Submitted via IRC for takyon
Cargill Inc., one of the largest global agricultural companies, has joined Bill Gates and other business giants to invest in a nascent technology to make meat from self-producing animal cells amid rising consumer demand for protein that's less reliant on feed, land and water.
Memphis Meats, which produces beef, chicken and duck directly from animal cells without raising and slaughtering livestock or poultry, raised $17 million from investors including Cargill, Gates and billionaire Richard Branson, according to a statement Tuesday on the San Francisco-based startup's website. The fundraising round was led by venture-capital firm DFJ, which has previously backed several social-minded retail startups.
They made the first ever chicken and duck meat that were produced without the animals.
The company expects to have a product in stores by 2021.
"They're the leader in clean meat. There's no one else that far along," says venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson, whose firm led Memphis Meats' recent $17 million Series A. Before he met Valeti in 2016, Jurvetson spent almost five years researching lab-grown meat and meat alternatives, believing the market was set to explode. "They're the only one that convinced me they can get to a price point and a scale that would make a difference in the industry," he says.
Cargill is the largest privately held corporation in the United States in terms of revenue ($109.7 billion in 2017).
Previously: Lab-Grown Chicken (and Duck) Could be on the Menu in 4 Years
Related: Lab-grown meat would 'cut emissions and save energy'
Producing Beef has the Greatest Impact on the Environment Compared to Other Animal Based Foods
Real Vegan Cheese: Coming From a Yeast to You
Would You Try Silicon Valley's Bloody Plant Burger(s)?
Lab-Grown Pork Closer to Reality
Related Stories
Research into the environmental impact of animal-based foods has concluded that beef has the greatest impact by a large margin (Full text [pdf]).
When the numbers were in, including those for the environmental costs of different kinds of feed (pasture, roughage such as hay, and concentrates such as corn), the team developed equations that yielded values for the environmental cost per calorie and then per unit of protein, for each food.
The calculations showed that the biggest culprit, by far, is beef. That was no surprise, say Milo and Shepon. The surprise was in the size of the gap: In total, eating beef is more costly to the environment by an order of magnitude about ten times on average than other animal-derived foods, including pork and poultry. Cattle require on average 28 times more land and 11 times more irrigation water, are responsible for releasing 5 times more greenhouse gases, and consume 6 times as much nitrogen, as eggs or poultry. Poultry, pork, eggs and dairy all came out fairly similar. That was also surprising, because dairy production is often thought to be relatively environmentally benign. But the research shows that the price of irrigating and fertilizing the crops fed to milk cows as well as the relative inefficiency of cows in comparison to other livestock jacks up the cost significantly.
Wired has a profile of "Real Vegan Cheese", a product emerging from Counter Culture Labs in Oakland, California. The DIY/biotech lab is using genetically modified yeast cells to produce 11 proteins normally found in cow's milk, which can then be used to create synthetic cheese.
The genetic engineering approach to cheese has been enabled by the rapidly falling cost of DNA synthesis. It now costs less than $0.25 per base pair to obtain a custom DNA sequence which can be delivered by mail. Why make vegan cheese using yeast? Cheesemaking is an artisanal process with centuries of history and one of the earliest examples of human-directed microbiology. Existing plant-based vegan cheeses can't reproduce the casein proteins needed to achieve a passable cheese. However, Real Vegan Cheese will not use animal fat or lactose.
The process is not limited to bovine cheese:
When I visit the lab, I discover the cheese team includes a biologist, a bioethicist, a retired clinical psychologist, an accountant, and a former Apple marketer. "This to me is a natural extension of computer culture," says Maria Chavez, the ex-Apple employee and a leader of the vegan cheese project. "What is bigger to hack than our bodies and our environment? It's one of the last big frontiers. The possibilities are exciting."
The possibilities include not just vegan cow cheese, but, well, vegan human cheese. The same basic process for synthesizing cow's milk applies to milk from any other mammal. You just need different genes. Cheese made from engineered human breast milk may not sound like a top seller at the deli counter. But the team says it can serve a practical purpose: Human milk cheese could offer an option to people who have allergies to non-human dairy products. (Chavez said the group has put its experiments with human milk on hold due to Food and Drug Administration concerns about possible autoimmune reactions.)
