this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2024
109 points (98.2% liked)

Asklemmy

44160 readers
1417 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy πŸ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

As a thinking experiment, let us consider that on the 1st of January of 2025 it is announced that an advance making possible growing any kind of animal tissue in laboratory conditions as been achieved and that it is possible to scale it in order to achieve industrial grade production level.

There is no limit on which animal tissues can be grown, so, any species is achieveable, only being needed a small cell sample from an animal to start production, and the cultivated tissues are safe for consumption.

There won't be any perceiveable price change to the end consummer, as the growing is a complex and labour intensive process, requiring specialized equipments and personnel.

Would you change to this new diet option?

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Only if I could put my own DNA in it so I could eat my own ass

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 hours ago

I... really don't have a reply to that. Autophagy? Perhaps?

[–] bruhduh@lemmy.world 7 points 6 hours ago (1 children)
[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 2 points 6 hours ago
[–] AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 3 points 6 hours ago

The only thing I'd wait for is for the process to be refined enough to be more eco friendly than just eating real meat. I'd do it, but until there's proof of it being more sustainable and won't tank my blood thin/thickness levels (blood thinners sometimes suck), I would be down to try it at the very least.

Though I would receive resistance in changing my diet until either my dad changes his eating habits or I move out on my own because my dad absolutely refuses things like plant based meats, so I know he'd most likely resist lab grown meat as well. It's also hard for my mom and I to switch to a healthier dinner diet since both my dad and older brother wouldn't dare change their diets to something like a Mediterranean or some other healthier because they can be picky eaters (especially my older brother).

[–] leonardodede3@lemm.ee 1 points 5 hours ago

Only if the culture medium for the meat cells is not made of living animals.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 4 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

I would be wildly optimistic, but very cautious.

I'd want to see multi-year randomized control trials comparing the bioavailability of not only protein, but also vitamins and minerals from the synthetic meat and liver, to natural meat and liver.

Assuming the RCTs show no issues, then I would happily move over.

Modern meat products are on a spectrum as well, it's not just having the meat, it's what the meat ate before it became me that's important. Grass-fed, versus grain fed for beef. Insect, and protein for chickens, grain fed for chickens etc. antibiotics, hormones being supplemented into the feed to improve yields.

One massive problem the industry globally suffers from is overpromising. Just like multivitamins, which are very poorly bioavailable, and mostly peed out, they promise a lot but don't deliver much.

Factors I would look for:

  • can somebody sustain life eating only the synthetic meat for multiple years?
  • oxidative stress, and oxidation in the synthetic food?
  • The temptation to engineer sugar, and carbohydrates, directly into the meat to increase sales yields.

Green sustainability:

  • can the synthetic meat be produced globally?
  • Will poor farmers in the middle of nowhere be improved or hurt by this? Will they have access to the synthetic meat?
  • in the event global logistics fail, like an a war, will moving over to synthetic meat severely hurt critical infrastructure and ability to feed populations?
[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 2 points 6 hours ago

That was a very compreensive answer. You gave me a few thinking points.

[–] orgrinrt@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago

We don’t eat red meat at all, so I would probably try it out fairly quickly. Actually we don’t eat chicken or the like either, only fish, which is something I miss a bit more now and then. We have a dried product called NoChicken that is actually pretty good, so that’d probably be sufficient for me to wait a bit to see how it goes long term (I.e is it truly safe to consume).

But every now and then, I miss game. Moose and wood grouse mainly. That’d probably hook me enough to try it quickly.

[–] Birdie@thelemmy.club 11 points 12 hours ago

I'll move to it in a second. Protein with no need to slaughter animals would be so fantastic for the animals, the earth, and people.

[–] bblkargonaut@lemmy.world 9 points 12 hours ago (1 children)
[–] fool@programming.dev 3 points 12 hours ago

its 3am and i laughed my ass off. why?

If it were indistinguishable from other meat sources, and priced similarly (preferably less!), then of course. I expect it will take a very long time to get to that point, though.

