
Lab meat to transform meat industry in 2021 - x43b
https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/companies/lab-meat-to-transform-meat-industry-in-2021-12750778
======
kjksf
This is a very thin article. Wired has a few in-depth articles on the subject:

\- [https://www.wired.com/2016/10/nerds-cattle-food-
technology-w...](https://www.wired.com/2016/10/nerds-cattle-food-technology-
will-save-world/)

\- [https://www.wired.com/story/the-impossible-
burger/](https://www.wired.com/story/the-impossible-burger/)

\- [https://www.wired.com/2016/07/lab-grown-meat-coming-win-
hate...](https://www.wired.com/2016/07/lab-grown-meat-coming-win-haters/)

\- [https://www.wired.com/story/navigating-the-uncanny-valley-
of...](https://www.wired.com/story/navigating-the-uncanny-valley-of-food/)

The reality is that currently lab grown meat is extremely expensive (thousands
of dollars per pound) and we don't even know if we can bring the cost down to
a level competitive with cows.

Impossible Foods, however, is already making an impact. They make "burger"
meat purely from plants by mixing thing up and adding fake "blood".

They're already shipping (there are 8 restaurants in SF alone that offer their
burgers,
[https://www.impossiblefoods.com/locations/](https://www.impossiblefoods.com/locations/)).

People seem to like their stuff (reportedly in some restaurants their burgers
outsell the real beef burgers).

They just finished their first large scale factory (1 million pounds per year)
and are ramping up distribution across US.

Cost-wise, they're already comparable with organic beef and there's a clear
path to make them cheaper than beef by increasing the scale.

In terms of impact and transforming meat industry, Impossible Foods seems to
be in much better position.

~~~
gnicholas
> _Cost-wise, they 're [Impossible Foods] already comparable with organic beef
> and there's a clear path to make them cheaper than beef by increasing the
> scale._

We buy organic ground beef for around $7/lb at Costco. A restaurant I talked
with said they pay $11/lb for Impossible Foods "meat". Do you consider these
prices to be comparable? Or are you aware of restaurants paying much less than
$11/lb?

To be clear, I understand prices of IF will come down—I'm just trying to get
clarity on current pricing, since a 40% price difference is material for
restaurants.

~~~
kjksf
To be honest, you have more inside information that I do, so thanks for that
pricing tidbit.

(my info comes from an interview with the CEO where he didn't say the exact
price, just compared it to the price of organic beef)

It looks like there's a solid premium on their "beef", good to know.

That being said, it certainly beats thousands of dollars for lab grown meat.

The important thing is that it's commercially viable at current prices.

I think Impossible Foods deserves credit for picking the right "go to market"
strategy.

Kind of like Tesla started with a sports car, they started by supplying
gourmet burger chains.

At $10+ per burger, the cost of raw material is clearly acceptable for the
restaurant, or else they wouldn't be buying.

------
physcab
I’m a meat-eater but my wife is vegan. We’ve been following Impossible Foods
for some time and got to finally try one of their burgers last month.

As a meat eater who is vegan at home, I think it’s a decent alternative
compared to other vegetarian meat-like products, in fact far superior. But
it’s definitely not a replacement for the real thing.

I have been pretty impressed with the steady innovation in vegetarian / vegan
options that give me as good alternatives compared to non. For example,
Miyokos cheese is incredible, and far better than any cheese I used to
typically eat, and it’s dairy free.

I used to eat Boca burgers when I’ve had to and they aren’t great. I’m excited
for better options to come into the market.

~~~
gnicholas
I was also underwhelmed by the Impossible Foods burger, which was a better
imitation of meat than other patties, but not necessarily tastier.

The bigger surprise to me was that Impossible Foods does not apparently
control how restaurants prepare their burgers—in fact, the restaurant where I
ate it even had an Impossible Foods chili. I would have expected IF to put
pretty close restrictions around how you cook and present their foods, to make
sure that people don't have a bad experience and assume it's the fault of the
"meat".

~~~
jkarneges
Chili, interesting. I tried breaking up a Beyond Burger patty so I could use
it as ground beef filling for burritos/pasta. It was pretty much a disaster.
Even when cooking the burger normally there is very little room for error,
compared to real beef.

I think the end-game for these companies should be to produce a chuck
substitute that is malleable rather than being restricted to patties. And of
course it shouldn't ruin easily.

~~~
jdavis703
Impossible and Beyond really aren't comparable. I prefer Beyond, because the
Impossible tastes and feels just a bit too much like meat for my tastes. The
Impossible burger also crumbles way better. I haven't tried to crumble the
Beyond burger, but I have a strong feeling it wouldn't end nicely.

