Ready to eat cultured animal cell lines?
Merry Vole
Shipmate
in Purgatory
'chicken bites' from cultured meat have recently been given approval for commercial sale by the Singapore Food Agency.
Other types of tissue engineered animal muscle and fat etc are being developed with the possibility of far less enviromental impact compared to farming and fishing, as well no cruelty to real animals.
But I think that with a healthy diet possible with a very small proportion of animal products (or maybe none at all) it is a solution looking for a problem.
What do shipmates think?
Other types of tissue engineered animal muscle and fat etc are being developed with the possibility of far less enviromental impact compared to farming and fishing, as well no cruelty to real animals.
But I think that with a healthy diet possible with a very small proportion of animal products (or maybe none at all) it is a solution looking for a problem.
What do shipmates think?
Comments
So I think this is a good idea although I feel a bit weird about it. I would certainly be prepared to give it a go.
You're right, the mass production of meat, with hormones, antibiotics etc, is a huge problem. And so is fishing the sea to extinction and 'farming' fish and prawns etc.
But isn't it driven by marketing-driven consumption and life-style aspirations that don't respect the environment?
Yes, it seems unreal to me to say, eat less meat. A meat substitute sounds more realistic.
Partly. But it's also driven by the fact that hundreds of millions of people who were previously extremely poor and barely able ever to afford meat are now able to afford it more often. This is a "life-style aspiration" if you like, but I don't think it's fair to call it "marketing-driven".
Big business and the ‘markets’ exploit, whatever the trend is, meat or no meat.
But purely on animal welfare grounds I would happily eat cell grown meat.
In terms of protein replacement insects are an underused resource. I've had locusts before, and they were yummy.
I tend to eat vegetarian food if I'm eating out and don't know where the meat has come from. By the same token I wouldn't eat cultured meat.
On the other hand Lab grown fungi pretending to be meat, I am definitely comfortable with (despite not being comfortable with fungi). There's a decent range that is almost 'good enough':
To me there are indistinguishable imitations of sausage rolls and nuggets (which probably says something about the real ones), (as well as the ones that are deliberately different)*.
Mince and chicken-replacement-pieces aren't quite as good but are a lot more convenient.
Sausage, burgers and steaks have a long way to go.
*Also I suspect by going full Vegan, by my metrics they potentially lose slightly on the ethical style than something 99% but easier oils.
Some meats and some cuts may be better or worse for one, but query what colour the meat is really has to do with that. Before it's cooked pork isn't even 'not-red'. It's just a bit pinker than beef or lamb. And what's good or bad for one's metabolism isn't an ethical question in the way vegetarians and vegans proclaim the moral superiority of their respective stances.
Although I've eaten some excellent chicken over the years, a lot of what one can buy is dry and bland. This may be the wrong time of the year to say this, but so, I'm afraid, is a lot of roast turkey, though I do quite like some turkey steaks. So, as far as I'm concerned, unless factory cultured chicken has got more to it than mass produced actual hens, I don't think I'll bother. I'd prefer a well made veggie burger.
I've not tried locusts, but flying ants (termites that is) fried fresh were very tasty. However, they only fly once a year, and we don't have them here.
I don't know whether pigs and chickens use fewer resources though. I would actually have guessed that they use more per unit mass.
From an animal welfare point of view I'd say pigs are probably worst, because they're more likely to be intensively reared than cows or sheep and they're more intelligent than chickens (ISTM).
Chicken is very efficient, resource wise. Unfortunately its efficiency is inversely linked to its welfare.
Resource use and economic cost don't always match up.
Beef is not necessarily worse than sheep or pigs for the environment, it depends on how it is farmed. Brazilian beef is many times more environmentally costly compared with English - tweet of comparison. What is attracting the publicity and information about beef is that reared on the ashes of the Amazon rainforest and/or other intensive farming. Blanket beef bans are black and white assessments ignoring the nuances that actually exist.
Unless you're very careful about the provenance of your chicken the welfare is likely to be horrific - link to Guardian story. And they will be reared on soya and other dubious produce.
And @Boogie is right, much soya is grown in Brazil, to feed beef and chickens, most soya is implicated in the same destruction, almond milk is mostly grown in California and is part of that environmental disaster. Oat milk is supposed to be least damaging (but no good for gluten intolerants). There is a brand of UK Soya milk that guarantees its soya is grown on its own French farms.
I don't like meat much, prefer vegetables, and am quite happy eating fungi, pulses and nuts so wouldn't bother with synthetic meat any more than I do now.
