Paris-based Gourmey hopes ethical lab grown foie gras will overcome bans - EU Today:
The push to make foie gras, the fattened liver of a duck or goose, in a lab comes amid a push to find a sustainable, ethical alternative to meat raised for slaughter. Most foie gras is made by force-feeding ducks and geese through a tube to engorge their livers up to 10 times their normal sizes. The process can leave ducks too big to walk or breathe, according to animal activists.
[...] With growing opposition to foie gras because of animal cruelty concerns, Nicolas Morin-Forest, Gourmey’s co-founder and chief executive, said that producing the delicacy from cultivated cells was a way to preserve a centuries-old French culinary tradition.
[...] Gourmey engineers faux meat by taking cells out of a freshly laid duck egg and placing them into a cultivator. The cells are then fed with proteins, amino acids and sugar, similar to the nutrients a duck would get from a diet of oats, corn and grass. The cells are then harvested and transformed into foie gras in a process that uses significantly less land and water than traditional methods.
[...] Mr. Morin-Forest said that, on a technical level, foie gras was well suited to be grown in a lab precisely because of its delicate texture compared with other types of meat.
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[...] [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: 3, Funny) by HammeredGlass on Monday July 26 2021, @01:19AM (3 children)
And if I can't taste that shared experience in my foie gras, I don't want it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @08:37AM
Figured you for one of those that likes "Life is suffering."
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday July 26 2021, @09:13AM
I love foie gras. But I was once in Belgium and couldn't find any for a dinner party I was preparing.I used Gaia Faux Gras [fauxgras.be] fake foie gras instead. While it clearly was nowhere near as good as the real thing from south-west France, it was okay.
Just saying, if someone invests enough, it's probably possible to come up with a very convincing substitute.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday July 26 2021, @09:59AM
Fighting PETA with religion.
Whoever loses
We win
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @01:21AM (1 child)
It's tough enough to get people to eat synthetic hamburger. Synthetic foie gras? Convincing THOSE snooty bunch?
Good fucking luck.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday July 26 2021, @06:02PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @01:26AM (1 child)
artificial hideous can't be much of an improvement over just plain unnatural hideous
I'll pass on the Frog Grass.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @08:40AM
Smart choice good buddy.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @01:29AM (13 children)
Would you eat HUMAN meat grown in a lab? Controversial scientist Richard Dawkins suggests it could 'eradicate the taboo against cannibalism'
- Clean meat' products are made by harvesting stem cells from living livestock
- These stem cells are then cultured in laboratory vats for a number of weeks
- Dawkins asked whether the same thing could be done with human flesh
- He said it could be an 'interesting test case' for 'consequentialist morality'
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @01:34AM
You are mixing up two issues - synthetic meat and cannibalism.
Let's take one step at a time, eh.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday July 26 2021, @02:51AM (10 children)
...Is that something we want to be doing? Why?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @04:19AM (7 children)
It's food for thought. Lab-grown human meat eliminates some reasons for cannibalism being considered bad.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday July 26 2021, @04:59AM (1 child)
I don't want to be on a life raft with a bunch of people who have developed a taste for human flesh...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 26 2021, @11:38AM
Simple solution, then: disgusting as this may be, eat them before they eat you.(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Monday July 26 2021, @08:04AM (1 child)
Food for thought, yes, but is it food for humans?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @02:16PM
By humans, for humans.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @08:48AM
is this very much the same path that gave us mad cows?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday July 26 2021, @04:17PM (1 child)
...so why would we want to lab-grow human meat instead of, say, pseudo-beef or pseudo-pork or whatever? In case you need a flesh transplant you can't do from your own belly?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @05:20PM
MotorcyclistsDonors won't die in vain if their organs are too damaged, simply serve fresh with foie gras and black pudding.(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday July 26 2021, @05:39AM
To prevent Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country [wikipedia.org].
compiling...
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday July 26 2021, @06:09PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday July 26 2021, @10:02AM
I prefer the free-range variant, hunted myself.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @01:41AM
You thought the krauts with their nazi heritage is bad? The French is way way worse.
