can imagine this having some kinda health issue involved. Everything man-made allways seems to have some implication to what would naturally be happening. (especially when it comes to food stuffs).

The problem is we never look far enough in the future as to what “could” happen, then when for example, certain produce like banana can’t easily be grown from seed anymore as they have been cloned so many times, what has also lead to a degradation in the general quality of the fruit, we can’t undo it easy. (this has actually happened with bananas btw)

@Clusterfrog 468868 wrote:

Possibly but that’s no reason not to try. All things are a learning progress, and many synthetic things have been a bastion of success, like quorn.

Afaik quorn isn’t synthetic, it’s made from a natural fungus (what is farmed) and chicken egg (not whole egg, just a part of it as a binder).

I can see where people are coming from wanting to try it, as we do need a lot of protein as humans and there aren’t that many readily available sources bar meat for humans (which is why naturally we would eat some kind of meat as part of out diet if it was available to us), but if someone has decided not to eat meat I can see the appeal.

@Clusterfrog 468884 wrote:

I know how it’s made and the format we eat it in is nothing like it appears in the wild, it took decades of work and research to make it into the textured meat substitute it is today. It’s no less synthetic then test tube meat would be (i.e. real cow cells grown in culture just as quorn is real fungus cells grown in a culture)

There’s loads of alternatives to meat, we can easily supply the world’s protein needs with nuts, beans and lentils and it would be healther, more efficient and require a fraction of the land. The problem is taste, nothing tastes like meat so people want to eat it. This is fair enough but the problem is the way things are going in the future meat would only be something the very rich could afford. We’re fast running out of land and the population and and demand for meat continues to rise.

I ment there aren’t that many, as in that many other options (what would get boring after a while), not that the options that are available are a scarce commodity. nuts, beans and lentals are just three things (I’m not expecting you to list everything ofc mind you), but as you say people want to eat meat because they don’t want to be eating the alternatives all the time.

I understand what you mean about cultivating fungus and cultivating the cells, but in nature meat cells do not grow separate of the rest of a body, the fungus is growing in it’s entirety as it would in nature, just somewhere else. Saing that because it doesn’t look like fungus what’s in the wild when we eat it is just like saing because you mixed tomatoe sauce and mince to make spag bol that spag bol is synthetic as tomatoes don’t look like that in the wild and neither does the beef. It’s not far off other processed foods imo, it’s not really synthetic (only if you say it’s synthetic meat, as it’s not meat but is made to look/taste like meat).

I’m neither saying this is right or wrong producing meat in this way moraly, I’m just saing I can see that because it is essentially cloning, (and we’ve seen the genetic fuck ups that can come from cloning … whether it be bananas or the failed attempts at cloning whole animals, until they got it right and made sterile animals) we are gonna have some health problems arise from eating meat grown in this way. I could well be wrong, but it’s something I’m worried about if humans go down this road as to how we source our food (it’s already un-natural enough as it is).

imo the further we go away from a natural diat the more health issue’s will arise in humans as a whole. O.K. we have more technology to deal with illnesses now, but the fact that all life is based on what food it eats (this has had a major influence on the evolution of species, there diat) make’s me worried.

This meat will not even of had blood pumping round it by the looks of it. that in it’s self is gonna stop there being a normal amount of iron in the meat, what is important to get in a diet as well as protein. At best I imagine it’s not gonna be a total replacement for everything actual meat has to offer nutrition wise.

@cheeseweasel 468888 wrote:

It all sounds good in theory, and whilst they can only grow it in tiny chunks at the moment (and it apparently tastes pretty rank), I wouldn’t be at all surprised if lab-grown meat becomes a reality in the next couple of decades.

I do worry though that if this technology catches on it will put meat production fully in the control of the large biotech corporations that hold a patent/license to use it. This is also my main concern about GM crops. I don’t belive that GM is as dangerous/scary as the media like to make out (and it has the potential to solve major food crises in Africa, which IMO overrides any wishy-washy arguments about ‘playing god’ or being ‘unnatural’), but if it catches on in a big way it would lead to the weird situation where corporations could patent their own seeds/plants. We’ve already seen GM seeds genetically engineered to ‘self-destruct’, forcing the farmer to buy new seeds every year, and I’m sure the companies producing this meat in the future would find all kinds of ways of ripping us off.

But maybe that’s a price worth paying for a world where we don’t have to raise livestock for meat? Dunno, I’m undecided.

The mere fact that the companies would possibly rip us off with regards to this product eliminates any chance this is gonna help 3rd world countries I recon. We’ve more then enough food to feed them already, just look at how fat everyone’s been getting in the west over the last decade or so and much waste is generated!) It’s greed, both from the companies and from the people in there target markets (arguably not the fault of the market due to rigorous advertising campaigns).

@Clusterfrog 468896 wrote:

The trick will be to not let cows go extinct then 😛

ultimately this will be better for nature as we will free up large amounts of land and could give them back to nature. If we fuck things up we can just move in, grab another animal and start exploiting it again. Or just stick to lentils which will not be the end of the world (something that might happen if we keep up the intensive farming of livestock)

it’s a possetive thing with regards to the wider eco system if we don’t rely on it 100% i recon. But I’d still be too worried about possible health reputations down the line to eat it my self. (might sond silly from someone who’s taken RC’s … but I’m trying to live as healthy life as I can atm)

@Clusterfrog 468909 wrote:

possibly, land currently has high value because there is much profit to be made by meat farming, so vast amounts of rainforest are being cut down every year by the meat industry. At the very least this demand would cease. At best the land would loose value so quickly it would become abandoned or could be bought up by environmental groups for conservation. Even if the land was used to grow timbre it would take the strain off other parts of the rainforest

I was thinking real estate, but it would be in places where house value’s aren’t high compared to the big metropolitan cities I guess.

I wasn’t saing it’s a bad idea 100% … just personally I think the problem lies somewhere else and the solution is a lot harder then just making food in this manor. It seams like a weak attempt to avoid the fact that the world is run by greedy fucks what don’t give a shit if people are starving, the rain forrest’s etc. are getting fucked up yada yada. I can’t see this taking any power out of these guys hands in the long run, but hopefully it will have some easing effects at least (but tbh the tech is probably already patented by a big company with ideas of making alot of cash from it, as opposed to someone with everyone’s best interests at heart, I mean the cash needed to develop stuff like this must be quite a lot in the first place).

I’d really be interested to see who commission’s the research into this. Any one have an idea where I could find out this information (assuming it’s even gonna be easily found)

@Clusterfrog 468907 wrote:

😀

^^ lol btw 😛

@Clusterfrog 468927 wrote:

for the record I do actually eat meat but only when I eat out or get a takeaway. Or I’m drunk. I’m like the worst vegetarian ever.

😛