Meat. The future??

[LDN]

I have heard for years how the future for the meat industry will be lab grown meat - doing away with the economic burden of rearing livestock and also to cater for the growing human populations the world over. It makes sense on almost every level: economically, environmentally, logistically, morally, etc etc.

These guys I just came across seem to be taking it a step further and want produce machines that will be found in supermarkets, petrol stations, etc the world over. Seems a great idea if a little far fetched... I mean it's almost sci-fi like in its ambition:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/supermeat-real-...

[Vizsla]

Meat. The Fokkers??

[curlyks2]

LDN said:

I mean it's almost sci-fi like in its ambition

Isaac Asimov uses something very similar in Prelude To Foundation in which much food production is the growing of yeast and algae. On (the planet) Trantor, the sector Mycogen specialises in this.

[LDN]

curlyks2 said:

LDN said:

I mean it's almost sci-fi like in its ambition

Isaac Asimov uses something very similar in Prelude To Foundation in which much food production is the growing of yeast and algae. On (the planet) Trantor, the sector Mycogen specialises in this.

Wow. My brain hurts after reading those links!

[Spare tyre]

I always thought it'd be insects squished into burgers shapes

[Teppic]

Soylent Green.

[RizzoTheRat]

Spare tyre said:

I always thought it'd be insects squished into burgers shapes

That do that around Lake Victoria and presumably other places.


Even if lab grown meat becomes common, presumably there will be many happy to pay a premium for the real thing. Plus there's a lot of land that's not really suitable for growing crops on but is ideal for sheep/goats. Then if we want to still have eggs/milk/leather/etc we're still going to be keeping animals so likely to still be keeping some for meat.

Presumably there's also a financial implication, if all meat was lab grown how do those people who previously grew the meat in fields buy the stuff as they've lost their income.

[battered]

I work in food, and I know my way around the Quorn process and indeed the factory.

I'm not holding my breath. Chickens are astonishingly efficient as a means of food production, better again are insects and fish. All have the fundamental advantage of being fed on things that we don't recognise as food. One of my favourites is rope grown mussels. Dangle a few ropes in the sea, come back a few months or a year later and pull off the adults. Leave the rest to grow to a usable size and reproduce the next generation. Food cost? Nil.

It is common in China to feed fish farms with human sewage. There's no biological reason why this won't feed fish, but obvious human health and food chain implications. It does however reflect the fact that "inefficiency" may not in fact be a problem if the "food" is a waste product. China is of course trying to reduce this practice, but they have a lot of people to feed.

[Jimmy Recard]

battered said:

I work in food, and I know my way around the Quorn process and indeed the factory.

I'm not holding my breath. Chickens are astonishingly efficient as a means of food production, better again are insects and fish. All have the fundamental advantage of being fed on things that we don't recognise as food. One of my favourites is rope grown mussels. Dangle a few ropes in the sea, come back a few months or a year later and pull off the adults. Leave the rest to grow to a usable size and reproduce the next generation. Food cost? Nil.

It is common in China to feed fish farms with human sewage. There's no biological reason why this won't feed fish, but obvious human health and food chain implications. It does however reflect the fact that "inefficiency" may not in fact be a problem if the "food" is a waste product. China is of course trying to reduce this practice, but they have a lot of people to feed.

Interesting post, thanks.

I've heard preaching vegetarian types talking about how inefficient farmers are - surely they are as efficient as they practically can be to remain competitive. Whether it's an inherently inefficient practice to produce beef rather than Quorn is neither here nor there - while people are prepared to pay for beef and beef is avaioable, they can have beef.

[otolith]

Jimmy Recard said:

I've heard preaching vegetarian types talking about how inefficient farmers are - surely they are as efficient as they practically can be to remain competitive. Whether it's an inherently inefficient practice to produce beef rather than Quorn is neither here nor there - while people are prepared to pay for beef and beef is avaioable, they can have beef.

They're not making an economic argument, they are arguing from the point of view of the amount of land that has to go under the plough, the amount of fossil fuel that has to be burnt or the proportion of the planet's population which is malnourished.

