FDA Approves First CRISPR Cows for Beef

https://modernfarmer.com/2022/03/fda-crispr-cows-for-beef/

by Ice_cream_suit • 4 years ago

179 323 4 years ago

modernfarmer.com

tormock2• 4 years ago

They will get more sun burns... at least I do when I shave my head.

They are probably doing this because the hair are a nuisance when they process the skins?

thebricksta• 4 years ago

The optimist in me hopes this really is a quality of life improvement for the cattle. The pessimist in me fears this a way to begin patenting livestock.

x3c• 4 years ago

Being out in the sun itself would be a huge step up in quality of life of cattle. Doubt free range cows represent a majority.

viswd• 4 years ago

More patented life and another food product I plan to avoid.

I wonder if the average consumer will be as disgusted and turned off by the idea of eating genetically modfied meat as I am.

jsnodlin• 4 years ago

Not in the least. What’s so disgusting about it? Totally concerned about “patented life” however.

ekianjo3• 4 years ago

average consumer will be as disgusted and turned off by the idea of eating genetically modfied meat as I am.

And yet people seem to be interested in lab-produced meat alternatives that use synthetic blood-like formula to make it taste like actual meat?

rtpg• 4 years ago

Right because of the idea that you can look at lab produced meat and feel like there is basically no suffering involved.

ticviking2• 4 years ago

Most meat alternatives sit on the shelves around here even when we have people stocking up for severe weather and there's nothing else left.

awb• 4 years ago

Price tends to be a big persuader.

kmlx4• 4 years ago

I wonder if the average consumer will be as disgusted and turned off by the idea of eating genetically modfied meat as I am.

quite the contrary. i think this should be celebrated as a great achievement and will happily eat it if it’s delicious :P

diffeomorphism• 4 years ago

I wonder if the average consumer will be as disgusted and turned off by the idea of eating genetically modfied meat as I am.

To me that sounds like being turned off by it containing dihydrogen monoxide. That is kind of a shame because the "patented life" angle is a real, serious problem worth attention but bundling it with shallow/trivial criticism like "turned off" (it literally tastes the same) makes it easy to dismiss.

ksec2• 4 years ago

From the 12+ Years on HN I know this is an unpopular opinion.

I dont like GMO / Genome-edited cattle / food or crops. Even if it could theoretically occur through a natural breeding process. You can cross breed all you want. GMO is not cross breed as many on HN somehow believes last time we had this discussions. You can do Data Science and other controlled environment in providing better yield as in EUR ( Or specifically the Dutch ). And we may soon have Cattle labeled as GMO / Genome-Edit Free as selling point, as US likes to do with Antibiotic Free and Growth Hormones free labels. Part of the reason why EU has never been keen on US Beef import.

To add some other context, US Beef export rank third in export volume and first or second in export revenue.

ekianjo3• 4 years ago

Even if it could theoretically occur through a natural breeding process. You can cross breed all you want.

I'm no fan of GMO products either, but the whole point is that it gets you there faster , and in a more predictable way, than doing cross-breeding. Economics at work.

Thorrez2• 4 years ago

And we may soon have Cattle labeled as GMO / Genome-Edit Free as selling point

A lot of food I buy has labels saying GMO-free on it. Although maybe that's just to distinguish from GMO plants currently.

klondike_2• 4 years ago

There are actually very few GMO crops available commercially. Mostly corn and wheat. The "No GMO" label is meaningless for most products that don't use these ingredients

kickout8• 4 years ago

Other have also commented, but this is mostly a marketing ploy. Non-GMO is not a regulated term and most things we eat have do not have a 'GMO' alternative.

epgui10• 4 years ago

I’m a biochemist, and I’d feed GMOs to my kids all day if I had any. Or to my mom. They’re totally fine.

karmakurtisaani4• 4 years ago

For me the idea that a company can claim intellectual property rights to a genome sounds pretty awful. To be fair, I don't know if that's a real threat or not, but I could totally see it happening.

netizen-9368242• 4 years ago

Same here. Also a biochemist, I'm totally fine with GMO stuff. There's nothing wrong with it at all

aaaaaaaaata2• 4 years ago

Are you commenting on the safety of GMO DNA structure, and long-term biology?

Or are you approving the chemicals that are sprayed on GMOs because they can survive them?

codingdave2• 4 years ago

The problem with GMOs isn't the GMO itself - it is the practices that surround them. Patents, pesticides, and the resulting monoculture in large agricultural operations.

strainer4• 4 years ago

Everything is totally fine until it bites hard enough to beat the marketing and legal campaigns run to promote and protect it. "Totally fine" is simply the orthodox professional position towards new potentially lucrative practices. Because it is a burden on the career opportunities to those who think otherwise.

