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Comment by kikokikokiko | Hacker News Reader

"And hopefully it'll eventually be cheaper than growing animals too."

Just as simply planting a tree and letting the sun provide the energy for it's growth will always beat those "synthetic trees" people like to hype from time to time, I can expect to never see a synthetic process that is more cost effective to create "meat" than simply letting nature do it's thing. Down here in Brazil you basically give the animals it's vaccines and let them graze for a few years, you can't beat that. And btw, I'll rather starve than eat anything syntesized that can be made, cheaper and for sure tastier, naturally.

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What about something like lab diamonds? You can give nature billions of years to "do it's thing" or we can produce the same result in a lab in a matter of weeks without any suffering and at a fraction of the cost. Synthetic processes can be quite efficient and it sounds like you're discarding them completely which is a little shortsighted.

I'd argue synthetic diamonds and synthetic "life" are pretty different. We also don't eat diamonds.

No, but we send people down into deep pits to dig them up with very little regard for their wellbeing.

There's an amount of suffering "required" for the production of both of these things. A diamond itself is not screaming in agony as we prepare it for use, but there's a human cost involved.

Creating Lab meat is in no way creating synthetic "life", it is more akin to synthetic diamonds than synthetic life

What about lab grown ice, then? When that was new, people complained it didn't have the same healthy green[0] color as the natural stuff.

[0] i.e. from the algae trapped in it when it formed

Synthetic diamonds are also objectively superior to natural ones.

Analogy aside, just because the process has been evolutionarily optimized it doesn't mean it's the most efficient way of doing it. There's a lot of other evolutionary pressure where energy is expended in ways that don't benefit obtaining the arbitrary end product.

Say synthetic wood as your example, I would be willing to bet that a dedicated system that extracts CO2 for the carbon and combines it with water to make cellulose could be made more efficient than any type of photosynthesis. You can sell carbon credits and oxygen on top of that too.

If it was evolutionarily optimized, it most likely is not the most efficient way of doing something but it most certainly is the most resilient way.

Potato blight? soon to be available for: meat!

Is a fungal disease that ravages crop organisms grown in the open (wild varieties included) supposed to be an argument against growing food in a sterile, controlled environment?

The source of potato blight is from the genetic similarity of the potatoes grown, as potatoes clone themselves when grown from potato seed (small potatoes) rather than "true" potato seeds, from their flowers. They are naturally selected, then naturally cloned en masse.

Lab grown meat will have the same problem assuming the cells have little to no genetic diversity. Even if grown in a sterile environment, they could become susceptible to a blight-like organism (virus, bacteria, fungus, etc) once on grocery store shelves.

> Lab grown meat will have the same problem assuming the cells have little to no genetic diversity.

I know it isn't on quite the same scale as literally cloning the cells, but livestock isn't a very deep gene pool. Lots of selective breeding, by the same mindset that gave european nobility weak chins.

I agree. Lab grown meat seems like a further step towards the preexisting industrialization of meat.

Removing the sentience from cows does reduce animal suffering, though I wonder if other things couldn't be done to preserve genetic diversity. Like maybe breeding oysters without ganglia, as they are barely alive to begin with. Farmed oysters are also better for the environment than wild ones.

Ah... You should look into the sets of processes around livestock family lineage tracking. Farmers have to swap out large parts of their herds over time to prevent inbreeding. All part and parcel of what you sign up for in Agriculture.

> it most likely is not the most efficient way of doing something but it most certainly is the most resilient way

For that purpose. Photosynthesis is horribly inefficient for any use other than making more plant.

What do you mean? Does a more efficient way of biologically using sun's energy exist?

There down in Brazil, rainforest are being cut down at alarming rate in service to animal agriculture. It will be easier to preserve the Brazilian rainforests if there was some other way to grow meat that didn't involve huge grazing pastures for animals.

I don't think deforestation is for pasture? I thought it was for animal feed crops like soy

Is there is a meaningful difference between removal of rainforest for pasture vs animal feed? They both seem to be "in service to animal agriculture" to me at first glance.

The issue is that 60%+ of all crops are for animal feed.

It's done to renovate or create grazing land too.

