Team wants to sell lab grown meat in five years (2015)

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34540193

139 114 10 years ago

qyv• 10 years ago

The ethical argument for the adoption of artificial beef is always brought out during these stories. But they forget to mention that the lab grown meat only contains lean meat cells and in order to make it taste good they need to add animal fat. As in, fat from farmed and slaughtered animals.

pen2l• 10 years ago

Shouldn't creating artificial fat be easier than creating artificial meat?

(I confess I have the impression that it would be easier based on a mere hunch... fat just seems less "complicated")

iaw• 10 years ago

With zero knowledge on the subject my guess would be that they've focused on the protein structure and not the fat structures in their efforts. I suspect there are a lot of similarly shaped fat structures that taste differently which makes it seem like a similar but different problem.

In short, my guess would be that they need to focus on that after they solve this problem. The value of the meat is probably higher than that of the fat though so the ordering makes sense.

tootie3• 10 years ago

Can't you use plant fat?

xyzzy123• 10 years ago

Yep, or just cook in butter.

nooyurrsdey• 10 years ago

do you think there will be a way to replace actual animal fat over time with another source? Is it cost holding it back or is it scientifically infeasible?

stupidcar• 10 years ago

Human fat. Just build the meat lab next to a liposuction clinic. Problem solved.

In fact, if you build a burger joint there as well, you've got a perfect Fat Cycle. People can go to the clinic to get their flab hoovered off, then head into the restaurant and eat it all back in burger form.

hkhall• 10 years ago

Thanks Tyler.

trentmb• 10 years ago

At least its fat neutral

ordinary• 10 years ago

A couple of days ago, I got a DVD-R in my mailbox. When I looked at was on it, it appeared to be a list of conspiracy theory videos. The file names of several of these alleged that aborted fetuses (human) were used in the meat industry, by McDonalds specifically.

I decided not to watch them.

untilHellbanned• 10 years ago

Reverse sticker shock as clickbait, there's a new one.

entee• 10 years ago

It's unclear what methods they're using to make these burgers, but often you need many animal-derived products to culture cells. Fetal bovine serum, growth media, all of these have animal products in them. If they make an ethical argument, then they'll have to solve that too. They might have, but it's not clear in the article.

truth_sentinell2• 10 years ago

I saw in a documentary that with only a sample of the skin they can grow like 10k burguers, and the animal won't even notice, it's like an injection. I don't remember the doc but it seems pretty ethical IMO.

_Wintermute• 10 years ago

It's not just the initial cells, the growth medium contains a lot of animal products - even culturing human cells for research uses lots of bovine products.

VelNZ• 10 years ago

I am really really excited about lab grown meat making it into the mass market and ultimately becoming cheaper than traditional meat. The environmental benefits will be insane; how much of the earth is currently devoted to either raising animals or growing feed to feed animals? If we can centralise the production of meat, suddenly we have huge swathes of land that, perhaps naively, I hope can be reforested.

dilemma2• 10 years ago

If we can centralise the production of meat

Sounds like a huge disease risk.

toomuchtodo3• 10 years ago

You should tour a factory farming operation. Lab grown meat could be as safe as vaccine production; both done in controlled, sterile environments.

EDIT: Seriously though, don't do the tour if you ever want to eat meat again. Doubly so for walking a slaughterhouse floor. There are some things you cannot unsee.

gravypod• 10 years ago

how much of the earth is currently devoted to either raising animals or growing feed to feed animals

Probably just as much of the Earth as will be needed to run this operation. Power, plant mass, and people aren't free resources.

zaroth• 10 years ago

The energy required to sustain and grow a life form (the cow) is orders of magnitude greater than the energy in the final product (steak). A lab can improve on that ratio.

api• 10 years ago

Not even close. Cattle are labor and space intensive as well as guzzling feed and water. All of the latter has to be shipped via trucks and pipes.

artifaxx• 10 years ago

It feels that way, but estimates look quite promising. If lab grown meat ends up using 1% of the land needed for animal production that would make a huge difference! http://phys.org/news/2011-06-lab-grown-meat-emissions-energy...

charlesdm4• 10 years ago

Am I the only one here who probably wouldn't buy artificial meat? I'm not a massive meat eater, but when I go shopping, I tend to buy better quality stuff without caring too much for the price. I'd give it a try, but would probably still buy "the real deal".