Putting cattle remains in cattle feed was fine until CJD was discovered, mass producing CFCs was fine until the chemisty of the ozone damage was understood. More chemists assured leaded petrol was fine and the few who complained were attacked... this list is huge. Its totally fine to mass produce plastics still. So to assure the generally well informed about the safety and wisdom of a technological proposition - you would need to be able to carry more detail than just adding 'I am a related professional - this is fine'

vanattab• 4 years ago

I am not a big fan of idea of GMO beef ether, not because I fear it will be dangerous but because I fear it will taste like crap and be unhealthy for the cows. Today they will make the cows hair shorter so they stay cooler for when they edit them tomorrow to grow an extra couple of hundred pounds of rapidly grown muscle.

gruez10• 4 years ago

because I fear it will taste like crap

OTOH I can plausibility imagine engineering to improve marbling for instance.

and be unhealthy for the cows

Todays cows are already really unhealthy because of feedlots.

klondike_2• 4 years ago

You don't provide any argument for why you dislike GMO food here. What bothers you so much about GMO food?

The fact is that humans have been breeding plants and animals to increase efficiency and palatability for thousands of years, and GMO is the next technological step.

mping2• 4 years ago

Unknown unknowns

Eduard3• 4 years ago

You don't provide any argument for why you like GMO food here. What bothers you so much about food?

simulate-me2• 4 years ago

GMO, as a technique, is not inherently bad. However, one common use case is to create pesticide resistant plants, which allows for higher pesticide usage, especially as resistance develops to the pesticide increases: https://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/2190-471...

Basically, if you’re fine with your kids ingesting higher levels of pesticides, then go for it!

yucky2• 4 years ago

Do companies like Monsanto hold patents on their GMO products and techniques?

Because trusting a company (like Monsanto for instance) to play nice with their patents as it relates to our food supply is a non-starter.

colordrops4• 4 years ago

The genetic changes you get with direct gene manipulation are qualitatively different from those that arise through artificial selection. You won't get fish or tobacco genes in a cow from selectivd breeding. To constantly repeat this trope and claim that they are the same is intellectually dishonest.

baremetal• 4 years ago

unintended consequences are what i dont like about GMO food

foobiekr5• 4 years ago

Start by asking yourself how humans have established that a given food, genetically engineered or not, is long-term safe?

i_am_proteus• 4 years ago

Further your assertion by discussing the real concern: uncertainty.

It seems to take generations for health problems with novel products that humans ingest to materialize.

We have millennia of experience with cross breeding, animal husbandry, etc.

Why trust these salesmen of genetically modified organisms, the same gentlemen who gleefully introduce pesticides into the environment, when we know that traditional hybrid crops and selectively-bred livestock provide ample nourishment?

Is optimizing for per-acre yields at the risk hazard the environment and human health worthwhile?

sokoloff2• 4 years ago

That depends in large part on whether a world population of 8B can be fed at the lower per-acre yields.

If the alternative is “everyone eats, but food is a little more expensive”, that’s OK. If the alternative is “billions live with insufficient food and 100s of millions die”, then I think the balance of the risk equation shifts.

rocqua4• 4 years ago

To avoid malthusian traps we do need per-acre yields to be higher and higher. Increasing yields is not just about farmers profits, also about feeding the world.

That does not mean it is a good idea to trade long term damage for short term yields. But yields are still important.

danielovichdk3• 4 years ago

Address the real problem. We are too many people on the earth for the resources that we are naturally given.

That's a fact.

ekianjo3• 4 years ago

We are too many people on the earth for the resources that we are naturally given.

The same old rant that we hear for like 100 years now "when we reach 1 billion people everyone will starve", "peak oil is just around the corner (back in the 70s)", and all this kind of bullshit.

Resources are plentiful as long as you are ingenious when it comes to harvesting them.

pixiemaster• 4 years ago

exactly. the Stone Age didn’t end because they ran out of stones.

fnord77• 4 years ago

like nuclear fusion, peak oil is perpetually 10-15 years away

danielovichdk3• 4 years ago

Who is polluting the world ?

Why are we breeding cattle which has modified genes for not sweating ?

You say resources are plentiful but apploud (?) modified cattle so they don't sweat, so they don't pollute and so we all can keep eating meat. You really don't see a flaw in that ?

Of course we are too many people. Denying that is really naive.

imtringued7• 4 years ago

In the meantime, approximately 793 million people are starving around the world, according to the U.N. That makes up about 11 percent of the population.

https://borgenproject.org/how-many-people-are-starving-aroun...

It's true isn't it?

pessimizer3• 4 years ago

Resources are plentiful as long as you are ingenious when it comes to harvesting them.

Resources are also plentiful until they're not. The idea that people have been saying that resources are running out for a long time is not evidence that they are infinite.

