• @driving_crooner
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    7916 days ago

    I can already see 20 years in the future, when China is doing the fucking best lab-grown steak the human specie have ever taste, supplying the world with cheap, nutritious and sustainable meat while the US cry about how they are “overflowing” the market.

    • carpoftruth [any, any]
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      3916 days ago

      Don’t hold your breath. Lab grown meat is a pipedream that serves only venture capitalists. Just eat fucking beans.

      • Tunnelvision [they/them]
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        4416 days ago

        You can already eat lab grown meat in certain restaurants in China. Do you really think it’s going to stop being developed on? This is the same society that made caviar available to the masses.

      • kristina [she/her]
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        2716 days ago

        people keep saying this but the meat industry is clearly very terrified of this and is lobbying politicians. i feel like that alone shows there is potential, beyond the advancements china uses to make egg whites and pig skins

        • RyanGosling [none/use name]
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          916 days ago

          Shit don’t make any sense. Stuff like weed and meat alternatives are a profitable and emerging market. Why don’t these people pivot towards it or at the very least make it easier for them to exploit the market once shit hits the fan and all the cows disappear?

          • kristina [she/her]
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            1216 days ago

            Requires investment in new infrastructure and dealing with new regulations. They want profit now not tomorrow

            • dumpster_dove [he/him]
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              716 days ago

              And also all your existing infrastructure and know-how could end up losing its value. I believe the ICE car industry has similar concerns wrt electrification.

          • Moss [they/them]
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            416 days ago

            I get that a lot of capitalists are probably invested in meat agriculture, but opposing weed makes no sense at all to me financially. It’s not like it’s gonna take away from existing industries, it’s by far the easiest drug to get your hands on and rn it’s an illegal market to invest in. The only reason I can think of is brainworms, like these capitalists must associate drugs with poor people and people of colour, which are obviously evil

        • NewLeaf [he/him]
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          16 days ago

          My thing is: who is the target demographic? I don’t see anyone switching back from being vegetarian or vegan, and right wingers already hate it. Wine moms who still shop at Whole Foods?

          • @driving_crooner
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            1116 days ago

            Are veggie meat alternatives cheaper that meat? Because I think once you have a product that is just as tasty and cheaper it’s just a generation or maybe two to wipe up the meat industry.

            • NewLeaf [he/him]
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              115 days ago

              No, they’re not, but people need to get over burger brain and realize you don’t have to eat meat every meal. Meat substitutes are nice for a treat, but you should totally just eat plants if you’re veg/vegan

          • @TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip
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            1016 days ago

            Anyone who isn’t anti-woke or already vegan/vegetarian? Which is still… a lot of people. Just less in America where oh no the woke virus or fucking whatever. Still plenty who do want to eat less meat or whatever.

          • kristina [she/her]
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            16 days ago

            Plenty of people can’t digest a lot of plant meats, but can digest real meat. There’s a ton of potentially problematic issues with plant based meat right now, including high amounts of carbohydrates and complex sugars. So it’s very good for people with medical disabilities

            • NewLeaf [he/him]
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              115 days ago

              I just don’t see that happening. They have an opportunity to make “flawless” meat and they’ll do it. The peasants can eat the factory farm garbage

          • Dagadashko [none/use name]
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            516 days ago

            Honestly, I’d be very in favor of lab-grown animal products, if they were affordable enough. I’m a pretty big foodie and it would be very wonderful to have an ethical way of enjoying and sharing recipes for which I’ve been unable to find an adequate vegan substituion.

          • RyanGosling [none/use name]
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            316 days ago

            Tbr market is people who want to keep eating meat and think the cure to environmental disaster is random technological innovation

            • NewLeaf [he/him]
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              115 days ago

              Good point. Like how electric cars are supposed to save us, but are worse for the environment because of the production process

      • CyborgMarx [any, any]
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        1816 days ago

        In the west maybe, but the technology is emergent and there’s capacity for development, it’s not like it’s fusion tech

        East Asia seems to be the place it will overcome the engineering hurdles and go to scale

      • CloutAtlas [he/him]
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        816 days ago

        I understand your doubt, it’s not unfounded. It is informed by the status quo of capitalists overselling and underdelivering on every single innovation or technology.

