What would food look like if we could scale up lab grown meat?

Submitted by sandcrawler56 t3_zx0b2c in Futurology

A lot of food uses bones, off cuts, etc. For example, soup. Many cultures also commonly make use of things like chicken hearts, feet, pigs intestines etc. I once ate lamb brains at a Michelin stared Spanish restaurant.

If lab grown meats become more prevalent (you could include plant-based meat here too), where would we get the bones and off-cuts for these things? I'm guessing that companies would want to grow the highest profit stuff like steaks and not off-cuts which will not make any money for them. Will we still grow animals? Will we have other sources to get flavor for broths? How will I be able to get teriyaki chicken hearts at the Japanese Yakitori restaurant down the road?

EDIT: Yes I get that it would be theroatically possible to grow anything we want. The issue to me would be the economics of it. Chicken hearts are essentially cheap waste products, that's why people eat them. I could see them bring niche products in the lab grown meat industry but this would make them expensive and most regular folk would never eat them. The effort to grow them would probably be similar to steak and it will never be grown in the same quantities as the good stuff. It's just not an attractive enough product to be highly desired outside of the convenience of just being there every time you have a chicken. Outside of your premium cuts, I really don't see liver, stomach and intestines being all that popular.

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OccupationSock t1_j1zn0iq wrote

There will be a day when everything but a perfect synthetic steak freaks people out

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Mdly68 t1_j203m2p wrote

Like my kids today who want chicken nuggets but not "real" chicken.

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SoUpInYa t1_j20hxg8 wrote

Like adults who go to Buffalo Wild Wings and order "Boneless Wings" which are glorified chicken nuggets

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GardenerGarrett t1_j20itcj wrote

Those faux wing nuggs were great with the side salad. Until they cheaped out on the side salad.

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scumful t1_j21wvv9 wrote

BWW went down hill so fast, once apon a time I remember people actually loving them not too long ago.

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Ok_Kale_2509 t1_j22ai8y wrote

I love that for some reason there is a part of the population so triggered by the thought of boneless wings they have to act like only little kids should like them. They are delights and I don't have to waste my time eating around bones. Why exactly does that make me childish?

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scumful t1_j21wqj0 wrote

😂😂 they taste different though !

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nerdswithfriends t1_j22og4d wrote

Good! Continuing to harm animals when there's a viable and equally palatable alternative available should freak people out tbh

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KelBowie t1_j1xvwwn wrote

Cuisine would very likely change to just be more like vegan food. Mushrooms make good broth flavoring. They have some very cool tricks.

As far as should we? Livestock animals have more purpose than just meat/dairy to eat. In regenerative agriculture they can as a portion of a crop rotation system that improves the quality and quantity of vegetable production with the bonus of a meat crop, and this can be managed in a way that honestly shouldn’t make a vegan angry if it’s done right. Those animals should be treated as well as pets, or even better because they earn our deepest gratitude by feeding us.

If we want to stop climate change and prevent food shortages then it would be a very good idea to stop farming the way we currently do before we hit the point where the food shortages happen. We should only have a few large farms that grow corn and soybeans, and we should change the subsidies to only support the farms that keep ecological diversity and sustainability in mind.

If you want to read more about this kind of stuff look up people like Joel Salatin (polyface micro) and Jesse Forest (no till growers).

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TechyDad t1_j1xy6nm wrote

I think lab grown meat would be a great replacement for factory farm meat. You'd still have farms with free range cattle (and other animals) that grazed. You just wouldn't have cows who live their whole lives stuck in a pen all but being force-fed to get as big as possible before slaughter.

The meat from the actual animals would be a niche item that some people enjoyed. Meanwhile, the masses eating McDonald's burgers would get lab grown meat that would be just as good (if not better) than the quality of meat they get today without risk of illnesses carried via the meat and without the huge climate footprint.

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AnDraoi t1_j1zuq0n wrote

This is the likely outcome, “real” meat would become a luxury and advertised to be high end while most people get lab stuff. The masses are still better off for the reasons you said

I don’t think “real” meat would become a luxury because it would taste better though. Most likely lab grown meat will taste as good if not better than the luxury stuff because it can be more finely controlled and will contain less gristle and connective tissue. The luxury meat would be high end because it would be authentic and expensive, and if the difference was big enough it might actually put the other market out of business

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mhornberger t1_j1zzrp6 wrote

> The luxury meat would be high end because it would be authentic and expensive,

I think the complication here being that slaughtered meat will still have the risk of fecal contamination. Which will be missing from cultured meat. Even grass-fed beef often still gets antibiotics, and most of it still gets some supplemental crops towards the end of their life, with chemicals sprayed on those crops. Grass-finished beef, beef that ate only grass throughout its entire life, is a tiny sliver of the market, and many don't even like the taste.

