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?
There’s tons of plant based proteins already. Having already added more vegan meals to my diet I think this would just be another option for me and one more for novelty than anything else
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.
Only if it’s human.
For clarification, human meat or humane?
Yes
The answer I was hoping for!
You really thought I’d eat inhumanly sourced meat?
Hey I don’t judge people from their fetishes. Not since the incident at least.
That’s not a fetish; that’s just playing with death with several possible causes for it.
Personally, I’d be the worst last meal of any canniba, as my body carries a nasty condition that would carry on to those consuming my corpse.
Bad breath?
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.
protein isn’t the issue, it’s all the bio-available vitamins and healthy fats that have already been converted.
if it’s a 1 for 1 replacement, depending on how we deal with the massive and now useless animal populations, I would totally switch.
What do you think supplements are for?
corporate profits.
Exactly.
I don’t really care about lab grown meat. Haven’t eaten meat for years, don’t really miss it that much since the plant based alternatives have gotten so good.
Give me lab grown dairy.
100%
I did hear, though I can’t remember where, that someone had successfully gotten yeast to produce the protein in milk that is required for cheese.
I’m too lazy today to search for the article on it…
Sup. No need to keep doing it the old way at that point.
Hell, you could have boneless meat, so it’s even better.
But the bones are how you make banging soups…
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.
If it was healthy, affordable, and tasty, then yes.
If it isn’t all three, then Veganism can continue to go fuck itself.
You are not limited to meat and lab-created meat, you know? Vegetarians can tell you to eat eggs and cheese if you want. Vegans will tell you that there are large varieties of plant-based proteins, amongst: lentils, soy, whole cereals, even green vegetables. While these tend to not be as complete nor bio-available as meat or eggs, if you combine them you can have various, delicious and protein-rich meals. I am personally working out a lot and my mostly vegan diet (some eggs and cheese from time to time) is enough for my protein needs.
I mean, if your goal is to keep the meat experience, then yeah, I get your point. But other than that…
I mean, if your goal is to keep the meat experience, then yeah, I get your point.
I think that was indeed very obviously the point. The point of both the comment you were replying to and this lab grown meat idea as a whole.
I’m not really good with obvious subtexts, I’m sorry ^^
Because Veganism is yet another new age fad diet based in pseudoscience and I will have no part in it. It’s just Einstein Pain Wave nonsense.
People showing empathy towards animals and their living condition isn’t exactly what I would label pseudoscience. It has nothing to do with science to begin with
Yes, but you can’t actually survive on a Vegan diet.
You’re too funny
Cutting down on eating meat is as good as going vegan
Villianising anyone and everyone who even so much as touches a chicken breast is a damn blunder and totally puts me off against the community
Then again, most vegans that are decent wouldn’t be pushy and tell people they’re vegan
Why would I ever cut down on meat though? It’s filling, delicious, and the reason why humans evolved intelligence in the first place.
Because humans found similar delicious alternatives?
I mean, it’s your choice and Europe and America heavily depend on a meat based diet with the exception of bread
Impossible! eats a handful of popcorn and some curly fries
No joke that is what I had for dinner tonight, I’m trying to cutback on finances.
It’s not a flex or anything, I just find it ironic that I’m eating corn and potatoes for dinner the same day I lecture people on the internet about Veganism being bad, and I need someone to note the melancholy I’m experiencing.
Veganism is already healthy, affordable, and tasty. Ever heard of a bean? And only doing the ethical thing when it is also the easiest thing to do is just extreme egotism. I’m not saying anyone has to be a saint, but they should at least put more consideration into their actions than “How does this affect me personally?”
Yes, absolutely. No risk of virus or bacteria, or worse…
Grown to the size you want…
Of the shape and type you want…
No fat (maybe?)…
What’s not to like.
What kinda idiot would want no fat?
The kind that wants realllllly consistent beef jerky.
Constipation-jerky
I’d say price is definitely a factor. I already pass over good cuts of meat for that reason. Also taste/texture/overall experience. If it checs those boxes, and it has been on the market long enough to be confident I won’t get instant cancer, then 100%! A little marbled fat makes it better though.
Yeah, definitely some fat is needed…
But I can see hordes of healthy people looking for fatless meat, as they already do I the supermarkets.
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.
How does it taste? How much does it cost? What’s the true environmental impact?
If it’s the same, less and less, sure I’d be all for it.
OP said it costs the same.
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!
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 had some impossible patty from restaurants and it’s actually not bad and fairly close to meat flavor.
The beyond stuff is a hard pass.
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.
I always assume any hypothetical beneficial scenario is happening under socialism or another system that discards the profit motive because while we’re dreaming might as well dream big.
Just trying to ground things into our current reality. But yeah, I think in a world where there is an incentive to do good, it’s a no-brainer that we could do stuff like this in a lab and in a much more efficient way than agriculture or raising livestock/etc. for protein sources.
As someone that has the genetic trait that enables me to smell insects… thank you, but no thank you.
Regarding corporations controlling lab meat production: regulation, control, overview.
Those are fairy tail words in the US
There is more to the world than the US.
Hence why I said “in the US” genius…
Why, thank you, Mr. President. It’s an honor to get a compliment from a personality such as yourself.
TIL, and of course I echo the sentiment of the other commenter that those words don’t truly exist here in the US, and I agree with you that the world is a much larger place than the US. I just would hope that European countries (or whatever other countries are concerned about the health of their people) lead the charge if such a solution to our protein came to be.
And the insects would be provided by whom if not a huge corpos? You create some false equivalence here, it’s the ages old struggle of lowering the food costs of feeding workers by making us eat worse things. Potatoes instead of wheat, highly process foods, fats and sugars in everything and ultimate fucking step is looming: eating bugs. You can’t go worse than that unless it’s a fucking soylent green which i can guarantee you would be somewhere next in the line after you allow the mega rich to feed you bugs.
I was attempting to communicate that I would sooner argue for eating insects over lab-grown protein mainly because of the danger I see in the concept of a food source that is only able to be produced in a lab, not that I am going to seriously argue for insects to be seen as anything other than a potential option for protein. Plenty of other cultures utilize insects in food willingly, and I’m all about arguing for consent and what’s best for everybody individually.
I think we will have to get very creative to solve our problems with agriculture and food production, and I think all options should be fairly entertained if they can be done in a way that is truly safe while prioritizing the will of the people. I’m of the opinion that our food sources should be more natural and that’s also what I was attempting to touch on.