The team is also attempting to create a narwhal cheese, after achieving the stretch goal on Indiegogo. The recipe and experiments involved will be released as "open source"; the DNA sequence(s) will be submitted to iGEM's Registry of Standard Biological Parts.
Critics of synthetic foods worry about the use of GMOs and the lightly regulated nature of biotechnology labs and hackerspaces. The Real Vegan Cheese team notes that the cheese itself isn't a GMO, only the yeast is. Other recent forays into synthetic food include Muufri's synthetic milk, and Evolva's vanilla/vanillin and saffron substitutes.
Several startups are trying to take plant-based meat alternatives to a new level. They include Impossible Foods, which has created a meatless burger that contains heme, a molecule that contributes color, taste, and texture to meat:
This summer, diners in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles will get their hands on a hamburger that's been five years in the making. The burger looks, tastes and smells just like beef — except it's made entirely from plants. It sizzles on the grill and even browns and oozes fat when it cooks. It's the brainchild of former Stanford biochemist Patrick Brown and his research team at Northern California-based Impossible Foods.
[...] It's not the only faux meat company selling bloody plant patties. Last month, Los Angeles-based Beyond Meat made headlines when it released the Beyond Burger, its pea protein burger that sizzles like real meat and "bleeds" beet juice. The burgers quickly sold out after debuting at a Whole Foods in Boulder, Colo. Beyond Meat's investors include Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Gates is also backing Impossible Foods. So is billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and Google Ventures. All told, the company has raised some $182 million in seed funding. Last year, Impossible Foods turned down Google's offer to buy the company for $200 to $300 million.
The Impossible Burger is more than just peas and carrots smashed together: It's the result of some pretty high-tech research. Brown's team analyzes meat at a molecular level to determine what makes a burger taste, smell and cook the way it does. He wants his burgers to be squishy while raw, then firm up and brown on the grill. He believes everything from an animal's fat tissue to muscle cells can be replicated using plant compounds.
The true test? Making the plant-based substance carcinogenic.
Scientists from the University of Missouri, the University of Maryland and the Animal Bioscience and Biotechnology Laboratory, US Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service have published an article in Nature outlining a method for "generating skeletal muscle efficiently from porcine induced pluripotent stem cells (piPSC) in vitro thereby providing a versatile platform for applications ranging from regenerative biology to the ex vivo cultivation of meat". The research used a porcine stem cell line to generate muscular tissue instead of cells taken directly from a pig:
"What the paper describes is research designed to generate muscle from a newly established pig stem-cell line, rather that from primary cells taken directly from a pig," co-author Dr. Nicholas Genovese, a stem-cell biologist (and vegetarian), told Digital Trends. "This entailed understanding the biology of relatively uncharacterized and recently-derived porcine induced pluripotent stem cell lines. What conditions support cell growth, survival and differentiation? These are all questions I had to figure out in the lab before the cells could be turned into muscle."
Also at GlobalMeatNews.
Enhanced Development of Skeletal Myotubes from Porcine Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (open, DOI: 10.1038/srep41833) (DX)
A company called Memphis Meats has announced that it has developed artificial/synthetic/lab-grown/cultured chicken and duck meat. The company's press release says it plans to sell cultured meat products to consumers as soon as 2021. Duck is identified as key to the mainland China market, which consumes more of it (over 6 billion pounds annually) than the rest of the world combined:
The quest for artificial meat inches forward—the company Memphis Meats announced today it has developed chicken and duck meat from cultured cells of each bird, producing "clean poultry." The firm provided few details, although participants at a tasting reportedly said the chicken tasted like, well, chicken. Below is a repost of a story originally published 23 August 2016 on some of the regulatory challenges and questions facing Memphis Meats and other companies pursuing artificial meats.
[...] So far, none of these synthetic foods has reached the marketplace. But a handful of startup companies in the United States and elsewhere are trying to scale up production. In the San Francisco Bay area in California, entrepreneurs at Memphis Meats hope to have their cell-cultured meatballs, hot dogs, and sausages on store shelves in about 5 years, and those at Perfect Day are targeting the end of 2017 to distribute cow-free dairy products. It's not clear, however, which government agencies would oversee this potential new food supply.
