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- Hacker News
- Would it make the meat industry more ethical if happy drugs were made available to animals? If I had to choose between a meaningful (even if I didn’t know it when living), blissful unnatural life and none at all, I’d choose the former.
It’s the negative affect and suffering (stress, pain, boredom etc) that is the bad part of eating animals.
(I think— I know others have thought more than I on this topic)
It just seems like an easier tech solution might be promising
by dr_dshiv - Turns out that nature is a lot more efficient at producing meat; I don’t think this will change for a while, if ever.
Bugs for chickens, grasses/grains for cattle and omnivorous pigs are their own kind of bio-reactor…
by shrubble - I had long given up on lab-grown meat. It started feeling like fusion, always around the corner, but never there (or at least not in an affordable way).
What replaced almost all ground beef (except in burgers) for me, was Jackfruit. More specifically, the combination 90% pea protein, 10% jackfruit. Granules that can be rehydrated with boiling water in 2 minutes, price competitive with discounter mince, no extra ingredients, no high carb count. It has a good texture and tastes mostly like whatever you season it with.
by Semaphor - I'm a bit surprised that we got disembodied intelligence before we got deathless meat. If you'd told me in the year 2000 that one of these would happen, I'd have put my money on the meat.by lordnacho
- it is sad how the lobbying of old evil industries like tobacco and animal-killing can convince the politicians and the public to outlaw and demonize their less-evil competition like vaping and lab-grown meat to make sure to hold on to the status quo.
but why write more than 7000 words to communicate a simple point (lab-grown meat was promised 1-2 decades ago but failed to arrive and won't arrive in the foreseeable future)?
by dinkblam - I worked in this industry for almost five years. Even the “fermented” alternative meats (bacterial, fungal cell culture) which were basically a drop-in fit with existing large scale fermentation plants were still not cost-competitive with chicken. Some were on par with beef if you made some hand-wavy assumptions about scale.
The killer was usually the downstream processing required to clean out off-flavors and colors, which was required to get even a passable product (these are just protein powder fillers at this point, not whole cuts), but ballooned CapEx and cut yield such that cost went back up to like, A5 Wagyu levels.
I’ve sat in the awkward tasting sessions the author describes, and they’re all the same. The attendees muster up a “that’s pretty good” - but we all know nobody would ever choose to buy this unless they were forced to.
Now that I’ve been out of it for a while, it’s pretty obvious to me what the problems are. Cost, obviously. Taste and texture simply aren’t there. And “the knowing” is real. I never got over imagining the whole factory process involved in the production. I’m sure vegans would say the same about animal farming, though. So my conclusion was, the only way this technology becomes relevant is if people are forced to use it. And that’s either because you’re cruelty-free by choice (small fraction of the population), or because the cost of meat suddenly skyrockets, which today, is not looking that likely. Keep in mind as well that meat costs would likely be driven by feed costs in such a scenario, which also impacts cultivated meat. So it’s ultimately a process efficiency play, and you’re competing against eons of evolution.
by plaidfuji - Man, I'm so glad I don't trade stocks.
I was so convinced that these meatless meats were going to be the next big thing.
One thing I think they missed out on was getting to 'close enough' and 'much cheaper' and then just pivoting.
Like, why stay with simulating the 5 or so animals we harvest? Just go off and make up new ones!
Like, here's a jackalope burger, or a unicorn burger or something. Tie into marketing!
"Exclusive to BurgerKing, the Iron Man 5 burger! Now through August 29th only!"
Put in some strange spices, vary the texture, give it a red and gold swirl, let the imagination run wild.
Can you imagine what business a Spiderman burger patty or sausage link would do? K-Pop demon hunters branded chicken-ish nugget like things?
by Balgair - > Then, suddenly, the nausea hit... The problem was not the flavor, not the texture, but the knowing. The Knowing. Knowing about the fat tank, about the sticky white substance...
I feel like squeamish people are probably not the best ones to write about novel meat products...
by swiftcoder