So instead of "luxury" meat, I think "traditionalist" will be the better moniker. Some people just don't like change, and they think there's some 'realness', some spiritual authenticity, conveyed by us having had killed the animal they're eating. So they won't care about the risk of fecal contamination, since that's part of nature, and you just wash your food as we've always done.

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TheUmgawa t1_j20crsd wrote

I have to wonder if animal rights activists would latch on to places that serve slaughtered meat and then treat their customers like people who wear fur coats.

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billtowson1982 t1_j1yav5q wrote

The problem is that the type of farming you recommend is very labor intensive - which translates to expensive. It also can't be scaled up to feed 8, then 10, then 12 billion people, etc. unless people start wanting to eat a lot less meat, and probably not even then. Finally, and I mean no offense because you seem like a good and well-intentioned person, but you really shouldn't tell vegans (or anyone else) how they should feel about something. Some people oppose meat because of the vast majority of it being factory-farmed. Some have an ethical opposition to taking a mammalian life for food, some have a religious-based opposition to meat, etc. etc. Plenty of those people might oppose any animal-based agriculture, and that's fine. Just as its fine for you to eat animals if you like.

Also, having worked on sustainable farms where animals are treated pretty decently, I can say with a certainty that most are still not treated as "pets." That's just not a realistic view of how this sort of thing is right now, let alone how it could ever, under any circumstances, scale.

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happy_bluebird t1_j220exz wrote

I think the idea is this *could* be a possibility- if we have lab grown meat readily and cheaply available, we can and should absolutely drastically scale down our animal farming

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billtowson1982 t1_j223j2v wrote

Maybe. But I think the basic flaw of that sort of agriculture being extremely labor intensive and therefore expensive remains. It's hard (and unlikely) for us to scale up a very expensive labor intensive way of doing things in a world where most people in even well off countries neither want, nor can afford, to spend a lot more on food than they currently do. And while labor is cheap in poor countries, another important goal is helping poor countries become better off.

Also we reap a ton of environmental benefits by having most people live in or around cities. Move a ton of people back to rural areas so that they can work on labor intensive farms and we'll pay a big environmental cost for doing that too.

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sandcrawler56 OP t1_j1xyuq9 wrote

Yeah but its different. Mushroom broth is delicious but its not the same as chicken or beef broth. Will chicken broth just not be a thing anymore? That will change food dramatically because A LOT (and I mean A LOT) of things use chicken broth as a base flavour.

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KelBowie t1_j1y0kye wrote

I think TechyDad is right on the money with his suggestion. Chicken broth wouldn’t be nonexistent, but it would be more expensive. It would be more economical to keep your own chickens for eggs and replace them every two years when they start to slow down on laying. Retiring egg chickens don’t make great meat, but they do make great broth. There should also be more small farms doing that on the scale of a few hundred chickens at a time, not a hundred thousand chickens all in one building in cages where they can barely move around and they never get to act like a chicken.

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mhornberger t1_j20035p wrote

> Will chicken broth just not be a thing anymore?

Cultured fat is going to be be made too, long before cultured meat scales production. Primarily it will be used for hybrid products, to improve the satiety and mouthfeel of plant-based options. But stock/broth is another market.

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MrCyra t1_j217ve5 wrote

Well you need bones for good broth. When you boil bones for hours certain compounds start to seep into water. But if you can create meats and fats in lab to your liking, then you probably can create mixture of very concentrated and potent broth in lab too.

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DoktoroKiu t1_j1zn2k8 wrote

>As far as should we? Livestock animals have more purpose than just meat/dairy to eat. In regenerative agriculture they can as a portion of a crop rotation system that improves the quality and quantity of vegetable production with the bonus of a meat crop, and this can be managed in a way that honestly shouldn’t make a vegan angry if it’s done right. Those animals should be treated as well as pets, or even better because they earn our deepest gratitude by feeding us.

Such a system would be undeniably better than what we have, but that does not mean a vegan will give a stamp of approval. The idea that animals have a purpose to serve for us is completely counter to the philosophy.

Your position here is similar to arguing for human slavery as long as it is done in a "good" way where the slaves are treated well and with a lot of respect and gratitude for their "sacrifice" for the betterment of society through their forced labor. Improving an immoral situation doesn't make it moral, just less bad.

I'm not equating human slavery and animal agriculture here. I'm just using the comparison to illustrate why your reasoning is flawed with respect to vegans.

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Ok-Environment-8444 t1_j1zwx9n wrote

To the idea that livestock animals have more purpose, it's not just regenerative agriculture or a self-sustaining farm between livestock and crops, but animal byproducts are spread throughout so many of our daily products. What they give back (manure) is the backbone for our crops and their bones, blood (plasma), unwanted organs, fat, are distributed from glue, dog food, medical research (auger broth), and medicines. Without the demand of meat, we will have a shortage for all of those other necessary supplies and materials. And if we attempt to have farms solely for those materials, then we'll have excess meat. If anything, with certain populations growing, some populations may require this "lab-grown" mean moreso than others than making the near 100% switch.

