Startup Serves Up Chicken Produced From Cells in Lab
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That's starting to wander into dry-aged beef ribeye territory at a higher-end version of common grocery chains, and sale pricing numbers at Whole Foods Market. It predictably starts out as a luxury good, but as others have noted, cell culture-based processes have historically scaled pretty effectively. So probably 2-3 more decades after that with continuous refinements will bring it down to a price point that even the middle class will look at, so that's pretty exciting it is getting so close.
What is the regulatory outlook for these products? Will they be regulated as pharmaceutical (due to the bioreactor origin) or food, or is this an issue currently being negotiated and discussed with government? I imagine investors would strongly prefer a food regulatory treatment.
The regulatory frameworks are still up in the air. I know from having attending the 1st and 2nd Cultured Meat Symposiums in Maastricht that both the USDA and the FDA are looking at clean meat. While both agencies seem pretty open and friendly towards it, they unfortunately both think they should be the one to regulate it :-)
That's a relief, because anything over $9,200/lb. causes me to consider having chicken one extra day a week.
https://www.impossiblefoods.com https://nishi.momofuku.com/nishi/menu/lunch/
As a farmer who used to raise pastured chicken, I was always happy to convert people to what real chicken is supposed to taste like.
Kind of like eating me vs. eating an Olympian.
That said, the difference that being able to forage green grass and insects in the short period they were out on pasture (usually 4-6 weeks, weather dependent) was so remarkable in terms of the flavour and the texture of the meat, that we're effectively ruined for eating any other non-pastured chickens. The fat was rich and velvety, the dark meat was meaty and deep in flavour; everything was just moist and juicy and delicious.
We didn't do many on a yearly basis (about 1000 +/-), and I was primarily using them for fertilizing pasture that I was grazing with our dairy herd. The fact that they were spectacular eating was just a side benefit.
If you're ever able to track one down, I'd highly recommend giving one a go.
...so my father lives in a village in the north-west of Scotland; the butcher there did locally sourced everything (you could buy venison that had come off the local hills; he did amazing venison burgers, made from scrap venison cut with pork). His chickens came from, I think, Black Isle? But they were fantastic. Stuff half a lemon up its backside, rub with olive oil and rosemary, roast, serve with potatoes and plain boiled carrots and peas... sadly, he retired, and the place closed.
I haven't had roast chicken for ages. Dammit, I'm hungry now.
All animals will die at some stage. If their life up to that point was in a caring and respectful environment, and they are humanely killed, what's the problem?
We regularly sent our cattle to the abattoir, and it didn't stop them being happy cows that got hugs and shoulder scratches...
Moreover, an important question is how many replication cycles the animal stem cells use - unless they're hybridized with tumor cells, they will eventually run into the hayflick limit, at which point you'll have kill another animal to obtain more stem cells.
It needs to be actually comparable in quality and the price needs to come way down though first. It's easy to imagine a future where the _best_ meat is actually grown in this way and is nonetheless cheaper than more environmentally friendly than raising animals.
And of course, then it becomes possible to build meats that correspond to no actual animal
Overlooking whether vegans or religious sects are good, bad or whatever, what really happens is probably that people find other vegan people, become part of a community and enjoy that.
It's the same cargo cult process that makes everyone want an Iphone. I dread the day when a high percentage or, god forbid, majority of people start looking down on those dirty meat-eaters because "won't anyone think of the animals?".
"huge" is debatable, but certainly a valid standpoint. In any way: there are pros and cons and everyone should weigh them against each other: health, price, animal cruelty, taste etc.
My compromise e.g. is non strict (and hopefully non dogmatic) vegetarian with preferably organic diary products.
This "high quality" protein myth is garbage.
The amount of protein in seeds, tofu, seitan, nuts, legumes is plenty for almost anyone. And if you are power lifting even omnivore lifters take protein shakes after working out usually.
You're shifting the argument. The point isn't that we need to eat like them, it's that we want to, and meat is delicious.
> The amount of protein in seeds, tofu, seitan, nuts, legumes is plenty for almost anyone.
By that logic, there'd be no point in manufacturing sports cars or macbook pros anymore, because normal cars and Chromebooks have enough power for "almost anyone".
Matter of taste? I don't like it much, never did and I grew up in a family were we ate tons of meat and vegetarian was a dirty word. I like 'a bite' of very good beef, but I could never eat a whole steak; just bores the hell out of me and the taste annoys me after a few bites. Chicken I just don't see the point. Next to a programmer I am a cook (own a restaurant) and I find taste very important; always have. So I think 'meat is delicious' is an opinion of yourself (and often people who never tried much else; people who cook 'without meat' (for whatever reason) often cook very bland; then I can understand it; those meals give 'vegetarian' cooking a very bad name and meat 'automatically' would make those better tasting for a lot of people. I wouldn't eat a barely heated up mashed pumpkin without seasoning either); I prefer other things and sure, if there is a bit of meat in something then it can be nice under the right circumstances.
