[muglug]

How does the energy consumption of the bioreactors stack up against live animals?

There’s two different opportunities here — a suffering-free meat substitute and a meat substitute with a lower carbon footprint.

This can get us closer to the former, but it’s not obvious it gets us closer to the latter.

[sacred_numbers]

Theoretically it should be way less energy intensive as well, since there won't be an animal expending energy to live for months before slaughter. Nor will there be a need to grow feathers, bones, or blood that end up as byproducts. Of course, this tech is still being developed, so it probably hasn't reached optimal efficiency, but it doesn't have to be that efficient to be better than standard animal agriculture.

[dflock]

Well, if the cow eats grass, then you aren't paying for that energy input.

[aviramha]

It's not the input. It's the output. Stock animals emit gasses (like any other animal) and it's non-neglectable footprint.

[dtech]

It's the main reason beef and lamb are so much worse in terms of CO2-equivalent than pork or chicken, and cheese isn't good either.

[bayesian_horse]

"Grass-fed" doesn't scale to the meat demand. It's a complacent luxury for some people, and that's all it's ever going to be until the Human population at least halves or becomes mostly vegan (so some people can enjoy better meat).

[mrshadowgoose]

Does it matter? The carbon problem can (and IMO should) be fundamentally fixed by wholly transitioning electrical generation to non-carbon producing sources. Industrial/commercial processes that have carbon footprints beyond their electrical expenditure, can be offset by using additional (non-carbon producing) electrical energy to perform carbon capture and sequestration. Yes, that would raise the cost of everything, which is why few politicians seriously focus on this option.

The common component to pretty much every process, product and comfort in our our society is energy utilization. Most people are not going to give anything up just because "the carbon footprint is bad/worse". So let's work on making it so the carbon footprint isn't even a factor.

[whatshisface]

If the energy costs are higher than those of normal farming, the whole enterprise becomes hard to justify.

[mrshadowgoose]

Depends on your target customer. Some people are willing to pay more for what they consider to be "ethical meat".

[DoreenMichele]

Some people are willing to pay more for quality food period. If this meat turns out to be better quality by some metric having nothing to do with "ethical meat" memes, there will be a market for it.

[elcritch]

Most mass produce meat are loaded with antibiotics and live in pretty terrible and unhygienic environments. Having meat that's not loaded with antibiotics and mixed with unsavory parts of the animal during butchering too.

Just visit a factory farm sometime. They are pretty cruel. Even if it's removing that cruelty for the sake of our own humanity makes sense to me. It's interesting to me that the Old Testament prohibition on "You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk" appears to be intended to avoid this sort of wrongness/cruelty. As in taking something that's fundamentally meant to provide sustenance and perverting it to cook the child it's meant to nourish seems pretty messed up right? Even if the goat itself doesn't care (though I think they do have some level of sentience). The effect isn't huge, but you can imagine that it produces a bit of desensitization to things that are important to our own humanity.

One thing with traditional family farms is that you gain a connection with the animals. Yes, you'll eat them but you know the cost of doing so. Modern factory farms completely remove that.

Of course, I'll continue eating regular meat due to convenience. That said, I do eat more substitute as it becomes more available.

[kodah]

This is the answer I think. My partner is vegetarian and sometimes I'll eat the Beyond Chicken Nuggets because they are just that good, often better than what I can make or buy store or otherwise.

[ed_elliott_asc]

One look at the ingredients in these things puts me off ever eating them:

“ INGREDIENTS: Water, Wheat Flour, Wheat Gluten, Faba Bean Protein, Modified Corn Starch, Natural Flavors, Expeller-Pressed Canola Oil, Pea Starch, Methylcellulose, Salt, Refined Coconut Oil, Rice Flour, Corn Starch, Yeast Extract Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, Pea Protein (Peas Are Legume, People with Severe Allergies to Legumes Like Peanuts Should Be Cautious When Introducing Pea Protein Into Their Diet Because of the Possibility of a Pea Allergy, Contains No Peanuts or Tree Nuts), Titanium Dioxide (for Color) Sugar, Dried Yeast Spices, Leavening (Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Baking Soda, Monocalcium Phosphate), Sunflower Oil, Canola Oil, Paprika, Dextrose.”

