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Comment by spodek | Hacker News Reader

We have a lot of entrepreneurs here.

Why don't we start with an easier lab-grown animal product than something we ingest?

How about lab-grown fur coats (EDIT from evilduck's comment: or lab-grown leather for clothing, furniture, shoes, etc)? Who wouldn't want to wear a "mink" coat created with no animal pain?

Develop the technology on something we don't have to eat, along with the associated health risks and sensitivity of our palates, but still useful. Then transfer the technology to the harder areas.

I wrote about in-vitro fur before -- http://joshuaspodek.com/vegetarian-entrepreneurs-test. I'd love to see it but haven't heard of anyone working on it. Is anyone doing it?

Another application easier than in-vitro meat for humans -- in-vitro meat pet food.

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Because it would be orders of magnitude more difficult. Muscle tissue is relatively homogeneous and has a far simpler structure than skin and hair folicles. Minced meat has had most of the complex macro-structure destroyed by the process of mincing, so it's easier still to imitate than whole pieces of meat.

There is also a very limited market for these products, as there are many satisfactory substitutes to leather and fur. Synthetic materials have replaced or augmented natural materials in most of the textiles industry, because they can offer superior properties.

I think a far more interesting development is Beyond Meat, who make a wholly plant-based chicken substitute that is remarkably realistic.

It may be more difficult but we have synthetic meet it's just far to expencive to be practical. So the fact that the end product would presumably be with a lot more per lb could be a significant factor.

PS: I suspect you could sell a few thousand 100k coats a year under the 'Animal Free' idea. Which pays for a fair amount of R&D.

You can already buy animal-free synthetic fur coats, and if you pay even $1,000 you're getting ripped off in a big way.

    Why don't we start with an easier lab-grown animal product than something we ingest?

Because it's a prestige product, Where "authenticity" counts? (e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_diamond) Or perhaps because millions of animals are slaughtered each day to be consumed as food?

Synthetic diamonds are actually not cheap at all, maybe third of the price of the real ones. I expected them to be dirt cheap when shopping for the wedding ring.

She's a lucky woman. :)

The idea was to get a much bigger identical rock for the same money.

Whoops, sorry. I thought the smiley made it clear I was just kidding around. Seriously, I don't blame you one iota, the De Beer's racket is an absolute crime.

I am not surprised. I'd expect the "jewellery-grade" synthetic diamonds to have the same artificial inflation of price that we see in natural diamonds. I would imagine industrial diamond dust has a different cost.

"I would imagine industrial diamond dust has a different cost."

I have a tube of diamond lapping compound somewhere in my basement shop. Dirt cheap because its full of inclusions and not clear.

They generally don't use jewelry grade diamonds for industrial work, although to manipulate the market I suppose anything could happen.

I was motivated enough to check amazon for the stuff I have and you're probably doing something wrong or weird if you're paying more than $3/gram delivered. One problem with buying a 5 gram plastic syringe of diamond lapping paste for $5 is the plastic syringe and shipping and handling probably cost a significant fraction... I would bet on industrial 55 gallon barrel scale its under $1/gram.

When researching lab-made, I found them to be 70% - 80% of the cost of nats across the board. My jeweler told me that (at least for the brand he carried) DeBeers bought the company that had the technology and patents for creating them in the lab, and thus the prices will remain close to nats as they will not set them at a point where they erode pricing on nats. Based off my research, if the poster above you got his/hers at 30% of nat cost, I'd say that is a pretty great deal, and I'd have liked to have found it myself before I purchased mine for my wife.

I'm just happy that there is a humane alternative to blood diamonds. If there wasn't a lab-made option, I wouldn't have purchased a diamond at all.

Actually it's not a humane alternative. The profits from the lab-made diamonds flow into the holding company owning all those mines.

The prices would be a lot lower if not for the identical owners.

While I normally try not to judge corporations, DeBeers looks, to me at least, like the ultimate prototype for "evil monopolist manipulating the masses".

