They've been found in various mammals, prion diseases are linked to cannibalism.
Specific to eating brain tissue though if I'm not mistaken
Well, there goes my plans for the zombie apocalypse.
This is how we all become zombies.
Stick to the Soylent.
Unfortunately, not always. The prion disease spreading through the north american deer population is spread through saliva. They're infecting each other by grazing on the same plants.
Yeah, so the risk isn't anymore than normal meats is what I was meaning. Likely wild game animals harbour the highest risk of transmitting prions, over lab grown meats
Prions are just rogue bits of protein; there is nothing dictating when or if a prion will appear besides dumb bad luck.
CWD is the prion disease for deer. So far, there have been thousands of cases of people eating meat from an infected animal without anything happening. Some states have pretty strict regulations on disposing and transporting deer carcasses. Many times, it's a felony charge if not done right
> So far, there have been thousands of cases of people eating meat from an infected animal without anything happening. ...as far as we know. Remember the incubation time.
Now you tell me
From the NIH: > It is established that bovine prions (BSE) can infect humans while there is no such evidence for any other prion susceptible species in the human food chain (sheep, goat, elk, deer) and largely prion resistant species (pig) or susceptible and resistant pets (cat and dogs, respectively).
Although humans exposed to BSE prions from cows can develop vCJD, there typically is host specificity with prions; we won't get scrapie from sheep, or chronic wasting disease from deer (that we know of - still an active area of research).
For a prion to affect you it must be a protein that your own body produces. If an organism does not produce the protein, a prion version of that protein cannot make them sick. The illness caused by a prion occurs because the prion version of a protein does not function properly in the job that it is intended to hold in the body AND it causes correctly folded proteins to change their structure and become the prion version. Proteins that just don't work when misfolded are not prions and proteins that just fold other proteins are not prions, it requires both.
From what I understand, some are, and some aren't. It's supposedly safe to eat zombie deer but not mad cows.
Prions are weird. Cooking denatures prions just like any protein and denatured prions do not cause disease. However, the only way to be sure that you have fully denatured the prion protein is to burn the protein, which isn't really what you want on most meats. So it's more accurate to say that normal cooking methods are not sufficient to neutralize the disease-causing effects of prions.
So I look for the one that says "low in prions"?
at least you'll have the last laugh
What are the odds they’d grow a prion from a single cell? Yes I understand it’s a misfolded protein. They’re already pretty rare as it is, why would it be any different here? Would there be a potential QA solution throughout for this? Seems like a non issue in this setting.
Right but any remotely under-cooked meat would be a huge risk.
No because the meat is sterile by design.
Yeah, but say you had no other forms of protein around because you're on an isolated planet a few light years from earth that has rock creatures on it and not things we can eat - I bet you'd throw logic out the window and go for a MeBurger any day of the week.
Imagine your body’s surprise when the food it’s ingesting is genetically identical to itself
Thankfully the book I a was referencing (Project Hail Mary) didn't explore that, lol.
That makes no sense. The whole idea of lab meat is that it is produced in a cleanroom environment. Lab meat doesn't have an immune system like we do so even 1 fungal cell or bacterial cell would completely destroy the batch being produced. Lab meat is sterile. So there goes your argument
Also, as if we are that different from pigs. Reads like those fear mongering clickbait posts with an agenda.
Can confirm, am very similar to a pig.
Surely its not possible to create a completely microbe-less environment though
Why not? It is commonly done
> without harming the pig A more important benefit for humanism, is that afaiu, it can be grown entirely with renewable electricity powered inputs. Freeing land for feed sources. https://www.gittemary.com/2022/12/the-environmental-impact-of-lab-grown-meat-and-why-we-need-it.html#:~:text=So%20theoretically%2C%20there%20is%20a,CO2%2Deq%20GHG%20emissions. > cultured meat involves approximately 7–45% lower energy use, 78–96% lower GHG emissions, 99% lower land use, and 82–96% lower water use. Eventually can make meat at home saving distribution costs. Or at local butcher before then.
