
Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef - sinesha
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/aug/05/google-sergey-brin-synthetic-beef-hamburger
======
wahsd
Mostly carnivorous guy here; I have started playing around with the use of
tofu and mushrooms in stead of meat and have come to the realization that it
is actually a lot easier to substitute them for meat. Another, even bigger
realization I have come to is that it seems that my addiction, yes, addiction,
to meat and meat having to be a minimum requirement for having any interest in
a dish, is that it is really a psychologically conditioned addiction. I don't
think that the meat alternative market is really addressing the real problem,
people's habitualized addiction to meat by industry, special interests, and
marketeers manipulating a vulnerability in humans.

I am not advocating universal vegetarianism, but the fact that Americans eat
insane amounts of meat is proof in and of itself that something is not right.
There is a healthy level of meat intake and we far exceed it. Just think of
how many meals have some form of meat in it. It's probably approaching 100%
for most Americans that are not vegetarians.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
>> Just think of how many meals have some form of meat in it. It's probably
approaching 100% for most Americans that are not vegetarians.

Really? Neither myself, nor 99% of the people I associate with are
vegetarians, but I'd say I AT MOST 50% of my lunches and 25% of my dinners
actually contain meat (and maybe 7% for breakfast). Granted, I do consider
myself a heath conscious eater, and thus eat lots of veggies and beans and
veggies. But still, I'm nowhere near having meat in 100% of my meals.
(Although I did enjoy a delicious flank steak with mango salsa last night.)

In my travels though, I have found that specific diets tent to be
geographically dependent as well. Ie, I find rural areas in the US to be heavy
on the meat and potatoes, with an almost irrational/religious fear of
vegetables and anything spicy/with a little different flavor/texture, whereas
in cities it's easy to get lost just trying all sorts of the different
cuisines available. People who must have meat in their meals also miss out on
lots of the fantastic flavors of non-carnivorous main courses available to
them.

~~~
chc
Based on the stuff I've read, I'm pretty sure you are much further from the
norm than he is. Only eating a meat-containing dish for dinner once or twice a
week is pretty unusual.

------
spodek
We have a lot of entrepreneurs here.

Why don't we start with an easier lab-grown animal product than something we
ingest?

How about lab-grown fur coats (EDIT from evilduck's comment: or lab-grown
leather for clothing, furniture, shoes, etc)? Who wouldn't want to wear a
"mink" coat created with no animal pain?

Develop the technology on something we don't have to eat, along with the
associated health risks and sensitivity of our palates, but still useful. Then
transfer the technology to the harder areas.

I wrote about in-vitro fur before -- [http://joshuaspodek.com/vegetarian-
entrepreneurs-test](http://joshuaspodek.com/vegetarian-entrepreneurs-test).
I'd love to see it but haven't heard of anyone working on it. Is anyone doing
it?

Another application easier than in-vitro meat for humans -- in-vitro meat pet
food.

~~~
jdietrich
Because it would be orders of magnitude more difficult. Muscle tissue is
relatively homogeneous and has a far simpler structure than skin and hair
folicles. Minced meat has had most of the complex macro-structure destroyed by
the process of mincing, so it's easier still to imitate than whole pieces of
meat.

There is also a very limited market for these products, as there are many
satisfactory substitutes to leather and fur. Synthetic materials have replaced
or augmented natural materials in most of the textiles industry, because they
can offer superior properties.

I think a far more interesting development is Beyond Meat, who make a wholly
plant-based chicken substitute that is remarkably realistic.

~~~
Retric
It may be more difficult but we have synthetic meet it's just far to expencive
to be practical. So the fact that the end product would presumably be with a
lot more per lb could be a significant factor.

PS: I suspect you could sell a few thousand 100k coats a year under the
'Animal Free' idea. Which pays for a fair amount of R&D.

~~~
mscarborough
You can already buy animal-free synthetic fur coats, and if you pay even
$1,000 you're getting ripped off in a big way.

------
amirhirsch
Best quote from Sergey: "If what you're doing is not seen by some people as
science fiction, it's probably not transformative enough"

~~~
enraged_camel
Perhaps ironically, by this criteria the iPad was transformative, since it
appeared in Star Trek. :)

~~~
TeMPOraL
A => B doesn't mean B => A. "If it's considered sci-fi, it's probably
transformative enough" does not follow from his words.

~~~
enraged_camel
I think in this case it does. Can you think of anything sci-fi that would NOT
be transformative enough?

