Lab grown protein: if created, would you move to it?
Lab grown protein: if created, would you move to it?
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!
I'd try it if the price came down. Fake meat is in the store now but I still eat the real thing. Maybe the current stuff isn't what OP is talking about.
I’d rather go vegan. Falafel all the way.
If I could afford it yeah of course
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.
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.
For seafood yes, but I'm unlikely to bother regrowing the necessary gut biome for other meats
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.
I would definitely eat cultured meat as long as it’s not too expensive.
500 protein bars...
As if the facists will allow it...
I'll move to it in a second. Protein with no need to slaughter animals would be so fantastic for the animals, the earth, and people.
The only thing I'd wait for is for the process to be refined enough to be more eco friendly than just eating real meat. I'd do it, but until there's proof of it being more sustainable and won't tank my blood thin/thickness levels (blood thinners sometimes suck), I would be down to try it at the very least.
Though I would receive resistance in changing my diet until either my dad changes his eating habits or I move out on my own because my dad absolutely refuses things like plant based meats, so I know he'd most likely resist lab grown meat as well. It's also hard for my mom and I to switch to a healthier dinner diet since both my dad and older brother wouldn't dare change their diets to something like a Mediterranean or some other healthier because they can be picky eaters (especially my older brother).
I would be wildly optimistic, but very cautious.
I'd want to see multi-year randomized control trials comparing the bioavailability of not only protein, but also vitamins and minerals from the synthetic meat and liver, to natural meat and liver.
Assuming the RCTs show no issues, then I would happily move over.
Modern meat products are on a spectrum as well, it's not just having the meat, it's what the meat ate before it became me that's important. Grass-fed, versus grain fed for beef. Insect, and protein for chickens, grain fed for chickens etc. antibiotics, hormones being supplemented into the feed to improve yields.
One massive problem the industry globally suffers from is overpromising. Just like multivitamins, which are very poorly bioavailable, and mostly peed out, they promise a lot but don't deliver much.
Factors I would look for:
- can somebody sustain life eating only the synthetic meat for multiple years?
- oxidative stress, and oxidation in the synthetic food?
- The temptation to engineer sugar, and carbohydrates, directly into the meat to increase sales yields.
Green sustainability:
- can the synthetic meat be produced globally?
- Will poor farmers in the middle of nowhere be improved or hurt by this? Will they have access to the synthetic meat?
- in the event global logistics fail, like an a war, will moving over to synthetic meat severely hurt critical infrastructure and ability to feed populations?
once it’s affordable, yeah almost immediately i reckon. i already go for plant based meats whenever i can find them for a reasonable price!
Definitely. I see no downsides.
I don't eat very much meat as it is. But if I could drastically reduce the suffering inflicted when I do I would not hesitate.
If it were indistinguishable from other meat sources, and priced similarly (preferably less!), then of course. I expect it will take a very long time to get to that point, though.
Only if the culture medium for the meat cells is not made of living animals.
As long at it wasn't even more destructive than normal cultivation (very much tbd), absolutely.
I had no qualms about switching to Beyond Meat either.
If we could figure out how to make a decent ribeye out of peas and seed oils, I'd prefer that to lab-grown too.
We don’t eat red meat at all, so I would probably try it out fairly quickly. Actually we don’t eat chicken or the like either, only fish, which is something I miss a bit more now and then. We have a dried product called NoChicken that is actually pretty good, so that’d probably be sufficient for me to wait a bit to see how it goes long term (I.e is it truly safe to consume).
But every now and then, I miss game. Moose and wood grouse mainly. That’d probably hook me enough to try it quickly.
still waiting for the mass to consume it and see what happen, also waiting for the price too
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.
Its the only way I would eat meat again. But don't think it will ever become a normal part of my diet again. The plant-based meat options are just as good and are healthier. They will only get better too.
I would sooner argue for eating insects vs. lab-grown protein made by a corporation. I have no trust for corporations to produce safe and emergent solutions to the problems we face as a species and world. They have no incentive to do the right thing and put the brakes on when things are looking bad.
Is it good? Like does it actually taste like steak? Economical to produce? Is it better for the economy and the environment, Hell yes, then.
Imagine a perfectly marbled, perfectly rectangular, gristle free Wagyu quality steak that you could sear in some butter in a cast iron and serve right up.
No animal had to be raised and slaughtered. Less drain on resources. Less land usage.