~~~
gnicholas
> _because the Impossible tastes and feels just a bit too much like meat for
> my tastes_

Many, this industry has quite a dilemma. On the one hand, some folks want
their products to taste as much like meat as possible. But others will avoid
products that taste too much like meat.

~~~
jkarneges
When Beyond Meat said they'd sell their products in the _meat_ section of the
grocery store, I thought it was brilliant. Their goal is to convert meat
eaters after all.

Not everyone got on board with this though. Safeway sells the patties
literally next to cow meat, whereas Whole Foods puts them in the vegan section
next to seitan.

It's an interesting line they have to walk.

------
tuna-piano
Imagine a future, lets say in 2040, where lab grown meat is cheap and tasty.

-Will future children look back at our current acceptance of the treatment/killing of animals like we look at societal acceptance of slavery? The pictures/videos of some of our factory farms are unbelievable.

-Will laws be imposed for the killing of mentally capable animals such as pigs and cows? Some states already outlaw killing/eating certain animals (dogs+cats)[1], and cruelty to animals is illegal almost everywhere. But what is a more cruel punishment than death? I'd rather be tortured and then live the rest of my life than be murdered today.

-We can all live perfectly happy, long lives without killing animals today... so why is it okay to kill them today just for our own enjoyment?

(I'm not a vegetarian but am ethically conflicted)

[1][https://inhabitat.com/killing-dogs-and-cats-for-meat-is-
stil...](https://inhabitat.com/killing-dogs-and-cats-for-meat-is-still-legal-
in-44-u-s-states/)

~~~
mrkstu
Quite simply because there is not ethical imperative to stop- and its about
nourishment rather than just enjoyment.

Do we have an ethical imperative to stop cats from killing birds? All complex
animal life on this planet consumes other living cells in order to survive, it
is just a matter of scale and type.

This is especially true for animals that exist so that we may consume them.
Hundreds of millions of chicken live only so that we may be nourished-
similarly for cows, sheep and so forth.

Raising them in a minimally harsh and 'humane' environment can be an ethical
good but that their lives are shortened by our 'harvesting' process is
irrelevant, since they exist only due to that need to begin with.

Now killing an animal and discarding the resultant bounty- that is unethical
and wrong, unless needed to ameliorate some other harm.

~~~
exit
_> Raising them in a minimally harsh and 'humane' environment can be an
ethical good but that their lives are shortened by our 'harvesting' process is
irrelevant, since they exist only due to that need to begin with._

are you saying it's always preferable to create a life, as long as its
conditions pass some threshold of being humane?

many would disagree. you might value minimising suffering above maximising
happiness, for example.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism)

~~~
mrkstu
I'm saying when a species exists in its current form and cannot exist except
for the support of its creator species, there is no ethical dilemma in
harvesting the results of raising it.

Unless and until we reach 'uplift' level sentience of client species the death
of a husbandry animal creates no more ethical conflict than cutting down
wheat.

~~~
exit
i don't follow how being born of and dependent on husbandry redeems the
suffering of these lives

------
freeflight
Unless this stuff is cost-competitive with the cheapest meat out there, it
won't change anything.

The vast majority of people still buy their food solely based on what's most
affordable, with little to no room to account for "ethical reasons" beyond
that. In that regard, "organic" or "ethical" often amounts to paying double if
sometimes quadruple the price of "regular" products.

If artificial meat can undercut regularly produced meat, price wise (without
tasting too bad), then that could be a real game changer, but until that
happens it will remain only interesting to the fringe demographic of people
with too much disposable income. Which isn't that big of a demographic and as
such will never have the potential to enact the desired environmental impact
change.

~~~
codetwelve
Yes, everything is expensive in the beginning until it's not. We knew this of
things like solar energy and other renewables. It needs to be worked on, early
adopters will support it then it will take off when the price starts to drop
and production goes up.

I dislike comments like this that seem to just be dismissive of a new
technology without adding any real insight. Everyone knows things are
expensive in the beginning so what's the point of saying it's not going to
work unless it's cheaper than real meat. It's really obvious.

Furthermore, oil has tried to undercut their prices to fend off other forms of
energy (specially renewables), people and countries are still choosing
renewables as a way to the future because it makes sense.

An alternative to raising livestock with clean meat is something that also
makes sense and I think quite a lot of people are eager to proceed with this
alternative.

~~~
freeflight
> Yes, everything is expensive in the beginning until it's not.

Some things will always stay more expensive than their cheaper alternatives,
case in point: Organic farmed meat vs mass farmed.

The former will always stay more expensive than the later because you can
produce that much more meat on the same space, you can produce it cheaper by
feeding lesser quality food to the animals.

Is the resulting meat a "better meat"? No, but it is the cheaper meat and
that's still what the vast majority of consumers are looking for.

> I dislike comments like this that seem to just be dismissive of a new
> technology without adding any real insight.

It wasn't meant to be dismissive about the technology, merely pointing out
that as long as this ain't cost competitive it will just be another niche
solution for the "Let's feel better about ourselves by throwing money around"
crowd and we already have plenty of those.

Silicon Valley/SF is a microcosmos on its own, some things might work there,
yet rarely do these things scale up outside of that niche-customer market, but
that's exactly the kind of solution we need if we want large parts of humanity
to change their ways about how they treat animals and animal products.

------
milansm
What I look forward to the most is it will make majority of the farmland
obsolete (land is mostly used for growing food for animals anyway). As someone
who's living in the area (in Eastern Europe) where there's no decent forest in
100km radius, due to everything being turned into farmland, I can't wait for
the era when forests will reclaim those lands.

When I cross a bridge on Danube and take a look from the hight (the bridge is
quite big and tall) at the countryside I live in, all I can see is a farmland.
And I can't help but imagine that only 200 years ago there were forests there,
as far as you can see.

But once the meat is grown in the lab, I hope that it would stop making
financial sense to farm the land for animal food.

------
hunta2097
Animal farming is such a historical constant, I wonder what the unintended
consequences of artificial meat are?

How does this ride with the trend for more organic and natural produce? Will
artificial meat only be a suitable alternative in cheap or fast foods?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
And my favorite: is lab meat vegetarian? is it vegan? Its certainly not cut
from some animal, and nothing got killed to obtain it.