~~~
chc
Three-dimensional chess. (Not really disagreeing. Just couldn't turn down the
challenge.)

~~~
pjscott
Video phones also turned out to be kind of boring, once they stopped being
part of the shiny future and started being part of the present.

------
aaronmarks
Biz Stone also just got into the meat-substitute space, with Beyond Meat -
[http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680007/biz-stone-explains-why-
tw...](http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680007/biz-stone-explains-why-twitters-co-
founders-are-betting-big-on-a-vegan-meat-startup) \- which I can report is
vegan, gluten free and delicious.

------
scld
I think the synthetic food market is going to be the biggest emerging market
by 2020, coming out of relatively nowhere.

I know that there is development around it but with all the talk about energy,
privatized space, mobile computing, clean environment, etc., I think synthetic
meat will be the dark horse for next big business.

~~~
prawn
I've wondered about insects too. I'm aware of at least one contemporary
restaurant in Australia serving crickets, mealworms, ants, etc. I suspect more
will follow.

UN seems keen too. Apparently there are prototype factories growing insects to
be crushed and used in a powdered form, and/or used as feed for livestock.

~~~
tomjen3
I believe the market for that will grow, certainly for life stock but I
personally can't see myself eat insects and frankly I don't believe I am alone
in that. Besides it is mostly whitemeat and red meat is better.

------
brianbreslin
I've been following this topic for a while, and the interesting thing is that
synthetic beef still has to be "fed". What its fed is stem cells and cow fetal
materials. So its not "vegan" per-se.

One of the synthetic meat companies switched to leather products as they found
out no one wants to eat bio-engineered lab grown steak (also it didn't taste
very good)

~~~
ignostic
You may be right in this case (I couldn't find their methodology online yet),
but it's just a MVP. They could easily make it without touching a cow beyond
the initial cell sample.

It's possible to feed the cells a synthetic culture medium, or something that
doesn't come from the cow. I don't know what was done in this case.

We also don't need to continually re-harvest stem cells from the cow.
Depending on when they differentiate, there would no doubt be a bunch of
growing pluripotent cells, including enough backup cells to start over if
batches are somehow contaminated.

I'm no expert in growing meat, but I'm sure the vision is beef without
reliance on cows, and the vision seems scientifically possible.

I know about a dozen vegans, and none would complain about small samples being
taken from a cow somewhere - potentially thousands of burgers - down the line.
Those vegans who have a problem with ANY sample are an unattainable and
insignificant target group.

~~~
asciimo
The potential reduction of animal exploitation is so great that this vegan
hardly cares how it comes into being. But I wouldn't eat it myself.

~~~
moheeb
What about all the vegetables you're exploiting?

------
antitrust
I like the idea of being able to be a carnivore without being a killer.

However, there is a trap in this. Right now, there are cows and pigs wherever
there are humans.

Fast forward 200 years when we can grow our own meat in the lab. Who's going
to keep around livestock? For what reason?

Pigs and cows would exist in a wild state in a small fraction of their former
"territory." If at all.

~~~
paulnechifor
>Who's going to keep around livestock?

The people who want to eat actual animals.

>For what reason?

I wouldn't be so quick to assume that cloning muscle cells is the same as meat
and it will replace all animal products. What about (almost) raw pig skin [1]?
It's delicious and people in this post say skin isn't so easily synthesized.

Pasteurization was invented a long time ago yet people still make natural milk
products. If I'm not mistaken these are illegal in the USA.

[1]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=șorici](https://www.google.com/search?q=șorici)

------
pdenya
Good on him for investing in stuff like this. Good for animals, good for the
planet, and good for me. I can't wait until this is universally available,
I'll never eat another boca burger again.

------
keiferski
The biggest challenge for synthetic beef will not be technology. It will be
marketing. I'm glad Brin is investing, but I'd really like to see a marketing
master like Richard Branson take the field on.

~~~
bowlofpetunias
I don't think marketing will be a problem if you consider the industry has no
problem selling crap that is made from far more distasteful things than
synthetic meat.

It initially won't be sold as "synthetic meat". It will be sold as "sausage",
"hamburger" and countless other products of which the labeling isn't protected
and which are basically "mystery meat" anyway.