You'd have to be quite ingenious to maintain the fossil fuel supply indefinitely through your harvesting tactics, unless the tactic you use is to slow to a stop.

betwixthewires2• 4 years ago

No it's not.

histriosum• 4 years ago

Even if we were to accept that fact as stated (I don't, but let's assume we do..)

What are you proposing, exactly? It sounds like "address the real problem" here means you are suggesting killing people off. That definitely doesn't seem like a good answer.

China tried the one child policy, and it didn't turn out very well. The second order effects were pretty awful, and will be felt for generations.

What would you suggest the path forward to less population is?

danielovichdk3• 4 years ago

Based on how we exploit our resources and the amount of people that are wealthy enough to live a good-standard life, we are definitely too many people on earth.

Of course I don't suggest killing people, why would you even suggest such a thing ?

I suggest people start to educate themselves and eachother. Instead of having kids, adopt. Instead of eating meat 5 days a week, eat it twice. Start using a bike and not a car.

But people don't think about the consequences for the next generations, and "we are empowered to have our own kids etc". People really don't give a fuck about the state of the world as long as they can get what they believe they are entitled to through life. And that's a problem.

Start accepting that and start accepting the how exploit what we have dear and have been given as being part of the world.

We are way too many people for all of us to live decent life's.

lonk3• 4 years ago

Resorces are enough for all of us. But money is not. Money is collecting in the rich people's pocket. This is the real problem.

ben_w8• 4 years ago

On a national scale, sure.

Worldwide (which is more relevant here), the absolute poorest of the poor, the people that would look up enviously to the accumulated wealth of a rough-sleeping westerner with a shopping trolley, are getting richer.

imtringued7• 4 years ago

Just money? What about the resources themselves? Putin is wealthy because he has exclusive access to them.

imtringued7• 4 years ago

Too many people to live a modern western standard of living.

I'm sure there is a compromise between vegetarianism and being a full on carnivore. e.g. a global middle class that doesn't suck.

mgerdts2• 4 years ago

I first thought “oh great more GMOs to maximize corporate profits while making animals miserable. Then my hopes rose with this:

They were bred with climate change in mind

So they’ve found a way to have happy cows that burp less methane?

No? Shorter hair so their methane burb greenhouse doesn’t feel so hot? Oh. This probably just boils down to profits after all.

lonk3• 4 years ago

I wonder which one effectfull to climate change, people's total farts vs the total farts of cows in the world?

karmakurtisaani4• 4 years ago

Cows by a wide margin, probably. And it's mainly their burps, actually.

koonsolo11• 4 years ago

36% of all mammals today are humans 60% are livestock

So I guess you have the answer

futuretom2055• 4 years ago

judging from the article right above this one, soon we will see

"Lawmakers Eats CRISPR Beef to Celebrate Legality, Become Immediately Sick (2055) (modernfarmer.com)"

Thorrez2• 4 years ago

Why 2055? Isn't it legal right now?

DocTomoe• 4 years ago

It will take some time for the public to take notice and create a meaningful movement against that thing. For nuclear, it took about 35 years before we saw public protest that was more than just three potentially mentally unstable folks raving about the end of the world.

dmix• 4 years ago

Horse breeding is a big business. That would probably be a good target for this sort of thing.

kmlx4• 4 years ago

maybe falconry as well? big business in some parts of the world…

Eduard3• 4 years ago

Maybe naked mole-rats as well?

betwixthewires2• 4 years ago

I want to know what exactly was changed to help them "endure climate change" because to me it sounds like bullshit designed to create a proprietary cow genome with a pretty story to sell it.

dillondoyle2• 4 years ago

Also 'endure climate change' is so grossly ironic.

Instead of factoring in the costs of our actions, engineer ways to lower price and feed more demand -> and thus creating more methane, forest destruction, emissions from feed, huge waste of water, and all the gas shipping it a continent away.

If people won't reduce their beef consumption, maybe we can crispr out some methane (seems not possible just based on chemistry but who knows?). Or maybe just let the real price with externalities lower consumption.

s1artibartfast5• 4 years ago

The methane isn't from the cows, it is from the bacteria in their gut. It can be greatly reduced with supplemental feeding that changes the microbiome

microjim3• 4 years ago

That information, alongside a comparison photo, is available in the first (very short) paragraph. The modification is to have them grow much shorter hair in order to tolerate heat better.

wedn3sday• 4 years ago

I dont mean to sound condescending here, but it would have taken you 2-5 seconds to find the answer to your question. This comment is an example of bad internet discourse.

However! I agree that the who-owns-the-genes question is interesting.