The problem with growing whole animal for meat, suffering aside, is that it's extremely inefficient. Most of the energy an animal consumes is used to sustain its organism — which, for the purpose of food, is a waste.

> Just as simply planting a tree and letting the sun provide the energy for it's growth will always beat those "synthetic trees" people like to hype from time to time, I can expect to never see a synthetic process that is more cost effective to create "meat" than simply letting nature do it's thing.

Evidence? Do you have any background in the field? It's easy as a layperson to imagine that not having to support the life of the entire organism and just growing the meat directly could absolutely be less energy intensive.

It’s not though. Lab grown meat requires several breakthroughs before it can possibly compete with cattle. Growing large amounts of meat in vats requires a clean environment, because the vats don’t have an immune system. All of the cells need to receive oxygen further complicating scaling and they still have to be fed. It’s a very complex and intensive process.

https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-sca...

For evidence, my extended family down here raises cattle to this day. It's hard to beat doing hardly anything other than let the beasts eat grass for a couple of years. Try to beat that for a cost of goods.

If we go off thermodynamics there is a lot of energy being wasted in producing the meat, even if that energy isn't expended by those tending the cattle.

To say nothing of the animal suffering involved, we currently expend ~10x the calories we get from the beef producing it (IIRC). If we could get even to 5x that'd be a huge environmental win.

Edit: Looking it up, beef sits at 25x, and chicken 9x. So, a lot of room for efficiency improvements.

does that include bioavailability of those calories to humans?

from this anecdotal source: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/sbfn6b/c...

1lb of grass to humans = 32kcals / lb

1lb of grass to cows = 800kcals / lb

800/32 = 25x

Assuming you grow something other than grass on that pasture to eat (also assuming it isn't marginal land which makes up 2/3 of agricultural land), wouldn't that other plant extract approximately the same amount of calories from the sun? And wouldn't the bioavailability of that plant also be lesser than that of meat?

First, most cows are not grass fed. They are largely fed things that have bioavailable calories for humans, like soy. Likewise, chickens mainly consume corn.

Second, farm animals are not 100% efficient in absorbing calories and converting them to meat calories, so the 25x going from grass to beef is meaningless, assuming you were attempting o make some connection to my 25x figure on beef production efficiency.

Third, agricultural land is not all used for meat, and I'd need a source for that 2/3 being marginal figure. Looking it up I see ~2/3 (60%) of ag land is used for beef, but it is not all marginal. Beef is the main cause of Amazon deforestation for example.

Forth, if we just go by land use to globally consumed calories, cows, despite using 60% of ag land, only make up 2% of consumed calories. If we make an absurd assumption that 50% of all calories come from non-farmed sources, that still leaves 40% of ag land producing 48% of the world's calories in comparison, which would include non-beef meat as well.

Finally, just because the land wouldn't have much use to humans if we didn't use it for cows, doesn't mean it wouldn't benefit the planet, and us, if we stopped using it for such.

I think there is a big difference between intensive animal farming (growing animal feed like corn and soy to then grow animals with) and letting animals graze on natural grassland. For example grazing works in non-arable land (eg hills / mountains / rocky areas) and is therefore (I'm guessing) a more efficient form of food production for these areas than whatever else could be done there. On the other hand, growing plants on farms specifically to feed livestock, probably not very energy efficient compared to growing plants for direct human consumption on the same farms.

Ok, switch from cattle to bison then. Lab growing isn't going to be economically feasible for a long time yet.

Are bison more thermodynamically efficient than cows?

This was asking about energy efficiency, though. The vast majority of the energy ever consumed by an animal is used in processes other than growth. The ability to grow meat without it needing to be part of an organism that has to be able to also grow a skeleton, reproductive system, be able to move and think, and other energetically expensive processes in addition to growing muscle, seemingly has to be possible for less energy cost than supporting an entire animal lifecycle.

Whether it can be done entirely using solar is another question, but free-grazing animals that only consume energy from local grass are not anywhere near prolific enough to feed the entire planet.

The price of goods aren’t the only relevant cost here, there’s also the carbon cost. As a Brazilian rancher, you must be aware of the massive cost the world is paying for Amazonian deforestation to produce arable land.

