Regenerative agriculture uses livestock to increase viability of soil. If used correctly theyre already a sustainable ag tool that uses waste and grazing as a benefit to plant production and carbon sequestration, not just a meat generation source. Lab meat will become less efficient at high scale not more efficient according to the history of previous biotech scale up attempts, most of which use more viable organisms than animal cell culture.
I am less sanguine on the efficiency issue. You have also thrown away very useful tissues comprising things like a functioning immune system and the circulatory system (gas and nutrient exchange and waste removal/filtration).
I would expect "lab meat" to demand much more purified, processed and energy intensive inputs than traditional farming. Laboratory cell culture is a hard and very expensive enterprise.
It's probably less efficient than regular livestock now but will be more effecient later, since when you are optimizing for meat instead of meat plus legacy biological life form, you skip the energy that goes into bone, brain, etc.
Artificial cell based meat can't get here fast enough.
Much of the farming in the US is for animal feed. Cell based meat presumably still needs some inputs from crops but it has to be much more efficient then feeding corn and alfalfa.
I think the market for plant based meat substitutes and cell cultured meat has the potential for massive growth. There are still some kinks to work out but tremendous progress is being made.
You can help out animals and the environment and make money at the same time.
If you have the money, buy meat directly from a regenerative ag farm you can go visit personally. You'll see animals with plenty of space, given healthcare and protection from predators, and contributing to soil growth and biodiversity.
While true that factory farms are a nightmare, lab grown meat is not the only alternative. There are plenty of regenerative farms out there that produce quality product in the most humane and environmentally beneficial way possible. Check out Polyface Farm in VA or Brown Ranch in ND for examples.
In general I’m bullish on biotech but best case for tissue culture meat still leaves me sceptical. Most of the hype focuses around beef substitutes, beef cattle is about as inefficient as animal agriculture gets at ~3% efficient on an energy basis of edible parts.
Dairy jerseys and laying hens are both ~12%, with meat chickens ~15%. The best replicating eukaryotic cell culture I know are certain yeast at 50%. So a best case scenario is factor of 3 improvement, I'd welcome results from multicellular organisms that got anywhere close to that but I haven't seen it.
Supposing there are no improvements to be had on the cell metabolism side; dressing percentage for broiler chickens is 70% so getting rid of brain, digestive tract, immune system, etc. doesn’t improve things that much. Keep in mind that tissue cultures are a lot more picky about feedstock than whole animals. Good luck shovelling hay into that bioreactor. All of the processing that the feedstock takes will claw back your productivity gains and then some.
Margins are slim at the bottom. As capital intensive as modern farming is, biotech puts it to shame. Once you factor in amortizing all that equipment this is a non-starter.
The only appeal is from an animal welfare angle. Even there an argument could be made that humane husbandry is positive-utility rather than the neutral of lab-grown, while also coming out ahead environmentally.
An Oxford research report refutes many of the claims made in favor of "regenerative animal agriculture" [1]. It's basically the clean coal of factory farming.
Also, to the extent "regenerative animal agriculture" works at all, it can be done without slaughtering the animals for their flesh.
> And precisely what is the sustainability of lab meat? What makes you think lab meat will be more efficient that raised meat?
Yuval Noah Harari, on the second video (ca. 0:40) states the reasons why he thinks cultured meat will have a smaller ecological footprint. He says: "When you don't have to raise an entire cow in order to get a steak, when you don't have to raise an entire chicken to get a schnitzel, you just need this particular piece of meat, these particular cells, it reduces considerably the amount of water, the amount of fuel, the amount of nutrients that you have to invest in it, and also the amount of pollution that you are creating."
I'm having a hard time following this line of thought. Cattle was around in some shape before what you could describe as modern humans existed. They need plants that grow naturally and are sustained by the sun and some land. It's clearly a sustainable process.
To the extent that it's not it might be improved by genetic engineering, and I doubt that producing the same meat in vitro will be a net improvement in sustainability for a long time. Now you've replaced a natural organism that needs some fodder and produces CO^2 with an entire factory, employees to manage it etc.
Why do you think that's more sustainable? One of those processes relies on non-technology that existed before there were even humans around, and the other needs high-tech that we don't even have yet.
A cow's rumen is amazing. You can feed a cow almost any vegetable matter and they will grow and produce milk and meat. Chickens and pigs are more particular but in terms of energy in to food out, are still very inexpensive and easy to manage. Cell cultures require sterile laboratory conditions, growth factors and very specific nutrient requirements.
A largely plant-based diet, sure, that is what most (but not all) of our hunter gatherer ancestors ate, but I doubt cell cultures will ever get within even a order of magnitude of the efficiency of growing and eating real animals.
> Probably just like vertical farming, it uses vastly more energy than traditional farming.
That's an unfounded assumption - vertical vegetable farming uses more energy than traditional vegetable farming (with a trade-off of less land).
However, farming animals also uses more energy than farmi9 vegetables. So it's possible that lab grown meat won't use more energy than farm grown meat, and will come with enough other benefits - less water and land use, less cruelty, less antibiotics, less risk of cross transmission of disease - that even if there is an increase in energy use, the trade-off will be worth it.
I'm hoping that lab grown meat takes off. I believe that this is on par with expanding solar power and electric cars in terms of combating global warming.
reply