Historically, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulates meat, poultry, and eggs, whereas the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversees safety and security for food additives. FDA also approves so-called biologics, which include products made from human tissues, blood, and cells, and gene therapy techniques. But emerging biotechnologies may blur those lines of oversight, because some of the new foods don't fit neatly into existing regulatory definitions. "Cellular culture raises a lot of questions," says Isha Datar, CEO of New Harvest, a New York City–based nonprofit founded to support this nascent industry.
To help provide answers, the White House last year launched an initiative to review and overhaul how U.S. agencies regulate agricultural biotechnology [DOI: 10.1126/science.349.6244.131] [DX]. And the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington, D.C., is working on a broader study of future biotechnology developments and regulation, with a report slated for release at the end of this year. In the meantime, industry leaders are thinking about how their potential lab-based foods might be handled by regulators. One approach, they tell ScienceInsider, is to show that their product is similar to an existing product that testing has already shown to pose no hazards. "Most food regulation is about aligning new products with something that's already recognized as safe," Datar notes.
Related: Producing Beef has the Greatest Impact on the Environment Compared to Other Animal Based Foods
Real Vegan Cheese: Coming From a Yeast to You
Would You Try Silicon Valley's Bloody Plant Burger(s)?
Lab-Grown Pork Closer to Reality
Right now, manufactured meat is as real as a flying car.
- Anonymous Coward, 2014
The U.S. Cattlemen's Association has asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop an official definition for terms like "meat" and "beef", as plant-based alternatives to meats continue to grow in popularity and lab-grown/cultured meat may be coming soon:
Companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are combining plant-based ingredients and science, rather than animals, to create fake-meat burgers and other products that taste like the real thing.
Now U.S. Cattlemen's Association is looking to draw a line in the sand. The association launched what could be the first salvo in a long battle against plant-based foods. Earlier this month, the association filed a 15-page petition with the U.S. Department of Agriculture calling for an official definition for the term "beef," and more broadly, "meat."
"While at this time alternative protein sources are not a direct threat to the beef industry, we do see improper labeling of these products as misleading," said Lia Biondo, the association's policy and outreach director. "Our goal is to head off the problem before it becomes a larger issue."
[...] While these foods are commonly dubbed "fake meat," there's a little more to the meat-substitute market than that. The Good Food Institute, which advocates a sustainable food supply, breaks it down into two categories: clean meat and plant-based meat. Clean meat refers to "meat" grown in a lab from a small amount of animal stem cells. This kind of meat isn't on the market yet, but it's in development. Plant-based meat is anything that mimics traditional meat but is made mainly using plant ingredients.
Here's an idea: define "meat" for the Cattlemen's Association, then tax it with an exemption for "lab-grown meat".
Related: Lab-Grown Pork Closer to Reality
Lab-Grown Chicken (and Duck) Could be on the Menu in 4 Years
Inside the Strange Science of the Fake Meat that 'Bleeds'
Impossible Foods Just Raised $75 Million for Its Plant-based Burgers
Cargill, Bill Gates, Richard Branson Backed Memphis Meats Expects Meat From Cells in Stores by 2021
Meat Tax Proposed for Sake of Human and Environmental Health.
Don't listen to Big Cattle — lab-grown meat should still be called "meat"
Lab-grown meat is on its way, and the government is trying to figure out how to regulate it. This week, the US House of Representatives [pdf] released a draft spending bill that proposes that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulate lab-grown meat and figure out how it should be labeled — which is a contentious topic since Big Cattle doesn't want it to be called "meat." Regulation is important, and there's plenty more to learn, but the USDA shouldn't be the only one regulating. And when the product comes to market, yes, it should be called "meat."
Traditional meat, of course, comes from animals that are raised and slaughtered. Lab-grown meat (also called "in-vitro meat," "cultured meat," or "clean meat") is made from animal stem cells grown in a lab. But because the stem cells are typically fed with a serum derived from the blood of calf fetuses, the product uses animal products and isn't vegan. Still, the pitch for lab-grown meat is that it saves animals and also helps the environment because lab-grown meat doesn't take much land or energy to grow. Plus, lab-grown meat doesn't directly create methane emissions, while methane emissions from cows accounted for 16 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2015.