Ethical gourmet switched from foie gras to liverwurst long time ago.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @01:56AM (1 child)
Lab-grown kebabs, so you can preserve a centuries-old French tradition via a process that uses significantly fewer Muslims.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @02:27AM
Hate mutton and lamb, but them turban heads make them tasty. Some kinda super MSG, I guess.
Hate froggy food. Love Freedom food.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @03:57AM
Ducks are alledgedly "ideal for [force-feeding] because of their natural ability to gain large amounts of weight in short periods of time before cold seasons" (Wikipedia). In other words, ducks already stuff themselves senseless with food to fatten up in preparation for the winter. Perhaps if the farmers didn't try to turn every duck into a web-footed Mr Creosote, the process wouldn't be quite so inhumane?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @05:01AM (13 children)
Animals are for food and work. If you are confused about this, you have too much time on your hands.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @05:37AM (1 child)
That doesn't mean its okay to be a dick about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 27 2021, @04:53PM
It does not, but that becomes an ethical argument about the man, not the animal. Ethical arguments about animals are intellectual masturbation.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @08:43AM (1 child)
Sounds like a psychopath because you think a 2nd grader is worhty of becoming food for you. Fucking cannibal, wtf wrong with you?
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday July 26 2021, @10:05AM
Humans are for food now, too?
Not complaining, just checking whether we finally found a way to utilize those we can't use for work...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Monday July 26 2021, @10:49AM (8 children)
That's not an argument, it's a diktat. When you objectify other beings that you don't care about you can easily write whatever narrative you want to justify your own wants and desires. That doesn't make it right. Similar statements would have been made to justify the enslavement of blacks and in both cases the arguments are invalid and callous.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @11:40AM (3 children)
People need to stop making it only about 'Black'/African-American people, because the same prejudice usually extended to Hispanics who couldn't pass for White, Asians, Native Americans, and others. Making it all White vs Black is ignoring the true extent of the problem and inherent racism that has underpinned America for 250+ years.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday July 26 2021, @12:09PM
You're not wrong.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday July 26 2021, @03:45PM
Don't forget my Slavic ancestors.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Monday July 26 2021, @06:18PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Monday July 26 2021, @05:20PM (2 children)
Historically speaking, it's only very recently that we've gotten this "mankind is just another animal" mindset.
There's some place in the Bible where God says something along the lines of "the Earth and all the animals in it are yours to do with as you please...just maybe exercise a little self-control" (the last bit is obviously the hard part). So yeah, you're not wrong it's a diktat.
This whole thing is why I tend to speak up when somebody starts throwing around "well if you believe that then you're not human" because [Godwin redacted], not for religious reasons.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Monday July 26 2021, @06:25PM (1 child)
animus: "rational soul, mind, life, mental powers, consciousness, sensibility; courage, desire"
anima: "living being, soul, mind, disposition, passion, courage, anger, spirit, feeling"
The animals weren't considered so dumb, just dumb enough for the granting of dominion over them to not be objectionable.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by HammeredGlass on Tuesday July 27 2021, @12:16AM
Latin was also a poorly developed language with a tiny vocabulary. Much of that loan words.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dictionaries_by_number_of_words [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0, Troll) by jbernardo on Monday July 26 2021, @06:18PM
Did you just compare "enslavement of blacks" with animals?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by darkfeline on Monday July 26 2021, @07:28AM (17 children)
There's nothing inherently wrong with foie gras just like there's nothing inherently wrong with keeping hens for eggs or cows for milk. Ducks don't have to be force fed to the point of suffering, just like hens don't have to be kept in tiny filthy cages or cows pumped full with hormones to increase milk production.
A third of the controversy comes from the misunderstanding that ducks do not have human esophagi and are perfectly fine swallowing whole fish. A third of the controversy comes from the fact that some foie gras farms treat their livestock inhumanely. The rest comes from screechers pushing an agenda.
If you want to stop unethical treatment of animals, then do that rather than banning foie gras. We don't ban eggs just because many egg farms treat their livestock inhumanely.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @08:45AM (16 children)
Banning inhumane shit is the only way to deal with things. If some devil farmer is able to persuade a regulator that they are not treating their ducks or whatevs inhumanely then all the better. If they can't, then they can fuck off.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday July 26 2021, @09:06AM (3 children)
If you want to treat farm animals humanely - which I'm all in favor of - then foie gras is the most obvious target. The suffering of the ducks and geese is well documented.
