
China spends $300M to buy lab produced meats from Israel - rahulshiv
https://www.fanaticalfuturist.com/2018/02/china-spends-300million-to-buy-lab-produced-meats-from-israel/
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sethbannon
This title is misleading (no one has spent a dollar as far as I can tell) and
the article gets several facts wrong. For instance, it says "Meat The Future"
is a clean meat company when in fact it's a sort of marketing and design
group. There is no way China could buy meat from them. Poorly researched
clickbait.

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hbbio
There seems to be a better article from a more reliable source:
[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-israel-
tr...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-israel-trade-deal-
lab-grown-meat-veganism-vegetarianism-a7950901.html)

And there is one company:
[https://www.supermeat.com/](https://www.supermeat.com/) and two other which
seems to be the same org labeled as non-profit or startup:
[https://www.futuremeat.org/](https://www.futuremeat.org/)

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m3kw9
I’m thinking they get a way bigger margin with this buy and they do not need
to declare that to the consumers, huge win for retailers. You wouldn’t be able
to pull this off in the US without major buyer bewares.

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orliesaurus
I remember when the first lab meat burger patty was announced it was like
$300K to produce.

There aren't long term studies into what lab produced meat means for the human
body right? It's pretty new and very niche still - but knowing how China has
"very loose rules" on these kind of topixs (I'm no expert in policies but it
does feel like that), this looks like a great move to speed up (by injecting a
lot of capital in research and operations) the insertion of lab produced meat
into the market. Is this good? Well at least no animals will be harmed in the
process - other than "human animals" who will be buying it eventually

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onion2k
_There aren 't long term studies into what lab produced meat means for the
human body right?_

Would that be necessary? It's chemically identical to what's grown in a cow.
The only difference is that it's grown in a vat. If anything it's _better_
because farmers give all manner of hormones and antibiotics to cows that you
don't need in a vat.

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JoshMnem
I think that edible insects would be a better protein route than lab-grown
meats. It would require a cultural shift in some places, but probably not as
large of one as people think. (Lobsters were considered inedible until
relatively recently.)

Lab-grown meat seems like an over-engineered solution to a problem that might
not be that difficult to solve in simpler, probably-healthier ways.

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combatentropy
Background:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultured_meat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultured_meat)

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nemonemo
I have little background about the cultured meat, and this link made me
curious: wouldn't cancer cells be good candidate cells for creating this type
of meat?

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wpovell
I also have little background, but I'd imagine the type of meat that cancer
cells create is not the same as the type that tastes good.

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madez
Do you have any evidence why cancer shouldn't taste good?

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gruez
"good" steak, for instance is marbled. i'm not sure how you can get that with
uncontrolled growth of one type of tissue. best case scenario you grow a huge
chunk of cancerous muscle, and grind it with fat to make ground beef.

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deepnotderp
But suppose I don't care about fat, in fact I want my meat to be as lean as
possible.

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gruez
i'm not sure what the point of that is. not sure about everyone else, but the
main motivation for eating meat is that it tastes good. without fat, 100%
muscle would be very dry/tough. you might as well eat tofu.

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deepnotderp
> you might as well eat tofu.

I guess this is a bad time to say I love tofu?

I'm more concerned whether or not it's technologically possible without health
risks.

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wollstonecraft
That cultured tissue is going to be loaded with antibiotics from the medium.

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Const-me
You can sterilize liquids without antibiotics, very cheap:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurization)

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wollstonecraft
Yes, we know about autoclaves. But aseptic cell culture without antibiotics?

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Const-me
Because enclosed environment. Many industrial processes work the same way,
e.g. unwanted microflora can destroy a whole batch of beer, yet people don’t
add antibiotics to beer.

Here’s a link that specifically tells the meat (at some other company, but
still) is grown without antibiotics:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-
science/lab-g...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/lab-
grown-meat-is-in-your-future-and-it-may-be-healthier-than-the-real-
stuff/2016/05/02/aa893f34-e630-11e5-a6f3-21ccdbc5f74e_story.html)