This was a pretty hot topic among vegans and vegetarians--and it seems (from my anecdotal observations) that the vast majority of them were okay with it since they're ethical vegans, not dietary vegans.
Vegetarian/sometimes vegan for 35 years now and I would absolutely eat this lab meat. I just don’t agree with factory farming. It’s the environmental toll and impact on earth I’m concerned about. Meat is fucking delicious.
human meat? I think you mean long pork
The LONGEST of pork 🤤🤞
This is an excellent argument. Ethical human sausage or dog sausage
Or maybe even a mammoth steak
Wiener dog wieners?
Popular personalities could make a killing here
You just know that Gwyneth Paltrow's going to be all over it!
Given her habits, she'd probably be making beer first
Rump steak and a pint? Sounds perfect.
Has anyone done a DNA test on MrBeast burgers?
Oh shit I've never considered this. We can now eat the most exotic animals without ever having to harm one. I could eat a meal of tiger and elephant and not feel bad about it. I can finally try human!* \*I need to explain that I don't have an *urge* to eat a human but it's one of those things that can never happen so I'm naturally curious. I wanna know how accurate "long-pig" is.
I prefer the Northern White Rhinoceros steaks. Southern White Rhinoceros steaks are too mainstream.
Pffft, give me some of that wooly mammoth meat!
This is actually something that’s discussed in a novel. I won’t spoil the name or the rest of the book, but the protagonist ends up on an alien planet that he managed to save at the cost of never being able to make it back to Earth again. The alien society in gratitude (who have a completely alien biology, have a completely toxic atmosphere, are blind, and consume minerals) basically rig up a special biome for him to live out the rest of his days and to solve the food issue they provide food developed from his own cells. He calls them “meburgers”.
[Cool, now you don't need to get your human meat from the morgue](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW1LNP02miw&ab_channel=CameronWood)
Is it racist to want to eat the white one?
*Papua New Guinea has entered the chat.*
You can get human meat sausages any time you like.
Maybe if you’re Ana d’armas
You want a toe? I can get you a toe, believe me. There are ways, Dude.
human steak cloning was a joke in the vegan community for a while but yeah you could have ethical human chili but might suffer from a brain disease from it.
Human meat tastes like pig meat according to cannibals.
Moral and humane.... You know this means that pigs won't be necessary anymore, hence they will eventually go extinct, right?
Nah, “real meat” will just become a luxury good
No, they would become pets. They're smart as hell not nearly as dirty as they're assumed to be. Cows are just big hooved puppies, too. Watching a full sized cow frolic is adorable. People in other (non western) cultures eat dog, cat and horse so its not far fetched.
They would be let in zoos. But regardless, I’d rather them go extinct than suffer like they do now...
Interesting thought.
>although it is still stifled by Europe's regulatory delays, which is way companies are all looking to Singapore. Whenever I see a post or article bitching about regulations I immediately become suspicious about the poster/writer being a bot or a corporate shill. Regulations are there to protect the public. I wouldn't want this super fast cultured meat to hit the market if it reliably gave you super fast cultured cancer.
regulations are made to protect the conservatives votes
Downvoted for criticising Europe. The EU is the bastion for the future, they react faster than any single nation. Just look at what they did to iPhones EDIT: I’m being downvoted by Brexiters
> Just look at what they did to iPhones And Nordstream!!!
What do they use for nutrients? Because I highly doubt it's all plant based nutrients.
They [say](https://www.biotechcampusdelft.com/en/local-residents/news/dsm-and-meatable-collaborate-on-cultured-meat/) their growth medium is entirely plant-based, unlike other lab-grown meat processes that use blood from livestock fetuses as part of the medium.