It has been done before, just look at the wide range of fake dairy products
which we now consider perfectly normal.

Getting it through regulation will be the biggest challenge.

~~~
kleiba
Well, as long as they make it clear on the label that their "hamburger" or
"sausage" product is made from lab-meat, not real meat, I'm all for it.

~~~
freehunter
Why? That's the same as labeling food made with GMOs. If there's no provable
difference between the two, putting it on the label is just spreading FUD
about the product.

~~~
DanielStraight
No, putting it on the label is giving the consumer the choice, as well as the
ability to follow their food back to its source if they so choose. In a
consumer friendly food economy (in other words, the EU, or at least Germany),
almost everything is labeled sufficiently to follow it back to the factory or
farm that produced it. That, to me, is a very good thing.

The idea that the government and corporations should decide what consumers
need to know is repugnant to me. The consumer should be the boss, not the food
industry, and certainly not the government. Knowing what you are buying is, in
my mind, a basic right in modern society.

~~~
freehunter
Sure, I agree with you. The problem is, if "regular" meat does not need to say
what type of cow it's from, what antibiotics were used, what the cow was fed,
the living conditions at the farm, the location of the farm, etc, then why
make lab grown meat have this label? It will only serve to differentiate the
lab grown meat. Unless there's some provable difference between meat A and
meat B, they should be subject to the same labeling requirements. To label
otherwise pushes the uncertainty onto the consumer.

This is similar to rBST in cows (note that I am only comparing the provable
human health impact as a comparison between these two products). I'm quoting
from Wikipedia here (you can follow their references to make your own
opinion): "The Food and Drug Administration[33], World Health Organization,
the American Dietetic Association, and National Institutes of Health have
independently stated that dairy products and meat from BST-treated cows are
safe for human consumption." [1]. Yet even though the major health agencies
around the world agree that there's no provable difference to human health
when consuming milk A vs milk B, but I've yet to see milk in my supermarket
that does not have the label "from cows not treated with rBST". The impact of
that label was so significant that the FDA had to push to get them to add an
additional disclaimer, "FDA states: No significant difference in milk from
cows treated with artificial growth hormones".

You might argue that people go with rBST-free milk because of the health
implications to the cows, but I would need to see some statistics to believe
that. If people were that concerned over the cow's health, they would not buy
factory-farmed hamburger meat in the same supermarket. I would wager that
people are concerned for _human health_ due to the contents of the milk. Not
labeling milk as rBST-free or labeling meat as lab-grown has the same effect:
it makes people question how healthy it is to consume. Unless those fears are
based in reality, all you're doing is causing FUD in the consumer's mind.
Unless all meat of the same health impact is labeled the same, you're going to
be putting lab-grown meat at a significant disadvantage when, by the time it
comes to market, it could be much better for cows than factory-farmed meat.

In short, more labeling on the production of meat is a good thing. But lab-
grown meat should not be the line in the sand. It should be labeled on all
meat or on no meat (if lab-grown meat is proven to have no significant
difference from farmed meat).

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_somatotropin#Hormones](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_somatotropin#Hormones)

~~~
DanielStraight
Labeling needs to be greatly increased as is, so it's hard to say anything
about whether a label specifically for lab grown meat would be fair.

You should have access to information about the cow that your beef was cut
from. I'm not saying it has to be all listed out in plain English on the
package, but there should at least be a code you can look up that tells you
who raised the cow, who fed it and who slaughtered it.

Part of the problem is that no provable difference is not the same as proven
to have no difference. The number of things with no provable health risks in
1950 that have provable health risks today is large. Go back to 1900 and it's
staggering. The change in recommended diet is equally staggering over the last
100 years. Yet somehow, we always think that _now_ we have it figured out and
can say with certainty what the best way to eat is and what's safe and what
isn't.

So, if it wasn't obvious, I come down on the side of nature. I want my food as
un-fucked-around-with as possible. There is zero chance I would buy lab-grown
meat, regardless what research shows. At least not for a few decades. I have
no problem with people experimenting with lab-grown meat or even selling it.
But I have the right to make my own choice on the issue, especially for such a
dramatic change in the way the meat is produced.

------
dreamdu5t
Even with fully-developed technology, I have a hard time believing it will
require less energy to manufacture a pound of synthetic beef than it will to
simply grow it naturally. Am I wrong?

