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After becoming somewhat used to food scares from China, now we have sleazy operators in Europe too.
From the ABC News article:
Authorities have arrested at least 66 people in a European food scam which sold horse meat unfit for human consumption.
European Union police coordinating organization Europol announced Sunday that eight nations cooperated in the operation. In Spain, 65 people face a series of charges relating to public health, money laundering and animal abuse.
The operation took several months and the chief suspect, a Dutch businessman, was arrested in Belgium in April.
Spain's Civil Guard said that the criminal ring acquired horses in Spain and Portugal that were "in poor shape, old, or had been designated 'not apt for consumption.'" After falsifying paperwork and substituting microchips used to identify the horses, the animals were slaughtered and the meat shipped to Belgium.
The Civil Guard said that the profits from the illegal meat could reach 20 million euros ($23 million) a year.
The case was linked to a 2013 scandal when Irish authorities detected beef burgers containing horse meat.
Is it still safe to consume Soylent?
Additional details at CNN.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @05:16PM (31 children)
Where is my vat grown beef protein in which no cow was murdered but still tastes like a steak?
It's been 10 years out since the 80's
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 17 2017, @05:25PM (30 children)
2015: The $325,000 Lab-Grown Hamburger Now Costs Less Than $12 [fastcompany.com]
Lab-Grown Meat May Save a Lot More than Farm Animals' Lives [nbcnews.com]
Lab-Grown Pork Closer to Reality [soylentnews.org]
Lab-Grown Chicken (and Duck) Could be on the Menu in 4 Years [soylentnews.org]
This could also be very relevant:
Millions of Functional Human Cells Can be Created in Days With OPTi-OX [soylentnews.org]
Go ahead and make your Soylent jokes. But if it can be applied to bovine/chicken/etc. cells then it could speed things up and lower costs.
I'll go with some others and predict a lab-grown meat product being sold in some capacity by 2020. Maybe in high end restaurants. The true test is getting that stuff into 5 lb frozen bags at Walmart, Sam's Club, Costco, BJ's, ALDI, etc.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @05:36PM (3 children)
Right where's my beef? seems like a money problem at this point why no VC's for food? right that might help people, rather than AI which leads to lots of military contracts
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Monday July 17 2017, @06:01PM (2 children)
https://www.wired.com/2016/10/nerds-cattle-food-technology-will-save-world/ [wired.com]
http://cbey.yale.edu/our-stories/disrupting-meat [yale.edu]
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/06/13/191029875/why-bill-gates-is-investing-in-chicken-less-eggs [npr.org]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/08/02/farming-on-the-moon-and-meat-grown-in-a-lab-six-thoughts-on-the-future-of-food/ [washingtonpost.com]
Actually the usual suspects are involved, including Eric Schmidt and Bill Gates.
Impossible Foods [wikipedia.org] is one of the most hyped entrants. It's making advanced veggie burgers, with heme [wikipedia.org] for "bleeding" and realistic flavor. You can buy the "Impossible Burger" at some restaurants and look up reviews on YouTube, etc.
Memphis Meats [wikipedia.org] is one of the companies I linked. It's working on cultured meat and expects to sell products by 2021. They seem to be betting on chicken and duck, not sure if they are involved with beef. Now they could sell this stuff at a premium and attract some interest, but if they somehow manage to sell it cheaper than you can get normal chicken at the store (say, $2/lb for chicken breasts) than I will be impressed. But if you compare it to premium/cage-free/whatever they have a lower hurdle since those can be around $5-6/lb at the store.
Hampton Creek [wikipedia.org] is one of the companies Bill Gates was interested in (maybe he has money in it). It makes "Beyond Eggs" and a line of eggless products including mayo. I have noticed the mayo at one of my grocery stores so I could buy it today if I wanted.
You'll notice that those three companies are all headquartered in California, two in San Francisco. Silicon Valley VC money is definitely funding alternative and lab-grown meats.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @06:15PM
But still no beef! I suspect that is no accident impeding something that could solve a lot of hunger because patents, or maybe just maybe it isn't as real as the hype
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @09:48PM
I've bought the Just Mayo from Hampton Creek.
They have some misleading marketing -- but -- the product tastes good. in my tests with unsuspecting participants, they didn't notice the difference.
