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Comment by jmilkbal | Hacker News Reader

I have a lot of mixed feelings about developments like this. On one hand, I'll tell people that food for me is about quality and flavor. I'm not opposed to pink slime for what it is, but because it just makes for a poor result. I'm in favor of this on a sustainability level, but very opposed on a quality level—not consistency and reliable textures and taste, but that sort of unquantifiable property that things exude when they just feel right. That's quality and it's just not going to come from a lab, in my opinion. Meat isn't just about texture and a taste, it's about /terroir/. Meat can be raised sustainably and humanely, it just isn't as appealing to your local food conglomerate looking to work on economies of scale. We can all eat /better/, live /better/ and be /better/ without all the trade-offs if we'll put a little more thought into our lives and a have a little more moderation of consumption. Oh, and waste less.

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It seems awfully close-minded to be dismissing the whole idea of eating lab-grown meat due to some ineffable "quality" before you've actually even tried it.

I said mixed feelings because that exactly how I feel. It's more hesitant, but I suppose you could say I'm cautiously optimistic.

You're placing artifical constraints way too soon, though. It came off unnecessarily dismissive, not cautiously optimistic :p

I don't have much faith in the patent or global food system to create something with "ineffable 'quality'". Once the local food conglomerates are able to produce this, it's all about a price point and most frequently that price point is so low that anything you'd describe as high quality is not available. Think Salisbury steak. What will end up happening is a stratification of meat. Those with higher disposable incomes will eat dead things and the impoverished will get the poor economies of scale.

You may find my lack of faith disturbing.

Edited for Vader.

"Once the local food conglomerates are able to produce this, it's all about a price point and most frequently that price point is so low that anything you'd describe as high quality is not available. Think Salisbury steak. What will end up happening is a stratification of meat. Those with higher disposable incomes will eat dead things and the impoverished will get the poor economies of scale."

I agree with you to a minor extent, in that there'll be extremely high quality meat available and cheap gro-meat available for the backyard burgers and fast food. I do not see this as an issue. Production will be cheaper, use up less resources, and destroy the shitty mediocre meat, leaving the higher-quality just as cheap as it always was.

"You may find my lack of faith disturbing."

I find it unsurprising, but I really don't see things as being that bad. This would be entirely preferable (in the pocketbook) for low-to-middle-classed meat eaters.

Do you put forward the same argument for diamonds? What about ice made by refrigeration instead of ice cut from a frozen lake? Early man-made versions of these products were inferior, but nowadays we prefer them. Likewise, in-vitro meat is still in its early stages, but it has the potential to taste even better than the most pampered animals today.

Somewhere on this planet exists the tastiest cow. It has just the right combination of genes and environment to make it more mouth-watering to us than any other cow. Unfortunately, we won't know it's the tastiest cow until we kill it and eat it. Then only a few people will be able to enjoy it. Offspring with the same diet would likely taste great, but breeding and changing diet will always be an imprecise way to get tasty cows.

When fully-developed, in-vitro meat technology will give us better control over every aspect of the meat's taste. Nutrients can be delivered in just the right proportions at just the right times. Exercise (or lack of) can be simulated as much as we want. Even the genes in the tissue can be altered to improve the taste and texture. Once the technology gets to that point, there will be no good reason to raise and eat animals.

We can all eat /better/, live /better/ and be /better/ without all the trade-offs if we'll put a little more thought into our lives and a have a little more moderation of consumption. Oh, and waste less.

This is a nice sentiment, but I don't think any civilization has voluntarily reduced its resource usage or consumption. The people working on in-vitro meat want to solve the same problem as you, but they're being pragmatic about it.

Eh, I can give up a bit of "unquantifiable property" if it means that living things don't have to die for it.

Well, you are growing muscle cells and killing them... but it is a step forward.

You mean "living things that look cute on pictures"? Cell cultures are alive too, and have to die for you to consume them.

Are you seriously trying to compare individual cells and fully grown mammals? Or are you just trying to be contrarian.

It said "living things". If it said "sentient things", that'd be different.

I think sentient is probably closer to his definition. Yes, vegetables are 'alive', but (as current knowledge) they do not feel. Which reduces the apprehension of eating it.

This line of thinking drifts into uncomfortable territory relating to cannibalism of euthanized elders, after all if they're not sentient around the time of death and those at the bedside vigil are hungry ... Just saying that as a moral/ethical argument its a minefield, not simple.

As a worse example of the same path, castration of bulls has always been seen as "OK" for convenience in raising beef, none the less I'm thinking a somewhat higher "brain-ectomy" of livestock isn't going to fix everything up for vegetarians.