        However, I believe it’s not a pipe dream to serve venture capitalists, it’s a pipe dream because of venture capitalists. Think what we can achieve if we didn’t have to cut corners to please shareholders, if every technique and breakthrough wasn’t trademarked or patented so they may be improved by others, if the end goal is to service the people and not make very few people very wealthy.

        It is a pipe dream because they are trying to get you to fund a ladder they can use to climb to wealth and pull up after them.

        But it is possible, and if anything, it’s more realistic than converting the average person to go vegan, esp with the reactionaries that will go out of their way to consume more meat out of spite.

    • kristina [she/her]
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      16 days ago

      They already have the best lab grown meat, theyre using it mostly for egg whites and pig skins right now (both are used a lot in traditional chinese cooking, egg whites in particular look very promising because they have their own ‘immune’ defense re: lysozymes, ovomucoids, innate ph balancers, etc.), though a lot of restaurants in hong kong serve chicken

      lysozymes can also be found in milk, and there has been some interesting developments in lab grown milk production using the same process that makes insulin. this would be useful for human milk too for mothers that have breastfeeding issues, human milk in general is very unique and has extremely high lysozyme counts which makes it a good candidate. personally i really hope lab grown dairy takes off, a lot of vegan cheeses taste like ass

      • iridaniotter [they/them]
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        1016 days ago

        Can you provide sources? I thought lab-grown albumen was early in development, and that lab-grown chicken was extremely expensive but being used by like a single restaurant in Singapore.

        • kristina [she/her]
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          16 days ago

          They have a whole outline in the latest 5 year plan of the cpc, they hosted a very large conference with a lot of cpc members and fed them all fabricated pig skin noodles and egg whites. I posted about it here a while back. I’m too lazy to search it but it’s on here somewhere

          This tech is related to organ growth tech, I hope that they get their shit together and give me a uterus and ovaries smh

      • Moss [they/them]
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        516 days ago

        really hope lab grown dairy takes off, a lot of vegan cheeses taste like ass

        Unironically I think this is one of the biggest obstacles preventing white people from becoming vegan. Most people in my country will have a dairy product in at least one meal a day. Sunflower substitute don’t taste the same as butter or cheese and aren’t really a substitute, they’re just a different ingredient entirely.

        • HexBroke [any, comrade/them]
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          416 days ago

          Unfortunately most lab meat processes require fetal bovine serum. A process for growing lab meat without FBS was achieved in 2022 though.

          FBS is a by-product of the meat industry. FBS, as with the vast majority of animal serum used in cell culture, is produced from blood collected at commercial slaughterhouses from cattle that also supply meat intended for human consumption.

          CW: description of the FBS collection process

          The first stage of the production process for FBS is the harvesting of blood from the bovine fetus after the fetus is removed from the slaughtered cow.

          The fetus dies from the lack of oxygen by remaining in the protective environment of the uterus for a minimum of 15–20 minutes after the cow is dead.

          The blood is collected aseptically into a sterile container or blood bag and then allowed to clot.

          The normal method of collection is cardiac puncture. This minimizes the danger of serum contamination with micro-organisms from the fetus itself, and the environment, while maximizing the volume of blood collected.

        • @driving_crooner
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          315 days ago

          We stopped drinking milk because oat milk is incredibly tasty. Hope in the future it gets cheaper because at the moment is 3 times expensive than cow milk.

        • the_post_of_tom_joad [any, any]
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          15 days ago

          [dairy is] the biggest obstacles preventing white people from becoming vegan.

          Me. I love milk, cream butter. Just can’t give it up. It’s (together with the price of non-dairy) the last obstacle.