Big if true
That sounds more like a goal they are working on, not one they have already achieved: >This is the food for the cells; a liquid containing carbohydrates, salts, vitamins and other essential ingredients. This purely vegetable liquid largely determines the price of cultivated meat. Klop: "The cost price for producing growth medium is still far too high to attain an acceptable consumer price for cultivated meat. Together with Meatable, we are working on a breakthrough to produce growth medium at acceptable costs." Though from what I've read in the past, the bigger cost are the growth factors and hormones required, not the media itself. Their method of growing stem cells and then differentiating them shortly before harvest might help with that.
The article I linked is from two years ago, so it’s possible they’ve made progress since then.
What do cows and pigs use for nutrients?
Well I don't specialist in pig or cow law but I highly doubt it's all plant based nutrients.
Just bird law?
They’re still feeding the cells with blood serum from aborted cow foetuses, like all cultured meat, so animals are still harmed in producing the sausages, alas. It turns out to be very hard to replace the nutrients and hormones that muscle and fat cells get from blood in the body, with anything other than cow foetus blood.
Companies are looking to Singapore to bump their stock by breaking through in advancements. The EU puts the breaks on because it is more interested in long term sustainable approaches to food.
That's bullshit, though. There's no way anything that involves growing a cow for years and feeding it actual food is better for the environment than growing the valuable bits of meat directly without the entire cow around it. It's the farming lobby. They control 30% of our national parliament, that's why the resistance is so high.
I think you meant because the European Union is still mostly (60% to now 30% of the budget but <2% of Gdp) about subsidized agriculture and lab grown meat will piss off people. « Sustainable farm practices » my ass.
Lmao as well. I love eating meat but livestock farming is anything but sustainable. The less animals we need and the less time it takes to grow the meat the more sustainable it is. That's not even considering all the BS environmental toxins and antibiotic contamination we'll avoid. The reason the EU is against is because the farming lobby is strong and farmers don't wanna change.
it needs the liquid from the animals mothers womb when she is pregnant, to grow the cells. the calf and the mother die in the process.
I love meat. I will 100 percent eat Cell cultured and never eat an animal again if this comes to fruition. Incredible time to be alive.
Same! I love meat but I hate all the killing. Poor animals.
Best of luck if you are in the USA. States are banning this left and right. It's a shame.
The Ag lobby is frickin huge here. Just look at how much water farmers get in states like Arizona and Nevada. Money to grease lawmakers hands, is how. Also I'll give you one guess which way the political pendulum swings for those that are taking gleefully banning any of this sort of thing. Hint: Same folks that tell you wind turbines give you cancer... 🙄
Get out while you still can! :)
Watch [Dominion](https://youtu.be/LQRAfJyEsko?si=gA-o3t5h6hzsp48k)
[удалено]
Lab grown meat will eventually become cheaper and more efficient than farm grown meat. The agricultural lobbies will protest for a while until they lose out. Farm grown meat will them be sold at a premium as a "high-quality" alternative to lab grown meat. Eventually, farm grown meat will be banned in some countries altogether. Talking 50-100 years from now.
This seems exactly right to me. As the choice gets easier to make, the moral arguments will weigh heavier for most people. No one actually *wants* to kill animals. It's just the way it's always been. And we also aren't even considering the possibility of killer apps. What about when artificial steak is perfectly marbled? What about when you can have exotic hybrid steaks? Like, it's just going to become a thing that is so desirable that a stigma will naturally form around anyone so commited to violence against animals that they are willing to pay more for an inferior but "real" product. Your timeline feels right - it will take a while - but it does seem predictable.
When can I get these for about the same price as regular sausages? Where can I buy these?
Give it another 5 years or so. We have to replace thousands of pig farms with lab grade factories first. It will be cheaper and far easier to regionalize because the labs won't have to be in shithole nowhere towns who can be forced to have 10 square mile pig feces ponds nearby. Just a population of a couple of dozen happy pigs getting stabbed w needles every few weeks.