Because of the way that government agencies work, it hasn't even been clear who should regulate lab meat. The USDA traditionally regulates meat, while the US Food and Drug Administration regulates food safety and additives. The proposal that the USDA be in charge of regulation is in line with what the [pdf] National Cattlemen's Beef Association wanted, but some lab-meat advocates fear that USDA will be biased against them in favor of traditional meat. If the USDA will be regulating lab meat, it should at least collaborate with the FDA. There are no slaughterhouses for the USDA to inspect anyway, and the FDA has already been regulating food technology, like the genetically engineered salmon it approved. It makes the most sense for the two to work together.
Previously: U.S. Cattlemen's Association Wants an Official Definition of "Meat"
Related: Lab-Grown Chicken (and Duck) Could be on the Menu in 4 Years
Cargill, Bill Gates, Richard Branson Backed Memphis Meats Expects Meat From Cells in Stores by 2021
'Soylent' Dawkins? Atheist Mulls 'Taboo Against Cannibalism' Ending as Lab-Grown Meat Improves
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved soy leghemoglobin as generally recognized as safe (GRAS) for human consumption:
Last August, documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that the FDA hadn't stomached the company's previous GRAS application. The agency concluded that soy leghemoglobin—a protein found in the roots of soybean plants that Impossible Foods harvests from genetically engineered yeast and uses to simulate the taste and bloodiness of meat—had not been adequately tested for safety.
In the application, Impossible Foods argued that the iron-containing protein is equivalent to hemoglobin, an oxygen-carrying protein in red blood cells and commonly consumed in meat. Thus, the protein was safe, the company concluded. It went as far as conducting studies in rats to back up the claim. But the FDA noted that soy leghemoglobin had never been used as an additive before, and the organization wanted data showing that the protein was safe and not an allergen specifically for humans.
[...] At the time, the decision was a searing blow to Impossible Foods, which up until then had fired up the appetites of investors and top chefs alike and savored glowing publicity. Since the company's founding in 2011, big names such as Bill Gates and Google Ventures served up more than $250 million in startup funds, and the impossible patty sizzled on the menus of such high-end restaurants as Momofuku Nishi in New York and Jardinière in San Francisco. The soy leghemoglobin was a big part of that hype, with the company touting it as its "secret sauce."
But the FDA's gut check didn't knock Impossible Foods off the market; it just left a bad taste. In fact, the company wasn't even required to submit its GRAS application to begin with due to the controversial way in which the FDA oversees food additives and GRAS designations. Under the 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and the 1958 Food Additives Amendment, the FDA allows food companies and their hired consultants to internally test and determine a GRAS designation of a potential new additive all on their own. They can start using it without getting approval from the FDA or even notifying the agency. The FDA only steps in after the fact if problems arise.
Impossible Foods' FAQ says "the heme molecule in plant-based heme is atom-for-atom identical to the heme molecule found in meat". Heme is a component of soy leghemoglobin consisting of an iron atom bound in a porphyrin ring.
Meanwhile, the FDA and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are continuing to fight over which agency will have jurisdiction over "cultured meat" (i.e. lab-grown animal cells for human consumption):
Plant-based burgers are "ultra-processed" like dog food, meat-backed ads say
A public-relations firm backed by meat producers has unleashed a savage marketing campaign that claims plant-based meat alternatives are unhealthy, "ultra-processed imitations" similar to dog food.
The campaign rolled out in recent weeks from the industry-funded firm Center for Consumer Freedom, according to The New York Times. So far, it has included full-page ads and opinion pieces in mainstream newspapers, including The New York Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal. All the marketing material raises health concerns about trendy meat alternatives, such as the Impossible Burger and Beyond Burger.
One ad posed the question "What's hiding in your plant-based meat?" Another directed readers to take the quiz "Veggie Burger or Dog Food?"
In an op-ed, the managing director of the Center for Consumer Freedom, Will Coggin, labeled meat alternatives as "ultra-processed" foods and noted that a recent study led by the researchers at the National Institutes of Health linked ultra-processed foods to weight gain.
