this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2024
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As a thinking experiment, let us consider that on the 1st of January of 2025 it is announced that an advance making possible growing any kind of animal tissue in laboratory conditions as been achieved and that it is possible to scale it in order to achieve industrial grade production level.

There is no limit on which animal tissues can be grown, so, any species is achieveable, only being needed a small cell sample from an animal to start production, and the cultivated tissues are safe for consumption.

There won't be any perceiveable price change to the end consummer, as the growing is a complex and labour intensive process, requiring specialized equipments and personnel.

Would you change to this new diet option?

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[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 1 points 43 minutes ago

For seafood yes, but I'm unlikely to bother regrowing the necessary gut biome for other meats

[–] juliebean@lemm.ee 8 points 5 hours ago

hell yeah. soon as its not way more expensive than normal meat, i'm down. your proposed technology also sounds like it should mean lab grown replacement organs with zero chance of rejection, which would be amazing.

[–] Shimitar@feddit.it 9 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, absolutely. No risk of virus or bacteria, or worse...

Grown to the size you want...

Of the shape and type you want...

No fat (maybe?)....

What's not to like.

[–] doingthestuff@lemy.lol 3 points 7 hours ago

I'd say price is definitely a factor. I already pass over good cuts of meat for that reason. Also taste/texture/overall experience. If it checs those boxes, and it has been on the market long enough to be confident I won't get instant cancer, then 100%! A little marbled fat makes it better though.

[–] GhiLA@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Can I see the lab?

no

Darnit...

[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 hours ago

Don't ask to see a slaughterhouse...

[–] r0ertel@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

No, i'd go vegan before i'd eat cultured meat. I'm not opposed to it and it's probably better for the economy and environment, but I have a mental thing about it. Granted if I had to catch and clean my own meat, i'd also probably go vegan. Maybe I'm just squeamish about my food.

[–] Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Sorta sounds like you already think meat is gross.

[–] r0ertel@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Yeah, I'm pretty picky about the meat I do eat. It's the fat and gristle that I can't stand. After a pork chop, it looks like a dissection. I don't like to eat around bones. If I think about it too much, old probably end up vegetarian, which would probably be better for me given my other health issues. I don't think anybody ever died from eating too many vegetables.

[–] argarath@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

What is the mental thing you have against lab grown meat?

[–] r0ertel@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

It sort of grosses me out. I don't know how to explain it.

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 4 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

You haven't mentioned if there are any ethical concerns with this new meat; e.g. environmental cost of the production process, what kind of human labour is required to create it, who is providing that labour and under what conditions are they working.

Provided I had no ethical concerns with it, sure, but a lot of modern innovations tend to have these issues and I assume lab-grown meat would have these issues too.

Edit: Also, I'm opposed to animal captivity, so if there's an ongoing need to collect samples from captive livestock then no, I wouldn't. If it's a "collect it once then it keeps reproducing from the lab samples forever" type of thing then sure.

[–] LiamTheBox@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago

500 protein bars...

As if the facists will allow it...

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 3 points 9 hours ago

I would definitely eat cultured meat as long as it’s not too expensive.

[–] bruhduh@lemmy.world 10 points 16 hours ago (1 children)
[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 2 points 16 hours ago
[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 6 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Only if I could put my own DNA in it so I could eat my own ass

[–] legionguy@lemmy.ml 1 points 54 minutes ago

sucking your own meat would be crazy

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 2 points 13 hours ago

I... really don't have a reply to that. Autophagy? Perhaps?

[–] AnnaFrankfurter@lemmy.ml -4 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (2 children)

You know the difference between a white vegan/vegetarian vs a non white, they don't try to find something that tastes exactly like a meat. There are a lots and lots of dishes that are 100% vegan/vegetarian and taste much much better and don't pretend to be meat of any sort.

If you are so tempted by the taste of the meat then just eat it.Environment isn't going to get any better just because you stopped eating meat, the animal cruelty isn't going to stop because of you.

[–] r0ertel@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago

I've never heard this, bit have tried to explain it to people and failed. If you're going to try to find a vegan substitute for a thing, most of the time it will fail to impress because it's not the thing that it's pretending to be. Take vegan cheese. It's probably worse for you than regular cheese because it's super processed.

I have several meals that I make that are vegan, but don't need to be labeled as vegan because it's not a substitute. For example, I make chili with those big mushrooms because I like the taste, but I don't call it a vegan chili, I call it a mushroom chili.

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

White/non-white vegan? That is uncharted territory for me. Can you expand a little more on that?

[–] AnnaFrankfurter@lemmy.ml 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

oh you know I'm vegan but I just love bacon, and eggs. OK sometimes I like to have a little bit of lobster

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

I'm a fence sitter on the eggs front, not going to lie.

