The world’s biggest cultured meat factory is under construction in the U.S. | Hacker News Reader

The world’s biggest cultured meat factory is under construction in the U.S.

singularityhub.com

65 pointscheinyeanlim83 comments

At this point I think companies should be required to run long clinical tests for the "foods" they produce/process. The food industry became an out of control experiment with world's population as guinea pigs.

I've long believed that about many consumer products like chocolate or candy. Why should it be allowed to sell and market this stuff to children when longterm damage is somewhat unknown or known to be quite bad. No, saying "everything in moderation" is not a valid religious dogma to use here. Moderation is a term used for "eat the correct amounts" and what is correct is up for the discussion.

With that approach you'll also have to do the same for rice, wheat, salt, butter, milk, carbonated water, etc. Basically every ingredients we daily use, like the ones currently classified as Generally Safe in the US [0]

I'm not sure any country is ready to go through requalification through long and extensive health trials of every single food product they've been using litteraly centuries. That's a crazy monumental effort (there is no consensus on food that doesn't need any moderation, so yes, it becomes a all or nothing issue)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generally_recognized_as_safe

Indeed. About a decade and a half ago I went backpacking, which plucked me out of my western European reality for a few months.

When I returned, I was very shocked every time I walked into any convenience store for a snack to realise that these places pretty much exclusively sold nothing but sugary, nutritionally void garbage wrapped in plastic. If there was a deli, the food products were the lowest imaginable quality.

At that moment it felt like a very large and problematic social addiction. I'd normalised this all my life.

Where did you go that the local grocery Marts weren’t just stuffed full of dried and canned foods? Fresh food is a huge luxury

Hard agree - all the antibiotics and hormones in meat, there's no telling what the consequences in the human body might be.

Yes. Same goes for any of the "meat" replacement, or maybe even the "milks".

Also we should evaluate any new "natural" breed or cultivar in same standard as GMO.

I think something being overlooked is this creating more centralised control of food production. Especially, if it comes with patents and licensing.

This is not a good thing for equitable and available food supply, no matter how it looks on the pamphlet.

Wow. I think the world will be so much better with less cruelty to animals if this works. But I’m not so psyched about eating lab grown meat myself because of the unknowns

Let's hope this continues well beyond meat and to the point where we can culture human tissue replacements. New organs, skin, hair, blood. All monoclonal with non-reactive ABO/MHC/etc. antigen groups.

I think it's the other way around - the medical research around tissue growth inspired artificial meat technology.

That could easily flip if fake meat turns out to be a big industry.

Don't eat farmed meat either then. There's plenty of evidence against it. No need for unknowns.

What do you mean by evidence against it?

Health risks, animal suffering, damage to the environment. The evidence is endless.

From a nutritional standpoint I'd never touch this with a 10 foot pole.

The ridicoulous belief that they can dump some vitamin powders into this and then say this is in any shape or form nutritionously adequate is absurd.

Also have fun you and your children being guniea pigs for a novel food that humans have never eaten.

The last time we tried such an experiment (~1950 and today) the USA ended up with 30M out of 300M total population (10%) with diabetes.

Kids are getting liver disease, which until ~1980 was unheard of (only in alchoholics up to that point).

Not to mention the destruction of human teeth and the explosion in other diseases related to metabolic illness and obesity.

Knowing this, I have no idea how people can be stupid enough to feed any novel "food" to themselves or their children.

Do you have any technical reasoning or sources that show that lab grown meat is “something with vitamin powders” on it and doesn’t have nutrients?

You seem to be familiar with the process of growing cells, what part of the process is the dangerous one for humans?

The dangerous part is "that it's a novel food that was never eaten by humans".

All cultures that eat bad food have died, so there is a survivorship bias because we now think "just eat this food": but only cultures who came up with a healthy diet have survived throughout history.

Nothing guarantees you that this food is "healthy" since we cannot analize the long term of effects of these foods with any modern technology.

> This huge investment seems like a bit of a leap of faith considering the company doesn’t have regulatory approval to produce and sell cultivated meat anywhere

Does this happen more often? There are so many challenges for this technology and almost nobody has ever tasted it, and here we go building a huge factory.

I really love the idea, but I'm still pretty sceptic (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28621288) about it being realistic. Sometimes I feel most of these companies are just there to burn venture capital and make bold promises, and there are _many_ of them.

I'll believe it after I tried it for a reasonable price.

Nobody wants to eat artificial meat, but everybody want some other group to eat it.

Meat eaters want vegans to eat this thing instead of soy meat.

Vegans wants meat eaters to eat this thing to prevent animal harm.

Rich people want poor people to eat this instead of insects.

And poor people want rich people to eat this as a punishment.

Many people are not vegetarian because being vegetarian can be hard (can't eat favorite family recipes, order favorite food at restaurants, etc). Anything that makes it easier can cause people to switch.

"Meat eaters want vegans to eat this thing instead of soy meat" - why would meat eaters care about what vegans eat?

