This is awesome. Presumably, at some point we'll have the process optimised to the point that it could be done in your own home, or at a local (supermarket?) level. Imagine having a kitchen appliance that produces meat from liquid feedstock.
Even more speculatively, I wonder if the nutrient medium could be produced from other kitchen scraps? That's basically what animals were kept for in the past.
Aside, it sounds like efforts are focused on replicating pork/beef. It seems like some kind of fish might be easier, since texture is less of an issue, but I guess that's not what the US palate demands.
Personally, I'm looking forward to lab-grown fur coats more than anything edible. I wore a fox-fur coat once and it was amazingly warm and light. I'd far prefer such a coat to down or synthetic if it could be made without killing the fox.
I think people who write about the ethical or taste issues are missing the boat. Peoples tastes and ethics will change as the technology does and the meat improves.
The most interesting perspective, in my opinion, are the entrepreneurial opportunities. Lab grown meat is the starting point. Lab grown fur, animal fats, leather, etc and so on are only a matter of time. The potential markets are colossal and can revolutionize many industries.
Not just lack of documentation either. It is really complex spaghetti code with almost no modularization. What modularization there is (organs and even tissues) is on a gross (output) level, on the genetic (code) level almost everything affects almost everything.
Not only do markets appreciate beef, but they will pay top dollar for fancy high-quality beef. Once someone gets growing beef down, it probably won't be much of a stretch to develop top-quality sirloin, and more repeatably.
Additionally, beef is a good target ecologically speaking. Fish and birds are much more efficient at energy conversion, so there's a much larger margin of energy and material savings to be had with beef. As yet even another bonus, I suspect the ratio of edible meat to body mass in beef is much lower than in fish.
> Not only do markets appreciate beef, but they will pay top dollar for fancy high-quality beef.
Maybe. It depends on the extent to which high-end beef consumers are paying for the direct experience (taste, texture, mouth feel, etc) versus other things.
For example, consider the scam that is high-end speaker cable. People pay a lot of extra money not for real quality, but for imagined quality, exclusivity, and brand association. The same thing definitely goes on with wine and cheese, and I'd suspect some beef purchase will be like that, too.
Beef is a case where there are some very obvious things(texture, fattyness, chewyness etc) that make eye fillet a much more pleasant eating experience than other cuts of meat and there's a lot less of it per animal. If you can pull that off you can make the general case of decent meat much more affordable.
Of course, there'll always be Wagyu and Kobe, but that's a much smaller market than just the high end of normal meat.
I think premium-quality foods are probably a bit further off, but something of similar quality to frozen supermarket tilapia is probably not too much to ask. Some countries already consume a lot of products made of processed, retextured fish protein. I love those artificial crab-sticks.
It will be fun to see how the environmental movement takes this. I bet some pragmatists will love it, some will go ballistic due to the GM nature of it, and some will maintain that we shouldn't be eating any meat, even the humanely grown substitutes.
Also note, Math for Industry 201 always uses fish stocks as an example.
Catch too many fish, and you get a suboptimal population growth - the babies that do get born do well (due to a lack of competition), but there's so few born that this doesn't really matter.
It's more true for slow growing fish, like salmon, and tuna.
Fun fact, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) was not formed to stop whaling, but because it was obvious that whale stocks had collapsed, and international co-ordination was needed to allow them to grow back to an economic level. The whaling industry collapsed slowly, got a second wind as steam ships made fast-moving blue whales a feasible target, then collapsed again as the blue whales ran out. The IWC was formed in 1946, and it wasn't until the 70s that the anti-whaling movement gained any steam.
Good call on sushi-grade fish, though I could imagine people still being picky about it (i.e. what's the point of eating sushi if it's not real, or tastes even 10% off).
I would of guessed they tried to replicate chicken. Since almost all meats are usually described as "it tastes like chicken" this would be the initial benchmark.
Its been in the research stages for a while but I fear that even if they could 'grow' you a filet mignon the anti-vax* folks are going to go ballistic against it. It would certainly not be 6 months from now, and I suspect not even 6 years from now even if instant steak was demonstrable today.
