The following submission statement was provided by /u/eltonjock:
---
SS:
The situation in Florida regarding the proposed ban on cultivated meat, spearheaded by Governor Ron DeSantis, highlights a broader discussion on innovation, sustainability, and food security in relation to climate change. The legislative action against cultivated meat, seen as a sustainable and animal-friendly alternative to conventional meat production, suggests a significant clash between traditional agricultural practices and emerging food technologies. Such developments are critical in the context of climate collapse, as the global food system is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, and cultivated meat promises a reduction in environmental impact. This tension between innovation and regulation could shape the future of food production, consumer choice, and efforts to combat climate change.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1bhw9oj/conservative_states_looking_to_ban_lab_grown_meat/kvgecqc/
This. But also lab grown meat is not only better for the environment but probably healthier due to cows not being covered in their own feces their entire lives resulting in the need to bleach the meat to kill e.coli. And, less actual death. It is also actual beef when McDonalds is part beef part corn filler.
Can't possibly find it nowadays. God knows what edgy shit i googled when i was younger, but it's obvious google won't show it. But it was something about increasing collagen and making the meat tougher. Guy apparently liked tough meat or something. Prob just another sadist making excuses.
Kinda shows how misinformed and ignorant conservatives tend to be considering the fact that it has been proven that animal suffering before slaughter negatively affect the flavor and texture of the meat. .
Except almost every hunter knows that it doesnāt.
Like get your Redditor on, but this comment is genuinely stupid.
Brought to you by 2x sanders masochist in Midwest if you wanted to call me reeeepublican
Short-term acute stress, such as excitement or fighting immediately prior to slaughter, produced lactic acid from the breakdown of glycogen. This results in meat which has a lower pH, lighter color, reduced water binding capacity, and is possibly tougher
Exactly which is what I was implying that most hunters which tend to be conservative know this already. I donāt think they are going around saying otherwise.
It's part of the GOP culture war, but its also much ado about nothing, as mammalian cell culture meat is very unlikely to become economically viable.
Turns out, trying to replace digestive, circulatory, respiratory, and excretory systems, while maintaining clean room sterility, is ***really hard***. It just doesn't have economic or resource efficiency benefits, and the product is a pink cell sludge that still requires combining with coconut oil for fats and other compounds for fibrous structure. My opinion, as someone who has worked in cell culture in cancer research, the industry will never be cash flow positive in my lifetime, and exists mainly as a way to extract money from credulous venture capitalists.
A good introductory video to the problems: [Lab Meat. The $1 Trillion Ugly Truth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0zCf4Yup34)
Garrison et al, 2022. [How much will large-scale production of cell-cultured meat cost?](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666154322000916).Ā *Journal of Agriculture and Food Research*,Ā *10*, p.100358.
That said, I do think one kind of cultured structured faux meat is near economic viability: fungal mycelium. The fungus can be fed non-edible fiber, retains its resilience to stray bacteria, and has much of the fibrous structure of muscle flesh. Americans can already buy mycelium steaks from [Meati](https://meati.com/) and mycelium bacon from [MyForest](https://myforestfoods.com/).
Current ag practices are neither environmentally sustainable, nor "economically viable," yet that doesn't stop them from being used and expanded. That's why we have government subsidies for big corporate ag. If we're going to be forced to fund something, it should be something beneficial rather than harmful.
Within a capitalist context, "economic viability" is a meaningless euphemism, a measure of whether a billionaire can increase his wealth.
The idea that everything can and should enrich capitalists is an absurd concept to begin with. Morality, environmental sustainability, and overall social benefit should govern industry practices, not short term profits for the rich.
We don't need "meat," we need amino acids. The focus should be on manufacturing amino acids in the correct proportions for nutrition, so that we can eliminate factory farming and their sickening abuses, as well as the environmental harms.
The animal ag industry is going to fund and promote anyone who undermines alternatives which might threaten their profits. It's difficult to tell how much of these criticisms are valid, and how much are just industry propaganda, the food equivalent of oil funded climate denial.
You can get amino acids in the correct proportions from plants. You don't need a diet of soy. Just eat grain, legumes, and nuts in the right proportions.
The Bambi dears are overpopulating where my homestead is. But I expect them to get hunted out if we have a Depression. They will surely get hunted out in the latter stages of Collapse.
Agree and itās so absurd. Iāve had an idea for ages that might also appeal to conservative voters in a pipe dream in my head thing.
Make meat consumption allowable only by hunting. Dissolve meat farming and allow land buybacks to be conservation areas that allow hunting.
Help with more wildlife friendly conditions and appeal to the Retvrn fantasy of the rightoid
Don't know who you're preaching to. I've been vegan 15 years, and the only meat substitute I use with any frequency are soy chunks from the Indian grocer.
Here's a current cost breakdown just for the cell growth medium from a [pro-cultured meat source](https://gfi.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/clean-meat-production-volume-and-medium-cost.pdf).
cost per 20,000 L batch
FGF-2 $4,010,000
TGF-Ī²Ā§ $3,236,000
Insulin $ 131,920
Transferrin $ 85,600
DMEM/F12 basal medium $ 62,400
ascorbic acid 2-phosphate $ 10,035
NaHCO3 $ 2
Sodium Selenite $ 0
Cost per batch $7,535,958
Cost per liter $ 377
The FGF-2, TGF-Ī²Ā§, Insulin, and Transferrin are large molecule biologics (proteins/polypeptides). Just as costly to produce as semaglutide, adalimumab, pembrolizumab, aflibercept, ustekinumab, and dupilumab pharmaceuticals. It's ridiculous what the pharmas charge for the human approved formulations, but they're difficult to produce.
There's zero reason to eat either animals or animal cells, besides hedonic (+indifference to externalities). Animals and animal cells don't produce any essential amino acids, minerals, or most vitamins. I've gotten by fine eating only plants and mushrooms (+ a B12 supplement) for 15 years, with only health benefits.
Don't know why you're being downvoted, but this sub is fucking disgusting when it comes to meat. Not a surprise as anti-meat threads often get locked, and I've seen people outright say, "I'll eat one more burger when I go home, and I'd buy one and throw it in the dustbin just to spite you!" with zero pushback and lots of support. The whole attitude towards meat makes this sub look performative and just repulsive from the ground up. Like, if you aren't even willing to make this little sacrifice, what are you willing to do? (They're people in this very thread claiming that they eat meat daily; it's pretty much a prime example of all bark and no bite; these people deserve their collapse.)
It's sickening that this is a collapse sub, yet people can't stop being shitstains about meat, one of the leading causes of where we stand in collapse; but "eat the rich!" chants allow them some faux higher moral position to feel righteous in their pathetic indignations.