[–] slowroll@r.nf 4 points 12 hours ago

still waiting for the mass to consume it and see what happen, also waiting for the price too

[–] yuri@pawb.social 13 points 16 hours ago

once it’s affordable, yeah almost immediately i reckon. i already go for plant based meats whenever i can find them for a reasonable price!

[–] Openopenopenopen@lemmy.world 52 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (6 children)

In a heartbeat. Although I’d prefer meat alternatives to lab grown meat. Like impossible burgers.

I don’t eat a ton of meat, and I’d like to eat even less. this option would help me feel like I’m not making animals suffer just so I can survive.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] akkajdh999@programming.dev 18 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Yeah. If it's the same, of course. I don't like killing cats for food.

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 6 points 17 hours ago

There are so many wrong things on that sentence.

[–] fixmycode@feddit.cl 2 points 14 hours ago

there's a not so small possibility that development of meat growing tech and patent expression will give us a niche market of not-available-before-for-ethical-reasons meats, like white rhinoceros burgers, cat and dog steaks, human fillets.

[–] metaStatic@kbin.earth 14 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

protein isn't the issue, it's all the bio-available vitamins and healthy fats that have already been converted.

if it's a 1 for 1 replacement, depending on how we deal with the massive and now useless animal populations, I would totally switch.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] DashboTreeFrog 31 points 21 hours ago (9 children)

There's tons of plant based proteins already. Having already added more vegan meals to my diet I think this would just be another option for me and one more for novelty than anything else

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 25 points 21 hours ago (11 children)
[–] Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world 18 points 21 hours ago

Rimworld player found

load more comments (10 replies)
[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 25 points 21 hours ago

Definitely. I see no downsides.

I don't eat very much meat as it is. But if I could drastically reduce the suffering inflicted when I do I would not hesitate.

[–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 13 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Sup. No need to keep doing it the old way at that point.

Hell, you could have boneless meat, so it's even better.

[–] Sturgist@lemmy.ca 11 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

But the bones are how you make banging soups....

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] eestileib@sh.itjust.works 20 points 21 hours ago

As long at it wasn't even more destructive than normal cultivation (very much tbd), absolutely.

I had no qualms about switching to Beyond Meat either.

If we could figure out how to make a decent ribeye out of peas and seed oils, I'd prefer that to lab-grown too.

[–] ramble81@lemm.ee 11 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

How does it taste?
How much does it cost?
What’s the true environmental impact?

If it’s the same, less and less, sure I’d be all for it.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 16 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

I don't really care about lab grown meat. Haven't eaten meat for years, don't really miss it that much since the plant based alternatives have gotten so good.

Give me lab grown dairy.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] M1ch431@lemmy.ml 6 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (8 children)

I would sooner argue for eating insects vs. lab-grown protein made by a corporation. I have no trust for corporations to produce safe and emergent solutions to the problems we face as a species and world. They have no incentive to do the right thing and put the brakes on when things are looking bad.

[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

And the insects would be provided by whom if not a huge corpos? You create some false equivalence here, it's the ages old struggle of lowering the food costs of feeding workers by making us eat worse things. Potatoes instead of wheat, highly process foods, fats and sugars in everything and ultimate fucking step is looming: eating bugs. You can't go worse than that unless it's a fucking soylent green which i can guarantee you would be somewhere next in the line after you allow the mega rich to feed you bugs.

[–] metaStatic@kbin.earth 5 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I always assume any hypothetical beneficial scenario is happening under socialism or another system that discards the profit motive because while we're dreaming might as well dream big.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 3 points 16 hours ago

I will let you all try it first. Going to pass on crazy mutation diseases.

[–] Unmapped@lemmy.ml 11 points 21 hours ago

Its the only way I would eat meat again. But don't think it will ever become a normal part of my diet again. The plant-based meat options are just as good and are healthier. They will only get better too.

load more comments
view more: next β€Ί