Dutch firm Meatable can turn pig stem cells into sausages 60 times faster than farmers can rear pigs.
Dutch firm Meatable can turn pig stem cells into sausages 60 times faster than farmers can rear pigs.
Meatable can transform pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) into high-quality fat and muscle tissue in a record four days, down from eight days, a faster process than any in the industry.
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okay, but what's the resource consumption like? that's the major issue with meat farming - it takes all the resources necessary to grow food for the animals, and also all the resources necessary to keep and grow the animals themselves. If you need more meat in the same timeframe you can always just raise more pigs.
Whatever that is right now, I'd say it's at least more animal friendly, and you can control waste and pollution better, making it cleaner.
Over time, efficiency can be improved as well
I'd say it's a very good step
Quick search shows that it is better from a resource standpoint for pretty much all resources:
https://scienceline.org/2019/01/the-truth-about-lab-grown-meat/
Is it better for the environment?
That’s a definite yes. A 2011 study found that clean meat produces 78 to 96 percent lower greenhouse gas emissions, uses 99 percent less land and between 82 and 92 percent less water. Research at the Good Food Institute has concluded that a cell culture the size of one chicken egg can produce a million times more meat than a chicken barn stacked with 20,000 chickens, according to Emery. Energy costs, too, are much lower — and no animal parts are wasted, he adds.
“We won’t be growing the bones and the skin and the intestines that take up resources,” Emery says. “We’ll be vastly more efficient in the land we use.”
How much will it cost?
Experts say cost is the main obstacle standing between consumers and clean meat products.
In 2013, the first clean burger cost $325,000. While the price has decreased dramatically since then, current estimates range from $363 to $2,400 per pound, making it much more expensive than regular meat. (A pound of conventionally produced lean ground beef costs less than $6. Organically raised beef typically costs about a dollar more.)
JUST’s Birdie says the company is pushing hard to drive down production costs. “How do we make these products in order to compete with the price of a Big Mac?” she asks.
The biggest expense, she says, is protein used to feed the cells as they grow. In an effort to improve cost efficiency, JUST has developed a robotic platform capable of screening thousands of proteins to find the best at spurring growth, she says.
And this was from a decade ago. I imagine they've improved the resource need quite a bit since then.
I mean, theoretically this makes only the parts we want to eat and makes it directly instead of an offshoot of all the other biological processes like growing to the right age and ratio and growing the parts needed to keep it alive all that time. So my ass pull non educated thought process would assume the end result should require faaaaarrr less energy assumption for the same amount of meat?
I mean what don't we eat/ use? I hate to imagine a world with only boneless wings. or not having a ham bone to make soup with after easter. my dogs would miss their dehydrated chicken feet. my stock would miss the chicken backs and necks and etc. shame we can't just raise headless animals.
I mean, if we can grow one organ we can grow them all
The major issue is the slaughtering and torture of animals...