~~~
crpatino
Beef is not very energy efficient anyways, around 10% conversion rate from
pasture calories to animal tissue. Pork and chicken are much more efficient
though.

From the very narrow perspective of energy efficient, the problem I see is
that we are ditching a true and tested method of doing things with (up to a
point) renewable resources and trying to create a substitute most likely based
on petrochemicals, just at the same time as we're dragging our feet on finding
_and deploying_ a viable alternative to petrol based energy systems.

~~~
MikeCapone
What makes you think that petrochemicals would be involved in growing
synthetic meat? They could use all kinds of natural feedstocks (starches).

~~~
crpatino
I am assuming those are cheaper/more efficient. After all, our grain
production relies heavily on petrochemical inputs.

Historically speaking, one of the reasons[1] domestication of large herbivores
for meat production makes sense is because those can be fed with agriculture
byproducts not suitable for human consumption. In industrial terms, it is a
sort of "rejects reprocessing" that partially recovers an investment that was
already lost.

Nowadays, we feed our animals with human suitable food, which is possible due
to the (cost) efficiency gains of the green revolution, which originally was
mostly about petrochemicals.

[1] the other being that in nomad societies, they constitute a food store that
can carry its own weight around.

~~~
MikeCapone
I'm not sure it would be more efficient. Starches from corn or potatoes is
pretty cheap, and if this synthetic meat can use it more efficiently (I
wouldn't be surprised at at least an order of magnitude or two) compared to an
animal in the wild, that's relatively little feedstock per pound of meat
compared to what we pay now.

And using the same kind of biotech we use to break down cellulose to make
cellulosic ethanol, we might be able to create feedstock for this meat from
agricultural waste or fast-growing grasses.

~~~
crpatino
This is precisely this type of reasoning that I fear:

* Starches from corn or potatoes is pretty cheap (money, heavily affected by federal subsidies).

* Synthetic meat can use it more efficiently (the engineer in me wants to say "energy", but depending on the context it may mean higher utility margins, or lower labor costs, or what not).

* Same kind of biotech [as] cellulosic ethanol. I am not familiar with the state of the art on this field, but (corn) ethanol companies just engages in arbitrage tricks to make a bundle on yuppie's eco-guilt and government's largesse. Both the economy and the environment would be better of if people just shut up and directly burnt the diesel used in machinery used to rise and transport the corn used as raw inputs to make the ethanol.

Not that this particular argument is wrong, just that I do not have the facts
and would like to see them discussed without all the hype!

------
wvl
_> A commonly cited statistic is that cows produce more greenhouse gases than
all the world’s transportation combined, or 18% of all greenhouse gases. ...
[snip] ... A more accurate analysis of the data resulted in a much more
respectable estimate: that cattle contribute less than 3% of global greenhouse
gas emissions._

[http://chriskresser.com/the-real-environmental-impact-of-
red...](http://chriskresser.com/the-real-environmental-impact-of-red-meat-
part-1)

------
peterjaap
Hasn't Veridian Dynamics done this before?

Edit;
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_bPobs8T5w](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_bPobs8T5w)

~~~
lechevalierd3on
This video is scary.

------
Nux
Nice of mr. Brin to do this. It should set an example. I'm all for anything
that will reduce/stop the mad slaughtering that's taking place now.

------
lukashed
Next up: Google beef. If they know our ad/browsing preferences, they also know
our food/taste preferences.

~~~
pavs
They will also know your shopping habits more precisely once "Google Shopping
Express" gains widespread usage. I don't think ad/browsing habits can gain
that much precision.

I am not sure thats actually a bad thing. They are trying to get the same data
thats widely available to Amazon like services.

------
hawkharris
Do British newspapers not capitalize the word Internet? I know all American
papers capitalize it because it's a proper noun. I'm wondering if that's just
a recurring typo in this article or if British journalists follow a different
convention.

~~~
codev
The Guardian is pretty progressive in style terms. I think there's an
increasing tendency to write it as internet and they're closer to the cutting
edge than a more conservative (style-wise) newspaper like the NYT. Here are
their capitalisation rules:

[http://www.theguardian.com/styleguide/c#id-3043710](http://www.theguardian.com/styleguide/c#id-3043710)

~~~
hawkharris
Thanks for taking the time to find and share this interesting guide.

I think that The Guardian is a very progressive paper in general, but I'm not
sure that lowercasing "the Internet" is a progressive move.