I had a few chickens for some time, always made sure they were well fed, sheltered and protected from potential predators and at some point they just started laying eggs around. There was no rooster to fertilize the eggs, so... it was just spoiling around.

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 5 points 16 hours ago

The only thing I'd wait for is for the process to be refined enough to be more eco friendly than just eating real meat. I'd do it, but until there's proof of it being more sustainable and won't tank my blood thin/thickness levels (blood thinners sometimes suck), I would be down to try it at the very least.

Though I would receive resistance in changing my diet until either my dad changes his eating habits or I move out on my own because my dad absolutely refuses things like plant based meats, so I know he'd most likely resist lab grown meat as well. It's also hard for my mom and I to switch to a healthier dinner diet since both my dad and older brother wouldn't dare change their diets to something like a Mediterranean or some other healthier because they can be picky eaters (especially my older brother).

[–] Birdie@thelemmy.club 16 points 22 hours ago

I'll move to it in a second. Protein with no need to slaughter animals would be so fantastic for the animals, the earth, and people.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 5 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

I would be wildly optimistic, but very cautious.

I'd want to see multi-year randomized control trials comparing the bioavailability of not only protein, but also vitamins and minerals from the synthetic meat and liver, to natural meat and liver.

Assuming the RCTs show no issues, then I would happily move over.

Modern meat products are on a spectrum as well, it's not just having the meat, it's what the meat ate before it became me that's important. Grass-fed, versus grain fed for beef. Insect, and protein for chickens, grain fed for chickens etc. antibiotics, hormones being supplemented into the feed to improve yields.

One massive problem the industry globally suffers from is overpromising. Just like multivitamins, which are very poorly bioavailable, and mostly peed out, they promise a lot but don't deliver much.

Factors I would look for:

  • can somebody sustain life eating only the synthetic meat for multiple years?
  • oxidative stress, and oxidation in the synthetic food?
  • The temptation to engineer sugar, and carbohydrates, directly into the meat to increase sales yields.

Green sustainability:

  • can the synthetic meat be produced globally?
  • Will poor farmers in the middle of nowhere be improved or hurt by this? Will they have access to the synthetic meat?
  • in the event global logistics fail, like an a war, will moving over to synthetic meat severely hurt critical infrastructure and ability to feed populations?
[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 2 points 16 hours ago

That was a very compreensive answer. You gave me a few thinking points.

[–] bblkargonaut@lemmy.world 10 points 22 hours ago (1 children)
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[–] Openopenopenopen@lemmy.world 58 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (7 children)

In a heartbeat. Although I’d prefer meat alternatives to lab grown meat. Like impossible burgers.

I don’t eat a ton of meat, and I’d like to eat even less. this option would help me feel like I’m not making animals suffer just so I can survive.

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[–] orgrinrt@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago

We don’t eat red meat at all, so I would probably try it out fairly quickly. Actually we don’t eat chicken or the like either, only fish, which is something I miss a bit more now and then. We have a dried product called NoChicken that is actually pretty good, so that’d probably be sufficient for me to wait a bit to see how it goes long term (I.e is it truly safe to consume).

But every now and then, I miss game. Moose and wood grouse mainly. That’d probably hook me enough to try it quickly.

If it were indistinguishable from other meat sources, and priced similarly (preferably less!), then of course. I expect it will take a very long time to get to that point, though.

[–] leonardodede3@lemm.ee 1 points 15 hours ago

Only if the culture medium for the meat cells is not made of living animals.

[–] akkajdh999@programming.dev 19 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yeah. If it's the same, of course. I don't like killing cats for food.

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[–] yuri@pawb.social 14 points 1 day ago

once it’s affordable, yeah almost immediately i reckon. i already go for plant based meats whenever i can find them for a reasonable price!

[–] DashboTreeFrog@discuss.online 33 points 1 day ago (9 children)

There's tons of plant based proteins already. Having already added more vegan meals to my diet I think this would just be another option for me and one more for novelty than anything else

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[–] metaStatic@kbin.earth 14 points 1 day ago (3 children)

protein isn't the issue, it's all the bio-available vitamins and healthy fats that have already been converted.

if it's a 1 for 1 replacement, depending on how we deal with the massive and now useless animal populations, I would totally switch.

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[–] wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 27 points 1 day ago (11 children)
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Definitely. I see no downsides.

I don't eat very much meat as it is. But if I could drastically reduce the suffering inflicted when I do I would not hesitate.

[–] slowroll@r.nf 4 points 22 hours ago

still waiting for the mass to consume it and see what happen, also waiting for the price too

[–] eestileib@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 day ago

As long at it wasn't even more destructive than normal cultivation (very much tbd), absolutely.

I had no qualms about switching to Beyond Meat either.

If we could figure out how to make a decent ribeye out of peas and seed oils, I'd prefer that to lab-grown too.

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