Article: The Science of Building the Perfect Pig

[TheVeganAtheist]

Anyone here read through this article on gizmodo? (Yes, an article about the history and future of pig farming on a technology and gadget blog). Thoughts?

http://gizmodo.com/porklife-the-science ... 866516/all

[thebestofenergy]

Anyone here read through this article on gizmodo? (Yes, an article about the history and future of pig farming on a technology and gadget blog). Thoughts?

http://gizmodo.com/porklife-the-science ... 866516/all

The future is lab-grown meat anyway. We cannot keep up the environmental destruction, and it's going to be much more efficient (it wouldn't be totally cruelty free and it'd still be wasteful, as explained here http://animalrights.about.com/od/animal ... ryMeat.htm, but the only other option that's better is veganism).

[cufflink]

The future is lab-grown meat anyway. We cannot keep up the environmental destruction, and it's going to be much more efficient (it wouldn't be totally cruelty free and it'd still be wasteful, as explained here http://animalrights.about.com/od/animal ... ryMeat.htm, but the only other option that's better is veganism).

That's really interesting. I see that at its current stage of development, lab-grown meat isn't totally sound environmentally or completely cruelty-free. But here's a hypothetical situation to think about: It's 50 years in the future. Scientists have now found a way to produce meat in the lab that's completely indistinguishable from conventionally obtained meat. Moreover, its production is energy-efficient and doesn't rely on the killing or suffering of animals. (I know this sounds implausible, and it very well may be . . . but it's a thought experiment.) Given those conditions, should vegans have any problem eating it?

[thebestofenergy]

The future is lab-grown meat anyway. We cannot keep up the environmental destruction, and it's going to be much more efficient (it wouldn't be totally cruelty free and it'd still be wasteful, as explained here http://animalrights.about.com/od/animal ... ryMeat.htm, but the only other option that's better is veganism).

That's really interesting. I see that at its current stage of development, lab-grown meat isn't totally sound environmentally or completely cruelty-free. But here's a hypothetical situation to think about: It's 50 years in the future. Scientists have now found a way to produce meat in the lab that's completely indistinguishable from conventionally obtained meat. Moreover, its production is energy-efficient and doesn't really on the killing or suffering of animals. (I know this sounds implausible, and it very well may be . . . but it's a thought experiment.) Given those conditions, should vegans have any problem eating it?

If you're vegan for ethical/environmental reasons, and meat doesn't gross you out, then you shouldn't have a problem eating it; altough, if it still was wasteful and it still was going to imply the harm of animals, even if at a much lower scale, I wouldn't do it, since I wouldn't have a justification.
But if you're vegan also for health reasons (or exclusively for health reasons) then it'd still have some of the same problems that meat has (but not all, as explained here http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archi ... us/278778/).
However, like I said
1) it still requires the use of animals
2) it's still wasteful. It takes more than 11 times as much fossil fuel to make one calorie from animal protein as it does to make one calorie from plant protein, and lab grown meat would only reduce the energy wasted by 45% (as you can see here http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-23576143), which is not enough; which is not counting the land and the food/water wasted and the pollution.

[cufflink]

Good points. I was thinking of the ethical/environmental concerns, not the health ones. For those concerned about the health issues, those wouldn't change if lab meat were indistinguishable from conventional meat. As for the other problems you mentioned, I was imagining a scenario where they would have been overcome, but I admit that even in 50 years that's probably too much to expect.

[thebestofenergy]

Good points. I was thinking of the ethical/environmental concerns, not the health ones. For those concerned about the health issues, those wouldn't change if lab meat were indistinguishable from conventional meat. As for the other problems you mentioned, I was imagining a scenario where they would have been overcome, but I admit that even in 50 years that's probably too much to expect.

If those problems were overcome, and scientists were able to produce lab-grown meat from other sources instead of animals in a non-wasteful way, then there would be no ethical/environmental reasons to boycott such a thing.

[brimstoneSalad]

(it wouldn't be totally cruelty free and it'd still be wasteful, as explained here http://animalrights.about.com/od/animal ... ryMeat.htm, but the only other option that's better is veganism).

That article seems full of factual errors.

However, cell cultures and tissue cultures typically do not live and reproduce forever. To mass-produce laboratory-grown meat on an ongoing basis, scientists would need a constant supply of live pigs, cows, chickens and other animals from which to take cells.

Embryonic stem cell lines are immortal, and we already know how to differentiate stem cells in the context of existing cells.
Dr. Post was just talking about killing cows as a cell source because it would be more economical at this point.