The negative marketing campaign comes amid soaring popularity of meat alternatives, which threaten to slice into the meat market's sales and profits. In recent months, big players in the meat industry had tried a different—some might say hypocritical—tactic to compete with the new comers—that is, they released their own lines of meat alternatives. Now, the industry wants consumers to think such alternatives are unhealthy.
Older stories:
Previously: U.S. Cattlemen's Association Wants an Official Definition of "Meat"
Regulation Coming to Lab-Grown Meat
FDA Approves Impossible Burger "Heme" Ingredient; Still Wants to Regulate "Cultured Meat"
Missouri Regulates Use of the Word "Meat" by Food Producers
Following IPO of Beyond Meat, Tyson Foods Plans Launch of its Own Meatless Products
Mississippi Bans Calling Plant and Cultured-Meat Patties 'Burgers'Related: Cargill, Bill Gates, Richard Branson Backed Memphis Meats Expects Meat From Cells in Stores by 2021
FDA May Force Rebranding of Soy, Almond, et al. "Milks"
Meatless "Beyond Burgers" Come to Fast Food Restaurants
Beef Trimmings Dubbed 'Pink SLIME' Can Now be Labelled 'Ground Beef'
No Need to Cut Down Red and Processed Meat, Study Says
Lab-grown meat is supposed to be inevitable. The science tells a different story.
Splashy headlines have long overshadowed inconvenient truths about biology and economics. Now, extensive new research suggests the industry may be on a billion-dollar crash course with reality.
[...] [In March], the Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit that represents the alternative protein industry, published a techno-economic analysis (TEA) that projected the future costs of producing a kilogram of cell-cultured meat. Prepared independently for GFI by the research consulting firm CE Delft, and using proprietary data provided under NDA by 15 private companies, the document showed how addressing a series of technical and economic barriers could lower the production price from over $10,000 per pound today to about $2.50 per pound over the next nine years—an astonishing 4,000-fold reduction.
In the press push that followed, GFI claimed victory. "New studies show cultivated meat can have massive environmental benefits and be cost-competitive by 2030," it trumpeted, suggesting that a new era of cheap, accessible cultured protein is rapidly approaching. The finding is critical for GFI and its allies. If private, philanthropic, and public sector investors are going to put money into cell-cultured meat, costs need to come down quickly. Most of us have a limited appetite for 50-dollar lab-grown chicken nuggets.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday November 05 2017, @03:39PM (9 children)
Vegetarian and Vegan faggots will still continue to be vegetarian and vegan, they wouldn't dare give up their smug sense of righteousness and ugly bumper stickers on the back of their Priuses.
Chicken is for people who don't know what they want to order. Let's hope that Memphis meats can do seafood and shellfish next.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Sunday November 05 2017, @04:34PM (1 child)
Most of the vegetarians I know stopped because of the cruelty aspect. No cruelty = eat all the meat you want.
(Score: 4, Funny) by RamiK on Sunday November 05 2017, @05:24PM
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/ethical-consumption [smbc-comics.com]
compiling...
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 05 2017, @04:50PM (3 children)
This shit is for the proles.
Question to ponder. Cannibalism is taboo almost everywhere in the world, right? And, anyplace that it isn't taboo, some more powerful outsiders have put a stop to it. So . . . if they can grow human muscle tissue, would it be alright to fry it up, and serve it with some fava beans and a nice chianti?
Never mind - the proles can't afford a nice chianti. It will be long pig over rice, and mad dog for dinner.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Sunday November 05 2017, @07:01PM
I will happily eat prole-priced lab meat if it can match the meats that are being replaced in terms of quality, texture, and price. Getting the texture of more complex cuts right looks like it will be a hard task, along with scaling up the process, but I am confident that it can be done. Easier stuff like ground beef or meatballs should be a piece of meatcake though.
If done right, these cellular processes could match "Wagyu" levels of quality, at a lower price, with no animals killed, at a fraction of the environmental impact (land/water used), and provide a FRESHER product to the consumer since you could put factories much closer to where people live (while preventing these kinds of incidents [slate.com]).
It could also be used as the basis for a cheaper pink slime... but people already eat billions of pounds of that stuff [yum.com].