0des3• 4 years ago

This might be an unpopular opinion here but if this puts more beef on the table or at a lesser price, bring it on. I love beef. I want more people to have access to good quality beef at a competitive price. The pandemic for me saw meat in general double in price on average. I can't in good faith consume corn, tomatoes, tobacco, or even broccoli while saying I don't support GMO. It is not the same but it also is not an entirely unrelated concept. As an engineer we are taught to analyze and overcome and to me this is nothing different.

bigDinosaur5• 4 years ago

if you have literally no concern about the suffering of animals, then it's a good thing. If you think that the suffering of animals outweighs people's preferences (not needs, you can thrive on a vegetarian diet) then this is absolutely not good. I'm happy to see high prices for beef, and would be happy if everyone was priced out of eating it. As second best, I'd be happy if people at least considered the suffering that went into their food production and chose to reduce that consumption even if they feel they cannot eliminate it.

throwaway73838• 4 years ago

I agree. I think eating meat is abhorrent, and genetically mutilating animals even more so. Selective breeding is one thing, but this opens the doors to all kinds of ‘design gene’ questions that I don’t think the world is ready for, or ever should be.

triyambakam• 4 years ago

I felt sad seeing the cows in the featured article :( Friends not food.

0des3• 4 years ago

I respect your choice, and hope some day the work we see here can open doors to a lab grown alternative that eliminates the suffering so that you also can experience the joy of a ribeye, bone-in with a compound butter and runny egg.

landa• 4 years ago

You're 100% right about this. What's going on right now with mass slaughter of animals will hopefully end one day soon and be looked back on as the darkest time in the Earth's history.

thunderbong• 4 years ago

We weep for the blood of a bird, but not for the blood of a fish. Blessed are those who have voice. - Mamoru Oshii

Knufen• 4 years ago

This is probably gonna sound a bit dystopian, but would you eat beef if we eliminated suffering with CRISPR? I don't get to talk to a lot of vegetarians/vegans so honest question.

kmlx4• 4 years ago

you can thrive on a vegetarian diet

as long as you take vitamins B12, D and some iron, you should be fine.

but having been meat eaters for 2.4 million years will be hard to shake off.

if anything eating beef will increase in the future as more and more people rise to the “middle class”. we should probably take this into consideration and it’s implications, no matter how you feel about the subject.

DeWilde2• 4 years ago

not needs, you can thrive on a vegetarian diet

Not true for everyone. I have a specific health issue and to ingest the necessary daily intake of proteins solely through non-meat source would mean ingesting a lot more carbs that I can handle for a day.

Also explain how would CRISPR increase the suffering of animals?

matchbok2• 4 years ago

The virtue signaling is strong here. Humans have been eating animals forever. It played a large part in our evolution. It's a normal part of life. Wringing hands over it helps nobody.

sschueller• 4 years ago

But the race to the bottom has shown that quality goes out the window. People will eat garbage if it's cheap and companies will cut any corners they can to get the price down.

Corn fed factory meat doesn't taste at all the same as grass fed organic free-range.

I'd rather pay quadruple for a piece of meat and only eat it once a week than the crap we get for cheap every day.

chiefalchemist• 4 years ago

Moves like this are not about improving the general conditions of the masses.

Please let's stop being so naive.

kotxig• 4 years ago

It's good for climate change because it will gross enough of us out to stop eating meat all together.

lonk3• 4 years ago

If meat is designed and/or produced at lab, it is not meat. It is cancer. Do not eat cancer.

ls15• 4 years ago

Are cancerous cells unhealthy to eat?

ben_w8• 4 years ago

I don’t know, but I do know some tumours are transmissible (even interspecies) so I wouldn’t want to rule it out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clonally_transmissible_cancer

I expect thorough cooking to prevent this sort of thing, but some people do eat raw flesh deliberately.

ben_w8• 4 years ago

The first two sentences are so badly wrong I don’t even know which thread to pull on to unravel your thought processes. (I can’t speak for the third).

Do you believe that “natural” is tautologically equivalent to “good”?

verisimi• 4 years ago

This is great news, and overdue!

Of course there are issues with mere humans editing creatures, and true, coarse-grained crispr editing could result in unintended consequences.

But our ethics committees see nothing wrong with this. And as my morality depends on what ethics are commonly said to be ethical, this is a decision I am delighted to accept. And think of all the invalid children this will help!

Sure, I'm not clear on what has been edited here. Nor do I understand the legal implications of the editing, where a corporation is now considered to be a patent holder in a living cereus.

And I'm not sure what the future holds for people, even though I have read talk that dna was changed by vaccines (not just rna). Surely, corporations wouldn't argue that they have a legal interest in people, and that their interests need to be accounted for?