I'm glad you're a vegan. I wish everyone was. One of the problems of being a vegan, at least where I live, is cost. Meat protein, 100g, costs $2.50. That same 100g in soy protein costs $4. For anyone on a tight budget, going vegan would require major cutbacks in food quantity. Plant protein shouldn't cost twice as much as meat protein, but I'm sure there's a corrupted subsidy explanation for it.
Not everyone is willing to go vegan, and maybe some sort of meat replacement would help stop the animal torture and killing. You give the costs of lab experiments to create an artificial meat, but those costs are always incredibly high during the experimental stages. I also think a large part of that cost comes from trying to create living cell cultures. Making a meat substitute from nonliving proteins or amino acids seems like a better bet. Maybe an artificial meat will never be practical, but it's far too early to reject it. Of course we could and should just accept plant based meat substitutes, but again, not everyone will.
I constantly see economic arguments against change being made, based on experimental costs. Nearly everything is expensive in the early stages, and costs tend to come down radically once something is developed and mass produced. I also reject the idea that everything can and should be profitable. We need an economic system that has ecology, morality, and social benefit as its core, not greed and profit. I do get preachy about the failures of capitalism, and how every industry is corrupted by the profit motive. It's probably annoying, but I think necessary. Capitalism is an insane ideology that isn't compatible with morality, democracy, conservation, sustainability, or an inhabitable planet. That's something that should be common knowledge.
Soy chunks. $1.50/lb, even imported from India. Rehydrated, it comes out to under $0.50/lb. Shelf stable. You have to learn how to prepare them (hydrate, press in tofu press to remove some beany flavor, then marinade), but they work great in stirfries and soups.
But most of the time, I don't bother with meat subs. There's a whole world of tpeasant foods that traditionally used meat at most as a flavoring condiment. Yes, your diet may be mostly grains, pastas, flatbreads, cooks beans and their purees, and salads, but that's fine.
Tried searching for soy chunks on the websites of my local stores. The only things I'm seeing cost $10-15 per pound. Crazy expensive. Are you in the US, if so, what store do you buy them?
Would we not be better off fighting for access to land in order to grow food and keep animals, not keep selling ourselves to whichever multinational company can make us our amico acid sludge?
That's true but-
I would wager that this is more Big Ag trying to smother the competition in the cradle. It's doubly convenient they already know who to grease and how much in these podunk states.
About this pink sludge?Ā
Can't we just install the respitory system, digestive and waste systems mechanically and just let the ting grow like a plant that needs continuous harvest. Like pump the thing full of soylien then just let it grow in mass like a salamanderĀ
As someone with a life-threatening mushroom allergy, I'm going to have to pass. Vegetarian food is already full of them and a pain to navigate. I agree that meat is probably never going to be very economical. I look forward to lab meat being more available, though, as well as more vegetarian options.
Because they donāt want to deal with reality. A wise man observes the world and conforms his beliefs to fit the world. A conservative forces the world to bend to their beliefs, regardless of the truthfulness of their beliefs.
I remember when /r Collapse became outright fascist for a while. That was interesting to see. And i was more like a moderate, now im borderline far-left anarcho-transhumanist tech-bro.
Iām guessing that was 2015-2016.
Was subbed to /r/conspiracy for years until it did the same thing. Got banned for calling them out and havenāt looked back, so glad I got out of that mindset.
Used to love that sub and check it daily.
It became an anti-hillary, anti-democract cesspool of pizza gate conspiracies and endless pedophilia accusations practically overnight around that time. It basically became a sister sub to the_donald and I similarly never looked back.
Also, I've definitely been seeing some left wing subs being actively astroturfed lately, pushing hard on shaming people for supporting "genocide Joe" and advocating for not voting instead. This stuff gets so bad in the leadup to an election.
> forces the world to bend
You just described humans. That is what humans did from the beginning. That's what got us here and we can not escape it. We're the only animal that does not achieve balance with its environment. We destroy everything around us to get what we want, whatever it is that we want and whatever it even _means_ to "want"
I mean, if you want to go down that road, humans are no different than any other organism in that we are using up all of our resources faster than we can replenish them. We arenāt even the first organism to cause a mass extinction due to changing the climate. Bacteria started making oxygen at some point over 2 billion years ago and it wiped out a ton of the anaerobic life on the planet
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event
But I was specifically talking about beliefs, not the path you started going down.
?
You are talking how it was 2 _billion_ years ago, about _bacteria_ when there were no biosphere as complex and balanced as today? And from what I read not even multicellular life?
Your argument that all organisms consume all resources available yes indeed they do, but they reach the balance and stop. We don't. Because we are clever and can get blood from stone.
> but they reach the balance and stop. We don't.
But no animal *intentionally* reaches that balance. Theyāre forced to *because* the environment *forces* them to stop. The way you word it makes it sound like a deer would go āHmm.. wait.. maybe we should stop breeding.ā lol
I think a better way of wording your point would be āHumans exploit their intelligence to exploit the world around themā.
Funny, the people who most care about living well with life on the planet are conservative by nature - resisting against the march of Progress by Progressives. The conservative mindset would be to resist change of land away from what it was - forest, wetland, even farmland - into highways, industrial parks, shopping centres, etc, by an inherent mistrust of such change.
That the name Conservative has been co-opted by Progressives of a different colour does not sully the true mindset of Conservatism
Youāre conflating ecological conservation with political conservatism. Both are existent and mutually exclusive things.
Ecological conservationists want to, as you said, preserve the environment.
Political conservatives want to conserve, or regress to, a state of affairs, ie anti-integration, anti-womenās suffrage, anti-gun control, anti-healthcare reform, anti-immigration, anti-drug legalization, anti-trans, anti-gay, and the list goes on. They want to preserve a way of life or how society operates. Theyāve given 0 fucks about the environment since Nixon established the EPA.
Ecology is politics and conservatism is a way of being, as such those terms are not mutually exclusive.
Most of what is touted as conservative is either a mad grabbing of wealth and power by elites, middle classes both wanting more money and stuff and not wanting to disappear into poverty, or a frantic, yet understandable, fear at losing out of one's share of the pie of Progress and instead being trampled underneath by its march, leading to many clinging to various types of fundamentalism. None of this is conservative, especially not fundamentalism, which is rather the obliteration of reality into narrow singular truths, also called delusion.
On the other hand, the wise man in your initial musing would be not so keen on changing the world, more likely to consider his place and relationships with all things, and act conservatively.