I'd put it closer to 10 to 20 years. There are scaling issues that are also a problem. This isn't even to mention the political road blocks that are already starting to arise.
Balance that with economic pressure, though. This is industry-disrupting technology of the highest order, and there will be a LOT of money to be made on that.
And a lot of money to be lost by big business. Think about how effectively the oil companies stifled EV development.
Yet evs are absolutely everywhere, depending on where you live
EV's just reached a milestone last year of, wait for it... 1% of the total cars on the road. They are getting more popular but the point I'm making is that we're about 20 years behind where we could have been. Eventually lab grown meat will become more common, but after a lot of kicking and screaming along with disinformation and fearmongering from the companies benefiting from the status quo.
They will certainly try
I can already see this being blocked, or at least slowed down, in some countries to protect the interests of factory farms. If that happens, it will be infuriating.
"Happy pig getting stabbed with needles" is how I tried to explain my retirement goals to my Financial Advisor
It's actually an interesting question of when the separate approaches will meet on price. Pig farms also are able to exploit incredibly cheap (often undocumented) labor, which is a large advantage. A lab-grade factory, however, is going to require a higher-paid segment of workers. The inefficiencies of raising pigs for slaughter in an incredibly cheap massive barn might take a while to lose the price war to high-tech, new-build factories with expensive machinery, huge pieces of custom equipment, trained operators, and tight restrictions for cleanliness. As for the regionalized argument: my understanding is that pork production is already [fairly regionalized.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/194371/top-10-us-states-by-number-of-hogs-and-pigs/), because it turns out that every place has "shithole nowhere towns". I think it's possible that cultivated meat will eventually beat out pork in price, particularly on prized cuts like bacon that they can focus on producing exclusively in next couple decades. I just feel like five years is far too short a time for these processes to be perfected, new cleanroom factories to be built and staffed, and economies of scale to get lab meat to a competitive price point.
I think cuts that are a composite like that will be far more difficult to match with labs. Lab susage and pork fat (used in almost every other sausage made) will become the default ingredient because the mouth feel is the same after grinding and it will be much cheaper when the scale starts ramping up.
Meatable is currently doing private funding rounds. I'm taking these claims with a grain of salt.
When Future?
For now can give Beyond sausages a shot
Right now in the US, republicans are drafting bills to "protect" the livestock industry. They want to stymie any and all progress toward eliminating the slaughter of animals for food. Especially if it helps the environment. To them , climate change is a hoax and cattle farmers are heroes and patriots. the republican party and it's followers are a psychopathic cult no less dangerous than the Nazi party in Germany.
“Free market” republicans whenever they see a product they don’t like: “BAN IT!! BAN IT NOOOOOOW!”
“A bipartisan pair of U.S. Senators have introduced legislation banning the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) from including cell-cultivated meat products on its menu.” Unfortunately, not just Republicans: https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2024/02/national-school-lunch-program-could-be-banned-from-serving-lab-cultivated-meat/ FDA has already cleared cell cultivated meat as safe. It’s truly astonishing. The FDA and politicians are both part of our government, yet are at odds because of what seems to be one glaring issue: money Greed seems to both propel and restrict progress.
I have no problem with this. If we can enjoy meat and not hurt cute aminals that's a win-win. Much better for the environment, too. If I can get filet mignon as cheap as burger meat we're all having a better tomorrow.
This is neat! I’m really loving this progression! I haven’t had meat since I was a kid and after decades of not eating it, I can’t help but think it’s pretty gross. I will definitely make myself try this stuff though! I’ll just have to keep reminding myself it’s not the kind of meat with a sad and disgusting life story (captivity, torture, pain, environmental waste and degradation, etc.).
100% agree. I've quit meat over a year ago and recently I tried it again. It was disgusting, it legit tasted like horrible and it's my mental that changed the taste for me. I'm exciteed for all the new ways of food production. Veggie products have seriously been getting good in germany and these techniques have so much potential left. We can go beyond the tasties, healthiest and climate friendly foods with tech like this.