I'm not convinced that the technology will ever get there, but what do I know. I'm just some dude on the internet.
Yes, of course. I'll be among the first in line to try it. Anything to reduce our dependence on livestock is a good idea in my book. It would save me the trouble of having to go vegan. Plus I bet guilt-free meat tastes so much better.
I will let you all try it first. Going to pass on crazy mutation diseases.
Absolutely. I'll take grown meat over slaughtered. Last i heard they basically just need to make the equipment cheaper to have it be viable. I'm awaiting it.
The day it's on the shelf is the day I'll buy it.
It would be a novelty at best, though I'm not a big meat eater (flexatarian). I'd rather have tempeh or plant based meat
Kind of depends on if it's good, tbh.
If it's just mediocre, I might try and work it in some meals where I'd use lower quality meat (e.g. sauces, sausage, burgers, etc). Then I'd just get a good real steak from a local ranch a few times a year to scratch that itch.
If the difference is not really perceivable or better, then hell yeah. Easy choice. I might even venture into other meats that I wouldn't eat otherwise like lamb, dog, horse, or even human.
Instantly! I'm already drooling at the door of every meat lab hoping for the day I can get perfect texture meats from any possibly creature to potentially cook with. Imagine the possibilities! Fried dodo, elephant steak, shark kabob, all without the moral, ethical, or biological risks that come with consuming extinct animals, sapient beings, or super predators. The culinary world will never be more shook!
making meat green? Sure, it would be cheaper and less destructive.
Not right away. I have grown to have a healthy caution towards new things when it comes to what i put in my body. I would give it maybe 5 years or so. Enough time for them to do some multi-year studies on any potential health effects. Im not just gonna take some companies word that these meats are what they say they are.
I have no problem with the idea of lab grown meat on its own i just don't trust companies to do it right.
As a vegetarian, I wouldn't care much for it. I feel like the plant-based alternatives have got everything covered I could want from meat (and more, if you look beyond Western cuisine). And then I just feel like it's hard to compete with them in terms of sustainability, efficiency, price etc.. In particular, I also really cannot be fucked to put more perishable things into my fridge. I had bought these meatball-like things for Christmas, but didn't eat the whole load on the first go, so had to cram them in a few days later. Meanwhile my lentils, beans, TVP, peas, nuts etc. just sit there for months, not needing any of my attention.
The only question I have is about prions, which are just misfolded proteins. As long as the quality control is good enough I don't have to worry about that, then I'd have no problem with it.
Without hesitation. If the taste, consistency, nutrition, and price are all the same, then the only differences would be whether an animal was bred to suffer until slaughter and the likelihood of illness from consumption. I'm assuming that stuff like e coli would be nearly impossible through this. Plus less demand on farm meat means less chance of coronavirus mutations like the 2009 swine flu outbreak. And less of a need for the real estate, feed, and potable water to grow those animals. I must be missing something because I'm struggling to see a downside here.
I'm sure that, in the same way that there's still a market for objectively inferior exploitatively mined diamonds as a status symbol instead of lab created diamonds, there would still be a market for rEaL meat where "you can really taste the suffering" or whatever.
Now here's the more interesting question that actually has me on the fence: if "growing any kind of animal tissue" is what has been achieved, where would you stand on consuming lab-grown human meat? Is it immoral? Are there risks? Should such a thing be restricted in some way like alcohol or handguns? What would be the proper etiquette and presentation and everything if it became socially accepted? What wine would pair best with it? Or would it be more of a beer pairing? If this weren't socially acceptable, would no-suffering chimpanzee meat be okay?
If it only takes a small cell sample, would it be unethical to dig up extinct animals like mammoths or dodo specifically to enjoy their meat? If that's okay, and it chimps are okay, would neanderthals be okay to eat? Where would we draw the line?
its all about cost. The plant based while not as good as meat is decent and if cost competitive I would use it to at least reduce met consumption. lab grown at price parity would almost get me to switch. Problem is my wife is turned off by it so that will be a complication. crickets are fine to me in food so processed you would not notice.
Depends on whether if it can be integrated into any of my recipes; or could be used in different recipes that taste good. Since it matches the price criteria for me; all that remains is the taste.
Sure. Custom meat, without the unnecessary parts sounds great.
Why not?
Sure, why not? I don't eat meat currently but I'd prolly throw in a lab burger or two occasionally if they were available
100% yes.
Yes.
No, I'll stick to my delicious plants. I don't really like meat.