Suddenly we have huge swathes of land that, perhaps naively, I hope can be reforested.

Those plots would still be owned by farmers, and planting trees on them would bring in close to zero revenue.

jacalata2• 10 years ago

If there's a larger benefit to planting trees, then it would make sense for the government to offer incentives to plant trees, so they could make money.

Flammy• 10 years ago

Those plots would still be owned by farmers, and planting trees on them would bring in close to zero revenue.

There are lots of farming subsidies out there. Even subsidies for letting the land return to (and maintain it in) its "natural" state.

Source: Family members do this in Iowa.

15155• 10 years ago

Trees are enormously expensive for large trees, tree farmers do make decent money.

Probably not as much as other forms of agriculture, though.

jdhzzz• 10 years ago

I would expect that a similar thing that happened when humans went from hunter-gatherer to agrarian. Exponentially more humans. We'll need that land to house all those people.

CamperBob2• 10 years ago

You'll probably change your mind. If/when synthmeat becomes both economical and palatable, it will rapidly become socially unacceptable to eat real meat.

kalleboo2• 10 years ago

Wouldn't that completely depend on the quality? Sure if it ends up being slimy crap then you'd avoid it, but what if they manage to engineer it so each cheap steak is Kobe-beef quality?

robbrown451• 10 years ago

But people who refuse to eat lab meat will eventually die off. I mean, there are still people buying newly harvested fur, but they seem to be few and far between. Real meat will probably carry a social stigma as soon as fake meat becomes just as good or nearly as good.

greggman• 10 years ago

I will eat whatever is delicious. For example I find "The Loving Hut" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_Hut) pretty yummy and even though I'm a meat eater if I'm near a Loving Hut I'm happy to choose it because of taste.

If fake meat is yummy and doesn't have any bad side effects (gas) I'll be happy to eat it. If I can't tell the difference between it and a real burger I'll be happy to switch. If I can tell the difference, if it's yummy I'll still eat it, just as a separate type of food.

As an example fishballs, meatballs, and various kinds of things made from ground meat of all kinds are common.

https://www.google.com/search?q=fishballs&tbm=isch

https://www.google.com/search?q=%E3%81%8A%E3%81%A7%E3%82%93&...

Heck, other processed meats are very common throughout western cuisine as well. Just walk into any deli section and look 100s of them.

My point being even if they never get the burger a 100% the same as real if it's delicious they can sell it to me as yet another processed product and like sausage/pâté/terrine/galantine/ham I'll eat it.

spraak• 10 years ago

I'm with you. I too don't eat it often but would rather buy organic, grass fed, local. I also wouldn't buy synthetic meat for spiritual reasons: I actually want to consume a real dead animal that had a soul. It is much more nourishing for me to eat animals than be vegetarian, and I don't just mean physically nourishing.

onion2k2• 10 years ago

Why are you assuming that the meat grown in a vat in perfect conditions with a chosen ratio of muscle to fat, perfect marbling, in the ideal size, with absolutely no additives would be worse than something grown naturally?

pjc50• 10 years ago

In the case of the Brazilian rainforest, it's not necessarily owned but just illegally occupied by the farmers.

Balgair• 10 years ago

I'm currently looking at my bag of Cheetos and there is a largish 'warning'/statement on the back that says : "Produced with Genetic Engineering." Economics aside, I think you are going to have to put something like that on every unit of lab-meat that is sold, if not those words exactly (depends on the tech). People, for some reason, have gotten onto the 'Organic = Better' bus. Lab-meat is going to have to go against that zeitgeist. We already know that people will pay a lot more for 'organic' beef burgers, so I think we can say that the ethical issues are not in fact issues for most consumers, the health ones are though. Lab-meat, for most American consumers, is a no-go. Say McD's uses lab-meat, and they can undercut the price of a 'cheeseburger' by, what, 25%? A lot of people are still going to go to BK, as their marketers will gleefully and truthfully advertise that their burgers are 'real.' Outside of Sodexo, frozen dinners, and HotPocket, the only people that are going to buy lab-meat products are the dreadfully poor ones. A large market, unfortunately, but not one that you can reap big margins from.