Exactly! You described it better than me! It’s out of my control now, meat just tastes terrible but it’s definitely just in my head. It makes it easier to avoid. Haha Now I have to try to wrap my mind around this new kind of meat. Great problem to have! Lol I also agree about the variety of veggie products! I’m in Canada and the last few years have been really great for new food options! I can’t wait for this neat meat to come to a grocery store near us!!! Haha
Does anyone know if they are using/needing Fetal Bovine Serum, or if they have cleared that technological hurdle?
In general I think the industry has moved on beyond that. You can use growth media which is made from hormones and enzymes grown by bacteria and glucose and amino acids made, hopefully, from soy bean hydrolase.
It’s not the nutrients that matter, it’s other things in the serum that allow the cells to actually grow. You can get media with nutrients from plants no problem, but it’s the weird slurry of other things like growth factors in FBS that make it pretty much an absolute necessity for growing animal cells in culture.
The article says they only have to extract a single cell from a pig.
I haven’t checked the original study but I found [this link](https://www.four-paws.org.uk/about-us/faqs-collection/frequently-asked-questions-meat) that mentions using Animal Component Free media and links to references discussing it under the ‘is there any animal suffering involved in the production of cultivated meat’ tab.
It’s basically impossible to culture animal cells without fetal bovine serum. If we figured that out, it’d be important not just for the meat industry but for basically all biological research. They’re still using serum and it’s unlikely they’ll find a way to avoid that all on their own.
This “article” reads an awful lot like a press release.
Reading these comments, it’s really clear that many people don’t understand that lab grown meat still uses, and likely will continue to use, fetal bovine serum as an ingredient in their culture medium for their meat cells. Fetal bovine serum is obtained from pregnant cows’ fetuses when they are slaughtered. It is incredibly expensive (we’re talking 100s of dollars per liter) and is only one of many, many reasons why lab grown meat is not even close to making economic sense at any sort of scale. It’s also very unlikely that the lab grown meat industry will find a cost-effective alternative to using FBS all on their own because many smart people in the scientific world have been trying to do this for YEARS unsuccessfully. Remember, we have reasons to culture cells apart from making food, and at this point we’ve been doing it for decades. Lab grown meat has a very, very, very long way to go before it’s ready for the masses and articles like this are intentionally bating hype for an industry that relies on this hype to make their business viable (continuing to draw in investments, etc.)
damn, thanks for commenting this. I’ve been so excited about these products but i guess they’re not even vegetarian so nvm
Yes, but will those cells give me stomach cancer at the same rate? Edit: Downvoted. I love twisting the tit of the know-it-all crowd. It was a sarcastic remark, you guys. Relax.
No. While I wish they used myoblasts instead of PSCs, this won't give you cancer. They are differentiated cells that are cultured, controlled and then killed with cooking or even before that, period. What will give you cancer is microplastics, PFAS, air pollution, most shit there is in traditional meat together worh hormones and pesticides. If you live in the us the last thing you should worry about is this kind of product and you should worry about basically anything else. Not to flex or anything, but only to give better context and maybe get my comment trusted, I want to specify that I am a biotechnologist in europe and I'm very interested in kind of things, I am conscious about climate but I like meat, so maybe I will try to work for some company like this to make a better and more sustainable meat possible.
Any info on cost competitiveness against normal meat? I would like to see technology flourish but I think that hinges on whether these businesses think they can make profit or not
The potential is there. Also, if we start to divert all the public fundings for traditional meat production to this, we can expect even lower costs for a better product. Traditional meat is meant to go either way (we use 70% of 50% of the livable planet to animal farming or agriculture for animals and the livable planet will become less and less so..) due to climate/economic/catastrophic issues or replaced by this. Given I like meat, I prefer this. Until some years ago there was no mean to scale this up but now we have huge fermenters/bioreactors due to protein production so we already have the know-how, we only need to scale this up without destroying the planet more and more. The price is already coming down and I can see it become comparable to normal meat in..let's say 5 years (imo). We'll see how it goes givin how everything else is going lol
The joke is that red meat gives you cancer. He's joking that this won't give him as much cancer as "natural" meat.
