
Google's Sergey Brin explains why he paid $330,000 for lab burger - codegeek
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/googles-sergey-brin-explains-why-he-paid-330-000-lab-6C10853442
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fredley
What are the cells for the burger fed on? In tissue culture it's normal to
feed cells Foetal Bovine Serum. Is this the case with these cells? If so we
haven't fully removed the need for living, breathing animals from the
equation.

~~~
tovmeod
maybe this is not the objective, rather having a more efficient way to produce
meat, you're taking out of the equation the farm, meaning less space used,
maybe healthier meat (without all the antibiotics and less fat) from one cow
you can produce 10 tons of meat without all the space needed not only to raise
the cows, but to grow their food, the lab can also be closer to consumers
having obvious implications on that.

~~~
runarberg
Well, if efficiency is the endgoal here, than bean cultivation seems way more
logical answere to beef alternatives than fake meat. You basically take the
the food you would otherwice feed your cows, stew it together with some
saffran and beet juice (the same colorants as for the fake meat) and you have
your economy-burger.

No intermediate step which takes 10 times the space of a traditional meat-
farm, no anti-biotics, fat-free and no need for any living, breathing animal
slughtering.

Honestly I cant find a single logical reason why this artificial-meat buisness
is a good idea except for "just because we can"

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jasondemeuse
> Honestly I cant find a single logical reason why this artificial-meat
> buisness is a good idea

You can't find a single reason why people would rather eat a replacement that
eventually looks and tastes like a burger, rather than cow-food mixed with
saffron and beet juice?

If that sounds good to you, more power to you, but to think that people would
pay for the mush the same way people currently pay for burgers is ridiculous.

~~~
runarberg
No, I can't find a single _logical_ reason. Saturating peoples appetite for
overmarkeded type of food doesn't seem logical to me.

Just because people will pay money for it, doesn't make it a good idea.

~~~
kbenson
Why do people always confuse logic to mean we ignore all sociological
concerns? Just because they are harder to reason about doesn't mean they don't
matter.

It's not logical to pretend that they don't matter.

~~~
runarberg
Im sorry for the misuse of the word 'logic'. By 'logic' I ment 'makes human
sence'. But I was wrong there too. For investigating in means to satisfy our
tastebuts, more economly, sound really human to me.

I guess, what I'm saying is simply that the time and effort going into
artificial meat, and the promise it is going to generate will probably end up
in continued overcomsuption. Totally overshadowing the social consernes.

I only wish an investigation into how to behaviorally modify our species from
doing wastefull and damaging stuff on mass scale, would get as much funding
and attention.

~~~
jasondemeuse
How does this research _not_ have the goal of keeping humans from doing
"wasteful and damaging stuff"? The long term point is to have only a few cows
that can create tons of beef without being slaughtered. Sounds much less
wasteful, more efficient, and less damaging to me.

If your only other problem with this is that they're working on changing the
product rather than the behavior of an entire population, without actually
giving a hint on how you would go about changing that behavior, you're just
complaining for the sake of complaining.

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lechevalierd3on
Yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6159743](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6159743)

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marcuspovey
...And what happens when we no longer need cows? It's not going to be happy
fun time for the species, because as soon as there's not a reason to breed
them then we'll have a few cows kicking around in zoos and that's it.

Good for the environment, possibly, but bad for the species.

~~~
lttlrck
Do you think they are having fun now? They are bred to be eaten, if we don't
need them we'll stop breeding them.

~~~
jeltz
Why wouldn't they have fun? They get a comfortable life up until the horrible
end. Most cattle is not kept inside huge industrial buildings like chickens or
pigs.

~~~
Someone
Comfortable life: if it weren't made illegal, cows bred for meat would be
locked in cages where they can barely move. After all, all energy spent on
movement can't be spent on gaining weight.

Also, cows bred for their meet are slaughtered at 7-8 months of age. If cared
for, a cow could live for 20 years, but economics prevail.

Cows held for their milk have it a bit better, as they get to live for 5-6
years. Also, things have improved. For example, the milking robot not only
improved yield, but also allowed each cow to select the time it wanted to be
milked, and does not require farmers to chase their cows towards their milking
place two or three times a day.

Not kept in buildings: That depends on the level of industrialization of the
farms and on the quality of your grassland. For example, in the Netherlands,
mowing grass mechanically and feeding it to your cattle which is kept inside
year round is the way to go, if you look at this purely economically (cows
destroy too much grass by trampling it and by dropping cow peas on it)

Consequently, there is now talk of paying farmers to let their cows go out on
the meadows.

Not in huge buildings? Go to
[https://www.google.nl/search?q=cow+stable+design](https://www.google.nl/search?q=cow+stable+design)
and click on 'Images'. Fewer cows per stable than we do with pigs or chicken,
but not small stables, either.

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tunnuz
The real cool thing is that they are making great advertising to stem cells,
by doing something that has a very positive ethical connotation (which is the
typical argument against using stem cell in medicine).

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runarberg
Stem cells don´t sell unless they come with hamburgers

