As a thinking experiment, let us consider that on the 1st of January of 2025 it is announced that an advance making possible growing any kind of animal tissue in laboratory conditions as been achieved and that it is possible to scale it in order to achieve industrial grade production level.
There is no limit on which animal tissues can be grown, so, any species is achieveable, only being needed a small cell sample from an animal to start production, and the cultivated tissues are safe for consumption.
There won’t be any perceiveable price change to the end consummer, as the growing is a complex and labour intensive process, requiring specialized equipments and personnel.
Would you change to this new diet option?
Reminder that the meat you buy at the grocery store is as also as human modified as it gets and NOTHING like the wild game that our ancestors ate or even the farm animals from 100 years ago. The animal itself is probably GMO, spends its entire life in a steel cage standing in its own shit and piss and is given specialized processed feed to optimize how much meat it produces (or just has a tube down its throat so we don’t have to worry about it eating fast enough). Not to mention tons of antibiotics that are given to the animal just to ensure it survives the hell we put them through which definitely makes it into the meat and therefore into you as well. And they’re slaughtered and butchered by underpaid overworked factory workers who have to balance fulfilling brutal quotas with carefully extracting the meat and not getting it contaminated with shit from the animal’s guts or the myriad other disgusting things around the meat that you wouldn’t want to eat (you can guess how well that usually goes).
Animal cells (without the animal itself and also no central nervous system to experience suffering) growing in a clean, well controlled lab in tanks of sterile cell media doesn’t sound so bad in comparison.
Additional reminder that nearly all of the worst infectious diseases in history have been caused partially or completely by animal agriculture: the plague, spanish flu, smallpox, whooping cough, swine flu, bird flu, covid, etc. So if you’re worried about the long term health implications of lab grown meat, you should be ten times more worried about long term the health implications of regular meat, to the point where you should be worried even if you don’t eat meat.
Impossible Burgers already exist and are fucking delicious.
But, sure, if I can have pastrami or corned beef again without requiring a cow experience a life full of torment, emit a cow’s lifetime of methane, or have any of that happen where a forest should instead have been left untouched, I’d try it!
If it was healthy, affordable, and tasty, then yes.
If it isn’t all three, then Veganism can continue to go fuck itself.
I’d rather go vegan. Falafel all the way.
I’ve been vegan for almost 25 years, and vegetarian for couple years before that… and I’d be happy it existed, but I wouldn’t eat it. I don’t miss meat, and the idea of eating any of it just grosses me out.
If I could afford it yeah of course
Jesus, people bitch about processed foods but have no issues with whatever shit has to be put into this to make it grow?
Most that bitch about processed foods have no idea what “processed” actually means.
Most of the ‘chemicals’ they’re worried about occur naturally at quantity in plants and fruit.
The lab-grown meat uses the same organics that happen in the animal to trigger growth.
That said, price-wise, real meat will have to become very very expensive before lab-grown meat will be competitive. Breeding cattle is expensive, but a lot of it is just making sure life happens. Cows are hearty, self feed and have immune systems.
For seafood yes, but I’m unlikely to bother regrowing the necessary gut biome for other meats
hell yeah. soon as its not way more expensive than normal meat, i’m down. your proposed technology also sounds like it should mean lab grown replacement organs with zero chance of rejection, which would be amazing.
Yes, absolutely. No risk of virus or bacteria, or worse…
Grown to the size you want…
Of the shape and type you want…
No fat (maybe?)…
What’s not to like.
What kinda idiot would want no fat?
You haven’t mentioned if there are any ethical concerns with this new meat; e.g. environmental cost of the production process, what kind of human labour is required to create it, who is providing that labour and under what conditions are they working.
Provided I had no ethical concerns with it, sure, but a lot of modern innovations tend to have these issues and I assume lab-grown meat would have these issues too.
Edit: Also, I’m opposed to animal captivity, so if there’s an ongoing need to collect samples from captive livestock then no, I wouldn’t. If it’s a “collect it once then it keeps reproducing from the lab samples forever” type of thing then sure.
Can I see the lab?
no
Darnit…
Don’t ask to see a slaughterhouse…
You know the difference between a white vegan/vegetarian vs a non white, they don’t try to find something that tastes exactly like a meat. There are a lots and lots of dishes that are 100% vegan/vegetarian and taste much much better and don’t pretend to be meat of any sort.
If you are so tempted by the taste of the meat then just eat it.Environment isn’t going to get any better just because you stopped eating meat, the animal cruelty isn’t going to stop because of you.
I’ve never heard this, bit have tried to explain it to people and failed. If you’re going to try to find a vegan substitute for a thing, most of the time it will fail to impress because it’s not the thing that it’s pretending to be. Take vegan cheese. It’s probably worse for you than regular cheese because it’s super processed.
I have several meals that I make that are vegan, but don’t need to be labeled as vegan because it’s not a substitute. For example, I make chili with those big mushrooms because I like the taste, but I don’t call it a vegan chili, I call it a mushroom chili.
White/non-white vegan? That is uncharted territory for me. Can you expand a little more on that?
oh you know I’m vegan but I just love bacon, and eggs. OK sometimes I like to have a little bit of lobster
I’m a fence sitter on the eggs front, not going to lie.
I had a few chickens for some time, always made sure they were well fed, sheltered and protected from potential predators and at some point they just started laying eggs around. There was no rooster to fertilize the eggs, so… it was just spoiling around.
No, i’d go vegan before i’d eat cultured meat. I’m not opposed to it and it’s probably better for the economy and environment, but I have a mental thing about it. Granted if I had to catch and clean my own meat, i’d also probably go vegan. Maybe I’m just squeamish about my food.
What is the mental thing you have against lab grown meat?
It sort of grosses me out. I don’t know how to explain it.
Labs be like
Fair