* The anti-vaccine movement, also known as anti-vax, is filled with vocal, litigious, people who do not care for the science or the facts. They would have the human race become extinct because it would be 'better for the planet.' (note this is hyperbole but not far off from some of the more extreme elements of that movement.)
But still, where is "6 months" coming from? A vague "year" figure is given by Mark Post (with the caveat that funding is needed), but that doesn't even bring into consideration the process of getting the meat out of the lab and into the grocery store.
I wondered the same thing about the 6 month figure. This is some aggregator site run by the SciFi/SyFy channel? It's the kind of pop science reporting I think is bordering on irresponsible, really. Their source is New Scientist requiring a signup:
It's likely that the lab grown "meat" won't be a proper substitute for the meat that we evolved to eat. Food is more complicated than it outwardly appears (i.e. a collection of muscle cells != meat)
this sounds more like industry FUD. People are able to get there daily sustenance from gruel. Yes it may not fit your definition of food, but this is a first world complaint. There are millions of people around the world starving, that this technique could help.
Did you read that linked Michael Pollan piece? If not, please do, it's good. So is his other work. He's not an industry shill spreading FUD. There are serious gaps in our understanding of nutrition. Suggesting that lab grown meat might lack something that "real" meat has isn't FUD. There may be more nutritionally sound food sources than vat meat for people currently starving or subsisting on gruel.
Yes, it is confusing to put meat in a category of foods missing from first-world diets. Should we add caviar and pound cake to that list too?
More significant: will it be a diet improvement to replace fatty hamburger with this 'meat'? Perhaps - since Americans eat pounds of meat per day, a whole week's worth of protein in a Wendy's Double with Cheese.
I imagine there are far more useful things to worry about in the American diet, than subtle differences between a single strain of pork muscle vs which strain of angus they're eating. Like how much they're eating; how much fat, salt, empty carbohydrates.
If you are worried for yourself, fine, FUD away and eat vegan. But as a social phenomenon, I can't see how lab-meat can be very harmful, and it is a certain good.
Agreed. As a carnivore with a conscience I'm all about jumping on the lab meat bandwagon. But as someone big on natural foods and skeptical of the current state of nutritional knowledge, I would be hesitant to base a substantial part of my protein requirements on this.
There's not much of a wait left until the day a man will be able to come home from work, eat a lab-grown Bratwurst, have sex with his sex robot, and then relax with an electric cigarette.
I think I would always commute, even if "come home from work" only means leave the room I only enter while on the clock. Blurring the line between home and work too much sounds terribly unappealing to me.
Are you talking about the commuting or the work? Why would he be working at all? We only have to work now because resources are finite. When they are no longer finite what will be the point of working? I just need a food/water machine. If, for some reason, rent still costs then I'll just find the best paying manual labor job and send my robots off to work there.
Working on what I want to work on is fun. Making rich people even richer by rewriting the same kind of CRUD apps over and over is not remotely fun. It pays really well though.
It would seem that lab-grown meat is the only one of those things that is not already available, though it seems the current state of "sex robots" leaves something to be desired. Perhaps lab-grown flesh could go some ways to improving that as well ;)
A news story I saw last night about synthetic sausages contained a vox pop from a woman who claimed that she would not eat them because it was "unethical". I have to say, my mind was blown by her apparent construction of ethics.
If they can compete with textured soy protean then they have a viable market with pretty low technical requirements. As they develop texture and structure they could replace fajita and stir fry meats, maybe nuggets. Lots of markets as the product matures.
I'm skeptical that this is only 6 months away (6 years sounds more reasonable), but I'm still curious about the ramifications of synthetic meat.
Would it be more energy efficient to grow meat in a factory than in the fields? What are the energy requirements for a pound of lab meat vs a pound of pig meat?
More importantly, what would happen if it turned out cheaper and tasted the same? How many industries depend on eating meat? What would happen to all the pigs if nobody wanted to eat them?
