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Comment by hunta2097 | Hacker News Reader

hunta2097

Animal farming is such a historical constant, I wonder what the unintended consequences of artificial meat are?

How does this ride with the trend for more organic and natural produce? Will artificial meat only be a suitable alternative in cheap or fast foods?

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So much of this current animal at system isn’t a historical constant. Even eating this much animal protein isn’t normal.

Even if you neglect the animal suffering inherit in the system all the farm land freed up by not raising an animal for its flesh would do wonders for the environment.

Worrying about “unintended consequences” of solving some problems over how many problems it causes is crazy.

Worrying about the unintended consequences of replacing our diet with synthetic substitutes is most certainly not crazy.

I tentatively hold to the theory that human population generally expands until some resource constraint is barely satisfied in the good years, and becomes a tragedy on the bad years.

So my guess is that freeing up farmland will potentially result in even more human population, just shifting the odds of which particular tragedy will next befall us.

That's certainly true of other animals, and historically true for humans as well. See the population boom in Europe after introducing super foods from the Americas (potatoes, corn) which enabled calories grown per acre to double. However, in developed nations food is only one part of people's expenses. Food would be cheaper if there's more land available, but it won't get hugely cheaper, because it still has to sell for more than what it costs to grow it. Also much of the land used for livestock grazing is unsuitable for farming - too arid or poor soil. I don't think at the end of the day it would affect people's decisions about how many children to have in any material way. The other considerations around having children would dominate the decision making. Even unrealistically large changes to the cost of food would not likely factor into the top 3. The developing world is another story all together, but those countries are changing and will eventually more closely resemble the developed countries. Any affect on those countries would be short-lived (but still encompass multiple generations, which could have a huge effect on world population.)

I'm not worried about it - I'm fascinated to see how it plays out.

How long before other complex food proteins can be synthesised and mass-produced without the need of specialist farms?

And my favorite: is lab meat vegetarian? is it vegan? Its certainly not cut from some animal, and nothing got killed to obtain it.

It depends on whether Fetal Bovine Serum is used to grow the meat. If it is, it's neither vegan or vegetarian.

And what rotted into the soil the vegetables grew in. If it’s far back enough in the process does it matter? It may/may not be relevant, I’m vegetarian.

And this is where vegeterianism/veganism can turn into a religion. Where people start looking for rules as opposed to using logic of why something should be this way. It actually reminds me a lot of how very observant Jews treat the rules for Kosher food.

If you're a vegetarian for ethical or environmental reasons, I'd think lab grown meat is probably totally ok to eat. If you're a vegetarian for health reasons, not sure why you can't eat meat a few meals a month?

All food restrictions are religion. Will you eat sushi? Bugs? Vegetable protein paste? Why not? Most excuses are just religion dressed up.

Here's a train of thought to help illustrate:

I'm not vegan but I'm glad to eat lab-grow meat! Its clearly acceptable for {many reasons}.

Oh, how about meat grown from rats? Tasty and nutritious?

Uh, well, sure I guess.

How about grown from apes?

But...but...that's not...

And our new product: meat from people. Tastes like pork!

No, wait a minute, that's going too far!

The latest fad: meat from people you know! Your spouse! Your kids! Your grandmother!

Blech! I couldn't eat that!

Everybody has a different 'blech' threshold. And its all 'religion'.

> All food restrictions are religion. Will you eat sushi? Bugs? Vegetable protein paste? Why not? Most excuses are just religion dressed up.

What about just that I don't prefer the taste?

For instance, I would have no problem trying meat made in the lab from rats, apes or people.

But I probably wouldn't eat fish or goat or lamb, not because I have some"religious" reason for it.

If a religion can be defined as only a set of personal preferences, it seems like the entire concept of a religion is without a real clear boundary.

Well you're using religion in a very non-standard way. I could just as easily call every single thing you think "religion".

As a moral compass that guides our behavior without logic? Doesn't seem too far off...

I’ve heard it posited that oysters should be on the menu for vegans (one’s who are vegan for ethical rather than dietary choice reasons). The rationale is that oysters specifically have no nervous system in the way that, say, a clam does. In fact, from a capacity to suffer standpoint, they’re roughly equivalent to a carrot.

The other thing is that oyster farming improves water quality and the environment. So, vegans—go crazy I guess!

Vegetarian of 36 years here: I won't have any qualms about eating it.

It is whatever the marketing department says it is.

> Animal farming is such a historical constant, I wonder what the unintended consequences of artificial meat are?

I know what you mean, but animal farming at the scale we currently do is not a historical constant. The unintended consequences of having 7B humans eat meat every day is a much bigger concern that not eating real meat every day.

Our current meat consumption accelerates global warming, drives wild inefficiencies in the market, and is a hell for the animals themselves. (Edit: Also represents disease vectors in humans, see shared farm resources and things like e. coli).

We need to move to lab meat to avoid the distaster that eating meat is bringing.

Yes, large swaths of forest are being cleared for cattle rearing/production and animals also produce much methane as cows do as an example.

Whilst this may help, it will take many years/decades until the trust is there and indeed trusted backing and for some that will not change.

For me, I forsee artificial milk production as a more accepted avenue and if we can develop a process in which we chuck grass in at one end and get milk out of the other as a bigger opportunity and one in which would aid the environmental impacts in a more positive way. Until then we will still have cows, even with artificial meat.

But artificial meat, will take ages until it is accepted by the public, for me, it is when the likes of McDonalds adopting it that will be a key marker in progress and that is a long long way off as it stands.

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