Eating grass, producing waste, requiring space, labor, and disposal of concentrated waste (too much cow dung goes beyond fertilization) is energy intensive, which is what the parent comment was bringing up.

Cost goes beyond the labor (which is what I am taking your comment to focus on)

1. Grass costs nothing, it's already there and we can't eat it. You have to shred it so it doesn't grow too high anyway.

2. Again, pastures are already there, nothing else is on them.

3. Perfect, that's more jobs, but I know small family farms with 100 head of cattle with no extra ranch hands.

4. Not really, unless they are very large farms, but at very large scales making artificial meet will have challenges too, much more complex than shoveling shit.

> 1. Grass costs nothing, it's already there and we can't eat it. You have to shred it so it doesn't grow too high anyway.

> 2. Again, pastures are already there, nothing else is on them.

We’ve gone way beyond pasture just “being there” to rely on for animal agriculture at the rate we do it. Look at BLM grazing rates which are there to pay for renewing the grassland but to rate limit how many animal graze or the grassland would be destroyed. Amazon in Brazil is also being cut back constantly to create new pasture land

> 3. Perfect, that's more jobs, but I know small family farms with 100 head of cattle with no extra ranch hands.

If doing things inefficiently just to create jobs is a good idea, we might as well ban shovels and backhoes and make everyone dig with spoons

> We’ve gone way beyond pasture just “being there” to rely on for animal agriculture at the rate we do it. Look at BLM grazing rates which are there to pay for renewing the grassland but to rate limit how many animal graze or the grassland would be destroyed. Amazon in Brazil is also being cut back constantly to create new pasture land

A large part of America was already grassland. Many other parts the land aren't great, but cattle can still graze over it even with really sparse or dry vegetation.

> If doing things inefficiently just to create jobs is a good idea, we might as well ban shovels and backhoes and make everyone dig with spoons

I'm talking about families raising cattle on their private land and continuing to do so, not about banning shovels, backhoes, or meat.

>A large part of America was already grassland. Many other parts the land aren't great, but cattle can still graze over it even with really sparse or dry vegetation.

a large part of America was already grassland, but that doesn't mean it can handle infinite herds, hence the BLM grazing fees[1]. This is also ignoring the fact that I was referring to pasture land globally when I included references to the Amazon.

>I'm talking about families raising cattle on their private land and continuing to do so, not about banning shovels, backhoes, or meat.

Private land means nothing when you say "Perfect, that's more jobs". You should talk about how inefficiency is acceptable if it spreads work across more small businesses then, and I will argue with you on that point. I care 0% about family's keeping their small businesses together if it means the rest of us have high prices. If those families take more money to create the same amount of food as a large scale farm, then I give zero shits if they lose the family farm. I would prefer that an enterprise takes over, produces food at a lower cost, and then sells me food at that lower cost due to the competition that capitalism causes.

Could you please explain to me why I should care about the family farm asking for my tax dollars to subsidize them while they complain that my liberal lifestyle is unacceptable and should be prevented by law?

[1]https://www.blm.gov/press-release/blm-and-forest-service-ann...

I have extended family doing the same in South Brazil. But those cows require a bit of care, a fair chunk of land, and release a large amount of methane. Lab meat will beat it in the end one day when all costs are considered.

I'm sure parent meant the field on lab grown meat, not naturally grown.

Is that how chickens are raised in big farms here in Brazil too? It's funny how I hear some people say they'll never eat lab meat and it will never taste as good as meat from an animal, and then they sit there drinking their Coke or their Pepsi because they don't like fruit juice.

Soon it will only be cheaper if you're completely discounting the price paid to the ecosystem. In fact with a full accounting I'd wager it's already cheaper.

How many unique species that evolved over tens of millions of years have been lost forever, in the last 50 years alone, due to clear-cutting in Brazil?

How much clean water and topsoil has been polluted and washed away?

How much carbon has been released? How much suffering from butchered animals?

I really don't know how one can be so flippant about this.

Modern industrial agriculture, is what you are describing.

It is very efficient form the POV of $/calorie. But it is terribly inefficient from a hectare/calorie.

