
Cultured meat from stem cells: Challenges and prospects (2012) [pdf] - networked
http://new-harvest.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/post_2012_cultured_meat_from_stem_cells_challenges_and_prospects.pdf
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wollstonecraft
Cell culture is very finicky and costly. It's profitable when used to produce
fancy new antibody drugs like ipilimumab or denosumab, but when it comes to
producing meat, the gooey stuff in animals that Westerners won't eat do
important jobs and are good at them. Tissue culture protocols generally
discard the culture medium after a day or two, with barely any of the
energetic substrates consumed when too much lactate accumulates, because there
is no liver to keep pH balanced. And you need to keep the whole flask drenched
with a cocktail of antibiotics because there's no spleen doing whatever it is
that a spleen does. A chicken gets feed conversion ratio of 2-3 these days in
modern factory farming, and I'll be impressed if they ever come up with an in
vitro system that outperforms that.