> "Meat eaters want vegans to eat this thing instead of soy meat" - why would meat eaters care about what vegans eat?

I did a double take at that too. But after a bit of thought, I think it might actually be true. I'd like to hear the original argument.

Maybe so that they conform to eating meat, and stop introducing surrogates and meat-free variations of established, traditional, culturally sacred dishes. This tends to upset carnivores, from my observations.

> Maybe so that they conform to eating meat,

I don't know anyone that cares what vegans are eating.

I eat meat a couple of times per week. If this is comparable to actual meat in terms of texture, flavour, nutrition, and price, I may drop to around once or twice per year. This feels safer and more environmentally friendly.

> nutrition

If they can make nutritious meat they can also make nutritious pills or jelly, and the smaller form factors will have many more advantages (durability, no cooking etc)

In that respect I'd expect artificial meat to be mostly a ceremonial and/or tasting experience. Which is fine, but is a much narrower target than trying yo cover everything meat does today.

If artificial meat is to be advertised as a meat replacement, it ought to have similar nutritional qualities to real meat. Otherwise we're either misleading consumers into thinking they're getting benefits that they're not, or creating mental effort for them as they now have to eat twice to get the same total benefit. The latter is something vegans and vegetarians already have to do; it's tricky to get enough protein and iron in a veggie diet while keeping calories low. If a single product can reduce that mental effort, that's great.

I'd see it in the same framing as artificial sweetners, margarine and other "ersatz" peoducts: they don't need and might not want to have exactly the same properties as what they replace.

In practice less caloric meat, or in general meat that tastes good but has little impact on someone's diet in good or bad ways would be a fantastic product in itself.

I do see what you're saying but there's a crucial difference between sugar and meat. Sugar gives almost no marginal nutritional gain for a modern human. It can be substituted with something "empty" without thinking about it. If you do the same with meat, you have to get the nutrition from somewhere else.

Also, meat is generally a healthy food source. In terms of protein per calorie, chicken breast and steak are up with with pure protein shakes.

Hypothetically, this nutritious pill would satisfy everything I need from a meal, but it's not going to satisfy my stomach's hunger pangs when it's empty. Artificial meat would do both. Jelly could, too, I suppose, but jelly as the only thing I'm eating until I'm full isn't that appetizing.

I want to eat artificial meat! Maybe not the initial product, but I imagine after a few iterations I'd bet they'll be growing freaking wagyu,iberco, and sushi grade blue fin for much cheaper than the real deal

As a meat eater, I hope this succeeds because I think doing without the whole factory farming stuff would be pretty cool.

I don’t think this is true? Anecdotal (would love to see actual studies) but many of my friends and I are vegetarian, and we’d jump at the chance to try this. I miss meat.

I'll eat it! I was just telling my wife that when my dad was early in his career he had to install telecommunications lines in every office and factory and slaughterhouse and place of business you can imagine. After having seen the inside of slaughterhouses, my dad no longer ate hot dogs except from 1 brand only. So growing up whenever we had hot dogs, it was that one brand.

But now with veggie dogs, I don't have to worry about it being lips and tips and other trimmings swept up off the floor, whatever it is, and whatever it tastes like are clean and worry-free. So whether you like hot dogs or not, everybody ought to be able to get into some veggie dogs!

I like that train of thought.

As a vegetarian in childhood, weekly meat-eater in 20's, vegan over a decade since 30th birthday; I don't want anybody to eat artificial/lab-grown meat. They rather eat home-grown animals instead.

One vote to disagree as a middle class happy Beyond meat consumer (and unhappy investor..) -- building a nice burger is a satisfying experience, even more without having to worry about animal welfare, etc

I tasted artificial chicken at Panda Express. It's pretty good.

Early adopting is fun. ;)

Is it possible they'll eventually be able to let people 3D print meat at home?

And what about printing parametrized meats with desired form & texture at home?

And how different would that be from printing cooked or seared meats, in terms of tech? Could the coooking or searing be customized at home or is it cheaper to print as-cooked by design?

Like, this is just my opinion but if this leads to further meat customization, great? What is the downside?

It's not "printed", it's cultured. Not sure about this company's process but the ones I'm familiar with use a method called 'precision fermentation'. It's like regular fermentation but they control exactly what protein is produced by genetically engineering microbes to produce exactly the product that is wanted.

You could theoretically do this at home but for now it would be prohibitively expensive. Who knows maybe in the future there will be companies delivering the starter bacteria and then you can feed them your own nutrient solution in your own tank. I doubt that will be a thing any time soon though. No Star Trek type replicator just yet, sadly.

This is the tip of the iceberg man.

Picture an expecting mother putting the finishing touches on her baby-to-be's room with her fiance but instead of the fetus gestating inside the mother it's sitting in a small sleek artificial womb that looks like a futuristic microwave.

Or imagine a refrigerator that grew fresh chicken eggs for you daily, and had a spout that produced fresh milk right from some artificial breast tissue deep inside the bowels of the machine.

It's kind of frightening but also amazing.

