Singapore approves lab-grown 'chicken' meat
bbc.com
bbc.com
FBS is widely used for cell cultures in laboratories, but I as far as I'm aware, this is the first time that it's used as an industrial process for consumer products (although maybe it's used in commercial pharma, I don't know). FBS extraction is a "slaughterhouse" technology, so these new products don't yet move us any closer to the goal of ending industrial animal slaughter. In fact, this could actually be a step in the wrong direction.
I've kept an eye on this space for a while, and there have been plenty of announcements of artificial FBS, but none of them have ever been able to offer any proof, just vapor.
If a company comes along with a synthetic plant-derived alternative to FBS, and they can actually prove it works, invest heavily. They're the ones who will change the world.
EDIT: Good news! I found there is now a commercially available FBS alternative called 'FastGro'. It is very expensive - $264.60 per 100ml - and it doesn't say how it's made, but hey, it's a start.
It's also worth checking out their brochure just because of how hilarious and awesome the art is: https://media.mpbio.com/document/file/brochure/dest/l/s/1/0/...
This article addressees this with Eat Just in Singapore (They are looking at plant based in the future) -
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/02/no-kill-...
I'd read it as this is just to get another round of funding. At best a very expensive restaurant might sell slithers for the experience.
But I think it is a industry that's moving forward, so it's all a good thing. Many other industries are just stuck in scam stage.
There are some technical problems with FBS as well, it varies in quality and in composition of the component proteins, so a synethetic/plant alternative that could be adjusted for different purposes would be useful in the lab as well.
That apart, since this requires FBS/ chicken cells, not sure if it is going to attract vegans. Pricing is going to be another interesting avenue. Do we have double blind studies if it really tastes like meat or is it just another experiment?
If someone can see a way to profit off “undesirable” people and get away with it, they will.
So technically a vegan would not be happy eating it. I'm however curious about the ratio of slaughter to end product (e.g. is it one slaughter to 10kg of end product, or one slaughter to 1 tonne of end product), since that may sway some vegans/vegetarians.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/dec/07/lab-grown-chick...
I guess it depends on where you draw the line? The chicken isn't killed, but I assume it's anesthetized, and surgery is performed on it to get the biopsy sample.
Is that cruel? Do you refuse to eat any product that came from that biopsy?
Why don't we make food out of humans instead?
I think it makes more sense for these products (impossible, beyond, ..) to:
1 - Not worry too much about existing vegetarians / vegans
2 - Put more attention towards the growing number of people who eat meat less frequently
3 - Get prices below real meat and then, I think, it's game over
But I think all these meat alternatives are a great thing for meat lovers who try to reduce their consumption for ethical reasons.
For me, yep. What prevents me from eating vegan is the effort required to find, prepare, and get the macro nutrient profile I need. I’ll generally buy the “most organic” chicken I can find as a small token towards attempting less cruelty, and would probably happily pay three to four times the cost of chicken for a lab-brown substitute.
I'm vegan and sway towards of not wanting to eat anything from an animal. So as curious as I am, it's still a no for me.
But I approve for that it would be nice to see less slaughter caused by those who do eat meat.
The amount of suffering the animal who's cell is used has to endure to grow the lab owned meat is in no relation to the amount of suffering a cow who is being milked has to endure.
Therefore, I consider lab meat vegan in spirit, just like gelatin (e.g. not one pig less dies if you eat some licorice with gelatin in it).
Meanwhile, vegans eat avocados, which have a massive impact on the environment, and there's barely anyone in the vegan community who opposes that cause its aligned to the animal suffering dogma, and its almost like a cult, too.
Do gelatin manufacturers receive their animal parts for free? If they pay for them then it increases the value of animal farming, which will make some otherwise marginally unprofitable animals profitable.
If you want to make an impact, just eating one piece of meat less a week has more impact than quitting eating whatever amount of licorice with gelatin it is you are eating.
Another irrelevant one is rennet. Yes, a calve gets slaughtered for rennet, but calves already get slaughtered and one calve stomach is used for, say, 100.000 cheeses. It makes no impact as a vegetarian to therefore not eat cheese made with rennet. Just like it makes no sense to avoid lab meat because an animal suffered from it. At one point, it gets ridiculous, and its harmful for the cause (be it animal welfare, environmental welfare, or personal health).
This doesn't lay true, Those who are not vegan also eat avocados too. And likely at a higher rate then those who are if your going to throw that remark. Humans are a massive impact on this planet and wasteful resource.
Regarding to tires it's about time that changes as well. Rubber is such a destructive material to the environment and very toxic. However as far as I know animals are not being bred and slaughtered deliberately to be made in to tires.
No, I don't own a car. Yes I do walk. Yes I do drive, and yes I do my best to protect the environment. I even have my own litter picker and go out every-night picking up trash off the streets from those of the likes of you dropping it.
