Ask Lemmygrad

It's a distraction from the actually necessary work of getting people to quit eating animals.

Please stop eating animals.

There's no way it'll ever be as efficient as eating plants so its a nonstarter for feeding the world.

From what I have read the current stuff is basically artificially flavored jello with some vat grown animal cells thrown in for branding purposes.

I think its more feasible to develop some new meat like substance from yeast and reprogrammed bacteria than to make real chunks of meat from existing animal cells.

The composition of muscle is too complicated to build in a lab. Maybe some day they might make some non sentient biological machine that grows meat that can be harvested but I imagine that level of genetic engineering is many decades from where we are.

Just eat beans fam

I think precision fermentation is, at least in the near term, more scalable and energy efficient than lab meat. Basically, instead of recreating entire animal cells, microbes are engineered to create animal proteins directly, which can then be used in dairy and egg products without needing animal cells. Lab-cultured meat might take longer to catch on due to cost and consumer perception.

It's an extraordinary amount of effort to not eat tofu

I think it could be a thing in the future and I would eat it given there wasn't some insanely complex and expensive process that made it pretty much unviable, and I do believe that in time it will happen. People that say it'll never work really underestimate human ingenuity and technology. Only 30-40 years ago the smart phone you hold on your hand would have been considered impossible. We now cure diseases that people used to just have to live with forever. We grow medicine using bacteria, using them to grow a steak doesn't seem so far fetched.

And the there's the argument of "why. We should all just eat plants." The thing is, why not? Why not research the technology? Who knows what it could lead to. How many major human advancements came from an accident or unintended result from trying to research something completely unrelated? The answer is a lot. A lot of them. So go ahead, grow a steak or whatever. Let me throw a bunch of grass into a vat and out pops a bunch of "ground beef." Do the science and learn shit. Personally, I'm hoping for more of a star trek type of food replicator. Make a super advanced 3d printer that just zaps atoms into the right formula to make me an omelet.

Like, I'm not gonna gatekeep the future. It's the future. Do the science and make cool shit. Make USEFUL shit. At least it could potentially feed people. Maybe it becomes the first step in a more advanced food replication technology. Maybe we figure out how to grow the perfect nutritionally balanced feed stock that then can be used to replicate any other food you could want. Who knows? So go for it. I mean, it's not like it's hurting anyone.

I haven't eaten meat in 58 years. Ethical dilemma aside, what would be the point at this stage in my life. It would feel like a stumble and fall at the end of a marathon.

hey, i just logged on to post the vaguely inflammatory open ended question for the day...

It has to be more efficient than the current method to replace it. If lab grown meat requires more resources to produce the same amount of meat, it will never work out regardless of the moral reasons.

As an environmentalist, eating meat is probably the most immoral thing I do. I eagerly look forward to the day where we don't have to kill animals to eat meat.

First of all, what technology is meant by "Lab-cultured meat"? Because if it's something like taking a few cells from a few dead animals, which could even be extinct animals like mammoths or naturally extinct animals, and multiplying them in lab, without neurons/nerves and such, to feed all of humanity at reasonable efficiency, I just don't see what else is there to say other than "Great! Let's do it quick!"

I feel like I'm living in blade runner. The buffalo are being evicted (again), and meat is growing in the lab instead.

The animal agriculture industry is exploitative to animals and workers. In places where there are abattoirs there are higher rates of violent crimes.

https://www.animalagricultureclimatechange.org/the-life-of-a-slaughterhouse-worker/

What time is it, folks?!

Please stop eating our animal comrades. That is all.

i dont think its viable in scale. maybe for specific needs its an optimal choice. you still need biopsies to get cells from animals, so i would say its more vegetarian than vegan (so its still exploitative to animals). in general people can already have a vegan diet today. theres no need to invent anything.