Mammalian cells in research labs are grown in media that is composed of 1) multiple powdered components that are readily obtainable through isolation from bacteria/yeast or synthesis and, 2) 10% FBS (fetal bovine serum). Until these cultured meat companies can come up with a suitable replacement for FBS, due to environmental, moral, cost, etc concerns, none of these solutions are terribly viable. I personally wouldn't want to eat (or pay for) a tiger streak that required liters of FBS to grow.
> I personally wouldn't want to eat (or pay for) a tiger streak that required liters of FBS to grow.
Since FBS is collected from a bovine fetus at slaughter houses, I'm not sure that anyone who currently eats meat and dairy should have an ethical problem with this. You're already paying for the animals to be slaughtered.
I assume that if this is a serum that comes only from bovine fetuses, more cows are slaughtered per pound of cultured meat than per pound of natural-grown meat. That would make this much less sustainable.
FSB is a byproduct of existing slaughter, not a special process which kills extra aninals. If you're opposed to the use of FSB because you thinks it's immoral to kill the animals, you should be equally opposed to the meat and dairy industries as they are today. Both are responsible for the death of animals and often fetuses.
There is a risk that the FSB collection process will allow the fetus to gain consciousness before death, but those paying into the meat and dairy industries are already comfortable with killing conscious, sentient animals.
It seems that you are thinking a little too short-term here. We have been culturing cells for >50 years. If this is a necessary ingredient, it may be a lot harder to substitute than you might think, which relegates lab-grown meat to staying a niche product. You will not have a viable, scalable meat replacement if your replacement needs to slaughter more cows per kilogram than meat.
As long as the amount of cultured meat is _relatively_ small, it's sustainable; FBS is essentially a byproduct, and no-one is slaughtering extra cows just to produce it.
If the cow was going to be slaughtered anyway, and you still get the meat, what does it matter if you get less serum per cow than meat per cow? Shouldn't we be glad we're getting more utility per cow slaughtered?
In case anyone is curious about cell cultured seafood as well, here's a paste from a reply I made elsewhere:
I like to look at GFI's yearly state of alternative seafood reports [1] to get a sense of the landscape. New harvest has a good list of research they have funded which gets into the weeds a bit [2], check this one for example [3]. We wrote some pros and cons in my recent article that may be interesting [4].
This is a list of some players: Finless Foods, BlueNalu, Wildtype, Shiok Meats, Bluu Seafood. Most are at the pilot plant stage and have announced reaching market this or next year. Note that the investment landscape have changed dramatically last year, so timelines will likely change.
Finally: I think its going to be exciting to see alternatives coming out soon. For me the pros are definitely welfare and biodiversity related, while the cons are feed and co2 related.
Only high value species are interesting for the cultivated meat indsutry. The overwhelming majority of salmon is farmed, especially atlantic salmon [1, page 17]. Yellowtail tuna is increasinly farmed as well, but sure wild stocks of tuna are still getting depleted.
Eating chicken or some other meat is not better than eating fish.
The idea is simply genius, no way to compare the product to the real thing, even the few that actually may have tasted tiger or lion meat, how often did they eat it, maybe once in their lifetime.
Next step could be synthetic meat of extincted animals, even more failproof.
Prions are spread by eating (or otherwise becoming infected with) prions, not by eating something that is you, or is similar to you. There's no reason why a lab-grown me-burger would have prions in it. Or, at least, it's no more likely than a lab-grown beef burger spontaneously developing Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.
Well normally all skeletal muscle contains nerves which might have at least some of the proteins that could flip. But in this case you wouldn't want the muscle to activate, it is like the purest kobe veal kept in a box so that it's muscles never even had to work once. I have often joked engineer meat is like kobe veal, kept in a box and fed nothing but beer. Maybe soon I can test my theory.
Prions are a risk when eating meat in general. BSE (mad cow) can be transmitted to humans, and there's some limited laboratory evidence that scrapie can be transmitted cross-species, as well.
Though you do raise an interesting though -- are prions going to be more or less likely (or the same) in cultured meat?
> Next step could be synthetic meat of extincted animals,
It has been suggested before (by cstross I think) that the next step is celebrity endorsements. With their cells. There must be someone that you think of as "tasty". And it won't harm them, in fact they'll get paid when you buy.
I'm sure there would be plenty of folk who would love to chow down on a Taylor Swift steak, or a Chris Hemsworth burger. Probably decent money to be made, if you can get the celebrities to agree to it.
I wonder if this would act as a "harm reduction" mechanism for celebrity-obsessed weirdos who would otherwise stalk or attempt to harm them to feel close to them, or if it would actually encourage bad behaviour...
Burgers are a gimmicky way to present this. Most commercial burgers are made of low quality meat and slathered with sauces and served on an oversized bun. Unless they're really going to do meat-forward burgers that are served medium rare with minimal toppings, nobody is going to notice the meat in the burger.
They should imo be aiming at preparations that feature the flavor of the meat.
You’re absolutely right, if their goal is for people to get the flavor and texture of the meat. This is cultured meat though, which tends to develop far less connective tissue than it would in nature, so the point may well be to disguise the texture.
Its an interesting idea, though he did start to lose me when he started pitching snake oil style lists of benefits regarding brain health and doctors telling parents to feed their kids lion meat. Interestingly I noticed I had different reactions to the thought of eating different animals. No issue with the herbivores (giraffe, zebra, etc.) but a very negative reaction to the thought of consuming big cats. Not sure why. If there is a way to verify the source of the protein (animal type) by a government regulator I would be willing to give it a go.
While its far in the future I have always liked the idea of space missions being able to take cell cultures and grow their own protein removing their reliance on earth based food supplies. Makes the idea of a generation ship more realistic (although still terrible for the generation that are born, live and die on it)
Can anyone tell me how this lab grown meat has any sustenance? Animals get vitamins, minerals etc. from their lifestyles and what they eat. I see this stuff as the equivalent of white bread. Yeah it might look similar but nutritionally it's as good as eating cardboard.
No way I'm trying this lab grown artificial meat until his extensive nutritional studies. The FDA's food pyramid ought to be enough to not trust them on approving this.
As with most food, the more industrialized it gets the worse it is for our health and you can bet the moment they can commercialize this the point it's profitable then whether it's healthy or not will be inconsequential.
Typically the same people downvoting this will call our current mechanized food industry a blight on humanity that's destroying the earth, unhealthy, and harming animals. Yet, they're willing to let these same people feed them mass produced bio-lab meat without questioning one bit.
The FDA is out there recommending frosted mini wheats over chicken right now. I don't trust a thing coming out of there mouths. They're just paid off by the highest bidder.
Tiger/Human/T-Rex meat always seemed like a much more interesting sales proposition than trying to compete with beef/pork/chicken which people already have available and cheap...