The Internet is capitalized because it's a proper noun: not just any general
network, but a specific global network of computers. [1] There is only one
Internet. If an author is referring to a subset of the Internet, he or she
should be specific and elaborate. E.g. Is the author talking about an
intranet?

In other words, it seems that NOT treating the Internet as a proper noun
perpetuates a misunderstanding about what it is and how it operates. It
implicitly gives writers a license to be more vague in their description of
computer networks.

But I'm curious to hear your take on this. What do you see as the advantages
of lowercasing the word?

[1]
[http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/capitaliz...](http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/capitalizing-
proper-nouns?page=all)

~~~
hmsimha
In social network analysis, there's the concept of a giant connected component
in a graph where edges propagate between nodes over time. That's essentially
what I consider the internet to be. There's only one of them by virtue of
giant connected component emergence in that kind of network. I've never viewed
it as a proper name.

------
api
I can't wait to see the cognitive dissonance from the "natural" people.

On one hand, it could quite possibly replace factory farming and eliminate a
huge amount of waste, pollution, and animal cruelty.

On the other hand, it's GMO.

I love seeing True Believers in Movementarianism squirm.

I'm equal opportunity here. I like pointing out the philosophical
inconsistencies of dogmatic positivism to your typical Reddit /r/atheist type,
or pointing out the failures and corruption of the pharmaceutical industry to
the rabidly anti-alt-med people you find in skeptic circles...

Ideology: n.: from the root words "idiot" and "ology," the science and art of
becoming an idiot by confusing a model of reality with reality itself.

~~~
axblount
Why are you assuming that meat consumption is necessary?

~~~
tdfx
I keep a high level of protein my diet. I've tried veggie burgers and other
substitutes and enjoyed them a lot, but I can't replace all my meals with them
because they're just so damn high in sodium. Any suggestions?

~~~
api
If you don't want to go full-vegan, whey protein isn't bad. But you shouldn't
rely on any one source exclusively.

Full-vegan options include quinoa, beans, lentils, and nuts. But I agree it's
hard. You have to eat a lot of these things.

~~~
axblount
I don't use any protein supplements but I've heard good things about Vega's
products [http://myvega.com/](http://myvega.com/)

~~~
steveklabnik
+1 to Vega, for sure.

You can also get hemp-based protein as well.

------
penguindev
Sorry but this is just bullshit. More science will continue making
overpopulation WORSE and EVEN LESS HEALTHY. The last great example of this,
the Rockefeller foundation making the 'green revolution' of cheap, unhealthy,
and unsustainable mass carbohydrate production[1]. Read 'Wheat Belly'.

Why can't these billionaires ever use some right brain thinking? Stop
_fucking_ with our food. The more 'efficient' you have to be, the more
vulnerable the entire system is to shocks.

You want to end animal cruelty, stop having more than two kids. Period.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug)

------
Goronmon
Does it taste like despair?

Seriously though, that's always my first thought when I read a story about
something like this. It's like my brain can't help but cringe of the thought
of eating something made this way, even if it's irrational.

~~~
rorrr2
I'm the opposite, I love meat, but hate the animal suffering. Even if it
tastes half as good and costs around the same, I will switch.

~~~
rsl7
As someone who eats an entirely plant-based diet, it sounds like a terrible
idea. If it tastes half as good as actual meat, then it will be much worse
than even the cheapest, overprocessed soy protein 'burgers' in the frozen food
section of the grocery store. Seriously.

~~~
rorrr2
Bull. Shit. My wife is a vegetarian. I've tried probably 8-10 different brands
of vegie burgers and chicken nuggets. They don't taste even remotely like
meat.

Some do taste alright, I admit.

Another problem is price. You would think soy products would be cheaper than
meat. Nope. So freaking expensive.

~~~
dragonwriter
> You would think soy products would be cheaper than meat.