Animal slaughter for anything is wrong. Animals have long-been put as second class and that's what needs to change. Why?, why not. And your a prime example of someone who's first class who clearly shows; you don't really care.
That's what needs to change in the world. You. How much meat do you eat? Cut that amount in half. You don't need to stop but with demand so stupidly high because of people demanding it for convenience is what's wrong with this planet. Having meat for special occasions, I have no issue with that. If the animal is your own cattle and used for dinner, okay if the animal hasn't been abused. Cows need to be milked otherwise they get ill. That's fine.
The issues I have is that when an animal are bred deliberately, tortured and inhumanely treated for your self-indulgence. Sold for greed and profit or used as painful experiments (cosmetics) that's where it's wrong.
I'm a environmentalist activist which vegan is only just a sub-category of.
Being all-out honest I don't even like vegan products, they taste crap. Cheese is icky, their butter is meh. It has a long-way to go before it can come to anything. But I still hold to my views of it's time to stop eating animals, using animals for ones selflessness. Why are we still using animals, that's a question which no one can ever seem to answer.
As an example, chicken are animal welfare unfriendly, whereas they're environment friendly. As are insects; a very cheap and reliable resource of protein. The interests of an animal welfare activist are not always aligned with the interests of an environmentalist activist (I don't even like the term 'activist' TBH, as it implies the others do nothing).
I also have a litter picker, and re: "the likes of you": no, I don't consciously throw litter away on the street. I even keep plastic with me to recycle at home.
I don't follow any dogma, except I try to reduce my impact.
> That's what needs to change in the world. You. How much meat do you eat? Cut that amount in half.
You preach to the converted. I barely eat meat as it is, I often eat vegan, too. But what I am not going to care about is the examples I mentioned (another one is insect protein as insects don't have a CNS) throughout this thread, as their impact on animal welfare is very minimal. Just having one person eating one time a week no meat is going to have more impact.
You said vegans eat less avocado than non-vegans. I'm confident statistical analysis on that will prove otherwise.
> Animal slaughter for anything is wrong. Animals have long-been put as second class and that's what needs to change. Why?, why not. And your a prime example of someone who's first class who clearly shows; you don't really care.
I actually do care but I try to be realistic and practical. My approach is long-term. Most people eat meat, and they're not going to change that. They like the taste, they like the structure. If lab meat is a 1:1 copy of that, and it can be priced competitively, there's no more need for the bio industry. Its going to be a massive blow for animal suffering, world-wide. More impact than all of the people who are vegan combined.
> Why are we still using animals, that's a question which no one can ever seem to answer.
That's akin to the question why we still use fossil fuels. Because it has its advantages. For example, as you put:
> Being all-out honest I don't even like vegan products, they taste crap.
I actually like a lot of the vegetarian and vegan products, but they're generally not priced competitively, and the taste isn't 1:1 (though there's been a lot of improvement last 20 years -- 10 of which I was a full-time vegetarian, and 2 of which I was a full-time vegan).
While I've not read the book you linked but I saw at as attempt of as strike /for/ meat. My assumption is that this is the internet those who use social media enjoy being vindictive on the basis there is more evil then good on the internet. It enlightens me that your someone who does care to which I will take back my remark and apologize. Sorry.
I too don't like the word activist. It has a horrible concatenation to it. I normally just stick around with environmentalist.
> You said vegans eat less avocado than non-vegans.
I go on my view of products used in commercial food. Guacamole and the likes are all unnecessarily products sold to the supermarket consumer I would view as high amount. Personally I dislike the taste.
> I actually do care but I try to be realistic and practical. My approach is long-term. Most people eat meat, and they're not going to change that. They like the taste, they like the structure. If lab meat is a 1:1 copy of that, and it can be priced competitively, there's no more need for the bio industry. Its going to be a massive blow for animal suffering, world-wide. More impact than all of the people who are vegan combined.
I agree wholly and I work on the same basis. I can't convert someone, why should they listen to me? And I am not someone who is for preaching. I'll express my concerns above allowing the other person to take and think. I of-course listen and understand those to who do eat meat. And those who do, I won't shame, life is made of choices, you do you. But for me, I don't partly because my moral compass says no, like for the reasons above. I don't eat sugar either as that again is an destructive product of the devil.
> That's akin to the question why we still use fossil fuels. Because it has its advantages.
Money is a large factor but I don't have the time to debate, but I would argue that the advantages given are themselves disadvantages. I would argue that the con's outweighs the pro's and that it's destructive all around. From manufacturing to usage.
Thank you for the civil discussion :).
I'm a former vegan, for me veganism is almost like a cult. The amount of flak you receive when you don't adhere to the (ridiculous) standards is unreal, and the hypocrisy is both very real as well as harmful.