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NotObviouslyARobot t1_j1y7a9w wrote

Realistically, farm animal genetics would hit a bottle neck and the various varieties we've bred start going extinct--driving mankind further into monocultures and reducing the genetic diversity of what we farm.

If lab-grown beef reaches a price point where it can seriously eat away at farmed beef's market share, then many ranches across the US will start closing--or trying to sell out for a housing development. I foresee consolidation in the cattle industry, and ever-larger mega-ranches taking up more, and more land. Think more Ammon Bundy types.

For a number of reasons, cattle becoming economically unviable for small landowners, will change the economics of owning land in the rural US. There's a lot of land you'd consider marginal for farming--yet with relatively low effort (and small cost of entry), you can grow hay and cattle, and effectively buy the land by doing so. Being AG also gets you lower property taxes.

This incentivizes landowners to sell out to developers as quickly as possible--and will further drive suburbanization & car-based cities.

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mhornberger t1_j201mo5 wrote

> This incentivizes landowners to sell out to developers as quickly as possible--and will further drive suburbanization & car-based cities.

I don't think there are masses of people clamoring to move to rural areas to live on former cattle ranches.

Cities and suburbs are growing more dense, and rural areas are losing people. If animal agriculture declines, that'll take economic activity out of rural areas even more quickly. I can't see how that would result in more people moving in.

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NotObviouslyARobot t1_j209xov wrote

"I don't think there are masses of people clamoring to move to rural areas to live on former cattle ranches."

This...doesn't matter.

The same logic that makes homes investments and a way to build generational wealth, also applies to small landholdings--albeit homes are much less work. You get the land cheap, build a house, pay the taxes and the payments on the land for years, and then hopefully sell it after adding a shit-ton of value. This also protects the land from further development.

There are a lot of people who want to get cheaper homes in new suburbs after low interest rates

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strvgglecity t1_j20n19e wrote

If you think lived-in homes are investments, perhaps a course in economics would help. A property is only an investment when you earn from it. There is no guarantee your property's value will increase for future sale, nor that anyone will want to buy it. A house is an investment the same way a car is. Meaning, it's not.

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NotObviouslyARobot t1_j20v42w wrote

"A house is an investment the same way a car is. Meaning, it's not."

Wrong.

A house has earning power in the same way any suitable business location has earning power, regardless of whether or not you rent it out. The earning power incurred by owning anything is equivalent to the opportunity-cost of not owning something.

If my house costs me $300/mo. less than renting the equivalent, my home is creating real shareholder value for Myself, LLC, regardless of whether or not I'm renting it out.

There are two ways to make money in business: realize cost savings or improve sales. Owning a home is like investing in LED lighting to realize a smaller electric bill.

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strvgglecity t1_j21gigv wrote

Sure, ok, except... It's not, because homes depreciate just like cars. They require consistent maintenance. They also incur annual taxes that are never recouped. You also can't just sell your home, unless you simultaneously secure a new place to live.

The only reason prices go up is scarcity, and that relies on external factors far beyond your control. If a new development pops up next to yours in 10 years, your home is likely to be less desirable, and therefore command a lower selling value than the newer homes, because it is old and has depreciated. Flipping homes can be profitable if you can manage to affordably rehab a beater.

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/real-estate/is-buying-a-home-worth-it/

If you'll notice, the people saying it's a good investment are literally the people selling mortgages.

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NotObviouslyARobot t1_j23it4r wrote

"They require consistent maintenance. They also incur annual taxes that are never recouped. You also can't just sell your home, unless you simultaneously secure a new place to live."

All of the above also applies to owning a business asset, especially property. I'm about to go upgrade all the lights in a business property over the weekend. I've done lots of maintenance on it. It makes us money, but we can't just sell it unless we simultaneously secure a new place to do business. It also depreciates.

Real-estate value is determined by the amount of the purchase loan approved for the property, or the amount of money flowing around a market. This is why we have the USDA rural development program.

That new 300K development next to your 120K development isn't going to negatively alter your property value. In fact, it usually has a positive effect by increasing the number of dollars in the local real estate market--and by helping drive businesses to the area. This is one reason why the practice of Redlining was so harmful to older African-American neighborhoods.

There's an observed social behavior in humans called gravitation. Gravitation says that our geographic preferences follow a distance decay function. IE, the closer things are, the more likely they are to interact--and larger groups of a particular thing, have more drawing power than smaller groups of the same thing.

What drives down real-estate values is large centers of gravitation disappearing or being built far enough away from you that they draw people away in a cascading effect.