~~~
tunnuz
That's another way to put it :D

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6cxs2hd6
The timing on this is amusing:

Jeff Bezos buys a newspaper for $250,000.

Sergey Brin buys a burger for €250,000.

Each smart in its own way.

~~~
ngoel36
The inaccuracy on this is amusing as well.

~~~
6cxs2hd6
Gah. Coffee, why hath thou forsaken me.

Thanks for not downvoting this as mercilessly as it deserved.

/me slinks off

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mesozoic
This guy could pay $330k for a burger for lunch every day and not care.

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benburleson
It seems like this is all for solving the wrong problem. Why isn't there a
shift away from the perceived need for more meat.

~~~
myko
Could you elaborate? I don't understand what you mean by perceived need for
more meat - to me this seems like a project geared at creating more ethical,
future proof meat products.

~~~
runarberg
Humanity has never -- with the exception of extreme cases, historical or
modern -- eaten as much meat as the western man does now [1]. The only reason
we eat as much meat as we do, I think, is out of marketing. The perceived need
for more meat is therefor to saturate the marked.

The problem arising from growing meat consumption include, pollution,
maldistribution of food, animal suffering, wasting of land and resources,
wasting of water, etc.

[1] I suppose I need a reference for this claim, but think in terms of economy
and you'll find that no other culture can afford this much land and resorces
to go under meat-farming other than current western cultures

\--edit--

I forgot about humans living in extreme environments that live (by necesity)
almost exclusively on meat, like the inuits in Greenland, before major western
influence. It doesn't change the fact that the majority of all culteres do,
and have in the past, eaten but a porportion of the meat that the average
westerners eat today.

~~~
bane
> Humanity has never -- in no culture, historical or modern -- eaten as much
> meat as the western man does now

Absolutely incorrect. There are several well known groups of humans who
survive off of a diet of principally animal products.

 _edit -- apologized for snark_

I agree. In most places historically with good arable land, meat is not nearly
as prevalent in a meal as today's Western diet. In many places, meat is pretty
much just used as a flavoring in dishes like you might find in Chinese-
American Szechuan String Beans (the little salted pork bits).

~~~
runarberg
You are right, and I edited me original comment accordingly

~~~
bane
Sorry, I realize my reply came off a bit snarky and pedantic as well. I think
my inner-neck beard was choking me.

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scott_meyer
Was that with or without a tip?

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agentsaran
A complete waste for $250,000. Lab meat? Why? Why would any one want to buy
artificial, lab processed meat? Why do people insist on complicating food? Our
supermarkets all already filled with things that can be barely classified as
"food" and now we have this.

~~~
clicks
Well, it's a good indication you chose to make a throwaway account for that
post, as it suggests that you yourself are aware to some extent how uninformed
and ignorant the question is.

But, to answer: These animals are brought up in very inhumane conditions -- in
crowded spaces, with no light, no freedom. The whole process is unsustainable,
what happens when the world population reaches above 10 billion and demand for
meat keeps getting higher? Do we have enough space to keep these animals,
enough food to sustainably feed them without having bad environmental
implications?

It turns out there are alternative methods, and they may prove to be well
worth the cost of investigating them. So here we are, doing science, in the
hopes of a brighter future. Experimenting with food, to make it taste better,
healthier, cheaper, more environmentally-friendly.

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corresation
_These animals are brought up in very inhumane conditions -- in crowded
spaces, with no light, no freedom._

It isn't accurate to paint an entire, very diverse industry with the paints of
the worst offenders (e.g. Texas factory fattening houses).

~~~
clicks
That's missing the forest for the trees. There are probably lots of factories
that treat animals more humanely than others but we still should be
investigating alternative methods of creating meats. Ultimately you're going
to have to meet problems of scalability down the road in some years, and/or
other unforeseen problems with antibiotics and such. It's probably best to
start heavy research/experimentation in preparation now than later.