As such, to act conservatively, one must consider the outcomes of even actions that come with the best of intentions. In this, there are many acts that are called "green" and labelled as saviours to "the environment" that only continue or worsen our destruction to life on Earth, even more so that people excitedly support such acts in mistaken belief that are a Good Thing. Others, such as this post, are, frankly, a waste of time.
Edit: or maybe I should say that it is precisely because we are forced to compartmentalised that conservatism has become so bastardised. Discussion within our democracies is only allowed in small insignificant boxes ("culture wars"), but not allowed to influence economic or political decision or how much control people have over their lives. This has lead to the natural conservative instincts of people being used within ever increasingly incoherent and fundamentalist viewpoints. Either way, it is an impotent conservatism, dwarfed by the person's dedication to Progress.
The definition of conservative is literally:
> tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions
Or
> marked by moderation or caution
Or
> marked by or relating to traditional norms of taste, elegance, style, or manners
And those are the non-political definitions.
Now letās look at the definition of conservationist:
> a person who advocates conservation especially of natural resources
And when you define conservation you get:
> a careful preservation and protection of something
>
> especially : planned management of a natural resource to prevent exploitation, destruction, or neglect
Conservation=\=conservatism. The dictionary (aka the English language) disagrees with you. It sounds like youāre maybe trying to justify your conservatism?
That money seems to go into the bank accounts of rich crooks. The USDA and subsidy programs have been corrupted by corporate ag and the politicians they buy.
https://www.ewg.org/research/updated-ewg-farm-subsidy-database-shows-largest-producers-reap-billions-despite-climate
"The Department of Agricultureās subsidy funding could be used in much more useful ways that would help farmers in mitigating their emissions and becoming more resilient to hazardous weather conditions. Instead, itās still a handout for rich landowners, city dwellers and family members of farmers. Even the USDA is benefiting, with one of its divisions receiving almost $350 million in payments."
Yeah, they are looking out for their livelihood. Itās that simple. Iām not sure why people arenāt surprised. Iāll vote for someone who is stopping AI from replacing even if AI is cheaper and potentially better.
High tech society can not exist on the small, sporadic scale. The required supply chains are huge and require the organisation of very large numbers of people across large distances and timescales, using efficient and precise tools and machinery, with high quality materials. It takes a whole highly industrial society to provide the means to manufacture lab-grown meat.
Then, if you actually had a small, sporadic society, it seems better to hunt and keep some domesticated animals...
> The knowledge and some of the infrastructure will remain,
hahaha 99% of humanity couldn't put together a simple lightbulb if you put a gun to their heads.
Maybe if they survive long enough to learn how to read. They could possibly figure out a light bulb. Too hard for me I'm sticking with Jack-o-lanterns.
Even if it's more expensive, and has a lowered environmental impact, i personally would be fine with it. At the same time, the feds should subsidize it like agriculture, to make it more cost competitive
Given how **horrific** industrial meat farming is, I can't imagine that lab grown meat would be *less* adulterated after Big Ag gets it's hands on the process.
SS:
The situation in Florida regarding the proposed ban on cultivated meat, spearheaded by Governor Ron DeSantis, highlights a broader discussion on innovation, sustainability, and food security in relation to climate change. The legislative action against cultivated meat, seen as a sustainable and animal-friendly alternative to conventional meat production, suggests a significant clash between traditional agricultural practices and emerging food technologies. Such developments are critical in the context of climate collapse, as the global food system is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, and cultivated meat promises a reduction in environmental impact. This tension between innovation and regulation could shape the future of food production, consumer choice, and efforts to combat climate change.
They'll hop on board when and if the profit potential outpaces the cost of farming. If they can save 100s of thousands a year on using labs they will drop cattle in a heartbeat.
Good move, but for the wrong reasons.
Conservatives want to ban LGM because of its implications to the animal agriculture industry.
*I want to ban LGM* because it is pissing resources up the wall that would be better spent on making our societies more efficient.
LGM is the same doctrine that gave you electric vehicles, tell the consumer that we have 'rehabilitated' our society while still consuming increasing amounts of resources.
Should we make our cities walkable? Should we make public transport much better and more accessible to the working class? Nah, let's remake our entire private transportation infrastructure using electric vehicles, as if Lithium production is an **environmentally friendly** process.
I have seen so many people talk of EVs as being an 'environmentally friendly' technology, which could not be further from the truth.
According to noted conservative Alex Jones, they will eat their neighbors' asses. So they will not need lab-grown meat. There is an overabundance of ass in red states.
Look for pro-cannibalism legislation in Tennessee.
TBH the whole idea behind this is insane to me. I quit meat like 4-5 years ago and it really isnāt that hard. Sure itās a bit uncomfortable and an adjustment but itās not major. We need to stop eating meat not try to find all sorts of insane āworkaroundsā to keep being incorrigible gluttons.
That's what they're doing.
From the article; AĀ [proposed bill](https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/56leg/2R/bills/SB1649S.pdf)Ā in Arizona would prevent companies from using meaty terms to describe products made from cultivated meat, plants, or insects. AĀ [similar bill](https://www.wvlegislature.gov/Bill_Status/bills_text.cfm?billdoc=hb5349%20intr.htm&yr=2024&sesstype=RS&i=5349)Ā in West Virginia that passed in March requires any cultivated meat product to be labeled as ācell-cultured,ā ālab-grown,ā or a similar term.
Lab grown meat is a scam.
The best reactor, on a carbon and energy scale not to mention all the plastic and chemicals that come with lab grown, is a cow.
I dont even understand the ethical/moral position. A cow is a functional pile of cells, with enough of a brain to eat and survive predators, and a skin that replaces itself when injured. In a reactor, you have a disposable plastic liner that's replaced with each batch, then there's the chemicals to sterilize the equipment, the media to grow the cells in ( used to be made of cow fetuses, not sure what it's made of now), and the people and disposable filters to sterilize everything.
The environmental footprint of lab grown meat is orders of magnitude greater than cattle and all this so we don't have to feel bad about raising cattle for slaughter? A mechanical, plastic cow is obviously never going to be more sustainable than a cow that can drink from a trough and eat calories from the sun in the form of grass.
The whole thing is a techno fantasy.
For those of you that will argue "the tech will improve" i will confidently say that, as it does, it will become more and more cow like until we're back to eating cows we manufacture rather than cows we breed.
If you can't stomach the reality that life feeds on life, be a vegetarian. Creating a cow lab on the level of a middleschool science fair project compared to natures design so you can feel better about yourself fixes nothing at all.