Homeownership is an investment. Like any investment, it can be good, bad, succeed wildly, or go tits up.

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happy_bluebird t1_j2200z0 wrote

"Governments can also use restrictions like internal passports to make rural flight illegal." what

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Prysorra2 t1_j25amcs wrote

The land usage of beef and pork is geographically distinct enough that a collapse of the ranching business model will cause dramatic regional drama that will likely overshadow the exurban creep. Which by the way is too slow a process to really grind enough people’s gears…

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Butterflychunks t1_j20o34o wrote

Then solar really starts to take off.

> Goddamn it I can’t afford this cow farm anymore. 400 acres in the middle of nowhere, how could I make much money off of this land? Plus it’s hot as shit, the sun is beating down every day all year…

> I’VE STRUCK GOLD!

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NotObviouslyARobot t1_j20u3e5 wrote

That however, due to economies of scale, and power transmission--only favors super-large landowners.

We already have a model for what happens to resource poor land, and it's the mega-billionaire ranches of Texas.

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Songmuddywater t1_j21n0z1 wrote

No, all the form animals will just be raised to be butchered while pregnant.. you do know they need the blood of fetal calves to grow your precious lab grown meat don't you? Lab grown meat is more immoral than veal.

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NotObviouslyARobot t1_j23c1py wrote

Nah. They'll use male dairy calves for that.

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Songmuddywater t1_j23n6l8 wrote

You don't understand. If the calf is allowed to be born then the calf is too old. They have to kill the mother while she's pregnant and yank her calf out still alive and kicking.

This is what you support. This is worse than veal.

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NotObviouslyARobot t1_j23pp7q wrote

It's not any more immoral than veal, or dairy

The real question is how much FBS we need for a given cow-equivalent of lab-grown meat. If it's a 1:1 ratio or any similar low ratio cow-wise, it won't take off--and it's pointless to even discuss it because economics will kill it.

Cows take 18-24 months to reach slaughter weight. A cow can get pregnant once per year. The pregnant cow slaughter takes at least 3 herd animals or more out of the market.

Doing FBS production with beef cows doesn't make sense. The only way FBS would make economic sense is if you wanted to use producing it to "retire" older dairy cows--in which case...there's very little difference in the net cruelty.

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Songmuddywater t1_j23q33c wrote

So once again you're okay with slaughtering pregnant animals to vampirically suck the blood out of the still living and kicking baby in order to make your demonic meat in a laboratory.

Just admit you don't care about animals or animal cruelty. Lab grown meat just seems fashionable to you.

The truth is that most people would shove children into ovens if they were told it was the right thing to do by a figure of authority.

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yes_of_course_not t1_j252sr6 wrote

Chiming in with some info: At least a couple of the lab grown meat companies are using a non-FBS growth medium. Apparently it's also cheaper than using traditional FBS. FBS is not a requirement for growing lab grown meat anymore.

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yes_of_course_not t1_j2537e1 wrote

There are companies already using non-FBS growth medium. FBS is not required anymore.

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NotObviouslyARobot t1_j25iz1i wrote

I thought that was the case and that the guy I was responding to obviously wasn't arguing in good faith. Yay Science?

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SpielbrecherXS t1_j1y5iu6 wrote

Food's always changing, and we are already using much less animal organs in our cuisine than even a hundred years ago. So yeah, no doubts it'll change even more over the next hundred years.

Some organs can be grown same as meat though, if there's enough demand. Even with steak meat, you would want it with structure, not as puree, which makes it not so much different from some of the muscle-based organs as heart or stomach. The prices would change, I'm sure. Niche products would necessarily be more expensive than mass produced ones.

But I wouldn't expect farm animals disappearing any time soon. It's not just meat we'd need to substitute, it's also dairy, leather, fertiliser, blood products for medical use, bones for food additives, and so on and so forth. For some of these, we have the technology already, but it requires oil as the raw material (like leather substitutes) or produces toxic waste (like fertiliser), and it'd need a lot of scaling up. For others, we don't even have good alternatives yet.

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Shoot_from_the_Quip t1_j20yqr1 wrote

I like the idea of essentially 3D printing foods at super high speeds, like a food replicator in space movies. Instead of plastics we'd use proteins/aminos/organics. Fascinating potential.

Some day we'll get there.

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kdfsjljklgjfg t1_j1xw0pm wrote

This is something I've wondered a lot in reference to lab-grown meat. I can't think of any reason why growing a hanger steak or a chuck eye would be cheaper than ribeye or filet, so there would be no reason to make the lower-quality meats.

I'm ultimately all for lab-grown meat and I hope it takes over, but a part of me wonders if we're eventually going to lose a part of the culinary arts in exchange.

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Anakin_BlueWalker3 t1_j21sp80 wrote

If there is demand, it will be met.