And regardless, for some, after avoiding animal products for a long time the thought of eating them can come to be unappealing.
1) Animal well-being.
2) Environmental well-being.
3) Personal health well-being.
You may substitute well-being with suffering, and there's also a nuance between death and staying alive but using (e.g. milking).
[EDIT: I suppose there's a fourth, a psychological reason how some people find certain products 'impure' to eat. But I'm not sure how I'd define that group.]
I don't think lab-grown meat is suitable for vegans. Taking a cell biopsy is no different from taking milk or eggs from a living animal.
It's probably suitable for vegetarians though.
Similarly, there are people who have been vegetarian their entire life because that's their culture. India and Italy are home to the largest vegetarian populations.
These people don't wish they could eat meat any more than you wish you could eat grass.
Some may.
Some won't.
Some will argue you can't be vegan and eat lab meat.
Me, personally, would love to switch over to lab grown meat as soon as it is declared safe and an environment friendly alternative.
Hmm, just noticed that there were parts of the article I missed, the header formatting is a bit weird there. Somewhat lower than $50 a chicken nugget does sound like you might only want to try this for novelty.
I do think there is quite a lot of potential in that area, if people can be convinced that "lab-grown" isn't a bad thing.
People are conditioned to buy meat burgers, and price isn't a problem as long as they can afford it. An ultra cheap lab-grown chicken burger wouldn't be able to compete against a more expensive meat one without a big cultural shift.
Where are you? I've never seen this in any country I've been to. If you buy the raw ingredients and make them yourself then it might work out cheaper, but if you but a package of ready made veggieburgers or order them at a restaurant then they cost the same as meat.
> The decision paves the way for San Francisco-based startup Eat Just to sell lab-grown chicken meat.
Why would you hamstring your own startup by giving it such a terrible name?
Compare with, say, "International Business Machines makes a big blue computer". This doesn't quite make sense (semantically) if you read it literally rather than understanding the start to be the name of a company; it sounds like some machines own the computer. But even then, it parses (syntactically) into the correct parts of speach so it's easier to extract the real meaning without conscious effort.
Company names that end in a verb, like Just Eat, are also a little odd. But verbs have less of a habit of tightly binding to the word following them, so it's not quite as confusing as if the final word is an adjective or adverb.
India, for example, as a pretty long history of great vegetarian recipes. Why not take a similar approach, instead of coming up with better ways to make fake things appear real?
Well, it isn't. I've spent half a year backpacking around India being mostly vegetarian, because most of the meat food in dhabas was so full of bones (more than actual meat) and mutton so chewy, that vegetarian recipes were better (and safer) meals.
Its not for everybody, and not for all the time. This is very valid approach since billions people can't be forced out of meat. We can iterate on it, make it better, cheaper, more eco/animal-friendly. But go ahead and live by your words, nobody stopping you.
This exists, and continues happen, all around the world. People didnt stop cooking vegetarian/vegan meals to make way for lab grown meat.
"We" can do more than one thing at once!!
However, lots of wonderful resturants and chefs are creating vegitarian and vegan food that in no way immitates meat based food.
I also think, though, that if we can create lab grown meat that is identical to meat but doesn't involve suffering or enviornmental harm, that's a win. Most vegans I have polled would eat it, as long as their stomach could handle it.
All I'm saying is that I wish this were the primary focus, as I think it's far more fruitful long-term.
It might be better for their health and the environment if they learned to eat a wider variety of foods. Vegetarian food is incredibly diverse; more so than the fake diversity of putting 20 toppings in 2^20 different combinations on top of ground beef. But that's not nearly as strong as cognitive dissonance people have to sustain around knowing that animals suffer and die for their dinner.
I personally don't see what is lacking in this area, can you elaborate on what you think is missing?
Do you have vegetarian or vegan cookbooks? Just like there meaty counterparts, they usualy have more recipes than you can try in a year or so. Very appetizing, and there are local ones (focusing more on the typical ingredients from where I live) as well as more global ones. That's why I don't fully understand what you mean. Only when I just switched to not buying meat it was a bit of a problem to find meals, but that's completely logical if you have no experience and only books with meat in the recipes.
Wrt India: I just bought a really nice Indian cookbook half a year ago, only vegetarian meals, and only the 'real' Indian food i.e. what indian people actually eat at home which depending on where you live is quite different from what restaurants offer as Indian.
What I am suggesting is a cultural effort to remake this mental model, rather than simply make better "meats".
I’m got a huge meat eater, but I crave burgers every once in a while. Unless you have some way to codify that out of me, an impossible burger is the next best thing.
I mean, I want lab grown meat. That sounds great.
The focus of...whom?
And , would these have the same boner effects as the original ones ?