this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2026
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Well, that's the point. You can't have something cheap AND ethically and ecologically "good".
Oh man. I'm the one that gets to introduce you to science!
Yes, you absolutely can move all those needles in the right direction. It requires doing things differently, not just bigger. Companies LOVE to go bigger because it requires little thinking and you get economies of scale. But doing real thinking can help improve all the things.
I had a big paragraph here trying to explain to you that treating animals badly (as in less space, lower quality food etc) is resulting in massive cost savings that you CANNOT compete with if you treat your animals well. But halfway through, I've decided it's just not worth my time. Since you haven't even made an effort explaining how you "could move all those needles in the right direction", I genuinely don't see why I should.
Lab grown meat.
Lmaooo.
Lab grown meat is YEARS away from being as good as "organic" meat. While the concept is interesting, it's currently at the point where it can maybe grow something akin to a chicken nugget or ground beef, but not a steak or any "complete" cut of meat. Even comparing it to cheapest of the cheap meat, it loses in terms of quality while being dozens of times more expensive.
The second issue is that in order to grow meat without an immune system, you have to prevent ANY bacteria or anything from the outside get into the lab. Even the slightest contamination can completely ruin the entire "harvest". And from an engineering standpoint, keeping a couple of jars sterile is already hard enough. Keeping an entire lab sterile, well, that sounds like an almost impossible task.
Third, energy consumption. Having a bunch of cows on a farm doesn't consume any energy (as in, electricity). You might need some for the processing of the meat in the slaughterhouse, but not during the growth phase, which is the most energy intensive one. Sustaining the growth of meat including all the tech surrounding it over an extended period of time at a large scale would very likely rival AI datacenters in power consumption.
So no, lab grown meat is just not a solution yet. It will most likely take another decade until we have the tech that enables lab grown meat at a large scale.
So like I said. You can move all the needles by doing the hard thinking work. Is it surprising that would take time?
Yes, you certainly can. This isn't a "pick one" or even a "pick two" situation. A single example among millions: lentils are cheap, healthy, and rehabilitate the soil they are grown in. We are induced to make needless tradeoffs that do not benefit us, but rather benefit industrialists.
Lentils aren't bacon.