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kdfsjljklgjfg t1_j221pzo wrote

That's the thing. There's less demand now, when it comes as part of a package. When ribeye and filet are the same price, will there be enough demand for it in their place to even be worth production?

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Anakin_BlueWalker3 t1_j2220u0 wrote

Yes, there are billions of people, it is likely most types of meat that people are accustomed to will have some level of demand.

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sandcrawler56 OP t1_j1xymr1 wrote

Yeah exactly. All that would be sold will be the most expensive or profitable cuts.

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hotpietptwp t1_j1yxym3 wrote

At least in the US, people will still want ground meat for burgers and recipes.

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boneman1982 t1_j214wm0 wrote

Only when the technology's output is limited. When it makes enough to supply all that then there's no reason to limit it so long as there is demand at a profitable price point. If your cost to produce is $3 and you can sell it from anywhere between $4-$18, yeah you're gonna sell at $18. But there's limited demand there.

Plus like, you can't do barbacoa with ribeye. Or pot roast. Beef burgundy, shredded Italian beef..... These are all independently delicious and not just things people eat because they can't afford ribeye.

I guess we might lose out if lab grown meat gets popular enough to fuck up current meat industry but can't scale enough to make the cheap cuts profitably or can't figure out how to make cuts full of connective tissue properly.

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iamallanevans t1_j20cnyd wrote

It also kind of drives a potential thought of perhaps being able to replicate human meat and organs as a food choice. Which may breed some cannibalistic characteristics. Also could potentially create the possibility of lab grown humans, which could in turn be raised to be slaughtered kind of like how the current food industry is. Weird.

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kdfsjljklgjfg t1_j20drjr wrote

It's an interesting thought, but I don't feel the stigma against cannibalism is something society would be willing to set aside because the meat was lab-grown.

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werewolfpajamas t1_j1y5fhy wrote

All I know is that I am not eating factory meat until 10 years have passed to see if it has something that causes cancer or something knowing america.

And if it looks bad/tastes bad. If its anything like vegan food, hell no.

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mhornberger t1_j202b4j wrote

First lab-grown burger was in 2013. And keep in mind that cultured meat is just meat. It's the same cells, just grown outside the animal. You can tailor the feedstock however you want.

Another interesting read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultured_meat#History

If I ask the average shopper in the meat aisle of my supermarket if they knew or cared about the antibiotics, hormones, antifungals, and other drugs/chemicals in the meat they're buying, or in the crops fed to those animals, I doubt a lot would know or care.

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mhornberger t1_j2012bo wrote

The food from the waste products of animal agriculture will get more expensive, as animal agriculture shrinks in size. The price for all "traditional" slaughter meat will go up, as it loses the economies of scale.

>Will we still grow animals?

We still raise horses, but far fewer of them than in 1900. Look at whatever dish you have in mind, and ask if you would pay enough for that dish to raise the whole animal. These niche products will have to carry ever more of the cost of raising the animal.

>Will we have other sources to get flavor for broths?

Cultured fat is a thing, too.

>How will I be able to get teriyaki chicken hearts at the Japanese Yakitori restaurant down the road?

Heart muscle is still muscle, so if there's a viable market, cultured meat can probably make that muscle, too. I've read in an interview with an exec for some cultured meat company that said they could make bone, too. Didn't say they would, but that it wasn't impossible.

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Butterflychunks t1_j20ohil wrote

We all think of meat to come in a certain form. When we see meat, it looks a certain way, like a steak or a chicken breast.

The next generations can be influenced to think meat can come in other shapes. Marketing can take over the meat industry and reshape our entire concept of what proper meat “looks” like. So much so that in 2 generations, cuts of real meat will look brutal or alien.

Lab grown/3D printed meat can take any form, so it will.

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Sir_twitch t1_j220wvl wrote

This is a subject where I believe most of your answers lie in the past.

Off-cuts will be produced in smaller batches and consequently become more expensive; some may fall by the wayside.

Oysters and lobster, for example were food for the poor, even with laws established limiting how much could be fed to workers. Samuel Johnson, editor of the first English dictionary, famously went to market for oysters for his cat because it was considered such a poor-person's food that he didn't want to force his house staff to be seen in the shameful act of purchasing them.

Look at St John in London. A global icon of the culinary world, established on the art of offal.

The production of gelatine has been in operation for a little while now. I have no doubt we'll find ways to make lab-grade legit quality collagen. Everything else about stocks are addition flavors from veggies & aromatics. Even products like Better the Boullion are at least OK, and with a little care & a few sheets of gelatin can produce a relatively respectable stock.

I think the culinary world will change around this, but it is constantly evolving regardless as new ingredients, techniques, and technology comes available, and as others fall out of favor or availability.

