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Comment by greendestiny_re | Hacker News Reader

I have a sinking feeling this kind of synthetic food production is just a bait for health-wary consumers. After reeling in enough customers, lab-grown fish produced for profit will inevitably have to deteriorate in quality to maintain/increase revenue. Can this kind of endeavor scale? Can it be introduced to schools, for example? I'm sure some consumers will swallow the idea hook, line and sinker but I see it as just another cool concept in an ocean filled with bottom-feeders.

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I don't think it's inevitable that quality has to deteriorate. I buy all sorts of manufactured products that are perfectly good; competition in balanced, well-run markets keeps producers in line.

And personally, I'm willing to pay extra for lab-grown. I'm sure they'll sell that as a health benefit; it's much easier to avoid contaminants. But for me it's about minimized negative externalities. I don't have to worry that I'm driving a species extinct, or contributing to some more localized eco-catastrophe.

You may pay extra, plenty might want the same for less - particularly if it becomes fashionable. We don't really have balanced, well run markets, so competition also produces cheap, profitable eco-catastrophes, either to sell a similar product for less - see US experience of beef farming. Or to turn a once wild-caught luxury food into a mass market everyday food - see almost all salmon farming. No problem - the eco-catastrophe is now someone else's problem - an externality.

I see no reason to have confidence this will be any different in terms of eco-damage or other pollution without strengthening regulation in several areas. Just being in a "lab" - which will be regular food factory once commercialised - won't remove waste, or stuff down the drains.

many global fishing stocks are being critically overexploited, and lab grown fish could help abate it. this is a much more immediate threat to food security than climate change and may be intensified in the future by ocean acidification. i don’t see why a fish lab couldn’t be run in a carbon neutral manner and it’s much better than doing nothing.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/fish-stocks-are-used-...

I think it's much harder to have negative externalities in a factory, especially a food factory, than it is operating in the open ocean, or even in, say, coastal fish farms. Food production is pretty regulated, and drain systems are much fussier about what they accept than, say, soil runoff is.

I just don't hear many horror stories about people living next to, say, bakeries.

"And personally, I'm willing to pay extra for lab-grown."

I believe this mindset amongst thoughtful consumers like yourself only do harm. Like with other trendy foods that get popularized for health or whatever reason, it incentivizes the producers to raise the prices and when consumers like yourself accept that price, it sends a signal to them. The product then becomes too expensive for regular normal people to afford, so only wealthier families can afford to eat them and get those health benefits. If it is imperative for us to make healthy and sustainable diets more widespread, we must strive to make it as accessible as possible. Same with the beyond burger stuff or any other vegetarian/vegan products.

I don't think that's how it works at all.

There are a lot of products that start as a premium offering and move downmarket as they scale. Computers and cellphones are great examples. That early adopters paid a lot for their purchases didn't prevent the emergence of less expensive hardware. It enabled it.

Well they're not suddenly going to gain in mercury content or anything so I'd expect they'll always have an edge in health.

Also, 11/10 with the fishy idioms. :)

Or just have land farms of fish: http://www.uarahfisheries.com.au/

> After reeling in enough customers, lab-grown fish produced for profit will inevitably have to deteriorate in quality to maintain/increase revenue.

Maybe this post is just upvoted for the dad jokes, in which case, Fair Play...

But on the substance, all other food products have to compete on quality. Why this would be different needs to be explained.

Sure, it's always a balance of price and quality. But why would this particular food have a different balance than all other food products?

I sea what you did there.

> I have a sinking feeling this kind of synthetic food production is just a bait for health-wary consumers

I'm a futuristic person, I like to imagine what I can do far into the future, something like: "Hey space ship, I like to have some roasted Salmon Sushi sprinkled with tomato paste to be delivered to the observation deck please. Thanks!"

And I believe synthetic food is the first step to archive that.

do you know why you want such a such thing? is it merely indulgence?

You're assuming fish and seafood and quality goods. Fish is known to have lots of heavy metals for instance.

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