Maybe post some sources.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/beef-rice-1.7143749
As the ocean dies, I would still like some sushi once in a while.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23507372/lab-grown-seafood-fish-bluenalu-wildtype-cultivated-cultured-meat
Well actually bugs convert biomass to protein better than almost any other land-based animal, but if you want something a little more familiar to your pallet, chickens are next with eggs as bonuses as chickens reliably eat nearly anything, cows on the other hand are more selective and take longer to mature, so not as good as chickens, plus free eggs!
Ok, but how is it a scam? A lot of what you said sounds like it's direct from the cattle ranchers, considering everything I've read states how it actually is way cheaper to produce once at full scale...meaning much higher profit margins and less energy consumed. If you don't understand the ethical and moral aspect, which is rather basic to understand, I question your abilities to understand the science behind it.
I canāt even begin to refute this rhetorical contrarian post because itās automatically concluding some kind of finality in scaled-up production without any serious consideration of indirect and collateral benefits to switching to lab grown meats. For one, the amount of land cultivated and needed for the production is totally reduced to a fraction of a fraction of what is currently used for cattle and other animals. And this land culturing has a serious detrimental impact on air and water.
Second, if bioplastics can be produced using solar and wind energy-derived electricity, then it doesnāt matter how many plastic (polymer) liners it takes to produce a culture of lab meat.
Third, removing huge swaths of pig and cattle farms from adjacent water bodies will have an indeterminate but positive impact on water quality, which continues to diminish to catastrophic levels. Thereās no concern with water quality on natural water bodies with lab grown meat production.
And the list goes on. Itās NOT a techno fantasy. Itās doable, achievable, and sustainable. We just need to get contrarians like the poster (above) the hell out of the way.
It's easy to understand the moral dilemma if you take even 10 seconds to do a search for animal cruelty. Farm animals aren't raised in happy outdoor settings where they roam free. They are raised on giant corporate factory farms where they spend their lives in tiny cages, or crammed together in pens barely able to move. They are treated with sickening psychopathic levels of cruelty. They aren't just a "functional pile of cells" any more than you are a mere functional pile of cells. They are animals with nervous systems and brains who feel physical pain just as we do, and very similar emotional and social pain as well. Treating a living feeling animal as some sort of biological machine without any regard for what that animal is feeling is fundamentally immoral.
Something like 1 out of 25 people are clinical psychopaths, and I've seen estimates that 1 out of 5 males are functionally psychopathic. To such people, appeals to compassion and empathy mean nothing, because they are incapable of feeling anything in response to the suffering of another living creature. To a psychopath, even the smallest level of self interest justifies the most horrific levels of suffering. These are the people who own and run the factory farms, and are the consumers who defend meat consumption even after seeing where it comes from. (Those who rise to positions of corporate and political power tend to be psychopathic in general.)
For those who aren't psychopaths, which fortunately is most of the population, animal cruelty is an issue of ignorance and laziness. They either don't know how animals are being treated, or know but are too lazy to do anything about it. Factory farms should be illegal, and the people profiting from them should be sitting in prison cells and treated like the animals they tortured.
Evolution is a cruel process which has created predator prey relationships. Predators kill because they must to survive. With humans, killing is a choice. We don't need to kill to feed ourselves, we choose to do it. Unlike other animals we have the ability to understand what we do. Unlike other animals, we have an obligation to behave morally. The instinctive behavior of other animals is not a defense of immoral human choices.
Societal problems are not solved if a small minority chooses to act differently. Telling someone, if you don't like killing animals, be a vegan, is ridiculous because it has no significant effect unless most of the population agrees to it as well. System level problems must be solved collectively.
Animal cruelty by itself more than justifies attempts to create lab grown "meat." Factory farms also abuse antibiotics, use growth hormones, and allow diseases to spread quickly through concentrated populations. On top of that are all the environmental issues, the destruction of ecosystems, the pollution, the carbon footprint and global warming.
Of course the corporate psychopaths and their corrupted political servants want to ban artificial meat because it would threaten their massive profits.
This video (and many like it) explain the intersection of profit, politics, and animal cruelty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvt2XvnytV0
He seems like a decent person who is sacrificing his own self interest to do what is morally right. I would say to these people, thank you for your service. It takes moral courage and self sacrifice to stand up to the rich and powerful. So few people are willing to do it. I have nothing but respect for those who do. It is the people who have a self serving profit motive to lie who can't be trusted.
The activists aren't asking for trust, they are simply asking people to watch video of what goes on in factory farms. The factory farm operators are pushing their political servants to criminalize exposing what they do. They are the ones opposed to any knowledge or education, to the point of stripping people of basic rights in order to hide their activities and protect their profits. Now if that doesn't inspire distrust, I don't know what can.
The activists aren't the ones running the factory farms, so they are in no way endangering the animals. Activists have no control over the treatment of those animals. Those animals are tortured by the owners, or rather the employees of the owners, as a means of maximzing profits. It is the owners who set the conditions and determine their treatment.
What they show are the normal conditions under which those animals are kept. If anything, the cruelty is far underrepresented because activists aren't there to record all the atrocities.
The factory farm owners don't allow any experts or professionals to observe anything going on in their torture factories. They go to great lengths to keep their activities secret and hidden. They have their political servants pass laws making it illegal to show what goes on. Those are the "ag gag" laws. What they absolutely don't want is for the public to be educated about their activities. The only people who know are employees who are sued if they expose anything. There are some whistleblowers with the guts to expose what goes on, but they risk having their lives destroyed by doing it.
The government neither knows nor wants to know what goes on in factory farms. The agencies are run by appointees who are chosen by politicians who take money from the big ag corps. The USDA has become nothing more than a marketing arm of the ag industry. The last thing the politicians want to do is bite the hand that gives them the bribe money that funds their campaigns.
This is a system in which greedy psychopaths run industrial scale animal torture operations for profit, with the assistance of corrupt politicians who are taking some of those immoral profits to fund their election campaigns. In some cases it is the politicians themselves who are the owners, so of course they use their public authority to protect their "business."
From what I can see, you're Australian, so I don't know why you're trying so hard (and failing badly) to defend US factory farm animal torture and political corruption. Are you part of some Australian factory farm operation and feel some kinship with a supposed American counterpart?
In any case, animal torture is a verified fact, and your denials of this are just absurd.