No, this is great news. Onwards and upwards into the brave new world! And special thanks to the FDA who have bravely represented the best interests of humanity, refusing to kowtow to corporate interests. I only sleep as well as I do thanks to my wonderful government and its 3-letter agencies! Good job.

microjim3• 4 years ago

Would count this categorically as one of the ways we do not want to be using technology in the context of climate change, as it’s bypassing the negative feedback loop that already wasn’t strong enough to prevent us getting to this point in the first place.

mrfusion• 4 years ago

We need to be punished for our sins against the environment.

datavirtue4• 4 years ago

I think we should go a step further and self-flagulate, honestly. Seriously though, this quote made me laugh: "the gene-edited cattle are the same—as far as a consumer is concerned." They should peek in on the anti-vaccine crowd for a glimpse at consumer reality. I'm sure more than a few normies are going to want to see this on the label as well.

atemerev• 4 years ago

But if the loop is eventually not strong enough to have negative effects, why should we reinforce it? I am quite optimistic that the climate change crisis will be eventually resolved by the combination of engineering to restore the environment and adapting our existing technologies to damage it less (like it’s already happening). Humans are very adaptive.

microjim3• 4 years ago

At the risk of us getting too abstract here, the trouble with said loop being weak is that it is difficult to link our actions and their impact on our environment. It is weak because the forces in question operate on a very long time scale, and the system hasn’t self corrected as early as one would hope.

We are indeed very adaptive! It’s simply a case of us adapting our behaviour to mitigate the consequences, rather than just adapting to live with them.

TruthIsHeresy• 4 years ago

What happens when human adaptivity outpaces our species’ ability to accurately perceive and adequately understand the impact of our own adaptivity?

We seem to be becoming increasingly reliant upon technology which is increasingly untested to solve problems that are increasingly a result of this adaptivity. It’s a vicious cycle in which humans identify a problem but lack the necessary perspective to identify and solve the root cause of the problem so we end up with inadequate solutions that mostly prolong and exacerbate the original problem rather than actually solving it. Adaptivity aside, I just don’t think humans are at a point in which we possess the necessary perspective for us to safely engage in large scale commercial genetic modification of life without it backfiring on us in some horribly spectacular way.

koonsolo11• 4 years ago

In Belgium we have cows specifically breaded for meat, which are called "dikbil" =(fatbutt). It's extremely unnatural, so I'm very afraid what kind of monstrosity the industry can come up with when using gene manipulation.

https://www.google.com/search?q=dikbil

stefantalpalaru• 4 years ago

In Belgium we have cows specifically breaded for meat, which are called "dikbil" =(fatbutt). It's extremely unnatural

It's muscular hyperplasia obtained from inbreeding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Blue

They did the same thing in Piedmont, Italy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piedmontese_cattle

kawsper• 4 years ago

Denmark have been breeding pigs to have a higher amount of piglets, but it makes the death rate higher, about 25.000 piglets die a day, and the pre-wean mortality rate is ~21%.

We're also exporting the technology and knowledge of breeding pigs.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/30/danish-b...

sdflhasjd• 4 years ago

"Breaded" means coated in breadcrumbs. I assume they weren't bred like that.

cik2e• 4 years ago

I pictured a whole live cow covered in breadcrumbs instead of fur when I read that. The southern US would be a huge importer.

runeks2• 4 years ago

Sounds delicious

koonsolo11• 4 years ago

Ha yeah, I was already questioning myself if it was the correct spelling :D.

xbmcuser2• 4 years ago

Most livestock, fruits, grains and vegetable that exist today and we buy in our store shelves are all the result of selective breeding by humans over the last 100-200 years. More recently as the science and ability to do selective breeding has improved. Genetic manipulation is going to accelerate something that is already happening. For me genetic manipulation of livestock and grains is not as problematic as the western/richer countries patenting genes and making poor countries pay through the nose for it.

nojito• 4 years ago

If this didn’t happen in pharmaceuticals it wouldn’t happen in gene editing.

runeks2• 4 years ago

Most livestock, fruits, grains and vegetable that exist today and we buy in our store shelves are all the result of selective breeding by humans over the last 100-200 years.

More like thousands of years.

Also, before humans were selectively breeding, animals were “unconsciously breeding” e.g. fruits by eating the tastiest ones and thereby spreading their seeds.

koonsolo11• 4 years ago

I don't fully agree with that timeline, at least not when you consider it more broadly.

My granddad was a farmer (he was born around 1920). Back then, animals were still treated fairly well, and the animals themselves were also still natural. The real industrialization of livestock came after that, when he was already retired.

Having raised and killed animals all of his life, he actually wasn't too fond of how animals were raised and treated after that. For sure he regarded all specifically bred animals as unnatural.

mbg721• 4 years ago

The US has Dolly-Parton-esque chickens too, it's not a new phenomenon.

koonsolo11• 4 years ago

Yes, those we have in Belgium too.