[TheSpiceIsLife]

It's unlikely we can virtue-signal our way out of any problem.

If something costs more, that's a good proxy for that product being more energy-intensive. And where thst isn't the case, the higher cost is likely lining someone's pocket, who will then go on to consume more, thereby generating more pollution.

[hombre_fatal]

What’s your definition of virtue signaling here that doesn’t just cash out into someone having different ethical concerns than you?

[DoreenMichele]

If something costs more, that's a good proxy for that product being more energy-intensive.

New products that come from new tech always cost more and early adopters tend to be people with money to spare. Unless you can come up with a source showing the higher energy usage -- one with a comprehensive lifetime comparison, not cherry picked -- this is a baseless comment.

[amusedcyclist]

Yeah we can also ban factory farming, like we ban murder.

[planter]

The correct definition of murder is as such:

> Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse [...]

Animals are not humans, killing an animal is not a murder. Attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to animals is called anthropomorphism.

[petesergeant]

There are far more negative externalities to production of meat than energy expenditure, especially if the alternative can use renewables

[NoZebra120vClip]

On one hand, you have a highly artificial process in labs with high-tech equipment, probably all patented and proprietary. On the other hand, you have a process that occurs completely naturally, that man has understood for millennia, that is open-source and public domain.

Which one to justify to consumers, farmers, and developing nations? Hmm.

[mgrandl]

You fail to mention that the second options causes immense amounts of suffering to both animals and slaughterhouse workers and absolutely destroys our environment due to GHG and manure runoff. It also completely fucks up the biodiversity on this planet as now 80% of mammals by weight are livestock.

[NoZebra120vClip]

It doesn't have to. None of that is an intrinsic property of animal husbandry. All of what I mentioned seems to be intrinsic to cultured/manufactured meat, though.

[vintagedave]

It is intrinsic to the animal production in the quantities we consume, though.

If we returned to 1950s levels of meat consumption (my parents and grandparents regarded eating a chicken as a treat), or grew chickens or cows in our own backyards, maybe. But in a world of 8 billion people with our diets, cruelty, pollution, carbon impact etc are all intrinsically tied to our meat consumption.

So lab-grown, cruelty-free, without the carbon impact especially for highly polluting animals like cattle -- it's a wonderful idea.

[tony69]

Electrical generation is a small part of the problem.

Electricity generation takes up less than half of global energy consumption, I think the figure is 30-40%.

This means most fossil fuels are burned for purposes other than generating electricity, and even if 100% of electricity generation was carbon-free you would still have a ton of fossil fuel consumption, things like heating, transportation, etc.

Transitioning all of that energy consumption to electricity is a huge feat, AND you need a f-ton more electricity generation, transportation, and storage, and of course it needs to be carbon free otherwise the problem is just made worse by the inherent inefficiencies.

[tonmoy]

Chicken production is already super energy efficient (and probably also the cruelest). Beef typically needs more land, at least if that land can be repurposed for growing crops (to turn into biofuel)

[Out_of_Characte]

You cannot repurpose almost all land that farm animals use to grow crop. This is marginal land where only grass grows, or hilly, rocky terrain where equipment is not effective.

[phire]

Yes, chicken does make me feel a little uneasy.

Beef and lamb are probably the least cruel, at least when they are fed grass outside (and where I live, they always are)

I understand that grain fed beef can be more cruel, depending on how long they are kept inside.

[hannob]

The main energy input for meat from animals is the sunlight shining on the plants that the animals eat.

The efficiency of that is utterly terrible. That's also the reason why any form of bioenergy from crops has such huge landuse requirements. It is likely almost impossible to do any worse with any technological process.

[bayesian_horse]

That's not really true. The energy used in the cultivation of their feed usually has the highest carbon footprint of the whole equation. "Grass-fed" and similar approaches don't scale up to the demand of meat. They require more land and more labor, all of which increases prices and increases competition for labor and arable land.