Even more interesting, at least to me- what will the vegetarians do?
As for all the animals, their populations would obviously get scaled back. The transition would not happen overnight, there would be plenty of time. Though you may have a point- domestic pigs would likely become pets and little else. However, chickens still lay eggs, cows still make milk, and sheep and goats still produce milk and wool.
Your points about non-meat animal products still very much hold still. Pigs would be pets and sources of organ scaffolding for humans.
Additionally, the yearlong production of milk in animals requires contant pregnancies, so will still cause many animals to killed. For instance, goat milk products kill far more male goats than any demands for the meat.
There are multiple types of vegetarians. Ones who dislike the moral part of meat will not have an issue with the new meat. There are energy consumption vegetarians. If this new meat is considerably close to the energy requirements for a vegetarian diet, they may go for it. The health vegetarians who are afraid of adulterated food may go for this meat now, but the ones who are afraid of the general higher cancer risk from red- meat based diets, etc, will likely not be persuaded to change.
As a vegetarian, I'd eat it, but hold off for a while atleast to look for potential health consequences. I'm not too worried about nutritional imbalance because I don't think this will ever be my primary source of nutrition.
As someone who gave up non-veg food about 15 years back, I'd welcome lab-meat since it avoids killing animals. However, whether we would adopt it ourselves seems to be irrelevant. I, for one, would not like to cultivate the taste for meat again. As an animal lover, I'd certainly not like to see menu items like "Synthetic dog meat, tastes just like puppies". Going to the extreme, replace dog and puppies with human and babies. I'll stick to veggies, thanks.
This vegetarian would rather eat "real" meat from a farm like Polyface (featured in Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and some documentaries) than eat lab meat, at least the first many iterations of lab meat.
I don't want anyone to think I'm spreading FUD, I'm genuinely interested and concerned. Who knows what the nutritional consequences would be? We've only just started to realize that there might be some detrimental effects due to consuming the products of a corn-soy (duo-)monoculture farms, all in the name of efficiency, what of lab-meat? Plus, I'm just creeped out by it.
I do think it's valuable work, and largely inevitable, and wouldn't suggest for a moment that we (humans) not fund this kind of research.
Vegetarians are pretty diverse and really can't be considered as a single group. Some vegetarians eat fish, some sneak pepperoni pizza, some eat dairy, some will eat anything but steak, some extend the definition beyond food to clothing and furniture. The addition of test tube meat will just add one more variable to further diversify people under the "the vegetarians" label.
In a similar vein, would someone who identifies as Jewish or a Muslim eat test tube bacon? Well, some already eat real pork and don't get worked up about it. It just depends on how you interpret and practice your beliefs. And we've all got different beliefs that make us do different things.
He said "but steak". There are various kinds of vegetarians as he says, some who have eggs, some who have milk products etc. Regarding fish, I actually have relatives from Kerala, South India who are vegetarians who eat fish. They call it "the vegetable of the sea".
Not all of the pig/cow energy is spent on producing muscle mass/fat, essentially, it is eliminated with industrial production.
Initially, it probably will be quite expensive, but it is most certainly _potentially_ cheaper than real meat due to tech advances and economies of scale.
As for farm animals, they will be just bred less. Nobody will mass slaughter them just because there is a cheaper source of meat.
* I believe it is 6 months away from the start of testing legal approval
* it will not taste the exact same due to the different ways its grown, at least at first. It will be more easily customized to fit peoples requirements, however.
* the meat industry will not collapse in a day. Animal requirements won't change overnight. The industry will adjust slowly unless they get lobbyists to ban this technology (which they will attempt to do, of course)
* due to the innefficient way animals grow, lab-grown meat has the potential to be more efficient, but won't be at first
In vitro meat has been coming (in that it's been researched) for at least the last 16 years, and there have been edible forms since 2000. None of the other breakthroughs have lead to large-scale production, which I believe was due to the poor taste and that it's currently more expensive to produce than normal meat, per-pound. So don't get your hopes too high.