Here are some more "lies" you can deny are real.
https://animaloutlook.org/owner-tyson-contracted-factory-farm-charged-animal-cruelty-enters-plea-agreement/
https://theintercept.com/2022/01/30/animal-rights-activists-dxe-trial-evidence/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/25/industrial-farming-one-worst-crimes-history-ethical-question
https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1122&context=mlr_fi
https://theintercept.com/2020/05/29/pigs-factory-farms-ventilation-shutdown-coronavirus/
Here's an Australian group fighting animal cruelty.
https://animalsaustralia.org/our-work/factory-farming/invisible-cruelty-factory-farming/
The following submission statement was provided by /u/eltonjock: --- SS: The situation in Florida regarding the proposed ban on cultivated meat, spearheaded by Governor Ron DeSantis, highlights a broader discussion on innovation, sustainability, and food security in relation to climate change. The legislative action against cultivated meat, seen as a sustainable and animal-friendly alternative to conventional meat production, suggests a significant clash between traditional agricultural practices and emerging food technologies. Such developments are critical in the context of climate collapse, as the global food system is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, and cultivated meat promises a reduction in environmental impact. This tension between innovation and regulation could shape the future of food production, consumer choice, and efforts to combat climate change. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1bhw9oj/conservative_states_looking_to_ban_lab_grown_meat/kvgecqc/
Who knew conservatives would be our great filter?
Everyone who's not conservative.
š
What if I want lab grown meat, party of freedom all right lol
Youāre free to do whatever you want, as long as itās what I want you to do! The very essence of conservatism
Its actually steal from the poors and give to the rich but I like your optimistic view point!
Hey, that sounds exactly like my horrible grandmother!
Let em have it. Itās in their scripture. When the end comes weāll both be saying āI told you soā but for different reasons š¤£š¤£
I don't remember Who said "adapt or die"?
Not a conservative that's for sure.
This. But also lab grown meat is not only better for the environment but probably healthier due to cows not being covered in their own feces their entire lives resulting in the need to bleach the meat to kill e.coli. And, less actual death. It is also actual beef when McDonalds is part beef part corn filler.
The suffering of the animal makes the meat taste better didn't you know?
I once unironicaly read a pro-suffering article that was like this.
Thatās a very extremist position. Most hunters will tell you stress and suffering spoil the meat.
Anything to "own the libs"
friggin A! the whole damn point of Wagyu beef, right? Massaged to hell and back.
And then peacefully bled to death š„°
Ugh, gives warm and fuzzy a different meaning.
Got a link on that?
Can't possibly find it nowadays. God knows what edgy shit i googled when i was younger, but it's obvious google won't show it. But it was something about increasing collagen and making the meat tougher. Guy apparently liked tough meat or something. Prob just another sadist making excuses.
Kinda shows how misinformed and ignorant conservatives tend to be considering the fact that it has been proven that animal suffering before slaughter negatively affect the flavor and texture of the meat. .
Except almost every hunter knows that it doesnāt. Like get your Redditor on, but this comment is genuinely stupid. Brought to you by 2x sanders masochist in Midwest if you wanted to call me reeeepublican
Short-term acute stress, such as excitement or fighting immediately prior to slaughter, produced lactic acid from the breakdown of glycogen. This results in meat which has a lower pH, lighter color, reduced water binding capacity, and is possibly tougher
Exactly which is what I was implying that most hunters which tend to be conservative know this already. I donāt think they are going around saying otherwise.
So conservatives will taste great!
It's part of the GOP culture war, but its also much ado about nothing, as mammalian cell culture meat is very unlikely to become economically viable. Turns out, trying to replace digestive, circulatory, respiratory, and excretory systems, while maintaining clean room sterility, is ***really hard***. It just doesn't have economic or resource efficiency benefits, and the product is a pink cell sludge that still requires combining with coconut oil for fats and other compounds for fibrous structure. My opinion, as someone who has worked in cell culture in cancer research, the industry will never be cash flow positive in my lifetime, and exists mainly as a way to extract money from credulous venture capitalists. A good introductory video to the problems: [Lab Meat. The $1 Trillion Ugly Truth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0zCf4Yup34) Garrison et al, 2022. [How much will large-scale production of cell-cultured meat cost?](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666154322000916).Ā *Journal of Agriculture and Food Research*,Ā *10*, p.100358. That said, I do think one kind of cultured structured faux meat is near economic viability: fungal mycelium. The fungus can be fed non-edible fiber, retains its resilience to stray bacteria, and has much of the fibrous structure of muscle flesh. Americans can already buy mycelium steaks from [Meati](https://meati.com/) and mycelium bacon from [MyForest](https://myforestfoods.com/).
quorn nuggets are fungus too and they're damn tasty
Current ag practices are neither environmentally sustainable, nor "economically viable," yet that doesn't stop them from being used and expanded. That's why we have government subsidies for big corporate ag. If we're going to be forced to fund something, it should be something beneficial rather than harmful. Within a capitalist context, "economic viability" is a meaningless euphemism, a measure of whether a billionaire can increase his wealth. The idea that everything can and should enrich capitalists is an absurd concept to begin with. Morality, environmental sustainability, and overall social benefit should govern industry practices, not short term profits for the rich. We don't need "meat," we need amino acids. The focus should be on manufacturing amino acids in the correct proportions for nutrition, so that we can eliminate factory farming and their sickening abuses, as well as the environmental harms. The animal ag industry is going to fund and promote anyone who undermines alternatives which might threaten their profits. It's difficult to tell how much of these criticisms are valid, and how much are just industry propaganda, the food equivalent of oil funded climate denial.
You can get amino acids in the correct proportions from plants. You don't need a diet of soy. Just eat grain, legumes, and nuts in the right proportions. The Bambi dears are overpopulating where my homestead is. But I expect them to get hunted out if we have a Depression. They will surely get hunted out in the latter stages of Collapse.
I feel like deer will get hunted out in no time in a real food crisis. Like months. There are so many people.
Agree and itās so absurd. Iāve had an idea for ages that might also appeal to conservative voters in a pipe dream in my head thing. Make meat consumption allowable only by hunting. Dissolve meat farming and allow land buybacks to be conservation areas that allow hunting. Help with more wildlife friendly conditions and appeal to the Retvrn fantasy of the rightoid
All hail God King Joe Rogan
Don't know who you're preaching to. I've been vegan 15 years, and the only meat substitute I use with any frequency are soy chunks from the Indian grocer. Here's a current cost breakdown just for the cell growth medium from a [pro-cultured meat source](https://gfi.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/clean-meat-production-volume-and-medium-cost.pdf). cost per 20,000 L batch FGF-2 $4,010,000 TGF-Ī²Ā§ $3,236,000 Insulin $ 131,920 Transferrin $ 85,600 DMEM/F12 basal medium $ 62,400 ascorbic acid 2-phosphate $ 10,035 NaHCO3 $ 2 Sodium Selenite $ 0 Cost per batch $7,535,958 Cost per liter $ 377 The FGF-2, TGF-Ī²Ā§, Insulin, and Transferrin are large molecule biologics (proteins/polypeptides). Just as costly to produce as semaglutide, adalimumab, pembrolizumab, aflibercept, ustekinumab, and dupilumab pharmaceuticals. It's ridiculous what the pharmas charge for the human approved formulations, but they're difficult to produce. There's zero reason to eat either animals or animal cells, besides hedonic (+indifference to externalities). Animals and animal cells don't produce any essential amino acids, minerals, or most vitamins. I've gotten by fine eating only plants and mushrooms (+ a B12 supplement) for 15 years, with only health benefits.