I eat meat and (non-starchy) vegetables. I don't eat like a bodybuilder, but neither is a plant-protein-based diet easy for me.
Sorry, it is easier to eat meat. The protein IS higher quality, easier to digest and more balanced. Eating nutritional yeast and balancing your legumes, tofu and other protein sources to get a proper assortment of B vitamins and amino acids IS harder.
Not saying it's not healthier, not saying is not more ethical, not saying anything except it IS easier. Stop lying.
Do you think all vegans are the same? There is no need to make a huge generalization about a group that is so diverse.
> The protein IS higher quality, easier to digest and more balanced
I've never seen anyone claim that meat is easier to digest than plants. Do you have a source?
In terms of quality, you first need to define quality and that depends on your goals. Whole plant protein comes packed with fiber, while animal protein comes packed with cholesterol, IGF-1 and saturated fat. If your goal is to prevent heart disease and cancer through dietary means, plant protein is higher quality.
> Eating nutritional yeast and balancing your legumes, tofu and other protein sources to get a proper assortment of B vitamins and amino acids IS harder.
This statement makes it clear that you don't know much about vegan diets. This is usually a concern I hear from pre-vegans or people who have been vegan for 2 weeks.
> not saying anything except it IS easier. Stop lying. If I was ever worried about getting all 9 essential amino acids in a single meal (believe me, most vegans don't think about it), I would eat beans and rice, or lentils and potatoes, or edamame, or tempeh, or quinoa, or hummus and crackers, or a peanut butter sandwich, or tofu. For me, this is a lot easier (and cheaper) than preparing meat.
If you've been eating meat for 20 years, it will be easier for you to keep eating meat, no one is disputing that.
Now, eating out is definitely harder as a vegan, but like the parent said, it's because the way society is currently setup, not because meat is easier to produce.
True, I should have qualified this. It's only a subset of vegans who frustrate me this way.
> I've never seen anyone claim that meat is easier to digest than plants. Do you have a source?
Really? Google "is meat easier to digest than vegetable protein". It literally has millions of results.
> In terms of quality, you first need to define quality and that depends on your goals. Whole plant protein comes packed with fiber, while animal protein comes packed with cholesterol, IGF-1 and saturated fat. If your goal is to prevent heart disease and cancer through dietary means, plant protein is higher quality.
Yeah, I get this argument. It's why I'm eating vegetarian or vegan at least a few times a week these days.
> This statement makes it clear that you don't know much about vegan diets. This is usually a concern I hear from pre-vegans or people who have been vegan for 2 weeks.
I'm going by discussions such the ones in my vegan cookbooks, similar to this one:
http://veganhealth.org/articles/protein
> If you've been eating meat for 20 years, it will be easier for you to keep eating meat, no one is disputing that.
That was the crux of my argument: it is NOT easy to be vegan, stop saying it is. It is arguably better. Healthier and more ethically sound. But my vegan days have much more time-consuming shopping, cooking and prep days.
My personal experience was that going vegan was much easier than not, as soon as I became aware of what was going on (at around age 18). Once I realized that animals have relationships and emotional lives, it became clear to me that they weren't "food" for me.. in the same sense humans aren't food for me.
Additionally, in terms agriculture, it seems like it requires more work and inputs to create meat, so that is harder as well.
I've been vegan for over a decade and it honestly feels like it's only made my life better.
I've been reducing meat in my diet and eat vegetarian a couple of days a week. I try to buy ethically raised meat for other days.
What I was reacting to is the idea that it is some how not an effort to be vegan, as if it isn't any more work than stopping off at MickyD's on the way home ...
Also, yes to reducing intake. The idea you have to go totally vegan to make an impact probably hurts the cause.
My ultimte frisbee coach used to say he would offer to buy people vegetarian meals as an offset, so he could still eat meat.
I dealt with my concern over dating non-vegan women when I realized I'd probably save more animals by the fact they would most likely eat less meat at least sometimes by being with me.
Finally, I think some of the best work being done for animals is the work in startups making vegan meats and such.
This is wrong? Are you claiming you can just eat cruciferous vegetables, for instance, and be fine?
You really don't know what you are talking about do you?
Raw meat, eggs, and such are very easy to cook and make delicious.
Tofu is already highly processed, and beans require a length cooking time. By any definition of the word, animal protein is less time consuming to make more delicious than plant protein.
Your reading comprehension needs work.
And compared to tofu, a cut of raw meat is far less processed.