Why would I think that highly processed products of the isolation and
retexturing and reflavoring of soy products would be less expensive than meat,
which is usually pretty minimally processed? The raw materials cost of the soy
product might be lower (depending on what else is added for flavor and
texture, even that might not be true), but you can't really ignore the
processing cost.

~~~
jlgreco
I would expect it because corn subsidies cause _way_ more corn to be grown
than necessary.

Now, lots of corn is great and all (well, not really), but if you grow corn
all the time you are going to kill your soil (for one, depleting the nitrogen
in the soil). Soybeans have the neat property of putting atmospheric nitrogen
back into the soil. So if you want to grow lots of corn without breaking the
bank on fixing your soil all the time, then changes are you spend some of the
time growing soybeans. (Usually two seasons of corn then one of soybean, or
one of corn then one of soybean).

Since soybeans are not the primary crop but are grown relatively in proportion
to massively overproduce corn, I would expect soybeans to be pretty damn
cheap. I don't have the market breakdown but my understanding is that the bulk
of soybeans are just used as cattle-feed. I would expect this to depress the
price of soybeans leading to very cheap soy products, even with the large
amount of processing that needs to be done to them to make them human edible.

The large amount of processing might be the cause of the high price of soy
products, but with supply of soybeans so high my suspicion is that low demand
causes soybean product prices to be high. Soybean based food is still
relatively niche and there are not all that many companies in that field so
prices stay high.

~~~
dragonwriter
> with supply of soybeans so high my suspicion is that low demand causes
> soybean product prices to be high.

High supply and low demand are both factors that lead to low prices, not high
prices.

~~~
jlgreco
In Econ 101, yes. As I said, _" Since soybeans are not the primary crop but
are grown relatively in proportion to massively overproduce corn, I would
expect soybeans to be pretty damn cheap"_. Soybeans are not soybean _products_
though, and a high supply of soybeans doesn't mean that soybean _product_
prices should be low.

I posit that there is a low supply of soy-products caused by a low-demand for
soy-products. Only a fragment of consumers are interested in soybean products,
and demand is unlikely to change much as price drops. Worse, the vegetarians I
know tend to be pretty loyal to particular brands of soy product. Basically,
demand for soybean products is pretty inelastic _and_ low. Not many people are
interested in soy products, but the people that _are_ interested will pay what
they have to.

Premium soy products are the Bloomberg Terminal's of food. Almost nobody wants
a Bloomberg Terminal, but a _few_ people _need_ a Bloomberg Terminal. Worse,
the people in that market need a _Bloomberg_ Terminal _specifically_.
Bloomberg is unlikely to lease more terminals by dropping their price. If
there were more demand for that sort of product, we would probably see more
companies making suitable products for far cheaper. That's not the case
though, so it is a shitty market to break into.

~~~
dragonwriter
The issue then isn't low demand and high supply, it's low elasticity of demand
and, for human food products, low supply. The original cited factors were
irrelevant at best.

------
wprl
How about a return to traditional agriculture, which would provide more jobs,
cleaner food, and decentralization and localization of food infrastructure?
Why the relentless pursuit of industrialization and homogeneity at any cost?

~~~
philwelch
Because it doesn't scale to feeding 7 billion people for one. Because most
people in industrialized countries don't want to be farm labor for two.

~~~
wprl
Perhaps it's true that you can't feed the whole world without industrialized
food, but you could feed the vast majority of people who live in cooperative
climates. It's debatable whether the rest couldn't be fed as well.

Also, it wouldn't take "most people" to support small-farm agriculture. Many
would gladly raise organic produce and livestock, and sell locally if the food
economy were not stacked against them. It also provides more financial
independence than minimum wage jobs, and many full-time jobs. Not to mention
it would create many jobs.

~~~
philwelch
Creating jobs that people don't want and won't show up for, more like. With
unemployment where it is now, you'd think Americans would sign up to pick
fruit. But they don't, and we're dependent on migrant labor. More labor also
means more expensive food.

In the whole spectrum of human existence, farming sucks. It sucked so much
that people remained hunter-gatherers as long as they could to avoid it, and
it sucks so much that people leapt at the chance to become industrial wage
slaves to avoid it. Turning more people into farmers out of some crazy left
wing ideology sounds like a bad idea to me. I think Cambodia tried it once.

~~~
wprl
Unfortunately, your opinion just isn't based in fact.

~~~
philwelch
My opinion is based on the current US farm labor situation and the general
history of mankind that saw hunter-gatherers forcibly displace agricultural
civilizations throughout the Middle Ages followed by massive migration to
cities since th Industrial Revolution. Your opinion is based on what facts
exactly?

~~~
wprl
The displacement caused by industrialization and imperialism, and the
economies they foster, is not a situation in which enfranchised working class
people are making informed decisions about their future, freely choose their
lot, and draw from the public resources managed by their benevolent
representative governments.