Already things like sous vide and molecular gastronomy are reshaping the way we cook professionally, and at home. Lord knows the air fryer has already found a ubiquitous place on the counter of the home kitchen when they were practically unheard of five or ten years ago.

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Puzzleheaded_Big_442 t1_j223gdm wrote

What kind of waste is produced from lab grown meat? I’m not a biology major, but I know for cell growth to happen there must be some kind of inputs, like nutrients. So my question is, doesn’t meat create waste as it grows? Even if it doesn’t piss and poop?

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[deleted] t1_j1xuqu7 wrote

[deleted]

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Kipguy t1_j1xv9qy wrote

Why, we have tons of cattle. I'd think it would decrease in price as demand waivers.

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Photofug t1_j1xvyy9 wrote

Either this would be the end of small farms or the the end of industrial stockyards. I think there may be a path forward for small bespoke ranches providing premium meat for only those that can afford it.

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Kipguy t1_j1xw3vk wrote

Ahh. Your correct then. What about imports

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tcurrier12 t1_j1xvvj4 wrote

I'm sure the market will stabilize with both artificial and natural meats being utilized. Certain areas like cities will probably be more focused on artificial while rural relies on what they know. Special portions will probably be available in cities for a premium. That is if this all catches on.

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TemetN t1_j1y6gry wrote

It's an interesting point, I suppose my response would be to ask whether and how much demand there is for them. I mean, it's certainly doable, but the question would be whether people would want to pay for them. At least in an intermediate term, once costs come down further it might proliferate just out of novelty.

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TheDeadlySquid t1_j1yqxgq wrote

It really comes down to economics and the free market system. If the cost of producing lab grown meat becomes cheaper and the quality is the same or better then reaching will start to disappear and the market and menus will change. There may be a handful of boutique ranchers, but nothing on the scale of today.

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RPC3 t1_j1z3und wrote

People won't alter their culture's dishes. You have to give them an alternative. For instance, until chitlins are available cheaper and with good quality, people that eat them will buy them from people who slaughtered animals. Lots of cultures around the world use some pretty wild ingredients. They will keep doing that. They aren't just going to magically stop. It will also take a while before lab meat is even widely available. In segments of the world it won't be available at all.

There will even be a period of time to which lab steak is available for example, but segments of the population won't trust that steak and they'll still require one from cow, bison, etc.

The point is that these cultural changes take a long time, and it's going to be awhile before all options are available via the lab and all segments of the population accept that as the only meat available. I'm in my 40's. I'll see a hybrid mix at best for the rest of my life.

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stealthdawg t1_j1zrg1n wrote

I think pricing on things like organ meat will drive the extinction of those related dishes.

The most common meats are arguably the easiest to lab-grow (eg. ground beef).

Basically 50% of the meat from a cow goes to ground-beef. Luckily in the US that corressponds to how much beef is eaten overall vs steaks.

I'm not sure how the beef industry will reconcile this, because you can't grow a steak-only cow.

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RPC3 t1_j21gr5i wrote

It won't drive the extinction of it because people can get it from live animals. It's important to understand how influential culture is. I have Muslim friends for example. They have to murder a goat a certain way or they can't eat it under their religious traditions. Lab meat doesn't solve that. For people who eat organ meats as cultural dishes, you can't just drive that to extinction by making it expensive. They'll just keep the animals around and slaughter them. Lab meat changes nothing there.

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stealthdawg t1_j21z72x wrote

There is certainly a breaking point between how expensive the item becomes and how strong of a tradition it is.

Cultures use odd things like organ meat because they have to use the whole animal, not as the primary product.

Those ingredients will be substituted for something else when they become too expensive to acquire.

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RPC3 t1_j225inl wrote

You are missing the culture part though. It's a meme in the real sense of the word. They had to use the whole animal in the past and it became part of their culture. They had to do it because organ meats can be the most calorie packed and full of nutrients. People's native foods are downright holy to them in many circumstances. Attempting to make it too expensive is how you kill people. Stuff like that hurts the poor the worst. Also, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna pass laws saying they can't raise animals? That's where this stuff comes from in the first place.

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stealthdawg t1_j24fwi4 wrote

Nobody will 'attempt' to make it too expensive. And by 'it' I mean non-mainstream, non-muscle, items like organs and other animal tissue that are ecclectic.

It will become too expensive because lab-grown meat will dissociate the supply of regular meat from those other items, and it will cost more to raise an animal at lower quantities.

Nobody is saying there won't be small-batch farmers raising animals for these markets, but in agregate the supply is, imo, going to be severely reduced.

And tbh yes I think wayyyyy down the line (100s of years perhaps), if we can synthesize all the products of an animal, there will be valid discussion on banning animal slaughter.

