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Comment by jcfrei | Hacker News Reader

The farming lobby will try to ban it as soon as it becomes a viable alternative to poultry. I hope consumers will have the awareness to fight back.

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The feedstock has to come from somewhere, right? I’m assuming many farmers would prefer feeding it into stable vats of algae or fungus than dealing with the risks of another epidemic-induced chicken cull.

Fungus probably needs more much too, because no photosynthesis.

> I’m assuming many farmers would prefer feeding it into stable vats of algae or fungus than dealing with the risks of another epidemic-induced chicken cull.

Many farmers don't have the financial means to redesign their entire pipeline to move from birds to fungus. "farming" is in the name but I also suspect there is nothing in common between raising chicken in cages and mushrooms in sterile containers in term of know-how, maintenance, &c.

Factory farms consume far more feed than they can grow on site though, so the real power isn’t in the chicken farmers, it’s the ones growing chicken feed, and they’re probably used to switching crops to suit market demands.

And the farmers who do grow their own feed are probably smaller operations targeting higher quality meat than factory-farmed chicken, so they’re not the ones that vat-grown meat-substitutes would be competing with.

They would probably prefer that their expertise and massive investments in infrastructure for raising chickens isn't made worthless.

Looks like the feed is 95% glucose derived from corn starch[1]. They claim to have 1/4 the carbon footprint of chicken[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusarium_venenatum

[2] https://eathealthy365.com/quorn-vs-meat-the-2025-environment...

Alternatively, one of the poultry meat giants will just buy it and produce it themselves so they can capture the vegan/vegetarian market too. Why compete when you can consolidate?

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