Lab grown food - is it Green? and is it Ethical?

Hexane

michaels said:

I guess we can add 'Is it safe?' to the list of questions - are there potentially long term health or food security risks?

That's certainly something that can be assessed. In terms of food security, meat is one thing that the UK doesn't need to import a lot of, but this is less true for some other countries. In terms of long term health implications, what we do know is that existing non-vegetarian diets containing real meat, do have strongly negative impacts on long term health for most people. Real red meat in particular is correlated with very significant health risks.

Food safety of existing real meat products is often poor. I know that for some people the idea of a "lab" is intimidating or unnerving, but for me it seems likely to be a much cleaner and better controlled environment that where our real meat is produced at the moment. And way way cleaner than the source of what the USA would like to push onto our supermarket shelves - real meat from filthy grass-free feedlots where the animals are injected with growth hormones, poultry reared deep in their own excrement then sanitised with chlorine.

michaels said:

Further down the line if we decide it is unethical to eat meat products I guess we would have to decide whether it was ethical to eat manufactured products designed to resemble meat

That's an easy one. If there's no conscious entity suffering in the production of the product (neither animal nor abattoir-worker) then yes it is ethical to eat it. I think Kurt Cobain had a comment on this approach. Douglas Adams suggested an alternative approach (which suggested increasing, rather than decreasing, the sentience of the product in order to deal with ethical concerns).

michaels said:

In terms of ethical the only issue I can see is with regard to the impact on farmers livelihoods, not just the industrial mega-farms but also the small holders and indigenous third world farmers

Few of us have much sympathy for the industrial mega-farms. My sympathy for some small-holders is also waning. There has long been a belief that just because something is a "traditional" way of farming, that it must somehow be "natural" and of little environmental impact. Unfortunately this is often untrue; George Monbiot, already mentioned above, has written about how great swathes of the British countryside are unnatural farming environments which haven't made economic sense for 50+ years and are propped up by massive taxpayer subsidies. Supported by an erroneous belief that the natural state of the British countryside is for it to be covered by farmland even if that farmland is producing little food of value.

On the contrary, the natural state of the British countryside is for it to be covered by natural habitats. Norse immigrants deciding to disrupt ecosystems to set up hill farms 800 years ago is not a binding requirement for us the taxpayers to subsidise those hill farms now when their utility is so limited.

Cardew said:

Baxter100 said:

It's processed sludge really. If you are worried about the environment you are best off eating local, seasonal food.

Why use a 'derogatory' term like sludge? 

Sludge is the main constituent of the majority of non-lab-grown meat products consumed by most people. Hosed off the carcasses and entrails after the prime cuts are removed, hosed onto the abattoir floor and then hosed into vats to be turned into "meat".

Baxter100 said:

Because it is poor quality 'food'! Very heavily processed with all kinds of who knows what added in order to make it look and taste like the real thing.

Beetroot juice for the look, some other things for the taste. It's no mystery though, all of that would have to be listed on the packaging. Whereas "real meat" product ingredient lists have not always been so accurate, beef products that are 100% horsemeat for example.

NigeWick

The way I see it, meat is meat. If lab grown beef has the same nutrition as grass fed, grass finished beef and is cheaper, I'll eat it. What I will not eat is the over priced highly processed plant based substitute that is a far inferior product.

Pile_o_stone

NigeWick said:

What I will not eat is the over priced highly processed plant based substitute that is a far inferior product.

I'm not sure the meat based processed food that is being substituted is any better. Meat based sausage and burgers rarely used prime cuts of meat. When you start getting into the Ready Meal category of meat based foods, it's even worse. You may struggle to even know what animal you were actually eating, let alone what part of its body the meat came from. Remember the horsemeat scandal the other year?

Mickey666

Pile_o_stone said:

NigeWick said:

What I will not eat is the over priced highly processed plant based substitute that is a far inferior product.

I'm not sure the meat based processed food that is being substituted is any better. Meat based sausage and burgers rarely used prime cuts of meat. When you start getting into the Ready Meal category of meat based foods, it's even worse. You may struggle to even know what animal you were actually eating, let alone what part of its body the meat came from. Remember the horsemeat scandal the other year?

Absolutely!
Have you ever seen how they get mechanically recovered meat?  I'm not vegetarian but I'll only eat unprocessed prime cuts of meat.

shinytop

I think we are all agreed that mashed up, reconsituted food, be it meat or veg based, is best avoided.  I don't think it's valid to compare lab grown meat with this; IMO a better ethical comparison would be GM veg.  Anyway, ethics aside, once safety is proven (and it will be), it's going to have to both taste good and be the right price.  Real meat sets the bar very high in both these regards.   

michaels

shinytop said:

I think we are all agreed that mashed up, reconsituted food, be it meat or veg based, is best avoided.  I don't think it's valid to compare lab grown meat with this; IMO a better ethical comparison would be GM veg.  Anyway, ethics aside, once safety is proven (and it will be), it's going to have to both taste good and be the right price.  Real meat sets the bar very high in both these regards.   

'Real' meat takes masses of water, land and energy to produce each gram, surely lab produced  meat should eventually be an order of magnitude cheaper?

Cardew

shinytop said:

I think we are all agreed that mashed up, reconsituted food, be it meat or veg based, is best avoided.  I don't think it's valid to compare lab grown meat with this; IMO a better ethical comparison would be GM veg.  Anyway, ethics aside, once safety is proven (and it will be), it's going to have to both taste good and be the right price.  Real meat sets the bar very high in both these regards.   

Well said!

We are encouraged to eat less meat to reduce methane. Lab produced meat could lead to the elimination of this harmful Greenhouse gas produced by animals bred for meat. 

Also a massive reduction in insecticides/pesticides used in the production of animal fodder as well as hormones/steriods routinely fed to farm animals.

I wonder how vegetarians/vegans will view the inevitable?? march toward lab produced meat?

shinytop

Cardew said:

shinytop said:

I think we are all agreed that mashed up, reconsituted food, be it meat or veg based, is best avoided.  I don't think it's valid to compare lab grown meat with this; IMO a better ethical comparison would be GM veg.  Anyway, ethics aside, once safety is proven (and it will be), it's going to have to both taste good and be the right price.  Real meat sets the bar very high in both these regards.   

Well said!

We are encouraged to eat less meat to reduce methane. Lab produced meat could lead to the elimination of this harmful Greenhouse gas produced by animals bred for meat. 

Also a massive reduction in insecticides/pesticides used in the production of animal fodder as well as hormones/steriods routinely fed to farm animals.

I wonder how vegetarians/vegans will view the inevitable?? march toward lab produced meat?

 I hope they will view it in the same way as most sensible people view petrol and diesel cars, i.e., while they would prefer to keep things as they are, they accept they can't.  

EricMears

Cardew said:

I wonder how vegetarians/vegans will view the inevitable?? march toward lab produced meat?

Surely they'd be delighted that no animals were dying to provide their food so embrace the new technology ?

Cardew

EricMears said:

Cardew said:

I wonder how vegetarians/vegans will view the inevitable?? march toward lab produced meat?

Surely they'd be delighted that no animals were dying to provide their food so embrace the new technology ?

You would think so, but it is often a mistake to use logic in these matters