My grandfather was a farmer, and at his old age he bought such a chicken. He was amazed and astounded that within a few weeks it became so big it couldn't stand on its feet anymore.

He didn't buy such a chicken again.

AndyMcConachie• 4 years ago

0) Raise cattle

1) Earth gets warmer because we do shit like raise cattle

2) Cattle might die

3) Bio-engineer cattle that can live on warmer earth

4) ???

5) Get fucked

spicymaki• 4 years ago

Perhaps we can bio-engineer humans to be humane. I would back that research.

newman555• 4 years ago

“help endure climate change”, while beef and eating meat is one of the major contributors to climate change … This is wrong on so many levels.

d23• 4 years ago

Dystopian beyond belief

amelius• 4 years ago

Why is this for the FDA to decide, not the electorate?

We've had discussions about abortion for ages, yet here the FDA okays a human intervention just like that?

rocqua4• 4 years ago

This is about suitability of meat as food. That falls squarely within the purview of the FDA.

Whether this is allowed to do to animals is not determined by the FDA. I am not sure what law does cover this.

softwaredoug2• 4 years ago

I don’t want to argue you should be vegetarian, but I hope at least people might consider eating _much less_ meat. I’m trying to save it for special occasions. It’s not always possible, but I try and do my best.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eating-less-red-m...

colordrops4• 4 years ago

I do want to argue that you should be vegan. The meat industry is very cruel to animals, and it is nearly impossible to source truly "cruelty free" meat despite marketing saying otherwise. Dairy is far worse, with cows kept in small cages, constantly impregnated to keep producing milk, their calves pulled away from them and slaughtered for veal. Eggs are also horrible, with egg chickens living miserable lives, even "free range" ones, and the male chicks being culled by being thrown into a grinder.

Furthermore, water usage, water table pollution, and greenhouses gasses from animal husbandry are a significant chunk of the pie when it comes to climate change.

softwaredoug2• 4 years ago

That’s a valid position. However the reality many people I’ve found will be more open to eating less meat than going full vegan. If in the end you reduce meat consumption, it’s a win

wincy• 4 years ago

The happiest times in my life and the healthiest I’ve ever been are always when I eat mostly meat and very little of anything else.

I don’t care about the emotions of animals at all, and never will. I purposely show my daughter videos of how to slaughter farm animals to try to make sure she has a full understanding of what’s happening so she doesn’t one day realize what “pork” or “beef” means and becomes vegan. Her favorite food by far is steak.

I’m all for others reducing their consumption as hopefully that’ll drop prices so I can eat more meat and feed my children more meat. Which is the only actual end result people who advocate cutting meat consumption will ever achieve.

belorn3• 4 years ago

I want to argue that you should neither eat meat or an vegetarian diet, especially if either is produced through artificial fertilizers. As an Baltic ocean diver I am almost daily reminded of the destructiveness caused by farming, and I continuously witness the horror of asphyxia when low oxygen water get flown near the areas I dive, and when the visible-from-space algae bloom occurs. Artificial fertilizers is such a huge problem that practically every single fresh water lake in Europe is considered damaged by eutrophication. Sourcing food free of that is a major step to reducing ones personal climate footprint.

Eggs are actually great if you have your own flock of chickens. They work almost for free in keeping grass down without requiring fossil fuels or complex machinery. They are almost perfect in handling food waste, and they can reduce harmful insects and weed without using any herbicide or pesticide. For insects they are likely less cruel than poison, and do not spread the poison to bees or birds. They also fertilizer the garden in a very natural way. A fairly small flock can easily maintain the need of eggs for a small family, often producing so much that you want to give it away to friends and relatives.

A bit of an anecdotal but when the natural gas prices went up after Russian invasion of Ukraine, one food product that got hit hard was fresh tomatoes. Farming them during off-season is very energy intensive and so require a lot of electricity, which in most countries mean a lot of fossil fuel. Even if you use renewables, that is energy that would otherwise go to to displace fossil fuel. It is indirect, but fresh tomatoes is right now connected with fossil fuel and war. Meat is also effected, but analysts seem to argue that people can easier switch over to farm more animal feed than they can fix the energy dependence on Russian fossil fuels. People could stop eating fresh vegetables when its off season...

coolso• 4 years ago

I do want to argue that you should be vegan.

Tried it (by my own suggestion) as a supportive boyfriend for a week. Absolutely not. The food tastes awful and is so unfulfilling as well. Every single bit of it. Nice boutique vegan restaurants, homemade vegan, following highly rated recipes online, “you can’t even tell it’s vegan!!” alternatives from the store.