Earlier results of this process at Eindhoven University of Technology included that "due to safety restrictions, the scientists were not allowed to eat the meat, which tasted bland". (sorry, lost the reference)
Interesting article and I hope it becomes a reality in usage very soon.
I have been a vegetarian since birth. Earlier it was because my family was vegetarian and later it was because of my belief that I wanted to cause minimum harm to living thing. But I don't know why my instant reaction was that I am not going to eat it. All my reasons for not wanting to eat meat are resolved by this. No on suffers. Yet I don't think I would touch that.
I am all for it and I think it would be a very good step in many ways.
As a BBQ loving Texan, I find this fascinating. On the one hand, it does seem kind of creepy, on the other, this could be some cool resilient community-building technology to create a real alternative to the current food economy.
I don't think this will ever be a complete replacement for real meat. There are such subtleties to how an animal lives and what it eats that affect its taste. Wild hogs and domestic pigs are the same animal but taste entirely different (I prefer the wild variety).
Still, I'd prefer higher quality lab-grown meat created under safe and open conditions with some free range/hunted organic on the side to the factory farmed meat we're stuck with today. I drive 35 miles out of my way for groceries every week to avoid that stuff.
Somehow this feels like a Vonnegut plotline: population boom equals food shortage. Solution? Synthesize food from human waste matter. Absurd yes, but Japanese scientists have actually discovered a way to create edible steaks from human feces.
I am 100% for devastating the livestock industry within my lifetime but I think they are going to fight this on every level, especially politically, so it's doomed.
A few years back, some wit on Slashdot (responding on a similar topic) wondered whether vegans might object to eating meat grown from their own cells...
Hypothetical question. Let's say this fruitions and is widely popular. Wouldn't that mean we would simply stop rearing cattle and poultry? Would that mean the species will go extinct? Now isn't that cruelty.
I imagine that, no matter how popular this gets, there will always be a market for real cows, pigs and chickens. It's just going to end up being a high end luxury market. A whole animal for roasting is something that will never be able to made in a lab. Also from what I understand this process produces fairly homogeneous meat, meaning you're probably going to need a real animal to make more interesting cuts, or 'bi-products' like heart, marrow and liver. Combine that with the fact that there will probably also always be a market for real leather (which will also become a high end luxury product) and I can see cows being reared for a long time after this process becomes wildly popular .
Can they guarantee that the synthetic meat is healthy? Like, will it contain CLA, B-12, Omega-3s (found in grass-fed cows, and well-raised pigs), B-12, and so on? We get a lot of important nutrients from animal meat and fat that are harder to process from plant or synthetic sources.
Our subjective opinions on how "gross" this is won't get us anywhere. I don't find killing and eating animals to be gross—eating something that literally wasn't alive (I don't find cells reproducing in that way to meet my definition of "living") is repulsive to me.
I source all my meat possible from local farms that raise the animals in free-range methods, and slaughter them in ethical ways (IE, no shocking or killing them when they're in a panic, like a CAFO would). And that's as ethical and as kind as a meat eater can get, with no exceptions.
But the nutritional point I raise isn't a light issue. These are animal cells coaxed into growing in foreign conditions. Just like hydroponic tomatoes have no taste, and possibly poor nutrition too, the "flesh vats" of the future will have nutritional problems too.
>Our subjective opinions on how "gross" this is won't get us anywhere.
Then why did you start off by saying it was gross?
>But the nutritional point I raise isn't a light issue. These are animal cells coaxed into growing in foreign conditions. Just like hydroponic tomatoes have no taste, and possibly poor nutrition too, the "flesh vats" of the future will have nutritional problems too.
This will obviously be studied and tweaked at length. Input --> output.
Even more speculatively, I wonder if the nutrient medium could be produced from other kitchen scraps? That's basically what animals were kept for in the past.
Aside, it sounds like efforts are focused on replicating pork/beef. It seems like some kind of fish might be easier, since texture is less of an issue, but I guess that's not what the US palate demands.