It wasn't the case then, and it isn't the case now.

The fact is that industrialized agriculture represents a massive
centralization of the production of a basic necessity of life. It is made to
be perceived to be less inexpensive through subsidies on low-nutrition crops
such as corn, sugar, and wheat, subsidies for import and export, state-funded
research into literal Frankenstein's monsters built of corn, fish, and insect
genes. Patents for the basic building blocks of life are issued and violations
enforced, even cases of accidental spread of these genes by wind. Pollutants
and hormones abound.

And what do we get? Lower nutrition when picked, lower nutrition because of
shipping and storage, insecticides, hormones, anti-biotics, factory meat and
egg production that makes a mockery of animal life, runoff that poisons our
water supply and wildlife.

What is good about subsidizing junk crops? What is good about subsidizing the
fuel used to ship food across the world when it can be grown literally in
one's backyard? What if we funded robotics and technology for small
agriculture instead of drones that kill Pakistani civilians and children? What
is good about the conflation of money and value, to the point where money is
lauded over health and freedom?

Your premise seems to be that people have decided they want industrialized
agriculture because farming "sucks." To you this seems to imply that therefore
industrialized agriculture is good and that there are not alternatives. We
will and should become more and more materialistic, inert, disconnected from
family and nature, because what people want must be good. We are not being
manipulated by world government systems that have their own benefit at heart.

I reject this premise wholeheartedly.

~~~
philwelch
I think you're drawing a false dichotomy. It's certainly possible, and
probably preferable, to have large scale agriculture that limits ecological
impact, produces nutritious food, and avoids antibiotic use without requiring
large numbers of people to work as farmers.

~~~
wprl
Well, you may be right. I'd be happy with any system that avoids the negatives
of the current food infrastructure.

------
chris_wot
While it's more ethical for the animal, I must question the carbon footprint
and efficient and effective use of resources to make synthetic beef.

Firstly, to make it scale you'll need a lot of machinery. Then you'll need the
right nutrients. It will need a lot of technology, because to make beef grow
it will need to have everything maintained and provided for it. In nature,
beef cattle can be run on reasonably unproductive land (feed lots
notwithstanding). Cattle, as it turns out, are very effective and efficient
factories of meat production all by themselves.

~~~
TylerE
Did you read the article? 55% energy usage, 4% greenhouse gas emissions,
relative to the real thing.

~~~
VLM
From the article

"early indications suggest"

Early indications suggest based on graphs, empirical laws, and irrational
extrapolation that I can run a datacenter off a AA battery for a year.

I always find it hilarious when wild guesses are presented with multiple sig
figs like 55% as opposed to 56% or 54%. I suspect an error analysis would show
a standard deviation of a couple orders of magnitude.

------
jlebrech
we could also use that muscle to create clean energy, we could make it pedal
on bicycles.

~~~
mapleoin
that's a great idea, I bet we could feed it corn syrup; we certainly have a
lot of corn fields!

------
deegles
Fully automated, mass production of synthetic beef would be an amazing feat
and would definitely change nutrition for millions, if not billions of people.
That being said, I don't think we'll be there in less than 50 years.

In the short term, there's already a method of producing high quality protein
and fats at around 90% efficiency: insects!

Now if only the Western world would get over the stigma attached to bugs...

------
mapleoin
This is awesome, but I'd really hate to be a beta-customer for synthetic beef.
It might cause a lot of really bad side-effects while the whole industry
matures, figures out what standards it should set and implements them.

~~~
mistercow
I'm pretty sure they will have to test it by feeding it to animals for a long
time before they can even think about selling it to humans.

~~~
psuter
You gotta love the irony in that approach :)

~~~
mistercow
Yes, but as a consequentialist, I don't really have any choice but to be for
it. Even if trying to change the system so that we didn't test on animals were
viable, it would take so long that the delay would surely cause more net
animal suffering than just doing the animal testing.

------
gavinpc
> a history of backing projects that sound as though they belong in science
> fiction movies.... mining asteroids... trips to the moon... driverless cars
> and... green energy projects.