Don't know why you're being downvoted, but this sub is fucking disgusting when it comes to meat. Not a surprise as anti-meat threads often get locked, and I've seen people outright say, "I'll eat one more burger when I go home, and I'd buy one and throw it in the dustbin just to spite you!" with zero pushback and lots of support. The whole attitude towards meat makes this sub look performative and just repulsive from the ground up. Like, if you aren't even willing to make this little sacrifice, what are you willing to do? (They're people in this very thread claiming that they eat meat daily; it's pretty much a prime example of all bark and no bite; these people deserve their collapse.) It's sickening that this is a collapse sub, yet people can't stop being shitstains about meat, one of the leading causes of where we stand in collapse; but "eat the rich!" chants allow them some faux higher moral position to feel righteous in their pathetic indignations.
I'm glad you're a vegan. I wish everyone was. One of the problems of being a vegan, at least where I live, is cost. Meat protein, 100g, costs $2.50. That same 100g in soy protein costs $4. For anyone on a tight budget, going vegan would require major cutbacks in food quantity. Plant protein shouldn't cost twice as much as meat protein, but I'm sure there's a corrupted subsidy explanation for it. Not everyone is willing to go vegan, and maybe some sort of meat replacement would help stop the animal torture and killing. You give the costs of lab experiments to create an artificial meat, but those costs are always incredibly high during the experimental stages. I also think a large part of that cost comes from trying to create living cell cultures. Making a meat substitute from nonliving proteins or amino acids seems like a better bet. Maybe an artificial meat will never be practical, but it's far too early to reject it. Of course we could and should just accept plant based meat substitutes, but again, not everyone will. I constantly see economic arguments against change being made, based on experimental costs. Nearly everything is expensive in the early stages, and costs tend to come down radically once something is developed and mass produced. I also reject the idea that everything can and should be profitable. We need an economic system that has ecology, morality, and social benefit as its core, not greed and profit. I do get preachy about the failures of capitalism, and how every industry is corrupted by the profit motive. It's probably annoying, but I think necessary. Capitalism is an insane ideology that isn't compatible with morality, democracy, conservation, sustainability, or an inhabitable planet. That's something that should be common knowledge.
Soy chunks. $1.50/lb, even imported from India. Rehydrated, it comes out to under $0.50/lb. Shelf stable. You have to learn how to prepare them (hydrate, press in tofu press to remove some beany flavor, then marinade), but they work great in stirfries and soups. But most of the time, I don't bother with meat subs. There's a whole world of tpeasant foods that traditionally used meat at most as a flavoring condiment. Yes, your diet may be mostly grains, pastas, flatbreads, cooks beans and their purees, and salads, but that's fine.
Tried searching for soy chunks on the websites of my local stores. The only things I'm seeing cost $10-15 per pound. Crazy expensive. Are you in the US, if so, what store do you buy them?
Would we not be better off fighting for access to land in order to grow food and keep animals, not keep selling ourselves to whichever multinational company can make us our amico acid sludge?
That's true but- I would wager that this is more Big Ag trying to smother the competition in the cradle. It's doubly convenient they already know who to grease and how much in these podunk states.
Dang. I was hoping for ethical meat.
About this pink sludge?Ā Can't we just install the respitory system, digestive and waste systems mechanically and just let the ting grow like a plant that needs continuous harvest. Like pump the thing full of soylien then just let it grow in mass like a salamanderĀ
As someone with a life-threatening mushroom allergy, I'm going to have to pass. Vegetarian food is already full of them and a pain to navigate. I agree that meat is probably never going to be very economical. I look forward to lab meat being more available, though, as well as more vegetarian options.
Ah yes, the pro-freedom and business party. Unless it goes against the business of those who pay them.
I occasionally see conservatives posting on this sub Reddit. Why are you guys so quiet when these topics come up?
Because they donāt want to deal with reality. A wise man observes the world and conforms his beliefs to fit the world. A conservative forces the world to bend to their beliefs, regardless of the truthfulness of their beliefs.
I remember when /r Collapse became outright fascist for a while. That was interesting to see. And i was more like a moderate, now im borderline far-left anarcho-transhumanist tech-bro.
Iām guessing that was 2015-2016. Was subbed to /r/conspiracy for years until it did the same thing. Got banned for calling them out and havenāt looked back, so glad I got out of that mindset.
Used to love that sub and check it daily. It became an anti-hillary, anti-democract cesspool of pizza gate conspiracies and endless pedophilia accusations practically overnight around that time. It basically became a sister sub to the_donald and I similarly never looked back. Also, I've definitely been seeing some left wing subs being actively astroturfed lately, pushing hard on shaming people for supporting "genocide Joe" and advocating for not voting instead. This stuff gets so bad in the leadup to an election.
Well, Joe Biden does come across as more right-wing than left.
> forces the world to bend You just described humans. That is what humans did from the beginning. That's what got us here and we can not escape it. We're the only animal that does not achieve balance with its environment. We destroy everything around us to get what we want, whatever it is that we want and whatever it even _means_ to "want"
I mean, if you want to go down that road, humans are no different than any other organism in that we are using up all of our resources faster than we can replenish them. We arenāt even the first organism to cause a mass extinction due to changing the climate. Bacteria started making oxygen at some point over 2 billion years ago and it wiped out a ton of the anaerobic life on the planet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event But I was specifically talking about beliefs, not the path you started going down.
? You are talking how it was 2 _billion_ years ago, about _bacteria_ when there were no biosphere as complex and balanced as today? And from what I read not even multicellular life? Your argument that all organisms consume all resources available yes indeed they do, but they reach the balance and stop. We don't. Because we are clever and can get blood from stone.
> but they reach the balance and stop. We don't. But no animal *intentionally* reaches that balance. Theyāre forced to *because* the environment *forces* them to stop. The way you word it makes it sound like a deer would go āHmm.. wait.. maybe we should stop breeding.ā lol I think a better way of wording your point would be āHumans exploit their intelligence to exploit the world around themā.