They also tend to cherry pick figures relating to American farming practices.

[Shakermaker]

someone told me that the amount of land that is needed to grow all the soy plants for things like quorn, is a lot less efficient than the same amount of land used for animals? And how much forest was being "torn up" for the soy plants to be planted.

Was this correct?

[otolith]

It depends on what you are growing and how you measure it, but generally it is more efficient in terms of calories and protein out of a patch of land to grow and eat plants than it is to grow plants, feed them to animals and eat the animals. But the issue is more nuanced than that.

For example;

http://www.globalharvestinitiative.org/index.php/2...

[battered]

Shakermaker said:

someone told me that the amount of land that is needed to grow all the soy plants for things like quorn, is a lot less efficient than the same amount of land used for animals? And how much forest was being "torn up" for the soy plants to be planted.

Was this correct?

Maybe. As otolith says below, it's nuanced. It depends from one case to another.

An analogy is a mate of mine who refuses to do any DIY or anything around the house. His argument is "I'm an IT contractor, I can earn more in an hour doing my job than it costs me to employ a brickie/plumber/spark, and they are better at it." This is correct, but it assumes that all time is the same and it assumes that all time is chargeable. If my pal is taking time off work at £x hundred a day in order to sort out his garden or wield a paintbrush, then in financial terms at least he's a mug. He should employ someone. However if he is sitting around at home, watching TV or poking around on the 'net then that time isn't charged at £ so much an hour, it's free. There is no opportunity cost to him picking up a paintbrush, because he was doing FA anyway.

The same applies to certain feedstocks. I can get spent grains from a brewery (grains that have had the goodness taken out of them for beer brewing and are now a grey mush) and cows will live on them. You and I can't, or at least won't, so the fact that these grains contain X calories is neither here nor there. They are waste. So they are free. Where it gets complicated is that some of a cow's nutrition comes from grass, which I can't eat, and some waste products, but some is what you or I might regard as food. Potatoes at the end of the season, for example. It's further complicated by the fact that we make an assumption that the land is suitable for (say) soy bean production and that we have a means of distribution in place. Neither of these is a given.

[Alex_225]

From a non-techy/non-environment perspective, I'm not sure how much I fancy eating meat that's grown.

Part of the appeal of a nice steak is that it's natural and, well from an animal. Can't help thinking it just wouldn't be the same.

[Jimmy Recard]

otolith said:

They're not making an economic argument, they are arguing from the point of view of the amount of land that has to go under the plough, the amount of fossil fuel that has to be burnt or the proportion of the planet's population which is malnourished.

They also tend to cherry pick figures relating to American farming practices.

I was only trying to say that the economic viewpoint will always win as long as there are enough people who want meat and can afford it.

I don't judge whether they are right or wrong (morally/ethically) as I'm not really important enough to make that judgment!

[otolith]

No doubt - that's why they make the argument, because economics won't get them what they want so they try persuasion.

[Monkeylegend]

battered said:

One of my favourites is rope grown mussels. Dangle a few ropes in the sea, come back a few months or a year later and pull off the adults. Leave the rest to grow to a usable size and reproduce the next generation. Food cost? Nil.

Money for old rope as the saying goes.

[Lozw86]

Increasingly myself and those around me prefer to eat locally grown or produced food and produce. I'm sure this is reflected across the country, and this will (hopefully)counter some of the more artificially grown food sources

[slybynight]

I'm in the insects camp. I've even started on the mealy worms - the idea being that things can only get more tasty from that starting point! If they can get them to taste the same as a cow-based burger, I really wouldn't care. Apparently they are orders of magnitude less resource needy and environmentally damaging than livestock. I just don't think that artificially grown cells will be viable/safe when pitted against millions of years of evolution. I mean, the only way you could make artificial cells grow faster would be to make them cancerous surely? And as we all know from the BSE episode - you do take "on-board" some of the stuff that you eat.

[Goaty Bill 2]

Fortunately, I am likely to be long dead before any of those fungus munching, rabbit wannabes get their way.

NSFW
This Woman Said You Deserve To Die IF You Eat Meat