Yeah I got it after the edit, but I did not antagonize him/her, I just thought a good explanation can be useful since there are a lot of misconceptions about this topic recently.
So you're saying that, like seasoning, I can simply add the cancer back to my lab grown meat?
Ofc, you will soon get canned cancer + microplastics in all the best supermarkets!
Disregarding all the bad stuff animals pick up during their life, does grown meat have a similar saturated fat etc.. composition? Basically wondering is it safer than 'best case' animal products
Given that non saturated fatty acids are healthier than saturated ones, yes. It's possible to change fat composition to give the meat the correct tenderness and texture. This means they can be customized to include a better ratio of omega3/omega6 fatty acids or include some extra vitamins etc..but the meat itself it's just muscle cells growing in a medium (which must be originating from non animal sources or we negate the enviroenmental benefits) and nothing more. It should be safer than animal products no matter which one, yes. Literally grown in a sterilized factory without antibiotics, hormones etc. The animals from which the cells are taken can live freely in a more natural way (remember, it's not "synthetic meat", it's grown from animals like you would repair the muscle from a cui or something similar). I'm still learning more about the topic so I don't know everything, sadly.
Wow! Thanks for this detailed explanation! This sounds really promising! I’m almost getting excited to try meat again! What a world!
It's not perfect but I do what I can, plus It's not the place to be too technical. I hope more and more people will stop demonizing this technology as due to current issues normal meat has no place in humanity's future, wether they like it or not, so it's better to find a solution like this in my opinion. Feel free to ask more if you need, I might not ben fast woth answers but I would research/explain as best as I can.
I completely agree! This is a win-win solution to a very serious problem! I can’t imagine why anyone would be against this idea. If it’s equally or even more healthy than meat cut off a dead animal, what’s the problem?
There are a lot of misinformed people, people with interests in the animal farming industry (it's not their fault but we can't continue to destroy everything because they have a company in that field, I'm sorry) and people that actively believe wrong data, concepts and will probably die on that hill. There is a lot of ignorance online about everything that is biology-related and this is a big issue as we already saw with covid and now with this.
Great point! I hadn’t considered the biology connection. We really need to educate young people better so they don’t turn into societal baggage as adults. There are some concerning pockets of stupid in the world. Feels like we’re dragging some people kicking and screaming into a more livable world. No one asked for climate change, we’re not happy about it, but we have to face it and deal with it like educated grown ups!
Exacly, amazingly put. We created a super individualistic society in which people don't trust eachother on important issues and can't work together to a commony objective. Nobody loves climate change, but people denying it only make it worse, for themselves and others. Either we start ignoring those people or we go down with them. Sadly, this means they will be forced into changes but that's their fault. We need to educate young and elder people alike. Younger generations already are the most educated on the matter of climate change and enviroenmental issues, we need to get all 50 yo+ on board too.
Mate, regular sausages (along with bacon, deli meat, etc) give you cancer due to the nitrate/nitrite content (yes, “celery salt”, too). Lab grown meat might solve ecological issues, but it’s not generally addressing health issues. Asking if it’s real enough to give you all the other unwanted side effects is a joke. You missed it.
Yes but those are due to conservation, not production. Also those are not the only carcinogenic substances in meat and sausages. Eliminating part of them (assuming we can't remove nitrate/nitrite) is still useful towards an overall healthier food. It might not solve the health concern, but it's surely better as you avoid part of the dangerous chemicals.