The web site mentions non-lethal biopsies, though: http://culturedbeef.net/faqs/

They probably realized that, while slightly more expensive, NOT killing the animals would be better from a marketing perspective (since it doesn't cost much more).

Stem cells are another alternative, but would add another step in the manufacturing process, which might be more expensive than biopsy without the proper infrastructure in place (once economy of scale factors in, though, it would no longer be).
At this point, I can't imagine they would be interested in adding more complexity to the operation.

Assuming that immortal cell lines from cows, pigs and chickens could be developed and no new animals would have to be killed to produce certain types of meat

Immortal cell lines isn't something we have to assume- it's self evident. It's true of human stem cell lines now.

the use of animals to develop new types of meat would still continue.

The use of animals' genes would continue. This could be done with as little as a drop of blood, or a skin scraping.

Even today, with thousands of years of traditional animal agriculture behind us, scientists still try to breed new varieties of animals who grow larger and faster, whose flesh has certain health benefits, or who have certain disease resistance.

This has nothing to do with in-vitro meat. Those things are done to breed entire systems- which have little to nothing to do with the performance of a muscle cell line in an in-vitro environment. The very idea of such an analogy is absurd.

If you want to improve muscle cell lines, you experiment with and cross those muscle cell lines- you don't breed entire animals.

In the future, if laboratory-grown meat becomes a commercially viable product, scientists will continue to breed new varieties of animals.

If by breed, they mean introduce sperm and egg, and harvest embryonic stem cells without them ever developing beyond a blastocyst. Maybe.

More likely they will simply exchange evolving cell lines in a world-wide long term evolution experiment.
Genetic engineering will serve as the mainstay- although there will always be a market for non-GMO as well.

and those animals will be bred, kept, confined, used and killed in the never-ending search for a better product.

Unlikely.

Furthermore, these early experiments involved growing the cells “in a broth of other animal products,” which means that animals were used and perhaps killed in order to create the broth. This broth is either the food for the tissue culture, the matrix upon which the cells were grown, or both. Although the types of animal products used were not specified, the product could not be called vegan if the tissue culture was grown in animal products.

This is a straw man.

Fetal bovine, and other, serums are only used experimentally. Everybody (except the author of that article, apparently) knows that plant, bacterial, and mycoprotein based serums would need to be developed (and are under development) before the system was commercially viable. It's not even a question. You can't grow meat on meat and pretend that it's solving a problem- Nobody is claiming this.

Scientists are hopeful that laboratory-grown meat will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but growing animal cells in a laboratory would still be a waste of resources, even if the cells were grown in a vegan medium.

Note the 'even if' provision. No, there is no "even if". If it happens, it will obviously be a non-animal based medium.

Anyway, what is wasteful?

Manufacturing Seitan and other plant based meat analogues, importing fruit and vegetables, and spending electricity to watch TV is also "wasteful".
So, we should probably just sit in the corner quietly and eat gruel, right?

The question is not whether it uses energy and resources, nor whether that use is "necessary"- most things in life aren't necessary, including most things vegans do- but how much resource use it involves compared to comparable alternatives, and it's effects on the environment and other sentient beings.

However, Pamela Martin, an associate professor in geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago, co-authored a paper on the increased greenhouse gas emissions of a meat-based diet over a plant-based diet, and questions whether laboratory-grown meat would be more efficient than traditional meat. Martin stated, “It sounds like an energy-intensive process to me.”

That's just a lay comment some student journalist got from a random unqualified assistant professor who doesn't seem to have even read about in-vitro meat production: it might as well be a youtube comment. The author of that article is really stretching here.

No, it doesn't sound energy intensive at all. Pamela's opinion on the subject is irrelevant, and flies in the face of biology and established industry practice in biological synthesis here.

The closest analog we have is small fast growing fish that eat other fish, which approach an efficiency around 80% feed conversion on protein- that is, they can convert up to 80% of the mass of what they eat into their own mass in ideal conditions (although what they eat is other fish, so it's not efficient from grain).
We should expect a higher conversion than fish produce- perhaps up to 90%, on a SCP serum (which is about what you tend to get on a cellular level).

We don't get to compare meat directly to a feed stock like grain, because meat has a higher protein content- we have to compare the protein content.

The production of the serum for feeding the in-vitro meat will probably be SCP, or single-cell protein; bacterial or other microbial synthesis of protein from carbohydrate matter, which can approach 90% efficiency. Even as vegans, we can't get more protein out of carbohydrate heavy sources than that- our best example is nutritional yeast (which is actually pretty efficient).

