run from it, dread it, beans arrive all the same
this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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Believing that this tech will solve the environmental and ethical problems of animal agriculture is anti materialist. Cultured meat is almost certainly going to be way more resource intensive to produce than plant based alternatives. There’s no way around it.
You also don’t need to convince anyone to go vegan. The world at large either has to wind down it’s reliance on animal agriculture or face the environmental devastation that comes with it. Remember culture develops as a consequence of material conditions. It’s anti materialist to think otherwise.
For the record, the CPC disagrees with you and their body consists of thousands of engineers and historically cares a lot about food production. Though they are focusing on different meat products, namely eggs and pig skin. Eggs imo are far more likely to succeed here in the near future based on the research I've read in China. I remember researching how much funding this is getting in each country and China was funding this research on a scale of 10-1 over the West.
I’m open to being proven wrong but I just don’t think it’s viable. It’s not as simple as throwing a few cells in a bioreactor.
To make this commercially viable you would have to develop a very efficient supply chain to produce all the complex nutrients and hormones necessary to grown animal tissues in vitro. You would have to do this without relying on the byproducts of animal agriculture as is currently the case. Most of the research I’ve read kind of hand waves away that issue.
Next, you have to culture animal tissues at an industrial scale. This is the challenge some researchers are trying to address. I think this may be possible but it’s unlikely to be very efficient. You still need to “feed” your cells over a long period of time as muscle tissue does not grow quickly, even when stimulated with hormones.
Lastly, if you somehow find solutions to all those problems I think it’s unlikely you’ll have a product that closely imitates the taste an texture of meat. Animal tissues are complex. They contain a variety of cell types and extra cellular proteins that no attempt at lab grown meat has come close to replicating. I think it’s next to impossible for them to get cells to grow into a complex tissue like they would in vivo. So instead you’ll be left trying to cobble together a cell based mush full of antibiotics and growth hormones into something that looks edible.
The alternative is just using plant protein as a basis for meat alternatives. That’s something the CPC is also supporting. Personally I’m already pretty impressed by what’s available now. Improving it to a point where people will be comfortable giving up meat seems much more viable in my opinion than lab grown meat.
I am not totally convinced with that part, but the rest I would critically support.
If you grow plant matter in labs or hydroponics with usage of sunlight and water nutrition enhancement you will be better than lab meat, but there are plenty of plants which in the wild are less good. However there are also plenty which are good enough and widely available in the soils we currently got.
Your point will at least for 15-30 years be totally true (since energy production for both lab meat and hydroponics is on average bad).
I really think "materialist" and "idealist" outside the concept of 19th century debates around Hegel are thought-terminating cliches.
Yeah, the common usage on this site is
good realistic idea = materialism
bad unrealistic idea = idealism
I'm glad someone's said it finally.
From what I see:
PR campaigns to try to "convince people with ideas" to change their ways is definitely more on the idealistic side.
Tech that fundamentally changes the means of production of a fundamental commodity in local, regional, national, and international markets seems more on the materialist side.
I agree that those would be good, commonsense ways of using those words. It's also not what Marx meant by them. So when you throw them around on a Marxist forum, it gives a weight to what you're saying, but without actually referencing anything Marx said.
Do you see how this could create issues?