I tried the first no-kill, lab-grown chicken burger

"some animal rights activists[who?] argue it perpetuates an unhealthy obsession with eating animals."

I'd like to see a source on which "animal rights activists" this journalist is referring to. PETA? Random Twitter users?

You can find a small minority against literally anything if you go scrounging.

Or, you know, the journalist did their job and contacted relevant interested parties for comment, and included their perspective for the benefit of readers who would look for that perspective.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1oSqI4jnTM

We're still arguing if GMOs will be toxic to humans in the long term, and now we want to grow a whole chunk of animal in a lab, and proclaim nothing's wrong with it?

And lab-grown meat should also use fewer hormones, reducing human intake of animal hormones.

Lab-produced milk will be another important product.

Our species is slowly entering the bio-tech stage. How will daily life change?

I predict engineered mites that clean your home at night, consuming or carrying away every speck of dust. They will clean furniture, beds, pillows, and mattresses. By out-competing common dust mites, they will prevent many cases of childhood asthma.

Large-scale deployment of mites will collect pollution dust from cities. They will remove the metal nanoparticles from vehicle brakes that trigger asthma in children who grow up near highways. They will collect the persistent lead dust that accumulated in cities while leaded gasoline was in use, reducing childhood exposure to lead thereby boosting intelligence and reducing crime for the next generation. They will remove the microplastics that steadily fall from our synthetic clothing, food packaging, equipment, carpets, and building materials. The health problems of microplastics are still unknown. They may be the cause of declining male fertility.

Instead of complaining about vaccines and 5G, ignorant people will complain about the pheromones used to control mites. They'll say things like, "I'm sick because of the pheromones!" as the mites remove pollution that actually would make them sick.

Clothing fibers will be grown in a lab. Cashmere will become nearly as cheap as nylon. Once you've worn a cashmere outfit, cotton will feel like something a caveman would wear.

Washing machines will have different enzyme options for different kinds of materials. For example, you will buy clothes made with fiber X and use detergent X which dissolves everything except fiber X. Washers won't need heat or mechanical abrasion, so clothes can last longer or be made more cheaply while still lasting long enough.

No more brushing, just chew a dental candy once a day. It has bacteria that consumes plaque & tartar and viruses that kill acid-producing mouth bacteria.

Dynamic balancing of intestinal fauna will solve a myriad of undiagnosed chronic health problems. Also no more farts. I also predict a pill that will make feces emerge as small smooth fragrance-free pebbles. Paper consumption will plummet, but that won't affect the environment because paper fibers will already be grown in a vat, using sugars made by algae. Sugar is the feedstock of the world's industry. Algeria becomes the world's leading producer of sugar. Climate change is reversed by the adoption of a sugar-based concrete.

Data storage will become DNA-based. All of Google's data will fit in a drop of DNA preservative. Copying data will be cheap. But reading is slow, with throughput scaling with the number of reader chips. Data theft is done with mosquito drones that literally suck data juice. Surveillance is done with "tick" robots that record their sensor data to a DNA sac.

Humans will find an ancient DNA-based data archive in a colony of sea creatures in a deep sea trench. It contains a copy of Wikipedia from a civilization that evolved from squid many millions of years ago. They reached bio-tech stage and then disappeared completely. We prepare our own data archive...

I'd you see it purely economically, the question is just a matter of inputs vs outputs. If you can take grain and circumvent the inefficiencies of a chicken (gets sick, grows feathers, grows bones, produces excrement, ...) and instead get the same nutrients more directly to produce meat of course it's more efficient. The question is just how much else is needed - energy, space, cost of producing the initial materials, harvesting time, ...

Not to mention moral implications that a vegetarian might care about or practical elements (can you grow it with flavour?; do you need less space?; ...).

That said, obviously its not going to touch the ubiquity of chickens anytime soon - eapecially in poorer countries - as the tech is high cost while you can start your own chicken coop with two eggs or chicka. But heated greenhouses are also not replacing tomato fields and yet they have a huge role in some regions of the world.

Aren’t some of the ethical questions connected to environmental ones? Instead of chicken feed could one produce something better?

industrial chicken farming also produces waste and consumes water. Together with noise and smell there are surely environmental impacts.

Also an investment in labgrown meats could bring the cost down and is potentially a good driver for innovation. Not only growing meat for consumption, but maybe skin or other more complex cell structures for transplants or other medical purposes.

That led me to look for comparisons between FCR for poultry and cultured meat, and so far this report[1] seems informative.

Selected quotes from the report, as relevant to the topic of (land-use) efficiency:

"These results suggest that alternatives to the current mix of livestock production systems could substitute current animal products and substantially reduce the current agricultural land use footprint from food production."

"Although, the two most efficient products considered, i.e. imitation meat and insects, both come with consumer perception barriers, a shift towards poultry meat, eggs and milk was also found to offer land use and associated environmental benefits, of only slightly smaller magnitudes."

[1] - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221191241...

I find that hard to believe. Corn is 86kcal/100g while chicken breast is 165kcal/100g (according to a quick Google search). So you're saying that a chicken is a machine that converts 137kcal from corn to 165kcal of meat, while ... living?

Since the lab grown chicken doesn't need bones or organs, there is already an efficiency gain there. You also don't don't need to maintain a chicken for months since this burger only takes a few days to grow.

Real chickens are currently more efficient, but that won't last forever as lab technology improves. Ideally, you just need a vertical farm that takes in electricity, organic feedstock, and some minerals and you should be able to get a better energy to meat conversion than an inefficient chicken that was cobbled together by blind luck.

In Germany Burger King sells plant based nuggets. Barely a difference, we recently ordered both Chicken and Plant based nuggets, maybe the chicken one still had a bit more structure. But to be honest, one drowns them in sauce anyway. Probably will go for plant based ones in the future.

I wonder whether there's some genetic variation that causes some of us to be revolted by it, like some people who can't stand the taste of cilantro or Brussels sprouts.

Would much rather eat that than the alternative

it is the energy needed to consume it that people enjoy the distinction of, compared to substitutes which also compromise somewhat (less than in prior years) on taste and texture

lab grown meat accomplishes that alongside the taste of fat

Until we get to a point where literally the only difference between a lab grown filet mignon and a grass fed one is cost, people will be raising animals for mass slaughter.

Meat substitutes are a nice alternative to have but they're nowhere near the real thing. And you can only have lentils so many days in a row.

This technology, once improved and using a better growth medium, literally has no downside. I can understand people might not want it for themselves but I'm sure there's a sizable market in meat that doesn't come from the hell that is modern factory farming (or the abbatoirs all animals end up in irrespective of the farm).

Before moving to the US I always thought it was the style of bun that made it a 'burger', whereas if you put it between two pieces of sliced bread it would be a 'sandwich'.

There's a reason people use existing "technically incorrect" product names to refer to replacement products like this. It's so people who are used to consuming the original products see the replacement as a replacement, on level footing with the original.

Almost no one is going to replace dairy milk with soy bean-flavoured water, and chicken patties with chicken-flavoured burgers. The latter sound like dodgy knock-offs and people don't want to put that kind of thing in their bodies.

Also, "chicken-flavored burger" isn't really accurate to what this is. It may be lab-grown, but it's still meat. A "chicken-flavored burger" sounds like a vegetarian patty with chicken-like seasoning and flavours.