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Ok-Prompt-6391 t1_j1zca5y wrote

Think of a greenhouse but instead of plants it’s meat. I wonder if we’ll ever be able to grow meat that cooks itself

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stealthdawg t1_j1zpsdl wrote

Recipes using 'ecclectic' ingredients are borne out of necessity. You have the animal, you want (if not need) to use all of its parts, so cultures create these recipes to incorporate those ingredients.

These recipes of course, range from delicious to barely tolerable, and even that scale shifts between cultures and individuals based on familiarity and such.

That's all to say, I don't think it's a bad thing if recipes with unpalatable ingredients go extinct. Conversely if we discovered a new plant/animal, we may create new recipes around its components.

In the meantime, markets for those products would still exists and they would probably become much more expensive to acquire, driving the markets into the ground. So what?

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Techutante t1_j20j3fo wrote

Wild animals will become boutique food, cost more, be served with special flourish. The Rich will keep eating them, and poor people will get vat food. For good or ill.

This is the future every sci-fi author has seen, through a hundred different lenses.

Think about how many people are trying to make eating bugs a thing. Now imagine snow piercer. If they can, they will.

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GardenerGarrett t1_j20jadv wrote

Start with sushi. That’s already super expensive meat. And for some reason, lab grown unagi sounds less gross than some slippery eel.

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scarabin t1_j20ov9o wrote

Can i live in a world without fried chicken hearts? Yes, yes i can

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bluntrauma420 t1_j20x4bv wrote

I'm going to open up a restaurant called "Eat A Dick" and it's going to serve penis shaped steaks as the main course.

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sandcrawler56 OP t1_j225qla wrote

You should just lab grow real dicks and serve that instead.

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Songmuddywater t1_j21mxj0 wrote

Lab grown meat is more immoral than veal. They have to take a pregnant cow and kill her. They then pull the calf out still alive and drain all the blood out of the calf. They need the blood of the calf to grow your lab grown meat.

Anyone who pushes lab grown meat is either an immoral sociopath or a complete imbecile.

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sandcrawler56 OP t1_j226lbm wrote

I don't see how that's necessarily more cruel than the already cruel regular meat industry. I believe that eventually we will make a breakthrough that will remove the need for this step.

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yes_of_course_not t1_j255ymd wrote

It's already a thing. Some of the companies are already using non-FBS growth medium.

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Songmuddywater t1_j228prd wrote

You don't see purposely breeding cows getting them pregnant butchering them, delivering a calf prematurely and then torturing the calf to death as a bad thing? There is no breakthrough. You are advocating for them doing this now! There's a giant difference between humanely killing a 2-year-old steer, which is enough meat to provide one human being with all the calories they need for a year. And killing a pregnant cow and torture in the calf to death. But thank you for reassuring me that vegans don't care about animals. They just hate humans You're willing to torture baby animals to death to further your advancement of hatred towards humans

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sandcrawler56 OP t1_j22mktb wrote

I'm not a vegan. And no I don't think this is right but I also can do nothing to stop this. I just hope that some good eventually comes out of it and the technology evolved to the point that this is not necessary.

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Songmuddywater t1_j23ntob wrote

When you advocate for people doing something then you are directly morally responsible for it. When you advocate for lab produced meat which requires fetal bovine serum and blood. Then you are advocating for the continual impregnation and butchering of pregnant animals in order to attain that serum. ..

Again this is worse than veal and you are morally repugnant.

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sandcrawler56 OP t1_j23r30z wrote

Um, I never said I advocated for it. I said there is nothing I can do to stop people experimenting with it. And I hope that for the sake of our children's futures, something good comes out of it. I never once advocated for this to be the right thing to do.

You might as well say you refuse to be treated by modern medicine because all the good that we are able to do now is sure as hell based on a bunch of human and animal suffering through the centuries of experimentation and getting things wrong. Much of the progress we have now as a human species has been built upon the suffering of those in the past.

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Songmuddywater t1_j23vsfl wrote

You just defended it and have said nothing negative about well say many positive things about it.. That's advocating for it

I repeat again like I've done many times. Most people are so value vacant that they would shove children into ovens if they were told it was the right thing to do by a figure of authority. .

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sandcrawler56 OP t1_j25hf4b wrote

Nope, I have not said anything to defend it. Not that it matters anyway because someone like you is more interested in hearing their own argument than trying to understand what others have to say. The fact that you repeatedly resort to ad hominem arguments is just really sad.

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Scared-Conflict-653 t1_j21q1f3 wrote

I think animals will still be around, and if lab grown meat is cheaper than natural meat then I'm not seeing the issue.

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NickDixon37 t1_j2203lo wrote

The heart is the best part of the chicken. I'll happily pay $10 a pound or more for hearts - from healthy local chickens, and they're easy to saute, and very tasty and satisfying. And it only takes a few minutes to make a great chicken liver pate.

