
Lab-grown meat might be only 6 months away - coderdude
http://blastr.com/2011/09/lab-grown-meat-might-be-only-6-months-away-yum-we-think.php
======
DanI-S
This is awesome. Presumably, at some point we'll have the process optimised to
the point that it could be done in your own home, or at a local (supermarket?)
level. Imagine having a kitchen appliance that produces meat from liquid
feedstock.

Even more speculatively, I wonder if the nutrient medium could be produced
from other kitchen scraps? That's basically what animals were kept for in the
past.

Aside, it sounds like efforts are focused on replicating pork/beef. It seems
like some kind of fish might be easier, since texture is less of an issue, but
I guess that's not what the US palate demands.

~~~
ebiester
Duplicating the taste of fish would be more important, especially if it could
get to sushi-grade. Fishing many larger fish is becoming unsustainable.

It's also more difficult because not only does texture matter, but the meat
filters through sea water to get its taste.

~~~
iloveyouocean
'Fishing many larger fish is becoming unsustainable.'

IT IS unsustainable. Many fisheries have already collapsed with many more
collapses looming on the horizon.

~~~
wisty
Also note, Math for Industry 201 always uses fish stocks as an example.

Catch too many fish, and you get a suboptimal population growth - the babies
that do get born do well (due to a lack of competition), but there's so few
born that this doesn't really matter.

It's more true for slow growing fish, like salmon, and tuna.

Fun fact, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) was not formed to stop
whaling, but because it was obvious that whale stocks had collapsed, and
international co-ordination was needed to allow them to grow back to an
economic level. The whaling industry collapsed slowly, got a second wind as
steam ships made fast-moving blue whales a feasible target, then collapsed
again as the blue whales ran out. The IWC was formed in 1946, and it wasn't
until the 70s that the anti-whaling movement gained any steam.

------
stephencelis
> 2.5 centimeters long and 0.7 centimeters wide

An improvement on the 8mm x 2mm meat reported on just a few months ago:

[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_specter)

But still, where is "6 months" coming from? A vague "year" figure is given by
Mark Post (with the caveat that funding is needed), but that doesn't even
bring into consideration the process of getting the meat out of the lab and
into the grocery store.

~~~
spacemanaki
I wondered the same thing about the 6 month figure. This is some aggregator
site run by the SciFi/SyFy channel? It's the kind of pop science reporting I
think is bordering on irresponsible, really. Their source is New Scientist
requiring a signup:

[http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128283.500-meat-
with...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128283.500-meat-without-
slaughter-6-months-to-biosausages.html)

That article isn't much more informative though. That New Yorker article was
much higher quality, as expected.

------
richcollins
It's likely that the lab grown "meat" won't be a proper substitute for the
meat that we evolved to eat. Food is more complicated than it outwardly
appears (i.e. a collection of muscle cells != meat)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t....](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?pagewanted=print)

~~~
angryasian
this sounds more like industry FUD. People are able to get there daily
sustenance from gruel. Yes it may not fit your definition of food, but this is
a first world complaint. There are millions of people around the world
starving, that this technique could help.

~~~
spacemanaki
Did you read that linked Michael Pollan piece? If not, please do, it's good.
So is his other work. He's not an industry shill spreading FUD. There are
serious gaps in our understanding of nutrition. Suggesting that lab grown meat
might lack something that "real" meat has isn't FUD. There may be more
nutritionally sound food sources than vat meat for people currently starving
or subsisting on gruel.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yes, it is confusing to put meat in a category of foods missing from first-
world diets. Should we add caviar and pound cake to that list too?

More significant: will it be a diet improvement to replace fatty hamburger
with this 'meat'? Perhaps - since Americans eat pounds of meat per day, a
whole week's worth of protein in a Wendy's Double with Cheese.

~~~
richcollins
We evolved to eat wild game. First world humans are missing the meat that we
should be eating.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
...and that relates to purebred beef cattle, how?

I imagine there are far more useful things to worry about in the American
diet, than subtle differences between a single strain of pork muscle vs which
strain of angus they're eating. Like how much they're eating; how much fat,
salt, empty carbohydrates.

If you are worried for yourself, fine, FUD away and eat vegan. But as a social
phenomenon, I can't see how lab-meat can be very harmful, and it is a certain
good.

------
artursapek
There's not much of a wait left until the day a man will be able to come home
from work, eat a lab-grown Bratwurst, have sex with his sex robot, and then
relax with an electric cigarette.