Then refute it, instead of spouting baseless accusations. With meat, you cut the meat off the animal after skinning it.
With tofu, you dry the beans, soak them, add a chemical coagulant to the fluid, and then press it.
I don't know what sources you're reading, or what your definition of the word "processed" is, but neither are commonly accepted.
I think my situation is hardly rare.
It happened when other changes were occuring in my life, but I lost weight, hung out with other vegans, felt better overall.
It can really depend on when you live, but being vegan in most US metropolitan areas is pretty easy these days.
As for lab meats, they're great and I'm generally for them, but acting like we don't have viable other solutions is a bit silly. Lentils, beans, nuts, seeds, seitan, tofu, all great sources of protein.
Depends on what you mean by "viable". Food is a huge part of culture and while those items you listed do provide protein it's, in my opinion, no where near as enjoyable as various types of meat. In fact many of that, to me, is really gross and I've tried multiple versions of all of it.
Naturally to others meat may be gross. There isn't a one size fits all solution here. We've evolved taste for a reason and it's hard to ignore if you don't like the "other solutions".
So I would say I disagree with your statement when you call the other items "viable other solutions" :)
If your litmus test for "viable" is what currently makes you the happiest you'll be blocked off from not only helping the world but likely helping yourself too.
I find that terribly narrow minded. It's not about "happiest". I've tried almost all of those before, several of them in multiple ways. I don't like the taste nor texture. So since I don't like the taste of what you like I am thusly being selfish and blocked from helping myself and the world?
This isn't how you win people over to your side. This is the type of thing that actually reinforces someone's opinion and makes it worse getting through to them.
Instead of trying to make yourself sound better than the person you want to convince of your position, you would be better off trying to find common ground and working from there.
"You catch more flies with honey than vinegar"
Best of luck.
Honestly though, this comes up a lot "catching more flies with honey" but I don't think these things should be spoken about obliquely, truth should be spoken plainly. I spoke true to my experience and knowledge as best I could and tried to be as polite as I could. Best of luck to you as well.
Eventually one either gets used and enjoys the new foods or makes tasty meals in combination.
For me, getting drunk and then eating the disgusting thing in the morning made me love it. It's undescribable how delicious things are when one is dehydrated and when the disgusting taste of beer was the only thing in the mouth the night before.
The quality of life is subjective and taste can easily be acquired in a way that one can continue feeling satisfied with the foods they eat.
What you might need is a tastebud reset, which can easily be accomplished and after that you'll find anything extremely delicious.
You mentioned that you've just tried an ingredient and didn't like it which isn't even comparable to your dietary regime which was filled with meat during an extremely long period of time. To acquire taste takes effort or some out of the ordinary measures (a week or two of one ingredient diet to reset the taste buds, or that alchohol trick repetatively etc.).
What about this vegan NFL player? https://redditblog.com/2016/06/24/300-pound-vegan-david-cart...
Bit more about myself since I think it's applicable: I'm no world class athlete, but I went vegetarian and started weight lifting a while back. Benched like 120 starting out. Now I'm vegan and can bench 200+ lbs, gained that muscle without eating animals.
Sure, there's some random ingredient that studies show only meat has and may help a little, but plenty of vegan athletes are starting to pop up and show there isn't some special thing in dead animals.
The common theme among vegan athletes is that recovery times improve substantially.
True but highly misleading. Even a vegan will have some amount of creatine because this molecule is produced by the liver and kidney.
Also the effects of creatine aren't that well studied: http://www.webmd.com/men/creatine
I don't know why I joined this discussion. I am neither vegan nor an athlete.
This may be true, but all of those either: interfere with mineral absorption, decrease serum testosterone, or are not comparable in taste to animal protein.
You may have had an increase in quality of life, but this is not universally applicable to the entire population. Keto is the first thing that comes to mind that increases quality of life, that also focuses a lot on animal products.
Full disclosure, I am a vegetarian.
Thanks for also writing about the downsides! :)
Another algae-to-make-food company went into high-end oils for cosmetics: http://www.solazyme.com/ (and some other industrial things, from what I see now)
With high end stuff, you're really catering to the connoisseur. And if you can tell the difference between a dry-aged ribeye and a wet-aged ribeye, think about making a lab grown substitute for that level of discernment.
In fact, I read somewhere that the reason California rolls were invented was because somebody noticed that avocados have roughly the same fat content and mouthfeel as tuna belly, and was swapped in.
The dry vs wet aged ribeye is a little off to me too, don't they have the input of a raw steak (engineered or natural) if you're going to put it into an aging process?
I think the problem is to get the exact distribution of the fat through the tuna, but I'm not sure. I mean, you can just sort of slather on lard to regular tuna, but it's the texture and marbling that people are going for not just pure fat content.