Lab grown meat has the POTENTIAL to be better than traditional meat in every way, while avoiding that real prole shit... like Gaaark's mealworms.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 05 2017, @07:14PM
They can already grow human skin, so chicharrones shouldn't be out of the question. Sounds yummy.
Next item to work on are those little sausages
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @06:04PM
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Sunday November 05 2017, @06:48PM (1 child)
Given their trajectory I wouldn't expect seafood/shellfish anytime soon.
At least, that's what I thought. But it turns out multiple companies are looking at it:
https://gizmodo.com/meet-the-radical-scientists-who-want-to-grow-our-seafoo-1752950596 [gizmodo.com]
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/sep/20/lab-grown-meat-fish-feed-the-world-frankenmeat-startups [theguardian.com]
http://www.iflscience.com/environment/startup-making-synthetic-lab-grown-shrimp/ [iflscience.com]
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/53dzm3/lab-grown-shrimp-is-silicon-valleys-latest-and-most-ambitious-frankenfood [vice.com]
https://www.saveur.com/in-vitro-fish-fillets-finless-foods [saveur.com]
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/fake-shrimp/477120/ [theatlantic.com]
Finless Foods [finlessfoods.com]
New Wave Foods [newwavefoods.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 05 2017, @11:16PM
I hope so. These days I wouldn't touch seafood with a stick considering what's in the ocean. I would call such contaminants "crap" but literal crap would probably be a great deal less dangerous.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 05 2017, @07:24PM
Back on your meds please. I know some people complained about your change towards more moderate and less offensive material, but really it was better for your mental state.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday November 05 2017, @03:43PM (15 children)
I will be all over this. I'm an omnivore but once this is mainstream and at a reasonable price i probably won't ever eat a slaughtered animal again. This has ripple effects beyond the "last mile" as it were of meat farming, too; we could grow better things than corn, we could reforest a crapton of land, we could start growing loads of bamboo for structure or switchgrass for fuel...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 05 2017, @04:11PM
I won't, at least not for a very long time. Making food substitutes has always come with unrecognized risks and I'll be skeptical that they've really managed to get it right.
Meat is more than just the cells, there's other things in meat that can make or break it as a food.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ledow on Sunday November 05 2017, @04:11PM (12 children)
Omnivore myself.
Have honestly NEVER CARED about the fact that meat comes from an animal bred for meat.
Would still eat this if it were cheap, though. And still eat animals (because no way is it going to taste like a real chicken, have a skin, etc. and no way would they be able to produce every taste and texture of an existing animal that I might want to eat).
However, I'm much more concerned that perfectly-edible meat, like horse and other animals, strange parts of the animals, etc. goes to waste or to make pet-food because people are squeamish about it. That was always something we did, always something we could continue to do safely, and yet pure fussiness means good food goes to waste.
But lab-grown meat is going to gain acceptance from those same people? I can't see it.
Personally, if it makes food cheaper, I'm all for it. "Affording to stay comfortably alive" is a privilege that we take too lightly, let alone "being able to eat almost anything we want", "picking up everything we need to survive in one shop", etc. And you don't need to be starving to benefit from some cheap meat.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Sunday November 05 2017, @04:53PM (9 children)
Yeah, i never got the "I'll eat pork and beef, but horse, dog or cat? NEVER!" thing.
Are horses really better than pigs because we ride them?
With that logic, i could eat the flesh of guys, but not women.
I'd try dog and cat: i've eaten mealworms, so i think dog and cat would be much tastier.
Rat: i'd eat if prepared properly (don't know whether cooking it would destroy any plague they may carry, lol)
Would like to try haggis, but sooo difficult to hunt in the wild. ;)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 05 2017, @05:24PM
There's an instructable for that. http://www.instructables.com/id/Haggis-hunting/ [instructables.com] That young huntsman helps to remove most of the difficulty.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday November 05 2017, @05:25PM
Hard to hunt haggis in the wild? It's sheep. They are one of the more stupid animals. They wouldn't be hard to hunt at all. Not sure if there are any large populations of wild sheep around. I can't say anything about the taste either, it's not a very appealing dish in my mind.