All of it absolutely gross and of questionable nutritional value, both overall and to men’s health especially but also women. I finally discovered, for example, the source of my then-girlfriend’s bouts of faintness and nausea: her vegan diet. Supplementing with vitamins improved things overnight. But something feels very, very wrong about that.

There’s also the type of person that tends to be vegan. I’m sorry but when the scene is filled with people who believe veganism, male feminism, effeminate traits, inherent weakness due to diet, and voting for Bernie is a personality trait, I don’t walk… I run.

dehrmann• 4 years ago

with cows kept in small cages

I don't think this is common practice. My dairy knowledge is somewhat dated, but they they're usually kept in large corrals (possibly crowded) with many other cows.

nickstinemates3• 4 years ago

Grow your own meat or buy direct from someone who does

prepend7• 4 years ago

I’d like to argue for eating healthy and sustainably produced animal protein.

Commercial meat is really bad for the environment, but you don’t have to eat that.

Animals are evolved to make the most of vegetables that humans can’t eat. There are sustainable sources that we can use to eat beef, pork, chicken, lamb, etc.

I try and do my best by eating local sources that I know are well produced. I don’t hunt, but would one day like to.

https://www.sacredcow.info/ Is a decent source of info on this.

sweetheart16• 4 years ago

Unnecessary violence that is sustainable is still unnecessary violence. You don't need to eat any animals to thrive, so choosing to do so is simply choosing to induce suffering for ephemeral, meaningless pleasure.

tengbretson• 4 years ago

On the other hand, even if you want to regularly eat meat, between public land hunting and raising rabbits and chickens, the ability to take the production of the meat you eat into your own hands is a lot more accessible than you might think. Even if you live in an urban setting.

nickstinemates3• 4 years ago

Yes 100%. Raising 52 chickens for 1 chicken per week per year takes about 8 weeks start to finish and doesn't take much space at all.

Rabbits are pound for pound the most efficient meat to raise.

imtringued7• 4 years ago

I sure hope that these cows can reproduce without the authorization of a mega corporation.

Everyone loves talking about how their genetic engineering technique is the best and that at worst it is only as bad as selective breeding yet they completely dismiss the fact that you cannot apply selective breeding on a lot of these GMOs.

gruez10• 4 years ago

I sure hope that these cows can reproduce without the authorization of a mega corporation.

What's the concern here? That violating the reproductive rights of livestock is bad?

kickout8• 4 years ago

My opinion continues to be tools like CRISPR and genome editing techniques are just that--tools. Can be used for good or bad purposes depending on your context and bias.

Most people associate these genome modification tools as inherently bad because the first generation of them were tied to herbicide and pesticide resistance. Whether you agree with those applications or not, its clear those tools worked and were extremely powerful. I would personally argue they work too well and the 2nd and 3rd order effects are doing the most damage. But these tools exist in regulatory frameworks that are archaic and rigid and when billions of dollars are on the line companies figure out ways to play in between the lines.

An optimistic person might want these tools to be used to increase taste profiles, shelf-life, nutritional content, range of adaptation, etc. A pessimist probably sees this as a faster way to add more herbicide or pesticide traits to enable those chemicals to be applied.

I'm very bullish on genome editing tech. Lots of these comments are applying 1990s thinking to a 2030 and beyond tech. Akin to 1950s 'futuristic' predictions showing flying cars.

sjmm19893• 4 years ago

Anyone who has ever eaten bread or a banana, has already been technically in some fashion or another, eating GMO's.

Norman Borlaug helped rid us of Wheat rust, which took a more 'natural' approach to gene editing.

The banana has been a mutant for decades now.

qqtt3• 4 years ago

Also lemons, broccoli, and pretty much any modern vegetable or fruit - humans have been selectively growing plants since humans have had the knowledge of how to grow things period.

kickout8• 4 years ago

The banana is a seedless triploid (seeds don't form because they have an odd number of chromosome pairs). This is a common mechanism in fruits to achieve seedless varieties that can then be propagated vegetatively.

The term GMO has functionally lost all meaning to me as anyone can load up a straw man defining it how they need it to be defined at that point in time. Borlaug was a great plant breeder, but some of his inventions ushered in those tricky 2nd and 3rd order effects that I alluded to earlier. Namely, the response of (wheat) crops to synthetic fertilizer and how much synthetic fertilizer is both an economic boom and and environmental quagmire. Interesting debates no doubt

samatman2• 4 years ago

Speaking as someone who has genetically modified several organisms, please don't do this.

Genetic engineering is a distinctive and new technique for modifying the genomes of organisms, and the results of genetic engineering are referred to as GMOs.

The rhetorical flourish of decompiling the acronym and pretending it is descriptive rather than nominal does no one any favors. It's disingenuous, and doesn't alleviate someone's distrust of genetic engineering, because they know perfectly well that you know what they meant and are deflecting the conversation.