So green energy is on par with trips to the moon?

~~~
Thrymr
> So green energy is on par with trips to the moon?

Providing renewable energy on the same scale as fossil fuels is at least as
hard a problem as the Apollo program. We've got a long way to go. Graph for
the US:
[http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec1_6.pdf](http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec1_6.pdf)

------
total__C
Something I've always wondered about regarding synthetic meat:

for say synthetic pork, would it be necessary to mechanically 'exercise' the
muscle fibers in order for them to taste the same as pork from a pig?

------
esalman
What's with Google Glass? Why Google employees have to where it when appearing
on camera? Or do they use it all the time? Just wondering.

------
pearjuice
He doesn't seem to understand that everything on this planet has its purpose
and that of animals is, that it is to be consumed by us. I do not condone the
current ways of killing animals en masse but certainly artificial meat isn't
the answer either? We are dealing with a lot of unnatural food these days and
no matter what the motivations are, it is hurting humanity.

~~~
leoh
You have got to be trolling. You just said that the purpose of animals are to
be eaten. Okay, maybe some animals and maybe our society condones meat-eating.
But you cannot possibly allow this as absolute reality. Some very productive,
peaceful, societies (pre-Modern China) were almost completely vegetarian.
Vegatarianism is a possibility.

Now, regarding artificial meat. It's weird. But people will not hangs their
habits right now. It is possible, but it won't happen right now. Maybe the
best startup or business idea that could ever exist is helping people to
change. But the thing is, it is hard to change. And as many teachers and
successful people say, you can only lead people to a door, you can't make them
open it.

But with this artificial meat. So we can't make people change. We can't fight
highly unethical current practice by charging the same or lower than them. We
maybe can change legislation, but that is also very hard because these
industries are very powerful.

So we can't change what people eat, can't convince them based on price, and
can't change the way animals are treated.

But we can change the way the product is produced that we are already eating
en-masse. And it might be weird. But who knows, it's a gamble. But artificial
meat could work.

~~~
pearjuice
I would rather have vegatarianism as an absolute reality than one where
artificial meat is the standard. In fact, I will become a vegetarian if the
latter applies.

~~~
hmsimha
If everyone had switched to vegetarianism at the same time, we probably
wouldn't be in a situation where scientists are trying to develop artificial
meat. In fact, I would suggest that if you want to do your part to prevent
this from becoming a reality you should go ahead and switch to vegetarianism
right now :D If everyone does it, it might not be viewed as cost-effective to
continue this research.

~~~
pearjuice
No I will not because I can still eat real 100% natural meat which has been
dealt with properly.

------
zjgreen
Google Beef. Is that what he calls it? 0_o

------
magoon
Gross.

------
Dewie
> "Cows are very inefficient, they require 100g of vegetable protein to
> produce only 15g of edible animal protein," Dr Post told the Guardian before
> the event. "So we need to feed the cows a lot so that we can feed ourselves.
> We lose a lot of food that way.

Yes, if most of what you feed the cows are human-edible.

~~~
mistercow
Even if its not, you can still use the resources used to produce that feed to
produce human food instead. And feeding cows waste has its own environmental
problems, as it tends to play hob with their digestive systems and make them
release considerably more greenhouse gasses.

~~~
Dewie
> Even if its not, you can still use the resources used to produce that feed
> to produce human food instead.

If the resources required to produce (or harvest) the cow-food is more than
producing synthetic meat: sure.

> And feeding cows waste has its own environmental problems, as it tends to
> play hob with their digestive systems and make them release considerably
> more greenhouse gasses.

Waste? How about plain grass? Or growing crops that are not human edible,
since the conditions of the farm or land does not allow you to produce human
edible crops? Of course those crops would still have to be easily digestible
for the cows.

~~~
mistercow
Sure, but those same arguments apply to synthetic meat. If you're processing
inputs in a lab, you can likely be far more flexible than how a specific
animal's digestive system happened to evolve, and you don't have the overhead
of _running_ a cow for 1-3 years¹ before slaughter. From what I can tell,
about 75% of a non-lactating cow's energy input goes into body gain. So that's
25% off the top before you even consider what goes into skin, blood, bones,
and the less palatable organs. Apparently, beef yield makes up about 40% of a
cow's total mass, so assuming uniform energy usage for all body parts (which
could be wildly wrong), only around 30% of the calories actually processed by
a cow will turn into beef.

¹And having searched for that statistic and read the necessary surrounding
material, I need to lie down for a while. Jesus Christ.

------
snappy173
B(eef)-Trees?

------
sidcool
He doesn't seem to like bacon.