>As a worse example of the same path, castration of bulls has always been seen as "OK" for convenience in raising beef, none the less I'm thinking a somewhat higher "brain-ectomy" of livestock isn't going to fix everything up for vegetarians.

Well of course not. You're still ending a sentient life. You're just separate out the sentience ending from the life ending.

So? Cannibalism of euthanized elders doesn't seem immoral. It is not an accepted practice in most human cultures, because of emotional ties. Cannibalism itself was a prevalent phenomenon throughout human history. Although, my view of ethics mostly aligns with Peter Singer.

"This line of thinking drifts into uncomfortable territory relating to cannibalism of euthanized elders"

Obviously, being such a common practice.

Are you implying the primary difference between cell cultures and animals is that the latter 'look cute on pictures'?

I mean "things with nervous systems that can feel pain".

Pain is not a necessary component of the animal being eaten (unless it's being hunted down in the wild, of course, but most animals that are consumed by humans aren't), so if that is the problem it can be (and, as far as I know, is being) dealt with without reinventing the whole lifecycle in the lab.

Apart from pain, I would not like to die, and thus I would not kill anything that also does not want to die.

Two questions:

1) No species on earth "wants" to die. Every living organism has defence systems that it will try to prevent/repair any damage made to it.

Even more, (some) plants communicate and use signaling system to warn their neighbours about threats. Clearly, any species try to avoid death

How do you define "does not want to die"? 2) What about carnivorus species? Do they "allowed" to eat meat? If they are allowed, why humans can't? And more specifically, why you can't?

1) I'd say "being sentient" is a good definition for that. What exactly is sentient is left open to interpretation a bit, but I know big animals are, and I know plants aren't.

2) Eating meat is immoral, animals can't reason about morality, therefore they do whatever they do. Morality is the domain of beings intelligent enough to think about it. I consider killing animals immoral. That said, I do eat meat, because it's so tasty, in full conscience that I am immoral.

If you are so inclined, you could try being a weekday vegetarian - http://www.ted.com/talks/graham_hill_weekday_vegetarian.html. For me, the two hardest things, when finally quitting eating meat a year ago, were convincing everybody around me that was serious about it, and finding alternative foods. I still occasionally eat fish. I try to justify it to myself as fish being of lesser intelligence and sentience.

That would have been much easier if I liked fish, plants, etc :/ I'm a pretty fussy eater, sadly.

As someone who grew up in a rural place eating organically, humanely and affectionately grown (in the local terroir) animals, i am thrilled that the possibilities for in vitro meat are opening up. It's amazing that we have the technology to replicate the properties of real food sources in a way that will (ultimately) be cheap and eco-friendly. Raising animals organically is messy and impossible to do on a large scale. Replacing that with a machine is a much better solution than growing animals in factory farms stuffed on antibiotics.

It's just a start. There's no reason why we couldn't eventually engineer meat to have all those qualities, and even improve on them. It's just matter.

Pound for Pound, I could still see an engineered meat cube having better texture than tofu. Even if this was just used for ground beef substitute, it would probably be fine.

Tofu is not intended to be a direct replacement for meat. And some well prepared tofu is a delicious thing.

Given what some outlets (Taco Bell[1], looking at you) pass as meat, it won't be much of a change anyway.

[1] http://www.justmeans.com/editorials?action=readeditorial&...

I, for one, wouldn't mind trying it out, but I have serious doubts it would approach the quality of real meat grilled burger anytime soon. And I understand that there are places where people are starving and such technologies can save lives, but realistically being the part of the lucky billion that is not under the threat of starvation I would always prefer the real thing if it's available.

"Given what some outlets (Taco Bell[1], looking at you) pass as meat, it won't be much of a change anyway."

There's not a vast difference between what's sold as ground beef and what Taco Bell serves.

http://www.snopes.com/food/prepare/badmeat.asp

Maybe you could open your mind a little? Sausage comes to mind as does all the Asian fish balls eaten by billions of people. If it's indistinguishable from ground beef that's great but if not I'm perfectly happy to eat it as something else if it tastes good.

I'm also all for quality and flavour as well. It's like saying that a nespresso machine can't ever beat a professional barista, let alone best barista in the world. But whenever the coffee connoisseurs make their judgement, machines come out as well as, if not ahead of, their human counterparts. And there's no shame in choosing the machine over the human -- a coffee is a coffee is a coffee, no?

But then again, there's really no shame in advocating the preservation of human links in our already heavily mechanised food chains, is there? I mean, what type of world do we want to live in?

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