We should expect in-vitro meat to be about 90% as efficient as nutritional yeast. So, at best, we can criticize that 10% loss of resources.
10% is something, but when you compare it to other processed vegan foods, like store-bought mock meats, it might not be anything at all.

We should also expect in-vitro meat to be carbon-neutral, and produce no net greenhouse gasses. Only manufacturing energy would be relevant, but it doesn't take much to 'exercise' the meat (that claim was pretty silly; like there would be terawatts of power, Frankenstein style, being pumped into the meat).

As reported in the New York Times, Post replied to a question about whether vegetarians would like lab-grown meat, "Vegetarians should remain vegetarian. That’s even better for the environment."

Yes, if they aren't eating a lot of packaged, processed, imported foods. I'm a little surprised Post didn't clarify that point. There are a lot of things that contribute more than that level of inefficiency into our food supply.

When we start dealing with relatively small margins of efficiency (like 10-20%), it becomes less of an issue, and a vegan eating, for example, a lot of rice grown in an area is has to be highly irrigated, or imported foods, might have more environmental impact than somebody eating locally produced in-vitro meat produced on corn fed SCP serum.

[brimstoneSalad]

altough, if it still was wasteful and it still was going to imply the harm of animals, even if at a much lower scale, I wouldn't do it, since I wouldn't have a justification.

All farming harms animals at a very low level incidentally- whether insects through pesticides, or otherwise (even poisoning mice during crop storage).
How far do we go in comparing one farming practice to another in avoiding animal harm?

At a certain point, when that level of harm becomes so low, we stop paying attention to it. By doing a little good elsewhere- whether buying carbon credits, or helping animals (human and non-human alike) we can make up for the harm we couldn't help but do in the world.

If we're talking criticism of occasional pin pick biopsies for DNA, is that something at a pragmatic level of ethical concern?

Many vegan products, while all less harmful than the products of modern animal agriculture, involve varying levels of harm which range into the scope of in-vitro meat production. How can we criticize one categorically, but not others?

But if you're vegan also for health reasons (or exclusively for health reasons) then it'd still have some of the same problems that meat has (but not all, as explained here http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archi ... us/278778/).

That link explains how all known health problems from meat could be eliminated in in-vitro meat.

Of course, eliminating some of the harmful substances might require genetic engineering. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, though.

2) it's still wasteful. It takes more than 11 times as much fossil fuel to make one calorie from animal protein as it does to make one calorie from plant protein, and lab grown meat would only reduce the energy wasted by 45% (as you can see here http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-23576143), which is not enough; which is not counting the land and the food/water wasted and the pollution.

This is an example of where statistics can be deceptive.



That makes it look like a really big deal, because it's a very big circle- it's obviously of equal importance to the others, since it's the same size right?
But really, only the latter two circles are big problems (and water, which is not included here for some reason).

Eleven times a small number is still a small number. Six times a small number is even better.

It takes more than 11 times as much fossil fuel to make one calorie from animal protein as it does to make one calorie from plant protein. Raising animals for food gobbles up precious energy. Simply add up the energy-intensive stages of raising animals for food: (1) grow massive amounts of corn, grain, and soybeans (with all the required tilling, irrigation, crop-dusters, etc.); (2) transport the grain and soybeans to feed manufacturers on gas-guzzling 18-wheelers; (3) operate the feed mills (requiring massive energy expenditures); (4) transport the feed to the factory farms (again, in gas-guzzling vehicles); (5) operate the factory farms; (6) truck the animals many miles to slaughter; (7) operate the slaughterhouse; (8) transport the meat to processing plants; (9) operate the meat-processing plants; (10) transport the meat to grocery stores; (11) keep the meat refrigerated or frozen in the stores until it’s sold.

http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used ... z34wseCqH5

Here's an unanswered question in PETA's fact: What's the energy use for Seitan production and distribution? Or any processed vegan food?
It will probably end up less than meat, but most of that energy is being used in transportation- as it is for any product.

Meat is inefficient because it's a huge waste of land and water resources on crops that are wasted by being fed to livestock with a very low conversion efficiency, that worse yet pump out potent greenhouse gasses like methane constantly, and produce a dangerous waste stream.
The entirety of agriculture doesn't use a very large portion of global energy production.

The energy use of in-vitro meat production would be even less problematic, being more centralized, the majority likely drawn off the grid, rather than being from gasoline used in transportation (increase in nuclear power could help a lot in reducing emission for energy off the grid).

I'm not quite convinced that it would be substantially worse than comparable processed vegan food (and I'm not criticizing processed vegan foods here).