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Comment by resonantjacket5 | Hacker News Reader

> Nothing on this scale has ever existed—though if we wanted to switch to cultivated meat by 2030, we’d better start now. If cultured protein is going to be even 10 percent of the world’s meat supply by 2030, we will need 4,000 factories like the one GFI envisions, according to an analysis by the trade publication Food Navigator. To meet that deadline, building at a rate of one mega-facility a day would be too slow.

Optimistically it seems even according to this article that most of barriers for affordable cultivated protein are with high capital costs and once the factories are built, you can eventually amortize a lot of the costs aka how solar/electric cars did so. Also they are aiming for a self-imposed 2030 deadline, sure it might take until 2040/2050 but nothing the article says it won't eventually be built. (Unlike say the water/housing/ education/healthcare crises with bottlenecks of land/regulations/labor)

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> If cultured protein is going to be even 10 percent of the world’s meat supply by 2030

Why do we need protein from meat? The money to engineer cultivated protein could be directed to educating simple americans on the fact that they're consuming way too much protein already. Most americans consume twice the daily protein they need.[1][2]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/28/well/eat/how-much-protein...

[2]https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/how-much-protein-do-you-...

People want it. Who cares about eating the exact minimum.

Cutting out something you don't actually need rather than inventing lab grown meat is an elegant answer to a complex problem.

It isn't like asking people to be vegan or something extreme like that. Just be aware of what your body actually needs and don't go overboard or be wasteful.

Why would that be some kind of controversial message or idea?

Inventing lab grown meat is a good way to make the problems of scaling the raw inputs for custom grown human organs to be sufficiently cheap that everyone can have them.

Building a factory to make aluminium foil is extremely expensive if that's all you're trying to do: it's a lot cheaper if there's already a global mining industry producing aluminium in many near-finished states.

I loathe the idea that everyone getting replacement organs is some kind of good thing to be shooting for.

I have a condition where organ replacement is fairly common. I very much wish the world invested more effort in keeping people like me actually healthy rather than celebrating the macabre prospect of giving more of us replacement organs.

So this is a problem space I've thought about a fair amount and I have zero sympathy for an argument for engineering organ replacement for everyone.

You seem unaware of the many and myriad reasons organ transplants are performed. Like you get that by the time doctors are considering it, it's because the alternative is they think you're either (1) going to die soon when it becomes necessary or (2) is necessary right now.

Did you know there are people who survive COVID and wind up in kidney failure from the stress on their body? What's your answer to them? Oh right: hope you can get a kidney and then enjoy life on immunosuppressant drugs.

But you know, go tell those dialysis patients on the waiting list that actually they're not that important.

You seem unaware of the many and myriad reasons organ transplants are performed.

I'm not. I'm just skeptical that putting more time, energy and money into headline grabbing "heroics" actually makes people healthier and I am very concerned that it only turns people like me into guinea pigs for people who want some limelight more than they want (people like) me to experience some kind of reasonable quality of life.

> it only turns people like me into guinea pigs for people

Did you also know that you are legally allowed to decline medical procedures? You can even sign yourself out of a hospital AMA ("Against Medical Advice") if you don't like what's happening.

You are also completely free, and generally advised, to seek alternate medical opinions.

The existence of a medical procedure or option has not, and never does, obligate you to take it.

The absence of alternatives is my concern. If we optimize for better organ replacement instead of optimizing for how to help people keep their existing organs functional, it's really an asinine thing to pretend they have some kind of meaningful choice.

"Oh, well, now that we've let your organs decline this far, you can get a transplant and maybe live. Or you are free to decline it and almost certainly die." is not a meaningful choice.

I've gotten ridiculous amounts of flak for making real choices about my health. Much of the world would like me to know I'm evil incarnate for doing prosaic things like eating better as a first line of defense.

I guess you could say this, but given that the planet is essentially burning it seems like we're getting way ahead of ourselves with this type of "solution" when we could be working on more important problems.

Might want to actually read your second reference. It doesn't agree with your claim.

The summit was organized and sponsored by beef, egg, and other animal-based food industry groups

No conflict of interest there.

I've long heard that most Americans eat too much meat/protein. My understanding is that's a completely reasonable claim, citations or no citations.

I'm amenable to the idea that the typical American gets sufficient protein to fulfill their needs.

Referencing an article that doesn't support one's argument is nonetheless silly.

It's a nit and harms the signal to noise ratio. There are good kinds of pedantry and bad kinds.

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