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this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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Anyone have any ideas on price versus kill meat? Especially longterm?
Exactly where my head is. Assuming it is currently expensive since it is new and such little supply. But I'm wondering 5+ years down the road... Is it likely that it will be less expensive than traditional counterparts?
Bioreactors are much less efficient at producing meat than their biological equivalents. They are essentially huge buckets of liquid with nutrients without proper heart/lungs, circulatory/respiratory system that can evenly distribute oxygen and remove CO2, so you need to be constantly shaking and mixing.. which doesn't help with the heat that the reactions produce. You need to keep a constant temperature... and you also don't have an immune system to protect from bacterial growth that could contaminate the whole batch.
This is much more expensive, more risky for health and less environmentally friendly than naturally grown meat. Natural biological organisms have evolved across millenia to be extremelly efficient at what they do. You just can't compete using current tech.
I don't think we would be able to get a cheap sustainable alternative to traditional meat without essentially replicating the way animals grow. And at that point, I wonder if killing an artificially designed animal is any better.
Personally, i think protein from breeding maggots is the more realistic and sustainable source of meat at the moment... starting from a simple lifeform and adapting it is likely more viable.
I don't get how it could be less environmentally friendly than traditionally grown meat from cows or whatever. Cows need to support not just the meat growing systems in the their bodies, but everything else...and they need to live for years, with constant food and land.
Yeah that comment does not make much sense. Our bodies have to function every day moving around and doing things. The lab grown stuff just needs to make cells. It should be much closer to growing fungus or yeast.
Lab-Grown Meat’s Carbon Footprint Potentially Worse Than Retail Beef
It seems the crux of the issue is that current technology uses pharma-grade growing medium, which is very expensive and has a bigger footprint, and the hope is that scientists can figure out a "food-grade" medium that would have lower emissions. Since costs are also affected, I'm sure companies have a lot of incentive to look for a more efficient way.
The technology is still relatively young, so I'm on the board of "wait and see".
You're right and I think the commenter was sprouting bollocks. Reddit used to be plagued with comments like that which are simply meant to cast doubt, and aren't based on facts.
Cows are not the best choice, but bioreactors are still worse. At least with current tech.
From this article:
CC: @ChimpanzeeThat @HubertManne
This is an interesting comment and a point of view I haven't seen before. Do you have any source materials for the information in the first two paragraphs? I'd like to read more, from sources I can validate. Not that I disbelieve you particularly, I simply want to see the info from a more scientific source than social media.
And as for
YUK I don't think that will sell very well. There will be more than enough resistance to lab grown "meat".
Yeah, I'm 100% down with cricket-based protein, but even I balk at maggot-based protein. Gonna be a hard sell, for sure.
I'm the opposite : I eat maggots without any issues but the crickets weird me out.
Some articles:
https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/
https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/lab-grown-meat-carbon-footprint-worse-beef
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bit.27848 (this is a very technical and in-depth article, but you can skip to the conclusion section)
A 25min documentary video showcasing some views from experts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0zCf4Yup34
As someone who works in a dairy manufacturing facility, you really aren't making sense.
You're describing fairly straightforward industrial processes.
There is bacterial growth in every single food manufacturing facility in the world. It's unavoidable.
That's why there is constant, and I mean constant cleaning. Stainless steel or silicon are used for any surfaces that the product touches, there is a TON of QA testing done specifically for allergens and bacteria. All factories are held to regulatory standards, I can't imagine this operation would be any less safe and compliant.
How much does it cost to maintain such a factory compared to how much does it cost to keep livestock for the same amount of produce?
I didn't say it's not possible to culture it, I'm saying it's more expensive and less sustainable. The food industry is huge, current livestock production is already among the largest CO2 producers. So if we want to replace them we should choose an option that is cheaper and produces less waste, not more. Otherwise the costs of food as well as the CO2 levels are gonna skyrocket.
It's hard to compare with current bioreactors because for making it our primary meat source you'd need a scale that hasn't existed ever before in the pharmaceutical industry. The cell density needs to be relatively low, so you need huge tanks for tiny amounts. Also.. meat cultures are particularly sensitive to both bacterial AND viral infections. Meat production is slow and the smallest contamination at the start can very easily make the end result not up to standards.
Quoting from this article.
This is referencing a very in-depth paper by PhD, PE, Chemical Engineer David Humbird.
I'm interested too. Long-term with economies of scale, hopefully no kill.
But idk about now, or inour lifetime. Like we've been farming for a long long time. And at least for a while, the most efficient things for producing animal protein, are ... Animals.
I think this will be targeted to (relatively) rich people who want to cosplay being vegetarian and vegan. Tbh I'd try it.