Jon_Lowtek• 4 years ago

Are you trying to conflate "selective breeding" and "genetic modification" or do you mean "US Americans" when you say "anyone"?

If by "Anyone" you mean "US Americans", then you are probably referring to that vitamin A added GMO "golden banana" that is field tested there. But in that case there would be no need to say "technically in some fashion or another". (EDIT: i must have misinterpreted a single source, there is a lack of secondary sources confirming any large scale availability of this banana in the USA. Sorry! The field test is in Uganda not America)

The banana we are used to (Cavendish, ~99% world export market share) is not a GMO, because that term has a definition and a meaning, no matter how much people try to conflate "selective breeding" and "genetically modified organism".

What you are doing is called "muddying the water" and in general it is not helpful in serious debate, except when you aim for winning an argument, instead of reaching consent or discovering a deeper truth. I am not saying it is invalid to make a comparison between selective breeding and gene editing, highlighting the similarities. Doing that is perfectly fine. What is not ok, in my opinion, is trying to attempt to redefine and twist the words used by the other side of an argument to describe their position such that they can not express their position anymore. Note that sometimes word definitions are vague and reaching a common understanding can look similar to this pattern, but in this case the "technically in some fashion or another" gives the intention away.

foobiekr5• 4 years ago

You know, I agree with you, I think there's not necessarily a problem with CRISPR or GMOs or mutagenic selective breeding, or whatever.

But there are real issues: novel introductions make it harder to define how we talk about food safety in general, since almost all of it is based on both a very poor science (nutrition science is a dumpster fire) and long-term use by humans (GRAS) where previous generations were test subjects. The industry around this basically ignores these issues and pretends they don't exist and they label anyone raising issues as "anti-science."

Put another way: industries _usually_ don't end up untrusted because people are crazy, they _usually_ earned it, and GMO big ag has earned it in spades.

It's not just the original go to market being terminator seeds and submarining in patents, or to enable soaking fields with RoundUp, it's also that when people talk about GMOs, they're often talking about transgenic GMOs, things like Flavr Savr and the generally borderline-gaslighting issue around the industry and FDA pretending that labeling food with actual information would be bad (which has come up over and over, not just with GMOs).

There's also the disingenuous approach to pretending that modern genetic engineering is "just" accelerated breeding, which frankly isn't true and mostly relies on the fact that modern breeding uses mutagens to accelerate a process which makes coming up with a useful definition of GRAS quite difficult.

Basically the industry's argument was "GMO is no worse/different than what we've been doing for thirty years that you didn't know about, so it's fine" which, shocking, has kind of fallen flat because it is an outright lie.

Gaslighting is an overused term, but the industry's"it's just selective breeding!" argument is really pretty phony, and that's ignoring transgenic GMOs.

Before I get labeled "anti-science", I'm actually pro GMO, pro-GMO food and so on. But only in a functional regulatory environment, which we do not have at the moment.

kickout8• 4 years ago

All good points. Another topic lost in these debates is _very real alternatives_. People lament fields soaked in glyphosate or neonics. True, there are real problems with these actives. Unfortunately, these chemicals largely replaced _even more dangerous_ chemicals like DDT and other nasty organs-phosphates (I think sarin gas was discovered while searching for pesticides?).

It's unfortunate people don't have complete information and make the assumption of glyphosate/whatever or nothing when that reality never really ever existed.

WheelsAtLarge• 4 years ago

The big issue with gene editing is the unintended consequences. Everything is fine now but will it always be that way? We deal with consequences by applying patches. So it's patch after patch after patch until the problem gets so bad that we start over. We can do that with things. But for genes that have spread over a population it will be next to impossible. Good luck to the future generations that will have to deal with the genes that get modified today.

kickout8• 4 years ago

I agree with your core statement of a series of patches to fix things that get deployed, but I'm not so pessimistic we won't have better/faster/more accurate tools to deploy those patches. I generally never want to bet against human ingenuity, despite problems _seem_ unsolvable to our current understanding.

jdrc• 4 years ago

'Not' disappointed by the amount of content-free opinion in these threads. Gell-mann amnesia starts to fade

UltimateFloofy• 4 years ago

okja

mgraczyk• 4 years ago

Surprised by the negative sentiment here.

This is exciting for the obvious reasons of helping make meat production more sustainable and making meat more affordable. It's also incredible that we have this technology and we're putting to uses with obviously prosocial benefits.

I'm worried that we will reject climate change mitigations because of tradition or religious views. I hope we can change culturally to make it possible to survive for the next century.

orsenthil• 4 years ago

How do we review FDA's analysis? I hope it is available to researchers, and to public. Can someone point me to those?

FDA Approves First CRISPR Cows for Beef

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