With that said Horse taste great. Dog was nothing special. Never tried cat, worms or rats (as far as I know). I'm not entirely sure about the logic chain, it's not like we don't eat beasts of burden. We have just endowed various animals with cuteness or something and then decided that we won't eat them. Except that we totally would if we had to. It's just a matter of the position on the food chain vs hunger or desire. After all as noted by others if things come down to eat or die then some people will eat other people. I hope I would have to stomach for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguayan_Air_Force_Flight_571 [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 05 2017, @06:16PM
It's mostly because cats were essential to protecting our grains against rats and mice. Dogs were mostly around us because they were working for us doing things like helping us track game and scare off predators.
Other "cute" animals mostly get eaten by people as they have no particular value to us other than as food. Rabbits are a good example, they aren't eaten as often now as they used to be, but they're definitely something that you can put on the menu at a restaurant without people thinking you're weird.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by fliptop on Sunday November 05 2017, @07:20PM (5 children)
Try squirrel, or opossum for that matter. A squirrel is basically a rat that lives in trees. Since they eat only nuts their meat is kind of sweet. If marinated and prepared properly it's pretty good.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday November 05 2017, @07:40PM (4 children)
I should look up a squirrel trap.....hmmmm....
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Sunday November 05 2017, @09:41PM
I use a .410 shotgun, but a .22 or even a pellet gun would do the trick.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 3, Informative) by t-3 on Monday November 06 2017, @02:38AM (2 children)
Squirrel meat is the number 1 source of bubonic plague in the US, and they can also harbor other nasty diseases. Don't eat rodents unless you have to.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday November 06 2017, @02:57AM
Awwww... This is why we can't have nice things. Like squirrel nuts roasting on an open fire.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Monday November 06 2017, @03:00AM
The odds of that are very remote [yahoo.com]. I usually shoot and eat 8-10 squirrels every year and have never had an issue, not even w/ warbles which is much more likely.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Sunday November 05 2017, @06:59PM (1 child)
"strange parts of the animals, etc."
Ever eaten a hot dog?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @06:01PM
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Monday November 06 2017, @02:32AM
Meat animals will still be necassary - we've killed off too many of the large herbivores. Plant life has evolved with plant-predators, and many species now depend on them for survival. We might be able to get rid of factory farming, but large animal operations will still be necessary to ensure the health of any ecosystem we attempt to recreate.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday November 05 2017, @06:32PM (4 children)
Anything about the price per unit (kg or that other weird unit non-metric "people" use) of this "clean meat"? Also are we going to have to change the definitions here of what is "meat" and not? Meat is the flesh of animals. If no animals are involved no meat? or?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday November 05 2017, @07:11PM (2 children)
It's basically not commercially available at all. It's still in the R&D + Silicon Valley / venture capitalist stage.
The source story has an optimistic estimate: $1 / pound. Compare that to cheap ground beef: $2-3/lb, or cheap chicken: $1-3/lb. Note that most supermarkets mark down older meat, to as much as 50% off, before throwing it away.
A couple of years ago, it was reported that the cost of making a $325,000 lab grown burger had declined to $11.36 [sciencealert.com] ($80 per kilogram). Now there is obviously some bullshit numeromancy going on there. But it gives you an idea that people are seriously considering the economics of this approach and it is ready to scale.
This new story is about Cargill's involvement. There was some reticence in the traditional meat industries about lab grown meat, and predictions like "it won't reach consumers for 20 years". That might be set to change. However, even if Memphis Meats hits grocery stores and restaurants by 2021, I wouldn't expect the existing infrastructure to be meat obsolete for at least a decade more, during which time the lab grown meats will become cheaper.
I don't see a real problem with calling it meat. We should just agree to a simple definition of meat that encompasses both: "meat = a tissue made primarily of muscle cells". Boom, done.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 05 2017, @09:15PM (1 child)
Whether or not calling it meat is a problem depends a great deal on how accurate the reproduction is. It's got the same nutritional value, taste, texture and the rest of it as regular meat that's not going to be enough. We also have to have some assurance that the process hasn't introduced chemicals into the meat that weren't in meat to begin with.