But after banning that, you'd have to ban intensive poultry farming - because quite frankly, that's quite abhorrent too.
And then maybe less intensive poultry farming also - because if you've set out to ease animal suffering, well... they suffer too, even if they suffer less.
And then you ban intensive egg farms - because laying an unnaturally large number of eggs is quite taxing on the animals.
And then you ban eggs altogether etc etc.
Go down that road far enough and eventually you'll turn into one of those bonkers PETA activists, who would have you ask the bees nicely if they wouldn't mind parting with a bit of their honey...
Where do you draw the line? Nobody wants unnecessary animal suffering, but nobody wants to turn into an animal rights extremist either. Who gets to declare that this or that suffering is okay?
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday July 26 2021, @10:55AM (1 child)
Are you saying we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater? That we shouldn't do anything to improve animal welfare because we're scared of a slippery slope? Seriously? I hope you're playing devil's advocate. Honestly, the intellectual knots humans seem to tie themselves in when it comes to eating animals are just unreal.
It's a similar fallacy to the ones on here that say any government even slightly left of center is to be avoided like the plague (actually those ones don't seem to bother about avoiding the current plague--strange, that) because Communism.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday July 27 2021, @02:45AM
I'm not saying or advocating anything. I'm just exposing a problem and asking a question. I don't have an answer. I eat meat but I'm aware of the dilemma, is all.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @02:07PM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Monday July 26 2021, @10:08AM (11 children)
Then ban the inhumane form of fattening rather than the product. We ban tiny cages for hens, not the eggs. Eggs can be farmed in ways that are agreeable with the living requirements of hens, and it's quite possible to fatten geese for foie gras without cramming it down their throats, they are quite happy to overeat themselves without having to force feed them.
What an odd image, having something crammed down your throat that you would have no problem swallowing if people didn't try to force it onto you...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @12:04PM (6 children)
So your last sentence is really all about consent... if it quacks like a duck and eats like a duck it must be okay with me ripping out it's liver for dinner one day soon.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday July 26 2021, @02:04PM (5 children)
If they have a good life 'til that time, why not? It's probably a better life than most wild animals have.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by acid andy on Monday July 26 2021, @02:35PM (4 children)
Pity we can't ask them which life they prefer. Well, you could tear down all the fences and let them choose if they wanted to stay. I'll bet the places with the highest animal welfare would then get the highest retention rates!
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday July 26 2021, @03:34PM (3 children)
I don't expect an animal to know the benefits of being fed and sheltered compared to the pretty significant chance of dying as roadkill.
Do you seriously expect animals to make sensible decisions? What are you, five?
(Score: 3, Touché) by acid andy on Monday July 26 2021, @04:56PM (2 children)
No need to be insulting. They know to return to good food sources, shelter from bad weather and they also run from pain and danger. Those abilities are essential for survival and the amount of higher thought they put into it depends on the species.
FWIW I don't expect any of the alt-righters around here to know the benefits of being fed and sheltered compared to the pretty significant chance of dying from hypothermia and malnutrition without them.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday July 26 2021, @05:32PM (1 child)
I'm alt right now? Usually I'm a pinko commie. I wonder if my position changed or whether you're either, depending on what deep end the other one already went off.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday July 26 2021, @10:57PM
Nah you're not as far as I know. That line of my comment was totally offtopic. I just couldn't resist a dig at our resident RWNJs when I saw the parallel with what you said.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Monday July 26 2021, @05:13PM (3 children)
I'm guessing that at some point before their livers had swollen to 10x the normal size, the ducks would probably notice that something feels wrong in their body.
Or maybe not, I dunno. Dogs will basically eat until they're immobile if you keep giving them food, right?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @05:26PM
And monkeys will sit in a cage playing with themselves and flinging shit. It's just what dumb animals do.
(Score: 3, Touché) by FatPhil on Monday July 26 2021, @06:30PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 27 2021, @01:16AM
In case you didn't know: chocolate is poisonous to dogs