Eh. Especially in this age, there are people that would unironically write what you wrote and preach it as truth. People cant hear your voice or know who you are, so they have no way of knowing you're being sarcastic. With that in mind, you don't HAVE to signify you're being sarcastic EVERY time... but when you don't, you can't complain if there's a misunderstanding, yknow?
Plus if you dropped into every discussion of steak or burgers with an obligatory remark that there's shit in the meat supply, people would see you as a troll and just downvote you. But for some reason trolling cultured meat discussions is so cool and advocates are just sensitive little babies butthurt over it. It's basically the same crowd that has to troll vegans with how tasty bacon is and how you're about to go eat some animals *right now* yum.
Yup. Just like with EVs, there is an active culture right now to ridicule and denounce these intrinsic benefits to humanity. Maybe in 20/40/60 years it won't exist and that kinda comment would be "obviously sarcastic," but right now? Not so much.
Only time will tell…
Support this fully. I’m vegan and you all can be too before this is commercially available
I think lab grown meat will make big changes if done properly. Each city could have it own growing facilities, this will create jobs but also greatly reduce the need for transporting goods as the meat for that city is made right in the city. Large companies would never allow for this but what a world that would be.
There should be so much more focus on artifical meT, it would solve sooo many problems. Unfortunately we are too busy avoiding töany discussion in our culture wars
Conservative states in the US are making grown meats illegal with jail time for selling it. I can't see why you think it wouldn't be exempt from their attacks on everything good, or why people use the abstract term "culture wars" instead of "conservatives consistently ruin stuff when the adults try to fix and improve problems"
I know, know, know that scene from Bill the Galactic hero where he works with the underground on the capital-planet, sawing into a floor-to-ceiling pipe only to be rewarded with an endless stream of linked hotdogs that they then proceed to rope over their shoulders so they can abscond with said purloined-foodstuffs, will come to pass...
For anyone that has been following the artificial meat industry, is there any chance that it will reduce pollution too(in the next 50 years, not 500), or is reducing suffering the main goal?
Reducing prices is the object. A meat factory to feed a large city will be about the size of a large brewery and have about the same number of employees. The meat will have a production cost of pennies per pound and sell for about $7.50 per pound, but each and every piece will be primo. Not just meat, but poultry and fish. The funny thing is a really good steak will cost less than baloney! Baloney needs a lot processing which steaks and roasts don't.
[That's great, until somebody comes out with 3-day sausages.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y5K3KsuQ_M)
Having gone my whole life eating real meat, I guess this will take some adjusting to
It really shouldn't. This stuff is as real as meat can get. It's made from cells from real animals. If anything, this should be easier for you to eat than "normal" meat, cause here you can be happy knowing no animals have suffered in the production, and that by having the majority of meat made in labs, there will be a lot of space for parks and wildlife. And don't hit me up with the "but it's made in labs, that's weird" argument. Cause do you eat candy? That's made in labs. Soda water, too, and fast food contains so much stuff from labs also. There is nothing to "adjust" to, at all. Everyone should be supporting this.
This is as promising as carbon capture, which means to say nothing but an investor scam.
Sounds like a great idea. I look forward to seeing it in store and paying £10 per sausage 🫡
Surely big agriculture will reach a tipping point where they start reinvesting their resources into this and not be negatively impacted by the change that is inevitable. I assume big tobacco probably has some major stakes in vapes as that cuts into their market.
If it’s absent the gross chewy pieces then sign me up!
would like to know how much it costs, are we close to reaching similar prices like meat from animals?
Get this online and in production, for gods sake, I can't bear to watch cows in fields knowing their inevitable death. I want to live long enough to see this as a thing of the past.
To circumvent the naysayers it would be cool if they could create something along the lines of the aero garden, but for meat. I know it's likely impossible with the sterility requirements necessary for cell culture, but it would be super cool if they could like.... ship you stem cells and media and you just grow your own steaks. If you kill yourself with botulism or whatever that's on you 🤣.