I really want to eat a cellular blend of salmon, pork, beef, and chicken.

I do not totally understand the concept of non-meat meat. If you don't want to eat meat, there are a LOT of alternatives.

What if I like meat but don’t want to be responsible for animal suffering?

Depends on how important animal suffering is vs eating pleasure to you, but you could considered curbing your cravings and just not eating it.

I mean if I can still get that pleasure and not contribute to animal suffering why not do that?

That's not yet a choice.

I’m sure they hadn’t considered that.

Most people don't. They ignore the issue maintain cognitive dissonance, because the choice is too difficult for them.

I don't think it was completely unintended that burying your head in the sand and going back to ignorant bliss is represented by eating a steak in The Matrix.

Then don't eat plants or have pets or deal with people who do either.

It's not a simple issue to just make a big yes/no choice on, much as you might feel good or less guilty for doing so.

eat animals after they die of natural causes

Is that different from becoming vegetarian in any meaningful way? There is 0 availability of such meat, especially not at anything approaching a commercial scale.

Collect and eat road kill then...

Oh wait that's gross so no way. People make choices on what morally fits their views, not on logical solutions.

That’s like saying there are a lot of alternatives to pizza. Sure, I could eat a meatball sub, but it’s not a pizza.

exactly, you can get the same nutrients from other food too. why do you need the exact texture and feel of meat if you don't want to eat meat.

I think there are lots of people who want to eat meat, but feel that it's cruel to animals or bad for the planet to eat it.

I mostly don't eat based on nutrients, but on the flavour and textures I enjoy. Which includes meat.

Why do you need any of that other food either then, just have your soylent green.

Cultured meat is meat, it's just not taken from slaughtered animals. So there's a world of difference between processing vegetable matter and faking it into meat-like substances, vs. culturing meat "humanely" with technology to avoid the perils of factory farming.

All things being equal, the promise is that cultured meat will be equivalent in taste, texture, nutrition, etc. to animal meat.

With the patents and centralised control some people dream of. I think this is something to be very cautious of.

How can I short this company?

What does this mean?

They want to bet against them on the stock market with a "short", a bet that their stock price will go down. This company isn't public so one can't exactly short them, so maybe it's just an expression

Cultured meat - you mean salami?

Cultured meat is meat obtained from cows that were exposed to classical music and read books from the great authors of western civilization, just the way I like it.

Makes me think of the pig that wants to be eaten, from the Hitchhiker's Guide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAF35dekiAY&t=73s

And if you're worried about the effects of cultured meat, you can always just eat an equal amount of countercultured meat, just like how you can cancel out pasta with antipasto.

>>Cultured meat - you mean salami?

salami is cured meat

yes, but fermentation is part of the manufacturing process. "cultured" refers to the introduction of bacteria to start fermentation.

I apologize for committing the sin of wordplay on hn

5 hail YCombinators and 1 Elon-bad post will absolve you of your sins my child.

I hope those who are against eating meat enjoy this enough to allow we meat eaters enjoy our meat in peace

Both the meat-centered diet crowd and the vegan crowd seem to be about equally awful about being judgy about what other people eat. I eat a semi vegetarian diet. I'm not a vegetarian but some of my meals are. Both camps seem equally happy to give me hell.

I try to hope that most aren't really like that and, like with homeless people, we just seem to notice and remember the worst representatives of such groups because the rest are so quiet as to go unnoticed.

> Both camps seem equally happy to give me hell.

Important to remember here that it's a tiny vocal minority from each side. Probably in the <0.01% range. Most people just live their lives.

> it's a tiny vocal minority from each side. Probably in the <0.01% range

It's important to keep this rule in mind for all public discussions. Unfortunately, no one, including politicians and policymakers, does.

To be honest, if one day there's lab-grown meat available in every store with comparable quality and prices to animal meat (!), I will inevitably form some sort of opinion on people who still pick animal meat.

Us vegans get a lot more heat from meat eaters than the other way around. And I mean both social heat and environmental heat.

I've never seen a meat eater forcing anything upon a vegan.

But you see the inverse all the time.

Bullshit

Meat eaters will still get heat from those who oppose the production of meat on ethical grounds. There, the question of who enjoys what is a distant consideration compared to the death and suffering of those being eaten.

What makes you think that? I'm a vegan who's been involved in animal rights activism for four years, and I've never met another vegan who opposes cultured meat on ethical grounds (or for any other reason). There are plenty who are excited to eat it, in fact.

I can't even think of an ethical argument against cultured meat.

I meant traditional meat. It's possible that I misunderstood the previous post.

Actually, upon rereading the parent comment, I think I'm the one who misunderstood! That's my bad, hah.

If you can afford it without the unimaginably massive subsidies it gets today then go for it.

Edit: also humanly slaughtered

life experience teaches me that if many people start to accept this, they'll start to push it on others via legislation. (see: vaccination. No talk of force until >50% was vaccinated, suddenly forcing on others became feasable and desirable for them)

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