It spreads a little more thickly/is not as wet as traditional mayo, but it tastes very similar and is superior to many "not mayo but tries to be like it without adding weird flavor" spreads I have experimented over the years.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Monday July 17 2017, @05:46PM (24 children)
It's in the works, but at this point it's still another reminder that when it comes to chemistry/biochemistry synthesis Mom Nature has us silly humans completely outclassed.
We're just using nature's existing machinery and not doing that great a job of it.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 17 2017, @06:05PM (13 children)
Are we outclassed? Millions of Functional Human Cells Can be Created in Days With OPTi-OX [soylentnews.org]
You could interpret that as just another application of existing Mother Nature processes but it looks like we can do some natural things at an unnatural pace. I'll also be interested to see if we can do crazy stuff like apply the cultured meat approach to vegetables or fruits. Grow a mushy substance that is ready to be put into smoothies or baby food or whatever.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @06:18PM (11 children)
Soylent is no fun if it's not made of real living breathing thinking humans that are scoped up off the street, tell me how could vampire and proto cannibal peter teil feel good about that?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 17 2017, @06:32PM (9 children)
Maybe there is a libertarian approach to cannibal-vampirism. Invite the poor to voluntarily board a seastead libertarian utopia, eat them alive and pay their families some blood money. But your family will be paid based on the median or poverty line income in your country, so less money to Indians, Vietnamese, Ethiopians, etc.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @06:37PM (8 children)
You've been watching the strain haven't you?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 17 2017, @06:45PM (7 children)
I think I only saw S01E01 but there was probably some similar stuff in True Blood. Maybe I'll get back into it; I like del Toro.
And you don't have to look to fiction to guess this could happen. There's gotta be some rich libertarians out there harvesting transplantable organs to keep themselves alive. Maybe all parties in a transaction like that can feel that they've won.
We definitely know that rich couples (including gay couples) are using surrogate mothers in poor countries:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-28679020 [bbc.com]
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/05/dwindling-options-for-surrogacy-abroad/484688/ [theatlantic.com]
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @07:04PM (6 children)
Sorry perhaps you missed my reference to Peter Thiel that is a known vampire
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/peter-thiel-wants-to-inject-himself-with-young-peoples-blood [vanityfair.com]
so it's not a long jump to long pig
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 17 2017, @07:11PM (5 children)
Naw, I know about it. It's one of aristarchus's favorite memes after all.
I don't really think much of it. If you can culture meat, you can probably reproduce whatever junk in blood that might be causing the effect, which is not that well studied. Thiel is better off chucking some more money at Aubrey de Grey and nibbling on low calorie meals.
It does say a lot about Count Thiel that he would not only jump on such an unproven "treatment", but admit it to the press.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @07:31PM (4 children)
Goes to my larger point about VC's but the question still stands, despite seemingly promising results and seemingly understood biology Where is my vat steak?
Your dog wants vat steak but can't have it because ??
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 17 2017, @07:43PM (3 children)
It is an admittedly immature technology, and it also needs to scale up to compete with established cattle/livestock production. The processes may eventually produce higher quality meat than is possible by using livestock (you may be able to create marbled [wikipedia.org] "cuts" or weird "cuts" that have never existed in nature), but the easiest meat to produce will probably be ground meat, even in the case of chicken [aidells.com]. So maybe another year or two before your dog can get a firm vat steak. And it's not clear to me that these companies are going to be growing cuts of meat with bones in them.
It may also face regulatory hurdles and consumer ick factor that simply aren't felt by meatless vegan alternatives like Impossible, Boca, Morningstar, et al. Obviously, your vegan food can still be contaminated by E-Coli and other nasties, but vat meat is going to face USDA scrutiny.
I will note that PETA has shown support for the technology. In fact, they've been funding [peta.org] it [peta.org].
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @08:06PM (2 children)
So your saying hamburgers are easy? well
That'll do pig that'll do
Where's my beef?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 17 2017, @09:07PM (1 child)
I dunno mane
The headline
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @10:18PM
Mang, the headline tells me nothing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @05:47AM
OPTi-OX is real, living human brain cells. Who's to say it doesn't think?
