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Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

> The big question of course is scale.

I personally doubt this is anywhere near being able to compete with real chicken. Chickens are one of the most cost-effective sources of protein.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-efficiency-of-meat...

To put it into perspective beef requires 50x more energy input, than caloric output. Chickens only require 7.7x more input than caloric output, eggs are 5x.

Chickens take in corn and produce fat and protein. I'm unsure of the number of steps for lab grown meat, but I doubt it'll be fewer steps and likely will have more chemicals (and likely be less healthy).

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if they add regulations and additional burden on the non-lab grown meats and subsidizing lab-grown meats (they effectively do already subsidize it through grants).

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I’m not sure I agree it’ll have more chemicals. First, industrial chicken production is an incredibly chemical and antibiotic heavy industry. The assumption that animals effectively tortured through a life of highly stimulated over growth in crowded conditions then slaughtered in questionable ways produces a healthy protein seems dubious at best. Likewise, consistent growing meat cultures requires an optimal growth environment with no contaminants or extraneous non life inducing substances and the entire process has to be extraordinarily sterile. All I’ve read about cell culture leads me to believe the product will be extraordinarily healthy and higher quality protein than what can be purchased from the super market meat. I’ll wager a true free range chicken is a better option, but they’re absurdly expensive and even “free range” is such a loose term that the reality almost certainly doesn’t match your expectation of the term. Finally the chain of custody from the farm to table isn’t particularly clean. Cultured meat will be sterile when you eat it.

The question of scale and costs is a really good one. I suspect the real savings will not be in growing a chicken but in the whole logistics of getting a chicken into a supermarket packaging for you to buy. The process of taking a chicken from farm to supermarket is highly labor intensive and while it scales unit costs don’t decrease meaningfully with scale. The cultured meat decants ready to pack and could be packed and shipped in a fully automated fashion that decreases in cost as scale increases.

> 7.7x more input than caloric output, eggs are 5x

Fun fact, for octopuses that number is 3x, which (not that I've researched it) is the most efficient number I've found.

https://animals.howstuffworks.com/marine-life/octopus5.htm#:....

Per their protein content, chicken meat is only 2 to 3 times more expensive than legumes and only 3 to 4 times more expensive than cereals.

Moreover, in legumes and cereals the proteins are mixed with large amounts of starch and if the proteins are separated from starch in industrial processes the cost of the protein extracts is many times higher than the cost of chicken meat.

Only wheat flour is an exception, because the gluten from it can be extracted without special equipment or chemical substances, so wheat gluten is the only source of pure proteins that I am aware of and that is cheaper than chicken meat.

Is chicken production subsidised?

Corn is subsidized, and chickens eat a lot of it.

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