But, I think if they manage that, then I have no particular problem with them calling it meat, it would be meat in all practical ways, just with no brain attached at any point.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday November 05 2017, @10:17PM
Like I mentioned in another comment, lab grown meat could certainly enable a cheaper "pink slime". You could throw in any number of chemicals just like is done with traditional meats. And yes, it should be evaluated to make sure it isn't introducing something unexpected during the culturing process. But I see it as capable of also producing meat similar in quality to premium meats, if not better, at a lower cost.
If you look at the lab grown burger PR event [nytimes.com] from a few years ago, the major complaint from the taste testers was that there was no fat in the burger, which made it dry. They had to cook it in butter to add any sort of fat content. It was just muscle cells with no fat.
Otherwise, it looked just like a burger, and like a ground beef patty before it was cooked. It's clear that the first plausible application for lab grown meat is extra lean ground beef. The strands of muscle cells that they produced were too short to do anything but make ground beef.
Supermarkets usually sell 93% lean ground beef. I could see lab grown beef being mixed with a 70% lean "real beef" to hit a number like that. That doesn't achieve the goal of eliminating ALL use of livestock, but it is a quick way to get it onto the market, and something that might be done if lab grown meat defeats cattle on costs.
As always, skittish consumers could tank this with their hysteria, so I'm sure we will see more PR for the concept. Maybe even some counter-PR from livestock companies that don't want to lose market share.
Memphis Meats may be further along the path to commercialization than others are, but I haven't heard of any talk yet of throwing bones into the mix. Many meat products contain bones, and bones can be used to make broth, add flavor to beans and stews, etc. Unlike what they have been doing with strands of muscle cells, they may need to... 3D print bones using bone cells? They could take a page from what biomedical science people are doing [sciencemag.org] in this area.
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(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday November 05 2017, @07:21PM
I'll add that given the nature of the product (no animal suffering, supported philosophically by PETA as well as less rabid animal activists, less environmental impact, potential to be grown without exposure to antibiotics or pesticides), you could see how this might be sold at a premium in the initial years. This could allow it to compete against "organic", "cruelty free", and "cage free" products that can easily be 2-3 times more expensive than their normal counterparts. For example, in a previous story I quoted a price of $6/lb for bulk Costco chicken breasts. Normal chicken breasts cost something closer to $2/lb.
It also has the potential to allow the creation of meats that would normally be unmarketable or illegal (at least in some contexts, like the amount you can hunt). Penguin, lion, human (HeLameat?), whatever. Once you isolate the cells, you can grow it.
And if you can mimic marbling, bone scaffolds, and other characteristics needed for advanced cuts, you could imagine the creation of novel meat experiences that don't currently exist. Like beef in the shape/texture/bone structure of a fish filet (IDK - whatever).
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(Score: 1) by oakgrove on Sunday November 05 2017, @06:56PM (3 children)
What would be cool is if I could grow some of this stuff at home. Kind of like how I can grow fresh tomatoes if I want. But meat! On a stick of sorts.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday November 05 2017, @07:26PM
I'm imagining a "meat vat" kind of like those algae tanks/bioreactors, and then taking the muscle + fat cells and spinning them centrifuge-style to make a meat spit like you might see at a schwarma [wikipedia.org] place.
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(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Sunday November 05 2017, @07:56PM (1 child)
how about a lab meat Chia Pet?
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Sunday November 05 2017, @10:33PM
This could be a great video concept. Make a Chia-like mould of Obama or Trump's head with a bunch of holes where the hair should be. Then squeeze ground beef through the holes somehow as you film it.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 05 2017, @10:53PM (2 children)
cargill. the monsanto of meats!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @12:55AM (1 child)
Just what I was going to add -- the reputation of these giant agribusiness companies is not good. Until proven otherwise I'm going to assume they are in it for the money, and not to actually make a good nutritious product.
First thing to watch for is lobbying to get around truth in labeling laws, so this can be mixed in with normal ground beef (as suggested earlier) with no special markings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @02:56PM
Thing is, I trust stuff better when the profit motive aligns with what I want because, in that case, I don't have to worry about what they aren't telling me as much.
(Score: 2) by lx on Monday November 06 2017, @06:22AM
It's all an elaborate front.
They are turning prisoners into steaks.