China spends $300M to buy lab produced meats from Israel | Hacker News Reader

China spends $300M to buy lab produced meats from Israel

fanaticalfuturist.com

39 pointsrahulshiv21 comments

This title is misleading (no one has spent a dollar as far as I can tell) and the article gets several facts wrong. For instance, it says "Meat The Future" is a clean meat company when in fact it's a sort of marketing and design group. There is no way China could buy meat from them. Poorly researched clickbait.

There seems to be a better article from a more reliable source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-israel-tr...

And there is one company: https://www.supermeat.com/ and two other which seems to be the same org labeled as non-profit or startup: https://www.futuremeat.org/

I’m thinking they get a way bigger margin with this buy and they do not need to declare that to the consumers, huge win for retailers. You wouldn’t be able to pull this off in the US without major buyer bewares.

I remember when the first lab meat burger patty was announced it was like $300K to produce.

There aren't long term studies into what lab produced meat means for the human body right? It's pretty new and very niche still - but knowing how China has "very loose rules" on these kind of topixs (I'm no expert in policies but it does feel like that), this looks like a great move to speed up (by injecting a lot of capital in research and operations) the insertion of lab produced meat into the market. Is this good? Well at least no animals will be harmed in the process - other than "human animals" who will be buying it eventually

There aren't long term studies into what lab produced meat means for the human body right?

Would that be necessary? It's chemically identical to what's grown in a cow. The only difference is that it's grown in a vat. If anything it's better because farmers give all manner of hormones and antibiotics to cows that you don't need in a vat.

If the FDA approves it for sale I'll likely be one of the early adopters.

I'd love to see meat that is better for the environment and does away with the ethical concerns of pig, chicken and cow farms.

Bound to work out about as well as lab produced butter or cheese.

I think that edible insects would be a better protein route than lab-grown meats. It would require a cultural shift in some places, but probably not as large of one as people think. (Lobsters were considered inedible until relatively recently.)

Lab-grown meat seems like an over-engineered solution to a problem that might not be that difficult to solve in simpler, probably-healthier ways.

Background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultured_meat

I have little background about the cultured meat, and this link made me curious: wouldn't cancer cells be good candidate cells for creating this type of meat?

I also have little background, but I'd imagine the type of meat that cancer cells create is not the same as the type that tastes good.

Do you have any evidence why cancer shouldn't taste good?

Tumours are typically poorly organised tissues with areas of dead cells (necrosis) and very fibrous reactions from surrounding tissue (desmoplastic reaction). A steak made out of a large tumour would look patchy, and have areas of cheesy looking dead tissue that will belch yellow goo when you touch it. It will also be very chewy. Additionally, most cancers develop in tissues that are the equivalent of the gizzards, whereas most human meat consumption is muscle tissue.

"good" steak, for instance is marbled. i'm not sure how you can get that with uncontrolled growth of one type of tissue. best case scenario you grow a huge chunk of cancerous muscle, and grind it with fat to make ground beef.

But suppose I don't care about fat, in fact I want my meat to be as lean as possible.

i'm not sure what the point of that is. not sure about everyone else, but the main motivation for eating meat is that it tastes good. without fat, 100% muscle would be very dry/tough. you might as well eat tofu.

> you might as well eat tofu.

I guess this is a bad time to say I love tofu?

I'm more concerned whether or not it's technologically possible without health risks.

That cultured tissue is going to be loaded with antibiotics from the medium.

You can sterilize liquids without antibiotics, very cheap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurization

Yes, we know about autoclaves. But aseptic cell culture without antibiotics?

Because enclosed environment. Many industrial processes work the same way, e.g. unwanted microflora can destroy a whole batch of beer, yet people don’t add antibiotics to beer.

Here’s a link that specifically tells the meat (at some other company, but still) is grown without antibiotics: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/lab-g...

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