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posted by martyb on Monday September 27 2021, @03:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the how-much-of-a-premium-would-YOU-pay? dept.

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.

[...] [Dr. Paul Wood] couldn't believe what he was hearing. In his view, GFI's TEA report did little to justify increased public investment. He found it to be an outlandish document, one that trafficked more in wishful thinking than in science. He was so incensed that he hired a former Pfizer colleague, Huw Hughes, to analyze GFI's analysis. Today, Hughes is a private consultant who helps biomanufacturers design and project costs for their production facilities; he's worked on six sites devoted to cell culture at scale. Hughes concluded that GFI's report projected unrealistic cost decreases, and left key aspects of the production process undefined, while significantly underestimating the expense and complexity of constructing a suitable facility.

[...] In fact, GFI was well aware of Wood's line of criticism. Several months earlier, Open Philanthropy—a multi-faceted research and investment entity with a nonprofit grant-making arm, which is also one of GFI's biggest funders—completed a much more robust TEA of its own, one that concluded cell-cultured meat will likely never be a cost-competitive food. David Humbird, the UC Berkeley-trained chemical engineer who spent over two years researching the report, found that the cell-culture process will be plagued by extreme, intractable technical challenges at food scale. In an extensive series of interviews with The Counter, he said it was "hard to find an angle that wasn't a ludicrous dead end."

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @07:02PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @07:02PM (#1181951)

    The one issue with Impossible burgers is that the only reason to use them is if you want to go "cruelty free."

    The health benefits of going vegetarian apparently went out the window. Apparently, when you try to imitate meat, you end up making stuff that is as unhealthy as meat, go figure.

    That said, if cruelty free is your thing, then go nuts.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @02:11PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @02:11PM (#1182214)

    Cruelty-free is part of it, but my bigger reason is environmental. On the order of 80% of the crops grown in the US are grown to feed livestock, which are then killed and fed to people. All of the other food - bread, pasta, rice, apples, oranges, pears, almonds, walnuts, potatoes, tomatoes, mushrooms - is grown on the last 20%. So if someone waved a magic wand and made the entire US vegan tomorrow, it would cut the amount of land we need to farm by around 70%.

    Now, chickens are one of the most resource-efficient forms of livestock. You get a big cruelty reduction but small resource savings cutting chicken consumption. But cows - and beef is my favorite meat - are the worst. The cheapest and easiest thing an individual can do to cut their personal contribution to global warming is cut their beef intake. Even if you just switch to chicken, it's a big deal.

    I know I sound like a shill for the vegan beef replacement companies. Please do your own research and your own taste tasting. I think the Impossible Meat is delicious.

    In terms of health, I'm J Random Internet Jackass but the latest stuff I've read is that total calorie intake matters more than composition. I have a big serving of cucumbers or celery with dip, or a huge salad with a low calorie dressing, or a mushroom, zucchini, and tomato stir fry, or just some sliced tomatoes with salt, or four cups of strawberries (which is a lot of food but only 200 calories) and then when I'm mostly full from that I have a single medium portion of beef (or equally high fat Impossible Meat). I'm not hungry between meals, and I'm losing fat. Whether I'll be able to keep eating this way for the next few years is the million dollar question.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @10:48PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @10:48PM (#1182961)

      I think that this is an elaborate troll, but I'll try to give it a serious response.

      "Cruelty-free is part of it, but my bigger reason is environmental."

      OK, sure, you care about cruelty and the environment. So do all of us, with a narrow exception for psychopaths. Moving on...

      "On the order of 80% of the crops grown in the US are grown to feed livestock, which are then killed and fed to people."

      I have no idea where you get this number. It bears no resemblance to reality.

      https://www.treehugger.com/land-contiguous-us-used-feed-livestock-4858254 [treehugger.com]

      That tells us it's more like 40% of US land used for grazing - and that includes unimproved, non-arable rangeland.

      If you're talking specifically grain production, it's more like https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat [cornell.edu] 50% of grain (which is only a part of the bigger crop picture), and a large part of that is because prices are out of kilter anyway.

      All this completely invalidates what follows:

      "All of the other food - bread, pasta, rice, apples, oranges, pears, almonds, walnuts, potatoes, tomatoes, mushrooms - is grown on the last 20%. So if someone waved a magic wand and made the entire US vegan tomorrow, it would cut the amount of land we need to farm by around 70%."

      A classic case of GIGO. Not only are your numbers laughably off-base, the type of nutrition is not simply equivalent. If you think that it is, why don't you chow down on alfalfa for a few weeks and then let's have an endocrinologist check you out? Spoiler alert: it's not going to be great.

      "Now, chickens are one of the most resource-efficient forms of livestock. You get a big cruelty reduction but small resource savings cutting chicken consumption. But cows - and beef is my favorite meat - are the worst. The cheapest and easiest thing an individual can do to cut their personal contribution to global warming is cut their beef intake. Even if you just switch to chicken, it's a big deal."

      This would have been valid (given a ton of false assumptions about the nature of the carbon burden of various meats, by-products, farming practices and so on) if there were absolutely no other reason to keep animals. Unfortunately, there are, and this goes double if you want to spare the carbon because many of the reasons for which we burn carbon on farms or in support industries (such as shipping of crops and inputs, and production of fertiliser) are precisely those factors that we would replace with animals (or were you planning on hauling my crops to market for me by bicycle?) and this means that animal agriculture is very much here to stay. And if you have them, you might as well eat them, or did you want to bury every one in a solemn ceremony while a single tear rolls down your cheek in the evening light?

      "I know I sound like a shill for the vegan beef replacement companies. Please do your own research and your own taste tasting. I think the Impossible Meat is delicious."

      No, shills generally have their facts better lined up. You just sound ignorant.

      "In terms of health, I'm J Random Internet Jackass but the latest stuff I've read is that total calorie intake matters more than composition."

      Which is why scurvy, beri-beri, pellagra and rabbit starvation are filthy lies promoted by Big Ag. ... oh, wait.

      " have a big serving of cucumbers or celery with dip, or a huge salad with a low calorie dressing, or a mushroom, zucchini, and tomato stir fry, or just some sliced tomatoes with salt, or four cups of strawberries (which is a lot of food but only 200 calories) and then when I'm mostly full from that I have a single medium portion of beef (or equally high fat Impossible Meat). I'm not hungry between meals, and I'm losing fat. Whether I'll be able to keep eating this way for the next few years is the million dollar question."

      In other words, you have a fairly balanced diet. That incorporates beef.

      Let's keep this real: you have not presented a path to animal-free agriculture. You have not presented a path to reduced-carbon agriculture. You handwave away serious questions about the real-world nutritional balance of how you'd replace meat in the world's diets, and you expect us to take you seriously?

      Try this on for size: study some real-world agronomy first, figure out how much _pure vegetable_ intake you'd need to replace meat (hint: if you're not doing your sums on the nitrogen cycle, your work is garbage) and how much land you'd need for that, then get back to us. Until then, keep eating that Impossible Meat, buddy!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @03:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @03:43PM (#1182787)

    Apparently, when you try to imitate meat, you end up making stuff that is as unhealthy as meat, go figure.

    Really? Is it as inflammatory as beef? e.g. did they really put similar concentrations of Neu5Gc into their burgers?

    https://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2019-09-23-strip-steak-bacterial-enzyme-removes-inflammation-causing-meat-carbohydrates.aspx [ucsd.edu]