xbmcuser3• 10 years ago

Ethical considerations won't take this far. Need it to become cheaper than real meat the day that happens it will take off on its own. Meat or cattle raising plays a big role in the worlds methane production decreasing that would be huge achievement as with more people getting out of poverty every year meat production and consumption is increasing.

x1798DE2• 10 years ago

I could see another angle in the meantime, which is exotic lab grown meats. I'd be interested in trying bald eagle meat or polar bear or any number of animal meats where it's either illegal or impractical to culture full animals.

Presumably you can also make meats that scale disproportionately with the size of the animal, like sparrow burger or lobster steak.

MrQuincle• 10 years ago

Yes, or human.

Dove• 10 years ago

I see another advantage: it may be safe to do things with lab-grown meat that aren't safe with farm-grown. Tuna without overfishing concerns. Swordfish without the mercury. Chicken that can be served medium rare. Or ground beef for that matter.

On top of that, this approach to meat offers extreme customizability. Imitating what comes out of a cow in terms of fat, protein, flavor, is where they've got to start. And the first cars had fake horse heads. Eventually they can optimize for health or taste in a way nature can't. Fois gras times ten.

If this approach becomes truly economical, I would expect it to destroy traditional meat the way cars destroyed horse-drawn carriages: through sheer superiority of performance options.

taneq3• 10 years ago

Ethical considerations have all but removed cage eggs from supermarkets where I live, despite them now being around a third the price of free range eggs. If an issue gets enough visibility and there's a halfway viable alternative, don't discount slacktivism and squick factor as a significant economic force.

xbmcuser3• 10 years ago

Solar was the ethical choice but it didn't really take off till it reached parity with other sources of electricity production. Electricity cars are the more ethical choice and last few years people are paying more for it but it will only take off when it comes into parity with gasoline cars.

solotronics• 10 years ago

you claim this but personally I am a big meat eater but I find the factory farming system disturbing. I would definitely only buy lab meat if it was available for even double the price of animal meat.

xbmcuser3• 10 years ago

You are rich enough to pay more for healthy food. You probably come in the 1% of the richest people in the world this comment is for the other 7 billion people that cant afford to pay more for food.

throwaway982372• 10 years ago

As a vegan, I feel the day fast approaching when I must choose whether I'll eat this "vegan" meat or not. Either way I'm rooting for them on behalf of the environment and all the animals caught up in our current industrial food system.

jekrb• 10 years ago

I'm vegan too. My reason for being vegan is entirely on the basis of sustainability. If lab meat is produced in a sustainable fashion then I'll be all for eating it.

KitDuncan2• 10 years ago

I really doubt lab grown meat will ever be as sustainable, as a normal plant based diet.

thret• 10 years ago

Economies of scale. I think the product will become financially viable faster if it has wide-spread vegan support.

throwaway982372• 10 years ago

One would only be on-board with that assuming they were on board with the whole of the product. So first you'd need to make the argument as to why a vegan should be behind this product, besides "more people can afford it if all vegans buy it."

Also, that only works if it has competition, otherwise, if it were that popular and there were no competition the producer would have good reason to raise the price knowing the market could bear it.

jholman2• 10 years ago

This is year-old blogspam. bigthink.com spins every article out into nine self-linked articles, and also leaves out all the interesting details. Also they don't source the $11.36 figure, and all the other sources I've read give prices to about 1 significant figure, not to four, so I suspect that's made up.

If you're interested in this subject, read this WP piece from 18 months ago, or this BBC piece that was the actual source for TFA from 13 months ago, both of which contain more up-to-date facts than TFA.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/05/20/meet-...