Imho, there will always be a demand for "real" animal grown meat, especially among people who are trying to avoid overly processed food - and who can afford to grow their on - or to support local farmers.

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KalasHydra t1_j22gllz wrote

Well considering the lab grown meat so far is just a paste of cells grown together i dont think we will see lab grown organ meat

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CaliTheRogue t1_j22ptbx wrote

I’ll tell you how it’ll go. When my parents were growing up it was embarrassing for them to be going to school with lobster sandwiches because it was even as a cheap garbage food.

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KRed75 t1_j1y7bal wrote

The only place you'd see a cow or chicken is in a zoo.

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mhornberger t1_j20315b wrote

Chickens are natty, and live in the wild. Cows are as natty as a pekinese.

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hawkwings t1_j1z0k12 wrote

Chickens eat insects and scorpions. If we stopped eating chicken meat, chickens would still exist outside of zoos.

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KRed75 t1_j206ub1 wrote

Where did I say they wouldn't exist outside zoos? I said the only place we'd see them was in a zoo. Because they'd be so rare in the wild that you'd have to go to a zoo to see them. The only place I've ever seen a giraffe or an elephant or a lion or a tiger or a bear is in a zoo but they still exist outside zoos.

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hawkwings t1_j20h5th wrote

Chickens aren't that rare outside of zoos. I've seen wild chickens before.

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KRed75 t1_j20w12y wrote

There's no such thing as a wild chicken except for in Asia where they originated. Chickens were introduced to the world from Asia. They are considered feral chickens. I've never seen a feral chicken in 48 years. I've only seen a farm chicken running that escaped from his coop and lived at my kids' school for a few years until it died.

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vwlukefairhaven t1_j1y94dd wrote

Hearts are muscle so that can be lab grown as well. Most organ meats should be possible as well. We could have a lot more variety of meats as well. Basically any animal could be grown without killing an animal. Panda chops could be consumed guilt free. Dog soup, no problem. That Polynesian cannibal recipe book could actually be used again.

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sandcrawler56 OP t1_j1yet26 wrote

Cannibalism. Now that's something I haven't considered before... Maybe 2030 will be the year then.

Yes theroatically everything could be grown. Ears, heart, liver. The issue is that if these things become a niche product, it flips the economics on its head. Right now people use these things because they are readily avaliable waste products that are cheap. If they are niche products, they will most certainly become expensive. I can see how a chicken heart could cost more per gram than a high end steak. If this was the case, ain't no one going to be eating chicken hearts except at super fancy restaurants, which would be a pity.

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vwlukefairhaven t1_j207ewv wrote

This is how ox tails are now as expensive as Ribeye cuts. People figured out how delicious you can cook them and now its not the same price as ground beef.

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DRETIME t1_j1yg4tj wrote

Because my answer was too short, "Death on a plate. Literally" The more profitability involved almost always results in disregard to "would I eat this product?"...

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Toiletchan t1_j1yim3m wrote

Sure is a lot of go vegan/eat ze bugs posts on here these days.

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mhornberger t1_j202lee wrote

Most of the bug posts were about companies growing bugs for aquaculture and chicken feed. And cultured meat is meat. Most vegans will eat it because it addresses the issue of animal suffering, and vastly improves the environmental sustainability of meat production. Still not as sustainable as eating plants directly, but better than conventional meat production, certainly.

But the sub definitely needs an ag-tech flair, so people can hide the posts if they want to. There are only going to be more posts about cultured meat, cellular agriculture, vertical farms, even insect farming, as time goes forward.

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pinkfootthegoose t1_j1yrody wrote

Manufactures want so sell their goods with minimum effort so it will look like what ever the manufactures advertise as nice looking because that's how it looks coming out of the vats.

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ApolloAtlas t1_j1z5ie2 wrote

I'm farmer adjacent. The work that goes into raising ethical meat is incredible. It's also an incredibly different experience. People take meat for granted. It absolutely shouldn't be.

Lab grown meat is perfect for the people who don't care where their meat comes from that just want the chicken sandwich or burger from a fast food place. They might say they can tell or it isn't as good but it is. I've brought coworkers both impossible whoppers and KFC beyond nuggets as a blind test and they couldn't tell. (Side note KFC nuggets are very hit and miss on quality, BK mostly a hit but sometimes the burger flipper doesn't know what they're doing).

People who still want the fine dining experience with real meat should absolutely be free to do so and pay the price for it. Despite what hard-core vegans espouse, organic carbon neutral farming cannot be done without animals. Ethically is optional but in my opinion morally necessary.

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ATX_native t1_j1zp8jm wrote

>Despite what hard-core vegans espouse, organic carbon neutral farming cannot be done without animals. Ethically is optional but in my opinion morally necessary.

Huh?

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