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Monday July 17 2017, @07:29PM
That notwithstanding, I'd say we're completely outclassed. I must admit that I'm not fully up on neurogenesis development timelines, but this sped things up in vitro. Though functional, the cells haven't been integrated into working tissues, which I'm guessing would be one of the slow factors in natural neurogenesis (the cells have to migrate from where they started to differentiate to where they are needed. This is one of the hypotheses for part of the reason most antidepressants take so long to work.)
I work at a university and many of the talks I go to impress me with just how little of what's going on in the cell we really understand. We know many of the proteins/RNAs involved, say ribosome assembly, but we are only just beginning to understand how they are assembled on the fly into the complexes that do the work, and then fall apart and get organized for the next round. (Disclaimer, I'm not a biochemist, my background is physics, but I have a fair idea of where the general state of the art is just from all the research groups I work with.)
And it's not just synthetic chemistry. It's just about everything.
It's true, there are a lot of things humans do much faster than nature "usually" does them. Earthmoving for example. A bulldozer can do in a few minutes what would take hundreds of years due to the normal slumping and erosion of a slope. But, on the other hand, when Mom gets down to work, we still just can't compete. I give you the example of the catastrophic eruption of Mount Saint Helens. In less than a minute more earth was moved that all the bulldozers and earthmoving equipment in the world could have done in a much longer time.
We pride ourselves on being so powerful, but the universe is big, the energy flows enormous, and many of the time scales are much faster than we work on. Think about a supernova. That's just a firecracker pop in terms of the universe.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Monday July 17 2017, @06:16PM (9 children)
Nature had billions of years to figure it out. We got here in a few thousand.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @06:27PM (8 children)
Yes we are only 6000 years old, but a more important question is how do you score more with this silly comment than my posts and this is my thread?
(Score: 1) by Arik on Monday July 17 2017, @06:30PM (7 children)
As to the score, it's because you're anonymous cow-herd. Register if you want to score.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @06:35PM (6 children)
Hey I'm not the one that said we had only been around for a few thousand years and as for score are there no up votes does karma not exist?
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Monday July 17 2017, @06:47PM (5 children)
Human civilization has been around for a few thousand years (roughly speaking, about 7500). Even if you take "we" to mean "the genius itself", we've only been around for tens of thousands.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @06:58PM
7500 years sounds like several to me not few I had to assume you where a young earth creationist
(Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Monday July 17 2017, @07:08PM (2 children)
The dog was the first domesticant,[10][11] and was established across Eurasia before the end of the Late Pleistocene era, well before cultivation and before the domestication [wikipedia.org] of other animals.
The beginning of the stage is defined by the base of the Eemian interglacial phase before the final glacial episode of the Pleistocene 126,000 ± 5,000 years ago. The end of the age is defined as 11,700 years ago.[1][2][3] The age represents the end of the Pleistocene epoch and is followed by the Holocene epoch.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by unauthorized on Monday July 17 2017, @07:27PM (1 child)
I take the emergence of civilization as our starting point, since synthetic biochemistry has more to do with our intellectual abilities than with our ability to modify animal behavior.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @07:47PM
So you judge by booze since that was almost certainly our first venture into chemistry, and as has been pointed out we at more than 250k years old as a species possibly far older, so what where we doing for the several hundred thousand years before RECORDED civilization ? a lot has been lost and our collective history may be a lot longer than we think, take the Hittites, they where relatively recent but we know almost nothing of their civilization because the destroyed themselves and wrote in cuneiform but not in know languages, or the cretens or or and these are just peoples that exit within your arbitrary boundary, we know there where cities in south America that clearly had civilizations (trade population trans migration etc) but they have no written record how many times has none industrial society s been destroyed and like the Spanish with the mayans destroyed all their writings? we have no way to know unless you think we got smarter 7500 years ago for no determinable reason, the difference of us is oil and coal, and maybe the stupid blindness to barrel forward without regard for thinking.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Tuesday July 18 2017, @05:58AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday July 17 2017, @08:09PM
I'll be all over this. I'm an omnivore but would happily switch to lab meat as soon as it's available and at a decent price point. Since the meat I eat is almost all turkey mince anyway, it doesn't need to be cultured to have a steak/filet texture. This *should* in theory lead to low cost mince and other "cheap" cuts.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...