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34540193

Or, for more background, here's the 3-year-old piece from Time that raised a lot of discussion, and which gives the context for the price drop.

http://science.time.com/2013/12/16/the-triple-whopper-enviro...

Or you could read this, from 6 months ago. Note that it looks like a bit of a biased piece to me, but it appears to be directly sourced, rather than just regurgitated. It also is specific about Mosa's price targets, saying that they think that $29.50/lb will be their launch price, and they speculate that $3.60/lb seems like an achievable goal for later (currency not specified, though probably they mean USD, but note that the company is not American).

http://www.takepart.com/feature/2016/05/23/cultured-beef

grzm3• 10 years ago

"Also they don't source the $11.36 figure"

And did I miss it, but are we to assume that's $11.36/lb? Some other unit?

greeneggs• 10 years ago

Generally, random numbers like this come from unit conversion. My guess is that it started at $100/kg.

$100 per kg = $11.34 per 1/4 lb burger

You get $11.36 per 1/4 lb if you use 2.2 lb = 1 kg, instead of the exact conversion.

dang• 10 years ago

Yes, that's bad. We've changed the URL from http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/answering-how-a-sausage-gets-ma..., which points to the BBC piece.

CyberDildonics• 10 years ago

That's pretty good, but even if you buy now it will just be obsolete in a week.

woofyman• 10 years ago

Reminds me of Frederik Pohls "The Space Merchants" published 1952 where he describes a huge mass of cultured chicken breast cells fed with algae

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1002

taneq3• 10 years ago

Interestingly, the original experiment that spawned these stories (Alexis Carrel allegedly kept a culture of chicken heart alive for 20 years) was never replicated, and it's suspected that fresh cells were added to the mass to keep it going.

Attempts to replicate it lead to the discovery of the Hayflick Limit, which observes that most animal cells can only divide a limited number of times before dying.

mrob2• 10 years ago

I predict synthetic meat will be hugely successful simply because it avoids all the gross parts of dead animals. No blood, no connective tissue, no risk of abscesses or parasites, no worries about cross-contamination, the exact same size every time. If I can buy a sterile and perfectly uniform slab of synthetic muscle and marbled fat, to me that's a better product than natural meat. I don't even care if it tastes slightly worse. Put some ketchup on it and it'll be good enough.

"Inferior" technology very often wins because of convenience. People preferred LCDs to CRTs long before they'd caught up with CRT image and motion quality. Touch screen phones are more popular than those with physical keyboards. More people use ballpoint pens than fountain pens despite the higher writing pressure and lack of flexibility in ink choice. Synthetic meat can be the ultimate convenient meat and that's enough to make up for a lot of other flaws.

jonathanstrange2• 10 years ago

I'm not so sure. The problem is that any kind of processed real meat, like almost all other processed food, tends to be absolutely horrible from a culinary point of view and is often bad from a health-related point of view, too.

It seems unlikely to me that lab-grown meat would fare better in that respect than, say, processed compressed chicken remains that are sold as an ingredient in a vast variety of processed food.

I also don't think that lab-grown meat will have substantially less potential for biological contamination.

mrob2• 10 years ago

I'm confident contamination won't be an issue for consumers because AFAIK no current or proposed synthetic meat has an immune system. This means it will have to be grown in sterile conditions. Contamination will be a huge problem for producers, but they'll have to figure out a solution because the cost of losing whole batches would be too much if they don't.

onion2k2• 10 years ago

The problem is that any kind of processed real meat...

The aim of this is that it doesn't produce something that needs processing though. The aim is to produce something that is identical to just plain, real meat. There's no cooking or preparation involved - the only difference is that instead of being grown in a cow it's grown in a vat.

rdlecler1• 10 years ago

A US company called Modern Meadow is trying to do the same thing, but is starting with a more commercially viable first product: leather. This seems like a better way to develop the technology stack you need to crush the cost so that you can make it available for food.

SpikeDad• 10 years ago

Sounds like a job for a Kickstarter. They'll make a lot of money, maybe create some new science and then when they fail they can close up their shop without a single repercussion.

Team wants to sell lab grown meat in five years (2015)

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