I like going to my local butcher and choosing the meats, parceling them up at home and freezing them. I like getting lambs necks for my dogs, and I like seeing the carcasses cut up before me, seeing the butcher operate the mincer for my mince and the saw to cut up the bones for my dogs. I like that he gets his pig carcasses in on a Thursday, so that Friday is the best day for pork, and that he gets his chickens on a Wednesday. I like that you can't expect any chicken to be in his shop on a Tuesday. I like that he is married to one of our local vets, and that I couldn't get a better sausage than his in Europe.
I expect farmers and abattoirs to treat animals humanely, and my Government to regulate and enforce what that means. I appreciate it when animal rights activists expose bad practices or breaches of the law.
I have a problem with the live export trade, but I know that live export to Muslim countries is an important trade for the country and for farmers in the north. The way animals are exported needs to change. The way we handle our animals is our responsibility, including the conditions on ships to which we deliver the animals up. Animal rights activists have exposed very bad practices in some Indonesian abattoirs that are licenced to slaughter Australian animals. They are breaching their license conditions when they do so. We do attempt to have some control over how Australian animals are slaughtered overseas, in Indonesia and Saudi Arabia at least. But I also know that people with schizophrenia and other mental illnesses are chained to posts in some Indonesian asylums. There is only so much we can do.
They're still pretty gassy from grass, but there seem to be herb mixes that can be introduced into pasture that reduce levels even further.
Yes, the comparisons that eating beef from European farms does less damage to the environment than beef from Brazil (because we've already grown accustomed to the environmental damage done by our ancestors). And, therefore if we eat the same amount of beef and reduce production in Europe there'll be an increase in contemporary environmental harm. But, that's assuming we eat the same amount of beef ... if we significantly cut the amount of beef so that Brazilian ranchers don't need as much land (ending further deforestation, even better allowing reforestation or at the least plantations for whatever commercial trees suitable for those locations that allow local people to have export goods) and European farmers can plant more trees as well.
There's silage to harvest here, and the "harvest" for beasts is the sales (about 3-4 times a year). We had, however, pencilled in a "thanksgiving for lambing" for late April this year before covid intervened.
Turning back the millennia to return Britain to fully wooded is a tad more ambitious and almost certainly impossible without reducing the population to the same levels - I cannot see anyone sane aiming to achieve that. (However, the Woodland Trust and other organisations are campaigning to plant more trees.)
I agree with the conclusion of the article, that it would be better to fund farmers than bio tech.
Because, even if you convince most meat eaters, there will be holdouts who swear that no matter what you do you can't replicate Iberico Chorizo Belotta or Wagyu beef through cell cultures. Heck, they might even be right. The only way you'll see an end to raising animals for meat is prohibition. I'm pretty sure there would be a religious backlash too. Fundie Christians would claim that eating meat from dead animals is a divine command (they already claim that being vegetarian is un-Christian), some conservative Muslim scholars will declare it Haram to eat cultured meat, and some Orthodox Rabbis will say it's not Kosher.
If we were prepared to eat meat once in a blue moon and savour every scrap, eating oink to tail, respecting the lives killed in our quest to eat more protein than we need, we'd not be destroying the planet the way we are.
I’d have thought it’s more likely to be the big fast food and supermarket chains who will buy it to replace the more expensive real meat in their bargain basement processed-to-hell-and-back-anyway offerings.
Yes. As someone for whom texture is more important than flavour when it comes to food, that’s going to be a big issue for me.
I was very interested to read that article. Whilst I find the idea of eating 'lab meat' a bit off putting, I would hope very much to overcome my squeamishness as time went on. I was more concerned to hear that the process involved foetal bovine serum - which I think is obtained by slaughtering a pregnant cow - but then an update at the end of the article it suggested that it was no longer going to be necessary. I would be delighted if this lab meat could be produced on a large scale, and ultimately produced cheaply. Even if my generation can't quite stomach this stuff comfortably, I would hope that our grandchildren and great-grandchildren could take it for granted as a staple protein food. I think anything that takes the pressure off our intensively farmed animals and too much meat-eating is to be welcomed.
If this was accompanied by the high quality rearing of animals for food, where meat would be used more as a special treat, I would be comfortable with that too. For me the real bugbear is factory farming.
Yes, same here. I will only eat meat which has had a ‘happy life and humane death’.
Another article on the subject - https://tinyurl.com/y35qww4z
I’d happily eat the meat but the burger bun looks horrible!
You don't have to.
Well, not if you're arguing from an environmental standpoint. If you're taking an ethical-vegan "bacon is people" viewpoint, you care about every last pig and cow. If you're taking an environmental or general animal-welfare position, you don't.
But as others have pointed out, making growing meat in a tank as cheap as growing meat in animals is going to be a bit of a challenge.