Bioengineers in the Netherlands are now growing meat in a laboratory | Hacker News Reader

Bioengineers in the Netherlands are now growing meat in a laboratory

ft.com

69 pointsdsil34 comments

I am no vegetarian, but after reading about mechanically separated meat, washed with ammonia, infused with "flavor," and formed into common products like pepperoni, I would rather have my low-grade meat be lab-grown.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanically_separated_meat http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/04/whats-the-deal-with-tu...

I'm a steak lover, and reading about mechanically separated meat makes me throw up in my mouth a little.

For the past 60 years, when people defended women's rights in smalltalk they would often start with "I'm no feminist, but..."

Lately I've noticed an increased usage of the phrase "I'm no vegetarian, but...". Hopefully that's a sign that public awareness of the problems of industrial meat production may be nearing a critical mass, as eventually happened with the issues raised by Feminist movements.

I'm so glad this 'pink slime' stuff is banned in the EU.

I can imagine this going over well with people that want to eat meat, but don't really want to kill animals. I could see them paying twice as much for a steak produced this way.

Then, as it becomes cheaper and cheaper, it will become the norm for meat. Eventually "real" meat from animals will be the the luxury item.

I would pay twice as much for artificial meat that doesn't involve killing an animal, in a heartbeat. Being responsible for the deaths (often in abhorrent circumstances) of so many living creatures is simply difficult to swallow (pun ftw!). That said, there's a big if:

I would pay twice as much in a heartbeat, so long as the artificial meat tasted indistinguishable or close enough to the real thing. That means texture, juiciness, taste, consistency, etc.

I wouldn't pay anything for, for example, quorn.

I'm a meat-eater despite disliking killing so many animals because I love the taste of meat more than I dislike the killing.

Research and experience show that of all the people who say this (I would pay X more for animal-friendler meat), few follow through. I pay around 25% more for meat that is produced with the animals having better lives and the relative amount of such products available does not line up with the amount of people that say they would buy it.

The full statement is probably "I would pay X more for animal-friendlier meat if it was sitting next to the animal-unfriendly meat on the supermarket shelf". Not an indictment per se but it usually takes a lot of work on the producer and consumer side of the equation to effect real change in people's habits.

And if someone trustworthy has verified the animal-friendliness, because otherwise sham self-certification by factory farms is sure to predominate.

Almost certainly true about animal-friendlier meat. However, many people won't eat animal meat on moral principals, and quite likely would be willing to pay twice as much for non-animal meat. (Basically all they have to do to make it affordable is eat half the portion size of traditional carnivore consumers).

I dislike the killing as well, and so I haven't eaten meat in 29 years. But I'd eat in-vitro meat without hesitation.

You do realize that you're killing plants, right? Unless you're planning to photosynthesize, you're still part of a food chain.

Off-topic: Every new paragraph starting with an "I" comes off as distracting for the reader. Also the repeated use of "I would / wouldn't" makes it sound like it's a stylistic grip, but the sentences doesn't seem to be set up that way.

Seeing as you're interested in improving your writing [0] I thought I should mention it. Apologizes in advance if this wasn't the right time and place for it :)

0: http://swombat.com/2010/12/6/get-better-at-writing

Spot on.

In the article, one of the doctors mentions that the process of growing meat in a lab needs to be more efficient than in a cow or pig.

I'd say the process needs to be AS efficient, and could even be slightly less efficient to be economically viable.

There's a large and growing market of people who do not eat meat for ethical reasons. I've been a vegetarian for about 17 years now, and can't wait to take a bite out of a lab grown steak with some nice seasoning.

I would pay an extra 50% for cloned tissues (from cows to fish) because I don't like the killing and growing. Probably when the time comes to make the "real" meal a luxury item, the human empathy to the animals will be higher.

The way we treat our meat we might as well grow it in a lab. I love a good chicken as much as the next guy, but when you blast it with chemicals, drugs, and then freeze it for a few days, unfreeze it, freeze it again, and then finally shove it in my salad it doesn't taste any different than if you grew it in lab.

At least we can engineer the lab grown stuff to taste good after you beat the flavor out of it.

A slightly off-topic question this brings up in my mind - considering the current availability of multivitamin pills, protein + carbohydrate bars / shakes, various iron/mineral supplements, is it not possible to sustain yourself using just engineered products? Without having to buy the staple food we currently do (breads, meats, salads).

From reading the article, it seems we're still a fair bit off lab grown food - but certainly for future generations it may just be the norm.

I am not a nutritionist, but my understanding from reading a bit about it and from the writings of Michael Pollan and others is that our understanding of the nutritional needs of humans is pretty rudimentary. There may be (or there likely are) unforeseen consequences of breaking down food into component nutrients and consuming a cocktail of pills instead of eating "food, mostly plants, not too much" as Pollan recommends. Even industrially produced meat and vegetables may contain things we don't understand and aren't currently capturing in supplements.

Yes. I imagine all you would need vitamins, minerals and essential fats. Of course, this is sustenance not optimal nutrition. An example are coma victims fed ensure through a tube for very extended periods.

Possibly, but eating is not just about nutrition. There's a strong cultural, social, and emotional aspect to eating.

With how easy it seems to be to make meat carcinogenic [1][2], I'm going to wait a while on this one. (Yes, I eat meat, but limit what type and how much.)

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16526695

[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/23/cut-red-meat-can...

If lab grown meat, even if at first it is only hamburger, can be economically viable, then the boon to tissue engineering science could be very big indeed. There would be much more work done on bioreactors and biomaterials.

I didn't know Veridian Dynamics set up shop in The Netherlands.

http://www.movieweb.com/v/VIq12vszWI4Ftx

This is how "starving" will be solved in the future, with much cheaper lab-brown (replicator-grown?) food.

Of course for the first 2 decades or so it will still be in "beta" mode, and I wouldn't really want to be one of the early adopters. Hopefully regulators will monitor the whole situation and force them to put labels on it that clearly separates it from normal meat.

"Hopefully regulators will monitor the whole situation"

Which of course, they won't.

There's already enough food for everyone. It's just not distributed very well. Some people live in places where growing food is vey hard; either the climate is wrong or they don't have enough money for machinery or many people are ill or dying from disease.

Expensive lab-created product isn't likely to help with that particularly much, when we have trouble distributing cheap (0.5usd) rehydration salts that save lives.

I'm excited about this, but there really needs to be societal consideration here. While I'm all for eating whatever tastes good, many of my meat-eating friends are grossed out even when they think about how regular meat is procured. I don't want to think how they'll react to test tube meat.

Then again, the next generation won't know anything else.

What's the consideration you speak of? I don't really see any reason to keep people comfortably separate from the production of their food.

"Vrandin, the new near meat will bring about a higher culture in the butcher fraternity" [1913]

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1338&dat=19130331&...

Deja Vu: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/22197...

I think that it is the wrong approach to try to make lab grown meat taste indistinguishable from real meat.

Instead, they should aim to make it taste better than real meat.

Entomophagy.

Oh yay, they've finally found a way of over processing meat, the only thing that was still hard to over process.

What do you mean by "over process"?

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