Is lab-grown meat the next frontier in ethical eating? – CBC News
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The beef we purchase produces 300 hamburgers from 1/4 cow not counting the steaks, ribs and roasts, from 40 acres of land shared with 20 others cows.
For instance, the Texas Land Association gives guidance of 50-75 acres per cow for natural wooded pastures. If you develop a "managed pasture" (ie, you're driving tractors over it to spray fertilizer, have irrigation, etc) you could get that down to 2-6 acres per cow. Source: https://landassociation.org/how-many-cows-per-acre-in-texas-...
Living tissue collects organic freeloaders in the forms of airborne bacteria and pests.
A living cow fights off those freeloaders with its immune system and defends against the pests with its hair, skin, and physical reactions to their presence.
A vat of synthetically cultured cow meat has no hair, no skin, no physical reactions and no immune system.
In 2015, Ice Cream manufacturers Blue Bell suffered a listeria contamination that hospitalized 5 people and has had to pay $17.5 million dollars in damages. That was using products safely grown from a living cow but not properly handled by the humans responsible for it.
How will we guard against known and unknown issues in the face of quite fatigable humans who now not only have to follow the safety precautions of safely handling post-living cow meat as well as having to safely and sanitarily grow the meat without the natural protections that the living cow provides and doing all of that for less than the costs associated with feeding and tending to a cow?
All of that being said, I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it's far, far more difficult than people are making it out to be and it has many, many more risks to human health and welfare than are covered in these articles.