Hacker News Reader

Comment by skgough | Hacker News Reader

I hope this is where sustainable agriculture focuses it's attention in the future. Genetically modifying more energy-efficient organisms to be nutritionally useful to humans, while having free reign to make them taste however we want, seems like the way to go to me, instead of trying to grow beef in a lab. Lab-grown meat solves the ethical issues, but I imagine for a while it will be prohibitively expensive for the people who need nutritious food the most, while also being very energy-intensive to produce.

View on HN

I've been relatively convinced that, in the absence of some very major tech breakthroughs that are not even yet on the horizon, lab grown meat will not make sense except in extremely niche applications, perhaps even to the extent of it only being a thing where rich people buy lab grown versions of endangered/extinct animals.

Modified plant proteins like Beyond Meat and/or the kinds of organisms you describe seem to be a much closer, easier, and more likely near-to-medium term solutions. And I say that as someone who would love nothing more than for lab grown meat to succeed and someone who has made a variety of sacrifices and to both eat less meat and when I do eat more sustainable and ethical meat (to the satisfaction of my own personal morals).

> rich people buy lab grown versions of endangered/extinct animals

This is the first use case I've seen that makes sense.

Vow is a lab grown meat company taking this path. Last year they made a mammoth meatball that used mammoth dna with some elephant dna. I think this is a smart approach, allows them to charge higher prices for a unique experience. [1]

Other types of meat that make sense are high end sushi fish etc. where again the conventional price they compete against is high enough that it makes it economically possible to grow it in a lab.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/28/meatball...

Realistically I feel like this would first be adopted into snack food, where people don't really care what it's made of. It just needs good branding.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com