~~~
kenjackson
All that, yet he's still commuting home from work.

~~~
burgerbrain
I think I would always commute, even if "come home from work" only means leave
the room I only enter while on the clock. Blurring the line between home and
work too much sounds terribly unappealing to me.

Human contact is nice too.

~~~
theotherdouche
> Human contact is nice too.

Said the man with the sexbot.

------
mambodog
A news story I saw last night about synthetic sausages contained a vox pop
from a woman who claimed that she would not eat them because it was
"unethical". I have to say, my mind was blown by her apparent construction of
ethics.

~~~
wlievens
Strange indeed. If her answer had been that it's _unnatural_ , she may have a
point (not one I'd uphold thouhg), but unethical makes no sense.

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bobroberts
If they can compete with textured soy protean then they have a viable market
with pretty low technical requirements. As they develop texture and structure
they could replace fajita and stir fry meats, maybe nuggets. Lots of markets
as the product matures.

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Sodaware
I'm skeptical that this is only 6 months away (6 years sounds more
reasonable), but I'm still curious about the ramifications of synthetic meat.

Would it be more energy efficient to grow meat in a factory than in the
fields? What are the energy requirements for a pound of lab meat vs a pound of
pig meat?

More importantly, what would happen if it turned out cheaper and tasted the
same? How many industries depend on eating meat? What would happen to all the
pigs if nobody wanted to eat them?

~~~
sliverstorm
Even more interesting, at least to me- what will the vegetarians do?

As for all the animals, their populations would obviously get scaled back. The
transition would not happen overnight, there would be plenty of time. Though
you may have a point- domestic pigs would likely become pets and little else.
However, chickens still lay eggs, cows still make milk, and sheep and goats
still produce milk and wool.

~~~
gte910h
Your points about non-meat animal products still very much hold still. Pigs
would be pets and sources of organ scaffolding for humans.

Additionally, the yearlong production of milk in animals requires contant
pregnancies, so will still cause many animals to killed. For instance, goat
milk products kill far more male goats than any demands for the meat.

There are multiple types of vegetarians. Ones who dislike the moral part of
meat will not have an issue with the new meat. There are energy consumption
vegetarians. If this new meat is considerably close to the energy requirements
for a vegetarian diet, they may go for it. The health vegetarians who are
afraid of adulterated food may go for this meat now, but the ones who are
afraid of the general higher cancer risk from red- meat based diets, etc, will
likely not be persuaded to change.

~~~
DennisP
Seems like lab-grown milk would be easier than lab-grown meat. No texture
issues. I wonder if anyone's working on that.

~~~
wlievens
The ethical motivation is a lot smaller though, I presume.

~~~
gte910h
The energy motivation is a TON of a lot smaller. Milk doesn't take near the
energy to make as meat.

------
sorbus
In vitro meat has been coming (in that it's been researched) for at least the
last 16 years, and there have been edible forms since 2000. None of the other
breakthroughs have lead to large-scale production, which I believe was due to
the poor taste and that it's currently more expensive to produce than normal
meat, per-pound. So don't get your hopes too high.

------
skrebbel
Earlier results of this process at Eindhoven University of Technology included
that "due to safety restrictions, the scientists were not allowed to eat the
meat, which tasted bland". (sorry, lost the reference)

------
free
Interesting article and I hope it becomes a reality in usage very soon. I have
been a vegetarian since birth. Earlier it was because my family was vegetarian
and later it was because of my belief that I wanted to cause minimum harm to
living thing. But I don't know why my instant reaction was that I am not going
to eat it. All my reasons for not wanting to eat meat are resolved by this. No
on suffers. Yet I don't think I would touch that. I am all for it and I think
it would be a very good step in many ways.

------
cmars232
As a BBQ loving Texan, I find this fascinating. On the one hand, it does seem
kind of creepy, on the other, this could be some cool resilient community-
building technology to create a real alternative to the current food economy.

I don't think this will ever be a complete replacement for real meat. There
are such subtleties to how an animal lives and what it eats that affect its
taste. Wild hogs and domestic pigs are the same animal but taste entirely
different (I prefer the wild variety).

Still, I'd prefer higher quality lab-grown meat created under safe and open
conditions with some free range/hunted organic on the side to the factory
farmed meat we're stuck with today. I drive 35 miles out of my way for
groceries every week to avoid that stuff.

