Very likely. It would have to be good of course, and it might get some getting used to, but much of our food is already far more artificial than that, and lab-grown meat might well end up being healthier, more economical, and certainly more animal friendly than real meat.
Personally, I doubt that. I strongly suspect that lab-grown meat is mostly about making lots of money selling it for high margins to vegetarians who still want to eat "meat".
Am I ignorant or would it be hugely inefficient to grow meat in a lab energy wise?
I understand the whole methane issue but using up non renewable energy sources to make something that could be done with renewable resources seems a little silly unless the plan is to do this with renewables.
Yes, but the lab meat you're talking about is not made like ju-st thinks it is. Current (expensive) lab-meat is made by directly growing tissue, without growing a full animal.
In contrast parent ju-st talks about artificially fertilising livestock, perhaps with accelerated growth.
In terms of ethics, the second procedures seems at least not worse than factory farming. The animals in the second one would need to live less long in order to produce the same amount of meat, and also you'd stop having some unwanted animals like male chicks.
However I really hope that lab-grown tissue becomes the standard for meat production.
In the article, one of the doctors mentions that the process of growing meat in a lab needs to be more efficient than in a cow or pig.
I'd say the process needs to be AS efficient, and could even be slightly less efficient to be economically viable.
There's a large and growing market of people who do not eat meat for ethical reasons. I've been a vegetarian for about 17 years now, and can't wait to take a bite out of a lab grown steak with some nice seasoning.
Another theoretical alternative are lab-grown meats. It should be much more efficient to just grow steaks, instead of growing cows and throwing most of them away.
That would be an interesting way to fund and scale production capacity for that lab grown meat too. Some stuff is just hard to figure out until you try doing it at scale.
I’m not so sure. I think if people hear it comes from plants in anyway (even if it tastes the same as lab grown meat) they’ll refuse it. “Lab grown meat - just like the real thing!” feels like it would have much better uptake among meat eaters.
If it is tasty and affordable, why not? Almost everything we eat nowadays is already highly optimized through selective breeding over thousands of years, so adding lab-grown meat does not make our food less "natural" than it is already. On the other hand, lab-grown meat will probably use much less resources compared to traditionally produced meat, while not causing any issues with regard to (bad) treatment / killing of actual animals.
It would reduce the issue to ethics only though. Whether you agree with the ethics part or not, lab-grown meat will likely also require less resources and thus will be better for the environment (and it would also be cheaper if governments wouldn't support lifestock breeding with money). In my eyes that's the bigger advantage compared to the ethics question.
For the ethical part, I personally don't agree with the "killing animal for food" part. For me, it's perfectly okay to kill an animal for food and anyone who thinks I should stop eating meat is a problem in my eyes (if you don't want to eat meat, I won't judge, but please don't judge me either). Where I do have ethical concerns though is when animals are kept in bad conditions throughout their lives to minimize price. The impact is felt by humans as well, as those conditions often involve giving the animals antibiotics which leads to super germ evolution (and those germs land in the meat we buy to finally land in humans!). Hopefully we'll have minimum standards in the future for growing animals for food. Those standards will make "real" meat more expensive but most people won't care as they can eat lab grown meat.
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