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Comment by blondie9x | Hacker News Reader

@asmertgen thoughts on this research https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-sca... ?

This is a very good article. I place lab-grown in the same mind bucket as carbon capturing. Both are futuristic technologies that don't exist today (not really) but get a lot of media hype. For both, there's a much easier solution that exists today (e.g, switching to renewable energies, switching to plant-based meats) that are great and are also gaining a lot of traction. With both tech, it's unclear if they will ever work at scale. For both cases, it's now more important than ever that we reduce emissions today, and not hope for a maybe technofix in the future.

I don't mean to dunk on your research and proprietary tech. I'm just often pissed to see that these kind of tech is completely overblown and overhyped in the mainstream and media. The worst part is, it gives people an excuse to not change their behavior today: "I'll switch to lab-grown meat when they sell", "I won't cut back on flying, doesn't matter since they will recapture that carbon anyways very soon".

Asking/forcing people to change their behavior doesn't have a great track record. Given that constraint, putting effort into tech like this makes sense, especially if it's in addition to making behavior changes less difficult, like you propose. It's not an either-or.

I didn't say we need to ask people to change their behavior. I know that that's futile. My point is that great alternatives already exist, that don't demand a behavior change. For example, renewable energies and plant-based meats (Impossible and others).

You did, though, it's right in your comment: "excuse to not change their behavior today."

And no, plant-based meat isn't there yet. It's something I often choose myself for environmental reasons, but it's still strictly worse than real beef. And non-ground meat substitutes aren't even in the ballpark.

I'd bet you a lot of money that most people can't make out an Impossible burger vs. a beef burger in a blind taste. Tasting has to do a lot with psychology (see Pepsi vs. Coke blind tastes), and that's why people think plant-based meat sucks (there's a big variance in quality, agreed). Lab-grown meat won't change this fact.

We're at the point of disagreeing over opinion, but I'm pretty confident you'd lose that bet :) I say this as someone who usually orders the Impossible option. It is the first plant-based meat I've had that actually crosses the threshold into "good enough," but it's still noticeably inferior to a good beef burger. Most plant-based meats genuinely do suck, I prefer just forgoing those and doing a mostly-vegetarian diet, personally.

I think lab-grown meat has a much better chance than plant-based meats of satisfying the "want" of meat, while drastically lowering the environmental effects of eating meat. And again, I think pursuing both options is the best choice. I eat less meat thanks to Impossible, and I hope they continue to succeed.

These both demand behaviour changes. Using renewable energy is a behaviour change (although no one's running their own oil refinery in their backyard) even if it's at a different tier and eating plant based meats is CERTAINLY a behaviour change. I think asking everyone to start eating mediocre faux-ground-beef is a pretty big behaviour change.

Following that logic, eating lab-grown meat will is also a behavior change. So, my point still stands.

I didn't say it wasn't a behaviour change. This was a response to your statement that your solutions didn't demand behaviour changes, when they both demand significant behaviour changes.

My argument, which I have yet to state in this dialogue, is that lab grown meat offers the opportunity to provide an experience very similar to eating "real" meat at a lower cost to the consumer, thus making it a viable alternative in ways that today's current plant based meat substitutes aren't.

I am definitely open to plant based meat substitutes taking that role, but in their current form that would still require a large behaviour change by a large percentage of the population.

Now renewable energy is different discussion and that requires a much smaller number of people to make (albeit much larger) behaviour changes.

Fair enough. But the reality is that lab grown meat doesn't exist, so we are not certain how it will taste. Plant-based meats have come a long way in the past 5 years. Let's see where they are in another 5 years, at which point lab grown meat still won't exist at a scale and price point that's available to the mainstream consumer.

I don't have anything against people pursuing lab grown meat research. I'm just a bit pissed that "futuristic" solutions get so much more mainstream media attention than practical solutions that already have an impact today.

Fair points. I like that we have lots of different smart people tackling the problem from different angles, though. I’m optimistic about technology here because I don’t think people will trade concrete quality of life now for abstract quality of life in the future.

What’s your favourite plant based meat? I’ll try it next time I go get groceries.

Impossible is by far the best (I moved back to Europe couple of years ago and sadly they don't sell it here yet). I also heard their new nuggets are great, but haven't tried them yet.

Beyond Meat is also good, but I think Impossible is another ballgame.

Tofurkey also makes great cold cuts (haven't tried their bugers yet).

And then there are a bunch of smaller brands making great products, too. But it's a bit of a hit and miss with them, so you need to try a bunch to find something you like.

For carbon capture, I don't think its the case that equivalent technology exists today. On our current trajectory the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is going to keep going up for the next 10-20 years, regardless of how fast renewable energy is deployed. And to be in the best position to stop and reverse CO2 levels we need to start developing carbon capture today, for it to be ready to deploy at scale in a decade or two.

I get the risk of giving people permission not to change behavior, but I don't think we actually see that happening today. Tesla sells every car it produces, and more and more governments and companies are making meaningful climate commitments and starting to follow through on them.

To address climate change we need all hands on deck, and that means exploring every possible approach to the problem. We can walk and chew gum at the same time, and don't need to write off technologies when they are in their infancy.

Great question. We had this discussion internally quite a lot. Since my co-founder comes from launching rockets let me use this analogy: 20 years ago Elon Musk was though to be crazy when he wanted to build reusable rockets. But now it works. It took a lot of smart minds, effort and money. But they did it. We believe it will be the same with cultivated meat. Completely changing a system, in our case food system, is always a risk and a bit crazy. We agree that the hype is not great. We don't want to make to bold promises. But we do want to change something and we will work hard to make our part to change a system.

Do you have a clear ideas of what will enable your solution surpass the $50-chicken-nuggets unit economics mentioned? Is that a mid term goal of yours?

If a batch gets infected and must be discarded, how is it disposed of, and what are the environmental risks of that waste material? How is it sterilized before getting dumped? And where is it dumped?

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28621288

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