Comment by lqet | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lqet | Hacker News Reader

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I have mentioned this several times in comments on other threads, and each time my comment was buried under variations of the same argument: the vast majority of people cannot be expected to give up meat, and therefore to help both the environment and their health, and to stop killing animals, we should offer them artificial meat. But I very much doubt that the additional crazy overhead of producing and packing and shipping this artificial meat (which as you said is completely unnecessary, as you can just start eating non-hyper-processed vegetables) will result in a net benefit for the planet, or for your personal health.

Another thing that concerns me is the centralization aspect. It is still fairly easy to buy meat coming from your local butcher / local animals. Looking at the ingredients of some of this artificial meat, I fail to see how it should be produced by a local shop. You need a supply chain, and possibly special machinery. This may only be carried out by large companies.

Most of the "real" processed meat has more overhead than its counterparts. Most people do not buy from a local butcher, to imply otherwise is turning a blind eye. They buy big brand overly processed "meat" that comes in a cardboard box wrapped in plastic just the same.

With respect to "crazy overhead" animals require land, food and water at an exponential rate of consumption compared to alternatives. They also taint and pollute groundwater sources and contribute to a significant amount of food recalls due to the above.

Lastly in the metro I live there are about a half dozen alt meat "butcher" shops that supply alt meats to consumers and local restaurants. They're insanely popular and have been for over 5 years now. There's great brand recognition of those alt meats on local menus. You don't often see that with "real" meat because there's not as much differentiation in the product in real meats, just price.

A lot of the above points are simply ignoring facts and the market. Hopefully, like with EVs, more people can continue to make positive progress and acceptance with alternatives to real meats as we've been seeing.

> With respect to "crazy overhead" animals require land, food and water at an exponential rate of consumption compared to alternatives.

Why is the overhead exponential in the rate of consumption?

Well, the claim isn't "exponential in the rate of consumption," it is "exponential in comparison to alternatives" which is... not wrong really, just complete nonsense.

E: Unfortunately "exponential" just sounds too cool, so everybody goes for it. To push back we will need pick something else cool sounding. Maybe "nigh incomparably larger"

Mathematically that's wrong.

What is? Their original statement I guess. I think it is more unparsable than wrong. I think the we should invite the philosophers and linguists in. From a programming point of view -- fatal compilation error, "exponential" is not a comparator.

Is the implication that alt meats aren't being consumed and therefore more wasteful? I'm not sure I'm following - because when I started to look at the waste in existing livestock lifecycle you begin to understand that it's never been efficient, nor has the industry done much to pivot with better methods.

Here's a water footprint comparison [0]. Here's a study that showcases where: "Agriculture accounts for 92% of the freshwater footprint of humanity; almost one third relates to animal products." [1] And here's a study that showcases how many people could be fed by grain given the footprint of food livestock need to be raised and bred [2]. And here's data showcasing the significant delta of available land vs diet types for different nations [3], many being unsuitable without external use of land for food.

[0] https://waterfootprint.org/en/water-footprint/product-water-... [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221237171... [2] https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-m... [3] https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets

> Is the implication that alt meats aren't being consumed and therefore more wasteful?

No, I just didn't understand how the overhead of classic meat production can be "exponential", and I fail to find an explanation in your comment above. If your argument is that it is more wasteful to eat meat than to eat vegetables, I completely agree and this is hardly surprising. But this says nothing about the additional overhead and environmental impact of processing these vegetables into artificial meat on a global scale.

If the ingredient in a given product is known to be more environmentally impactful then the sun of the parts is, minimally, representative of those ingredients. It's well known, as you stated, that plants are less impactful on our world. The data linked in my parent comment showcases this. Alt meats are mostly plant based. Processing of livestock vs plants is much more costly, so I'm not sure where the disconnect is.

The data linked in your comment does not indicate any relevant exponential relationships so its unclear what you mean by that word.

Maybe you didn't open any of the links.

As an example, from "Water footprint of crop and animal products: a comparison" [0]...

Litre per kilogram - vegetables: 322, bovine meat: 15415 (47x more water required for meat) Litre per kilocalorie - vegetables: 1.34, bovine meat: 10.19 (7.6x more water required for meat) Litre per gram of protein - vegetables: 26, bovine meat: 112 (4.3x more water required for meat) Litre per gram of fat - vegetables: 154, bovine meat: 153 (1.006535948x more water required for vegetables)

It seems that with respect to water consumption bovine meat requires, in a way the particularly concerning word is often used, exponentially more for similar output - in most (3 out of 4) cases described by the article.

[0] https://waterfootprint.org/en/water-footprint/product-water-...

> comment was buried under variations of the same argument: the vast majority of people cannot be expected to give up meat, and therefore to help both the environment and their health, and to stop killing animals, we should offer them artificial meat.

People historically have largely given up meat because it was too expensive at the time. To help the environment and stop killing animals, we should impose proper Pigovian taxes on meat (and/or the supporting process that directly produce the environmental impacts) so that they disutility imposed by eating meat is properly priced in. (This will also naturally create a demand for alternatives that substitute without the adverse effects to which taxes are attached.)

No need to apply taxes on meat. Just stop subsidising animal husbandry, as well as subsidising crops dedicated to animal feed, and the true cost of meat will emerge.

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