this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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Anyone have any ideas on price versus kill meat? Especially longterm?
Exactly where my head is. Assuming it is currently expensive since it is new and such little supply. But I'm wondering 5+ years down the road... Is it likely that it will be less expensive than traditional counterparts?
Bioreactors are much less efficient at producing meat than their biological equivalents. They are essentially huge buckets of liquid with nutrients without proper heart/lungs, circulatory/respiratory system that can evenly distribute oxygen and remove CO2, so you need to be constantly shaking and mixing.. which doesn't help with the heat that the reactions produce. You need to keep a constant temperature... and you also don't have an immune system to protect from bacterial growth that could contaminate the whole batch.
This is much more expensive, more risky for health and less environmentally friendly than naturally grown meat. Natural biological organisms have evolved across millenia to be extremelly efficient at what they do. You just can't compete using current tech.
I don't think we would be able to get a cheap sustainable alternative to traditional meat without essentially replicating the way animals grow. And at that point, I wonder if killing an artificially designed animal is any better.
Personally, i think protein from breeding maggots is the more realistic and sustainable source of meat at the moment... starting from a simple lifeform and adapting it is likely more viable.
I don't get how it could be less environmentally friendly than traditionally grown meat from cows or whatever. Cows need to support not just the meat growing systems in the their bodies, but everything else...and they need to live for years, with constant food and land.
Yeah that comment does not make much sense. Our bodies have to function every day moving around and doing things. The lab grown stuff just needs to make cells. It should be much closer to growing fungus or yeast.
Lab-Grown Meat’s Carbon Footprint Potentially Worse Than Retail Beef
It seems the crux of the issue is that current technology uses pharma-grade growing medium, which is very expensive and has a bigger footprint, and the hope is that scientists can figure out a "food-grade" medium that would have lower emissions. Since costs are also affected, I'm sure companies have a lot of incentive to look for a more efficient way.
The technology is still relatively young, so I'm on the board of "wait and see".
You're right and I think the commenter was sprouting bollocks. Reddit used to be plagued with comments like that which are simply meant to cast doubt, and aren't based on facts.
Cows are not the best choice, but bioreactors are still worse. At least with current tech.
From this article:
CC: @ChimpanzeeThat @HubertManne