In my experience, the best alternative (in terms of retaining the virtues of diamond without the inflated costs and human rights abuses) to natural diamonds is ironically not artificial diamonds, but moissanite. It looks a lot like a diamond, but more fiery.

>The profits from the lab-made diamonds flow into the holding company owning all those mines.

I considered this too, but then I thought of buying a stone from another company, but realized that paying the same inflated prices for an essentially worthless (worth less anyway) rock would still contribute to keeping the margins and profits up for DeBeers and/or any company that might engage in questionable practices, then I thought about buying a non-diamond, but found that most semi-precious stones for sale were still offered by companies that also traded in diamonds.

To be honest, it was a bit exhausting (especially combined with the planning of a wedding). I just chose to draw the line at buying a stone that was created in a laboratory and not pulled from the Earth by a slave.

I would not be honest if I didn't admit that cultural expectations also came to bear on the decision not to just do something completely different.

I take your point. I feel like this is one of those areas where my purchase decisions could change drastically the more educated I become on the subject of the precious stones trade. Just in the span of buying the engagement ring to the wedding band, we decided to have zero stones of any sort on the wedding band itself.

Diamonds are supposed to be status object, allowing the owners to display their wealth. They wouldn't fulfill the goal if they were cheap.

Lab grown fur seems a lot harder to do than lab grown meat. Skin is an incredibly complex organ. Especially if you want to grow hair on it.

Maybe the first step would be developing the ability to grow hair on existing skin. That would be a very popular breakthrough, curing baldness and patching up scar tissue that cannot grow hair anymore. Then it's a matter of getting that to grow on synthetic skin.

Just wait.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2294205/Billionaire-...

Could fur possibly be easier to grow than meat? I think it's a fascinating idea, actually, but my impression is that in-vitro meat is currently mostly just muscle cells grown in culture, without any of the complications of mixing different cell types, giving them structure, etc. With fur, you'd have to create hair follicles, and induce the right oils to be excreted, etc... I'm not a biologist but it sounds much tougher.

I've seen this article's on that topic before: http://www.gizmag.com/modern-meadow-in-vitro-leather/24441/

The idea is generally that growing leather involves solving many of the same problems as growing meat, but lets you bootstrap the business on something that doesn't involve the FDA clearing you as a food (nor does it have the same cognitive effects on people wearing something lab-grown vs eating something lab-grown).

Synthetic fur is just going to re-ignite demand for the real thing. It might not be socially acceptable (perhaps) and only the wearer would know for sure but that's a battle that should not need to be fought again.

Also, historically speaking, when it comes to fashion, pain and suffering of animals has never been anywhere on the list of concerns of those involved. It took many, many decades for it to become an issue.

As suggested elsewhere, lab-grown leather might be a more laudable goal, particularly if a way to avoid using the myriad of toxic chemicals could be found. Lab-generated milk would also be a win, but that might undermine the "breast is best" campaign which again took a long time to wage, but the idea probably has merit.

One huge problem is the fake fur marketplace is already saturated with fake fur manufactured directly industrially rather than your alternative of industrially manufacturing skin which then grows natural fur, sorta. Its about a century old industry and reasonably stable market (well, as stable as women's fashion industry can be, anyway. Its demand is not nearly as stable as, say, coal demand.)

Lab grown fur is an interesting prospect. We've got (almost) industrial scale lab-grown skin and a quick check with a friend who knows much more than I informs me that she can't think of any barriers to growing fur this way. You could even insert chemical/genetic markers such that one could guarantee that a given piece of clothing was made from lab grown and not "real" fur.

Also, not a huge fan of mink. Other furs, perhaps. But not mink.

As a second aside, if we could produce fur, what about human hair, for wigs? But you'd likely have more regulatory issues with human hair than otherwise.

One reason is that leather is a waste by product of the demand for meat. If we made artificial leather it wouldn't really lower the number of animals that would need to be raised.

Lab grown ivory could be a big win? Or maybe lab grown amergris?

I don't believe that it would be easier/cheaper/better to make lab-grown fur over just artificial fur.

Lab grown meat scales much more. If you cracking it, suddenly you can attack the whole meat industry.

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