>The dry vs wet aged ribeye is a little off to me too
Well, in this case, dry aging really allows the enzymes present in the meat to start breaking down the meat. When you're engineering a steak, I think you're just engineering mostly the macros and structure of the meat.
I do worry though on the impact this will ultimately have on the farming industry and jobs. It is a slightly subtler form of job automation.
I just had a fantastic dinner with a perfectly fried beef tenderloin steak. It was delicious. If this could be made cheaper, faster, better, and without having to kill a cow every time, that's an absolute win for everyone.
"The meat industry is completely disgusting, and raising animals for slaughter is morally bad."
but yet >
"I just had a fantastic dinner with a perfectly fried beef tenderloin steak."
For morality to be true and relevant, we have to be able to consciously make bad moral choices.
What is it like to consciously make decisions you feel are morally bad?
We make these decisions all the time, every day. I at least try to be honest about what I'm doing. :-)
My point was more around the fact that, much like trucking, farming employs a large number of people in the US who generally are on the lower income side. If you take these jobs away, we have a larger national issue of what to do with a massive number of unemployed people with no means to support themselves. It isn't an easy problem to solve, and it is far from being a black and white issue.
But I really can't feel bad about it, in the same way I don't feel bad about the coal industry going belly-up, or the rest of the fossil fuel industry. I'm sorry, but it has to change. It is not sustainable.
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Beyond Meat ought to be a low-price product, but it isn't.
[1] https://play.google.com/music/m/Dj4goozcgwvlcixxhx2pekacws4?...
Cell cultures need to be sterile, the sugars, growth factors, and other nutrients used need to be highly refined. These are not requirements that are likely to change in the foreseeable future.
Would this somehow be different?
I am not a biologist, so I am genuinely curious...
Further, the breeds of chickens used for meat are usually for meat, eggs for eggs, etc - at least at the industrial scale.
That said, as a long-time vegetarian I would still guess that animal protein is likely to stay more resource-intensive than plant protein. But it could still be an improvement over our current situation, especially in terms of our treatment of animals, and use of water and feed.
In 2013, the first cultured burger cost $330,000 to make. Just under a year ago, Memphis Meats was at $18,000/lb of clean beef produced. Now they're at $9,000/lb. This is before any sort of efficiencies from scale, and before many steps of the process have been anywhere near fully optimized. They expect their costs to reach 2 cents/g by 2021, which would be cost competitive.
And while chickens are somewhat efficient, they're not as efficient as culturing techniques ought to be at scale. Memphis Meats' process will require 3 calories of input to produce 1 calorie of beef. That's just better than chicken, and massively better than beef or pork.
* They don't need to reach price parity to be financially successful. I'm sure there are people out there (former vegans/vegetarians or those considering veganism/vegetarianism) who would pay a marked up price. People already pay marked up proces for things like grass-fed beef and uncured meats.
* Is there any evidence that these price decreases hold at scale? There's a world of difference in being able to provide a market niche with artificial chicken at low cost and being able to produce enough chicken for the whole market at those marginal costs.
Put your prediction on PredictionBook? It's a great way to keep track of your predictions, and learn to be calibrated (e.g. to have about 80% of your predictions-of-80%-likelihood be correct, which doesn't come naturally to people).
Assuming I'm reading it right, the perfectly calibrated guesser would trend towards a straight line going from 50 on the left to 100 on the right.
They also have a way-too-addictive game where you can practice calibrating your confidence on a bunch of trivia questions: http://predictionbook.com/credence_games/try
"Ever"? Really?
I could see it for the next 5 years or so, but beyond that all bets are off.
Or there could be solar panels put there, or the corn could end up producing the input to the vat. Or hemp could be grown there which could be used as a construction material, or ...
Even bioreactors that produce pharmaceutical products are running on carbon-based energy derived from agricultural output -- glucose gotta come from somewhere. Fixed nitrogen, amines, gotta come from somewhere.
I wish that there was more of a focus on milk, because milk production is arguably the most cruel of them all, and it also seems to be more feasible, considering it's a homogeneous liquid solution. Granted, synthetic milk is getting some attention, too: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/genetic-engineering-synthetic-milk-...
Honestly artificial meat sounds like a repulsive idea an i'd never consider eating it regularly, maybe just taste as a curiosity.
I like my steaks rare, I like the taste of the juice that's left by the blood in the steak. I like to see the red in the meat.
Some vegans reading this will think I'm a horrible person. Others will think themselves better people than me because they are not enslaved by meat. Honestly, I find this much more repulsive than the way animals are treated in farms.
We need less meat from better raised animals. We need to understand that animals are an essential part of a balanced agricultural system. We do not need more food-industry.
This is a solution in need of problem