'Right in the firing line': New lab-grown milk substitute could threaten NZ's dairy sector

Alternative headline: Lab-grown milk substitutes a huge opportunity for NZ economy

Won’t China just make their own milk proteins, thereby decimating our dairy industry?
This tech will happen. Hopefully we can put our lands to better use.
- Like crops? From the article:
  While bad news for dairy, the study found employment and economic output would be boosted in a scenario where farmers switched to growing crops, which would also result in significant reductions in emissions and nutrient loss.
  But I also think of NZ produce as being more premium. There will likely be room for lots of players in a market like that.
- Probably, but that doesn't mean there will be no market for our product.
- Maybe. There's a perception that sells a lot of NZ dairy in china, that NZ products are safer. Might apply to vat milk too.

Key sentence here

While bad news for dairy, the study found employment and economic output would be boosted in a scenario where farmers switched to growing crops, which would also result in significant reductions in emissions and nutrient loss.

So I see this as a win-win-win.

Another interesting point

"I can't see parents ever being happy putting lab-grown meat and milk in their kids' lunchboxes... it's just not gonna happen," Federated Farmers dairy chair Richard McIntyre said.

Mr McIntyre is engaging in wishful thinking here, if the lab-grown alternative is half the cost, I'm sure parents will be only too happy to put it in the lunch boxes of the kids....some of the crap that gets put in now is amazing....

People are already putting in soy milk, almond milk, oat milk etc why wouldn't they put lab milk?
What a dork, of course they will come around. It may take some time and some convincing, but people will definitely accept this.
You think they'd learn after doubling down in the wool market and having the bottom fall out of it, they're doing it all over again
If only there wasn't a reason farmers are not doing more agriculture in the mountainous land of New Zealand.
- Most of our mountainous land is protected. Even if it’s not, dairy farms aren’t being run on rugged terrain. Cows aren’t exactly known for their adventurism.
- Well certainly not dairy farming.
Lab grown dairy protein will be sold wholesale long before it's available as milk. We'll be eating it as protein bars and chocolate, then processed cheese. Who's going to know the difference? Who's going to care?
That guy's talking shit and he knows it.
- Exactly

I think if this becomes a reality we are entirely fucked, much as we were in the 1880s when wool prices collapsed and a decade of economic depression followed.

There were a whole bunch of incredibly large land holdings up to their eyeballs in debt that kind of just hobbled on for a while, but not able to actually adapt. Ultimately, the government implemented the land tax to break them up to make way for more productive activities on smaller farms. I see a few parallels here.

Maybe, but there is a massive opportunity here to transition to supplying feedstock.
Look forward 30-50 years, will there be any dairy farming at all if this tech is perfected?
- Oh yeah for sure there is, but whether structurally, institutionally we'll actually do that in a proactive way, I'm not so sure. Dairy farms carry quite a lot of debt so their business models are pretty locked in to an extent.
  I wonder when they say sugar as a feedstock, do they mean like sugarcane or is it any sort of crop given everything we eat breaks down into sugars in the end. I wish these articles would link the reports theyre reporting on..
I mean, if a countries economy hinges on the cruel realities of animal agriculture, and a cruelty free alternative takes over - either get with the times, or good riddance to that economy I say.

Extractive economies based on production of commodities are unsustainable in the long term!?

(shocked_pikachu.gif)

If you prefer not to drink dairy milk, then just skip milk entirely.

As an aside, we really shouldn’t be eating food created in a lab. We’ve evolved as a species over hundreds of thousands of years to eat real food and we keep trying and failing to outsmart evolution. Trans fats, artificial sweeteners, processed food, and so on.

Milk is an end product. Precise fermentation is a better technology to produce it than cows.
- Better how? Certainly not more nutritious but having some new feature that adds convenience or uniformity. Processing always has side effects, usually discovered decades later. Trans fats, artificial sweeteners, refined grains, the list goes on.
What are your thoughts on iodized salt, niacin flour and iron fortified cereals?
- With a -8 vote, I’m not going to comment on eating real food ever again here. :)
  If you genuinely care and aren’t just baiting me, thinking you’ve entrapped me in an illogical box, here goes. I don’t have a problem fortifying cereal or flour, but they are both moderately to highly processed, so it’s generally better to eat less processed food. Salt is minimally processed and is an essential mineral, as is iodine. If you eat a good diet, you don’t need extra iodine, but I don’t think it’s harmful to add it. You can choose uniodised salt if you feel you don’t want extra iodine. Adding these things doesn’t make them more processed, it just makes them the same but with additives. :) Processing means you are taking a real food and removing nutrition from it in exchange for getting something in return like better shelf life or faster cooking times or some other convenience.