There are more than one chat on here about eating meat and the sustainability reasons for a plant based diet. What do people think about the idea of lab grown meat? I read some different articles about how sustainable it is. Definitely less methane emissions, much less land use, much less water pollution. But it uses a lot of power to produce, and that could mean higher co2 emissions at the moment, that does not matter if we transition to green power though. I'm mostly interested in the sustainability part, but for sure people will have ethical opinions too. Would you eat it, if it becomes mass produced and affordable?

Treebeard Science and ethics quite often go apart, but ethics norms are created by us. I don't really have a strong opinion about lab meats. The question is if that would be enough for meat eaters expectations? The energy can be easily made green. If we can grow the organ for transplantation why not to grow meat? Is it a natural process? Well…No.

I'm curious about it, there seems to be a lot of different research going on in different places to bring this to the market as something affordable that can be produced at scale and they all seem to have slightly different approaches. There are questions about sustainability, mostly the amount of power used in producing it, and then there are questions of how cruelty free it actually is, since it often seems to use something like bovine fetal serum to create cultures. Then I wonder how it will taste, the quality and flavour of anything is affected by the way that it grows, what it is fed on, etc. With vegetables, the weather and soil play their part, with meat, the lifestyle of the animal and what it ate do. No two carrots or two steaks will taste identical, but you can't replicate that with lab grown meat all grown identically from the same culture, so how do they decide that this is how it should be.

I think it could be hugely beneficial for everyone. I would be extremely happy to try it out as long as it looks somewhat "normal" and it tastes as good as the real stuff. If anything, I think the flavour shouldn't be too hard, it's the appearance and quantity that might be an issue

No! This just seems so wrong to me and I can't even explain why. I would prefer to not eat meat at all than to eat lab grown meat.

I am Ashlynn It's definitely unnatural and a bit weird to get your head around it. But I think a lot of people would definitely be willing to forget that if they have to stop eating actual meat.

Ash forget that if they have to stop eating actual meat. I think the point of "lab" sounds scary. But it is not like the meat is created from nothing. In most cases what they do is taking the cells from the animals and growing in the right environment until it is a big enough muscle piece. So flavour and look is like normal for example beef.

Lab grown meat

Ash

Piri

If I'm remembering correctly, I think the flavour aspect from their early tests wasn't an issue. But the look definitely was a concern. Maybe I'm remembering that wrong though so I'll have to check it out again.

John

Ash

I think the cost was always the biggest barrier as well, it's still hugely expensive to produce compared to farming animals but I guess that would change if it is produced at scale.

John

Treebeard

We've just republished an article from Impakter about lab grown meat that covers the sustainability part of the whole question pretty well - https://ekodiena.com/is-lab-grown-meat-part-of-a-sustainable-food-future/

Kyllikki

John We've just republished an article from Impakter about lab grown meat that covers the sustainability part of the whole question pretty well - https://ekodiena.com/is-lab-grown-meat-part-of-a-sustainable-food-future/

It's amazing that it takes so much energy to make it that it can be worse than keeping real animals for meat.

Meat is not really so exciting that we need to take such measures to keep making it I think.

Treebeard

John I think the cost was always the biggest barrier as well

From what I read that is still a problem, it is something like €100 per kg.

Ash

John

Yeah, hopefully, that is something that can be fixed pretty soon. Although, seeing Treebeards comment, for the price to drop from such a high price per kg might take quite a bit of time!

John

Ash Although, seeing Treebeards comment, for the price to drop from such a high price per kg might take quite a bit of time!

That's already dropped from about €1200 a kilo a couple of years ago.

Egle-K

I am Ashlynn No!

I'm with Ashlynn on this, I do not eat meat anyway, but if I did then it would be a big no-no from me.

Ash

John

That's good to hear because that is a huge reduction. It's kind of crazy to think that at one point it was that expensive. I wonder if real meat will one day end up being extremely expensive and we will all end up eating lab grown meat 😅

Piri

Ash I wonder if real meat will one day end up being extremely expensive and we will all end up eating lab grown meat 😅

If we will fuck up the planet even more probably all food will be lab 😂

Ash

I'm definitely willing to try out lab-grown meat but I'm not sure about other types of food. I think chocolate might be the one that I'm definitely not willing to give up 😅

So Veli

Kyllikki Meat is not really so exciting that we need to take such measures to keep making it I think.

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