~~~
KitDuncan
It depends on whether Fetal Bovine Serum is used to grow the meat. If it is,
it's neither vegan or vegetarian.

~~~
lostlogin
And what rotted into the soil the vegetables grew in. If it’s far back enough
in the process does it matter? It may/may not be relevant, I’m vegetarian.

------
nkkollaw
I don't know how to feel about this.

I'm definitely worried that no one knows what weird diseases this could cause
years from now, and if any research pointing to cancer or other problems has
been kept secret (like it's been done before in so many cases).

For sure, intensive farming is bad for everybody (besides the farmers,
perhaps), and anything that will reduce it is good news IMHO.

As for how I'd feel eating lab meat, we only eat meat because most of us
haven't seen how animals are kept, what they're fed, and how they're
slaughtered (I have at my dad's organic pig farm and it's nothing pretty--and
I can't imagine how intensive production looks). So, I guess meat coming from
a lab is just as gross/weird as the above, I would probably try it and even
get used to it.

I'm sure vegetarians will love it--or at least the ones that do it for the
animals--as they'll finally be able to eat meat, which is unarguably personal
preference but IMHO about 100 times better-tasting than imitation meat (like
those burgers you buy at the grocery store).

I suspect if it's cheaper I'll get it served at some fast food restaurant, so
I'll have a chance to try it.

~~~
danharaj
I'm a meat eater but in my experience vegetarian or vegan good that merely
tries to imitate meat dishes always sucks, but cuisine built around the
ingredients available can be amazing. For example, i think south Indian
vegetarian food is good enough that if I had it every day I wouldn't mind not
eating meat.

If you use enough "umami bombs" in cooking then you can make very savory veg*
dishes. My faves are soy sauce and yeast extract and I'm also not above using
MSG.

Tbh I think meat is an addiction. Even if veg meals satisfy me and meet my
caloric needs I still crave it!

~~~
eric_h
> My faves are soy sauce and yeast extract and I'm also not above using MSG

If you're putting yeast extract in, you are absolutely not above using MSG, as
that's pretty much what makes yeast extract so tasty (and used in many
processed foods so they don't have to say that they added MSG to their
product).

As an aside - I bought a big ole bag of MSG a while back, and it's great to
toss into sautéed vegetables.

~~~
danharaj
Ah yea, i said yeast extract instead of nutritional yeast: that stuff is
amazing! Especially on popcorn

------
ourmandave
Apropos to nothing, pigs outnumber people in Iowa 7 to 1 (21.2M hogs vs 3.1M
people).

------
shaunxcode
what is the holdup? how are we not just throwing government dollars at this
industry??

~~~
jdavis703
Because a headline like "Lab grown meat kills hundreds" could set the industry
back a century. There's also the fact that ranchers, pig farmers, meat packers
and the rest of BigAg don't want their businesses disrupted. And then add in
the anti food-tech people (the ones who complain about Soylent et. al.) and
combine that with the anti-vegeterian folks and you have a whole lot of
opposition.

As a current vegetarian I'm excited to start eating these lab grown meats, but
I also want the industry to do it safely and intelligently.

~~~
kemiller
Complaining about Soylent per se doesn’t make you anti-food tech generally.
Soylent has legitimate serious issues. But I agree with you that we need to
approach it sensibly.

~~~
pault
Could you link me to some of those serious issues? I've been using soylent to
save myself the effort of scrounging for breakfast and lunch lately.

~~~
jdavis703
They've had some ingredient mislabeling issues and also some reports of people
suffering from algal oil allergies (it's a novel food additive, and it turns
out that while it has certain health benefits, a lot of people can't process
it nicely). They have since removed the algal oil from their newer
formulations, and hopefully have better processes around labeling so they
don't make that same mistake again.

------
jkarneges
What about lab dairy?

It's completely counterintuitive, but factory farming practices for dairy are
arguably as bad if not worse than what is done for meat, and dairy even
supports the meat industry (veal).

I know there are fake options like Daiya, but it's just not the same.

------
FreeRadical
Hopefully this will positively impact antibiotic usage.

------
mozumder
Do they include nerve cells or a nervous system? How "conscious" are these?

~~~
Hasz
As far as I'm aware, they're just culturing muscle tissue. There is no nervous
system, and it is certainly not conscious.