------
superkarn
Easier to swallow than this
[http://www.dailytech.com/Japanese+Make+Delicious+Nourishing+...](http://www.dailytech.com/Japanese+Make+Delicious+Nourishing+Steaks+From+Human+Feces/article21932.htm)

------
cpeterso
The other alternative meat: Japan scientist synthesizes meat from human feces

[http://www.digitaltrends.com/international/japanese-
scientis...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/international/japanese-scientists-
creates-meat-out-of-feces/)

 _Somehow this feels like a Vonnegut plotline: population boom equals food
shortage. Solution? Synthesize food from human waste matter. Absurd yes, but
Japanese scientists have actually discovered a way to create edible steaks
from human feces._

~~~
kentbuckle
There is some evidence this might be a hoax:
[http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/06/23/japan...](http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/06/23/japan_feces_meat_viral)

------
jvoorhis
Apparently nobody was paying attention when Meat Tube won Best New GMO in 08.

<http://www.ilovemeattube.com/about.html>

~~~
jayair
I'm not sure if you are joking but that looks like a parody site.

------
ck2
I am 100% for devastating the livestock industry within my lifetime but I
think they are going to fight this on every level, especially politically, so
it's doomed.

------
glyphobet
If lab-grown meat qualifies as vegetarian, will that mean that lab-grown
_human_ meat won't count as cannibalism? Wacky.

~~~
fractallyte
A few years back, some wit on Slashdot (responding on a similar topic)
wondered whether vegans might object to eating meat grown from their _own_
cells...

That's even _more_ twisty. Interesting, though.

------
sankara
Hypothetical question. Let's say this fruitions and is widely popular.
Wouldn't that mean we would simply stop rearing cattle and poultry? Would that
mean the species will go extinct? Now isn't that cruelty.

~~~
adrianN
I don't think you can be cruel to a species because a species doesn't feel
anxiety and pain.

~~~
sankara
"Now isn't that cruelty" - was meant at the species going extinct. Just a pun.
Not a literal comparison with slaughter.

------
kleim
When will I be able to print my own T-bone with my 3D printer?

------
stoph
My first thought here is that fast food chains will try and pick this up to
cut costs, it can be grown cheaper than farming.

~~~
jessedhillon
My thought was pet foods would be ahead of human foods in adopting this, due
to, well, a less-than-discriminating end-user.

------
laglad
Molecular gastronomy should converge with this. Imagine the wacky tastes and
textures that we would be able to create.

~~~
joezydeco
Molecular gastronomy is technology taken from the industrial food sciences, so
they're probably one step ahead of you already.

------
lobo_tuerto
Wondering why the page was with no content. It seems to be Chrome (15.0.865.0
dev), loads good on Firefox.

------
sien
Would it be legal to produce a product called 'Soylent Green' ?

~~~
apostlion
Soylent Green is people.

Seriously though, an idea of a fake meat modified to taste like human meat is
both troubling and intriguing.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I'd try it. And then I'd stay up for nights on end, wondering - "Is that
_really_ what human meat tastes like?"

------
pointyhat
I wonder if they will grow human flavoured meat :)

~~~
fractallyte
Pork already has that infamy. Hence the slang for human flesh: 'long pig'.

------
beatpanda
Man, this is great, because look at how well every other processed food has
worked out for human nutrition!

------
trebor
This is gross!

Can they guarantee that the synthetic meat is healthy? Like, will it contain
CLA, B-12, Omega-3s (found in grass-fed cows, and well-raised pigs), B-12, and
so on? We get a lot of important nutrients from animal meat and fat that are
harder to process from plant or synthetic sources.

~~~
gfodor
Grosser than eating something that was once a living, breathing, feeling
animal? Probably not.

(I'm a meat eater but still acknowledge how horrible it is.)

~~~
trebor
Our subjective opinions on how "gross" this is won't get us anywhere. I don't
find killing and eating animals to be gross—eating something that literally
wasn't alive (I don't find cells reproducing in that way to meet my definition
of "living") is repulsive to me.

I source all my meat possible from local farms that raise the animals in free-
range methods, and slaughter them in ethical ways (IE, no shocking or killing
them when they're in a panic, like a CAFO would). And that's as ethical and as
kind as a meat eater can get, with no exceptions.

But the nutritional point I raise isn't a light issue. These are animal cells
coaxed into growing in _foreign conditions_. Just like hydroponic tomatoes
have no taste, and possibly poor nutrition too, the "flesh vats" of the future
will have nutritional problems too.

~~~
puredemo
>Our subjective opinions on how "gross" this is won't get us anywhere.

Then why did you start off by saying it was gross?

>But the nutritional point I raise isn't a light issue. These are animal cells
coaxed into growing in foreign conditions. Just like hydroponic tomatoes have
no taste, and possibly poor nutrition too, the "flesh vats" of the future will
have nutritional problems too.

This will obviously be studied and tweaked at length. Input --> output.