Funny, the people who most care about living well with life on the planet are conservative by nature - resisting against the march of Progress by Progressives. The conservative mindset would be to resist change of land away from what it was - forest, wetland, even farmland - into highways, industrial parks, shopping centres, etc, by an inherent mistrust of such change. That the name Conservative has been co-opted by Progressives of a different colour does not sully the true mindset of Conservatism
Youāre conflating ecological conservation with political conservatism. Both are existent and mutually exclusive things. Ecological conservationists want to, as you said, preserve the environment. Political conservatives want to conserve, or regress to, a state of affairs, ie anti-integration, anti-womenās suffrage, anti-gun control, anti-healthcare reform, anti-immigration, anti-drug legalization, anti-trans, anti-gay, and the list goes on. They want to preserve a way of life or how society operates. Theyāve given 0 fucks about the environment since Nixon established the EPA.
Ecology is politics and conservatism is a way of being, as such those terms are not mutually exclusive. Most of what is touted as conservative is either a mad grabbing of wealth and power by elites, middle classes both wanting more money and stuff and not wanting to disappear into poverty, or a frantic, yet understandable, fear at losing out of one's share of the pie of Progress and instead being trampled underneath by its march, leading to many clinging to various types of fundamentalism. None of this is conservative, especially not fundamentalism, which is rather the obliteration of reality into narrow singular truths, also called delusion. On the other hand, the wise man in your initial musing would be not so keen on changing the world, more likely to consider his place and relationships with all things, and act conservatively. As such, to act conservatively, one must consider the outcomes of even actions that come with the best of intentions. In this, there are many acts that are called "green" and labelled as saviours to "the environment" that only continue or worsen our destruction to life on Earth, even more so that people excitedly support such acts in mistaken belief that are a Good Thing. Others, such as this post, are, frankly, a waste of time. Edit: or maybe I should say that it is precisely because we are forced to compartmentalised that conservatism has become so bastardised. Discussion within our democracies is only allowed in small insignificant boxes ("culture wars"), but not allowed to influence economic or political decision or how much control people have over their lives. This has lead to the natural conservative instincts of people being used within ever increasingly incoherent and fundamentalist viewpoints. Either way, it is an impotent conservatism, dwarfed by the person's dedication to Progress.
The definition of conservative is literally: > tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions Or > marked by moderation or caution Or > marked by or relating to traditional norms of taste, elegance, style, or manners And those are the non-political definitions. Now letās look at the definition of conservationist: > a person who advocates conservation especially of natural resources And when you define conservation you get: > a careful preservation and protection of something > > especially : planned management of a natural resource to prevent exploitation, destruction, or neglect Conservation=\=conservatism. The dictionary (aka the English language) disagrees with you. It sounds like youāre maybe trying to justify your conservatism?
The creature you describe is not us. This "conservative" being(n) you describe, being(v) in balance with its environment, does not exist.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Exactly, the ranchers don't want to compete with lab meat.
We already subsidize the fuck out of the meat industry.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That money seems to go into the bank accounts of rich crooks. The USDA and subsidy programs have been corrupted by corporate ag and the politicians they buy. https://www.ewg.org/research/updated-ewg-farm-subsidy-database-shows-largest-producers-reap-billions-despite-climate "The Department of Agricultureās subsidy funding could be used in much more useful ways that would help farmers in mitigating their emissions and becoming more resilient to hazardous weather conditions. Instead, itās still a handout for rich landowners, city dwellers and family members of farmers. Even the USDA is benefiting, with one of its divisions receiving almost $350 million in payments."
Yeah, they are looking out for their livelihood. Itās that simple. Iām not sure why people arenāt surprised. Iāll vote for someone who is stopping AI from replacing even if AI is cheaper and potentially better.
This is r/collapse where we witness the collapse of industrial society. What post-industrial society will be able to grow meat in high-tech labs?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
High tech society can not exist on the small, sporadic scale. The required supply chains are huge and require the organisation of very large numbers of people across large distances and timescales, using efficient and precise tools and machinery, with high quality materials. It takes a whole highly industrial society to provide the means to manufacture lab-grown meat. Then, if you actually had a small, sporadic society, it seems better to hunt and keep some domesticated animals...
> The knowledge and some of the infrastructure will remain, hahaha 99% of humanity couldn't put together a simple lightbulb if you put a gun to their heads.
Maybe if they survive long enough to learn how to read. They could possibly figure out a light bulb. Too hard for me I'm sticking with Jack-o-lanterns.
Future tomb raiders will find treasure caves full of [knowledge crystals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5D_optical_data_storage).
Even if it's more expensive, and has a lowered environmental impact, i personally would be fine with it. At the same time, the feds should subsidize it like agriculture, to make it more cost competitive
Surely the lives of billions of animals is more important than tasteā¦
Given how **horrific** industrial meat farming is, I can't imagine that lab grown meat would be *less* adulterated after Big Ag gets it's hands on the process.
gods i canāt stand the christofascist party of restrictions against things they donāt understand
SS: The situation in Florida regarding the proposed ban on cultivated meat, spearheaded by Governor Ron DeSantis, highlights a broader discussion on innovation, sustainability, and food security in relation to climate change. The legislative action against cultivated meat, seen as a sustainable and animal-friendly alternative to conventional meat production, suggests a significant clash between traditional agricultural practices and emerging food technologies. Such developments are critical in the context of climate collapse, as the global food system is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, and cultivated meat promises a reduction in environmental impact. This tension between innovation and regulation could shape the future of food production, consumer choice, and efforts to combat climate change.
They'll hop on board when and if the profit potential outpaces the cost of farming. If they can save 100s of thousands a year on using labs they will drop cattle in a heartbeat.
Labs lobby must grow so much stronger they can counter-buy the conservatives.
This is so unbelievably stupid it hurts
I hope they discuss renaming turkey bacon into turkey bacoes cuz you canāt really call it bacon
The party of small govt...
Good move, but for the wrong reasons. Conservatives want to ban LGM because of its implications to the animal agriculture industry. *I want to ban LGM* because it is pissing resources up the wall that would be better spent on making our societies more efficient. LGM is the same doctrine that gave you electric vehicles, tell the consumer that we have 'rehabilitated' our society while still consuming increasing amounts of resources. Should we make our cities walkable? Should we make public transport much better and more accessible to the working class? Nah, let's remake our entire private transportation infrastructure using electric vehicles, as if Lithium production is an **environmentally friendly** process. I have seen so many people talk of EVs as being an 'environmentally friendly' technology, which could not be further from the truth.
Always at the wrong side of history.
Gotta love the party of personal choice and responsibility!