The purpose of modern industrial agriculture was to free up labour for industry. It has been a huge success in that.

Applying technology to the food production system is IMO a good idea. I think we should be sensible. Using robotics and regenerative agriculture has huge potential to increase production, increase the quality of land husbandry, and sequester carbon in retained topsoil.

Applying technology to growing meat in vats? It is hard to see how it could improve the situation. The one thing it does is free the consumer from being part of a killing chain. I can see no reason to believe that it will improve the system in any other respect. I retain an open mind about that, but am yet to be convinced.

If you do not want to be part of a killing chain, perhaps the best way is to become a vegetarian rather than open a factory?

> It is very efficient form the POV of $/calorie.

It's probably only efficient because farms don't have to cover the cost of their methane+CO2 emissions and water usage+pollution. I'd like to see these subsidies eliminated.

> I really don't know how one can be so flippant about this.

Easy -- think for yourself!

Easier to get rid of all the useless eaters. Are you sure that doesn't include you?

Aye, but it will be nice when mining Luna to have locally sourced meat instead of just yeast concentrate.

1) your externalizing the VAST environmental costs from grazing: methane production, vast amounts of land dedicated to grazing, plus likely there is still farming/crops to feed them over winter. Googling leads to (accuracy undetermined) that 41% of land is dedicated in the US to meat production.

2) you are assuming (because you externalize / push onto the future generations the cost) that grazing is the most efficient means for meat tissue production. I doubt it is. If artificial meat can beat cows wandering around eating grass for three years by a substantial margin, which I think is theoretically possible, then grazing will be a niche production.

This technology is desperately needed for climate change mitigation, on the scale of electrification of consumer transport. It's not just the methane and farming, it's also all that land that could be used as carbon sinks and biodiversity.

https://www.arespectfullife.com/2018/08/05/41-of-u-s-land-is...

The big issue is that the world wants meat. If we can reduce the carbon footprint by 1/10th, which I think is possible, then it will be a very good think for a sustainable human race.

What makes you think a human optimized process specifically designed to be simpler/faster/tastier than slaughter won't be? The whole reason it's getting research and work done on it is for the reasons you claim are important, so how are you reaching the conclusion that it's somehow worse?

You can beat it because you don't need a few years, acres of land, and a large amount of water.

> Down here in Brazil you basically give the animals it's vaccines and let them graze for a few years

Let me fix this for you:

> Down here in Brazil you basically destroy a million square kilometers of old growth rainforest, give the animals it's vaccines, and let them graze for a few years

You have no idea what you are talking about. Brazil is a continental country, I'm sure you know about it. My family and I come from the southern part, it's basically pampa downn here, a green savana. That's why Argentina, Uruguai and south Brazil are the best places to raise cattle in the world, it's just grass from horizon to horizon. The average HN user is so oblivious to anything other than this idiotic 1st world mainstream view it shocks me. The propaganda about the Amazon destruction is hilarious coming from a brazilian native point of view.

> why Argentina, Uruguai and south Brazil are the best places to raise cattle in the world, it's just grass from horizon to horizon

Uruguay’s environment is massively altered by wide-scale cattle raising [1]. The savannahs are being destroyed, deforestation lowering water tables and effluence and run-off contaminating what groundwater remains. They’re great places to rear cattle. That doesn’t mean they have no environmental impact.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_in_Urug...

yah, I always had the impression that Brazil was predominantly rain forest. I'm curious what percentage of the country's land mass is deep/tall Amazon rain forest. If we came up with some cheap threshold like at least 10 trees in 100 square meters each at least 10m tall or something, what percentage of Brazil's land mass would satisfy that constraint?

I heard of the pampas in Argentina before I think through literature from Jorge Luis Borges. I never knew that Brazil intersected with that region down at the southern tip https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pampa.

The Amazon is only a thing at the upper third of the country, and rain forest, probably just the western side. I would guess 30% of the land area of Brazil. 100% of the south and north east, 90% costal areas, and 75% of the midwest are NOT rain forests. People don't even seem to know outside of Brazil that the north eastern part is basically a huge savana, with some areas being more like a desert than a savana even.

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