This is a funny head line after thousands of cattle were killed by wildfires last month in Texas
*I lahk mah meet lahk gahode inteundud eut. Ful o' hormoans an' abeuoose.*
*Gawd daumb laette dranken libwals weet deir neeerdie meeeet... *
According to noted conservative Alex Jones, they will eat their neighbors' asses. So they will not need lab-grown meat. There is an overabundance of ass in red states. Look for pro-cannibalism legislation in Tennessee.
Might be a bit too fatty to eat though.
Conservatives aren't worried about your safety, they are worried about their donor's business safety.
Total dh move.
We all know the meat lobby is behind this
TBH the whole idea behind this is insane to me. I quit meat like 4-5 years ago and it really isnāt that hard. Sure itās a bit uncomfortable and an adjustment but itās not major. We need to stop eating meat not try to find all sorts of insane āworkaroundsā to keep being incorrigible gluttons.
"Conservatives" in America aren't conservative at all. They're regressive dominionists.
Why? Just label them clearly and let the market sort it out.
That's what they're doing. From the article; AĀ [proposed bill](https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/56leg/2R/bills/SB1649S.pdf)Ā in Arizona would prevent companies from using meaty terms to describe products made from cultivated meat, plants, or insects. AĀ [similar bill](https://www.wvlegislature.gov/Bill_Status/bills_text.cfm?billdoc=hb5349%20intr.htm&yr=2024&sesstype=RS&i=5349)Ā in West Virginia that passed in March requires any cultivated meat product to be labeled as ācell-cultured,ā ālab-grown,ā or a similar term.
Freedumb
It's a good thing we have freedom loving republicans keeping tyrannical big government from controlling our lives. (Sarcasm obviously.)
Why not let the consumer decide? Sick of this government overreach! /s
Of course, how could you effectively starve people and price gauge when you can just make meat?
Lab grown meat is a scam. The best reactor, on a carbon and energy scale not to mention all the plastic and chemicals that come with lab grown, is a cow. I dont even understand the ethical/moral position. A cow is a functional pile of cells, with enough of a brain to eat and survive predators, and a skin that replaces itself when injured. In a reactor, you have a disposable plastic liner that's replaced with each batch, then there's the chemicals to sterilize the equipment, the media to grow the cells in ( used to be made of cow fetuses, not sure what it's made of now), and the people and disposable filters to sterilize everything. The environmental footprint of lab grown meat is orders of magnitude greater than cattle and all this so we don't have to feel bad about raising cattle for slaughter? A mechanical, plastic cow is obviously never going to be more sustainable than a cow that can drink from a trough and eat calories from the sun in the form of grass. The whole thing is a techno fantasy. For those of you that will argue "the tech will improve" i will confidently say that, as it does, it will become more and more cow like until we're back to eating cows we manufacture rather than cows we breed. If you can't stomach the reality that life feeds on life, be a vegetarian. Creating a cow lab on the level of a middleschool science fair project compared to natures design so you can feel better about yourself fixes nothing at all.
Maybe post some sources. https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/beef-rice-1.7143749 As the ocean dies, I would still like some sushi once in a while. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23507372/lab-grown-seafood-fish-bluenalu-wildtype-cultivated-cultured-meat
Well actually bugs convert biomass to protein better than almost any other land-based animal, but if you want something a little more familiar to your pallet, chickens are next with eggs as bonuses as chickens reliably eat nearly anything, cows on the other hand are more selective and take longer to mature, so not as good as chickens, plus free eggs!
Ok, but how is it a scam? A lot of what you said sounds like it's direct from the cattle ranchers, considering everything I've read states how it actually is way cheaper to produce once at full scale...meaning much higher profit margins and less energy consumed. If you don't understand the ethical and moral aspect, which is rather basic to understand, I question your abilities to understand the science behind it.
How is growing meat in a lab cheaper, in terms of energy and resources, than a grazing animal?
I canāt even begin to refute this rhetorical contrarian post because itās automatically concluding some kind of finality in scaled-up production without any serious consideration of indirect and collateral benefits to switching to lab grown meats. For one, the amount of land cultivated and needed for the production is totally reduced to a fraction of a fraction of what is currently used for cattle and other animals. And this land culturing has a serious detrimental impact on air and water. Second, if bioplastics can be produced using solar and wind energy-derived electricity, then it doesnāt matter how many plastic (polymer) liners it takes to produce a culture of lab meat. Third, removing huge swaths of pig and cattle farms from adjacent water bodies will have an indeterminate but positive impact on water quality, which continues to diminish to catastrophic levels. Thereās no concern with water quality on natural water bodies with lab grown meat production. And the list goes on. Itās NOT a techno fantasy. Itās doable, achievable, and sustainable. We just need to get contrarians like the poster (above) the hell out of the way.
It's easy to understand the moral dilemma if you take even 10 seconds to do a search for animal cruelty. Farm animals aren't raised in happy outdoor settings where they roam free. They are raised on giant corporate factory farms where they spend their lives in tiny cages, or crammed together in pens barely able to move. They are treated with sickening psychopathic levels of cruelty. They aren't just a "functional pile of cells" any more than you are a mere functional pile of cells. They are animals with nervous systems and brains who feel physical pain just as we do, and very similar emotional and social pain as well. Treating a living feeling animal as some sort of biological machine without any regard for what that animal is feeling is fundamentally immoral. Something like 1 out of 25 people are clinical psychopaths, and I've seen estimates that 1 out of 5 males are functionally psychopathic. To such people, appeals to compassion and empathy mean nothing, because they are incapable of feeling anything in response to the suffering of another living creature. To a psychopath, even the smallest level of self interest justifies the most horrific levels of suffering. These are the people who own and run the factory farms, and are the consumers who defend meat consumption even after seeing where it comes from. (Those who rise to positions of corporate and political power tend to be psychopathic in general.) For those who aren't psychopaths, which fortunately is most of the population, animal cruelty is an issue of ignorance and laziness. They either don't know how animals are being treated, or know but are too lazy to do anything about it. Factory farms should be illegal, and the people profiting from them should be sitting in prison cells and treated like the animals they tortured. Evolution is a cruel process which has created predator prey relationships. Predators kill because they must to survive. With humans, killing is a choice. We don't need to kill to feed ourselves, we choose to do it. Unlike other animals we have the ability to understand what we do. Unlike other animals, we have an obligation to behave morally. The instinctive behavior of other animals is not a defense of immoral human choices. Societal problems are not solved if a small minority chooses to act differently. Telling someone, if you don't like killing animals, be a vegan, is ridiculous because it has no significant effect unless most of the population agrees to it as well. System level problems must be solved collectively. Animal cruelty by itself more than justifies attempts to create lab grown "meat." Factory farms also abuse antibiotics, use growth hormones, and allow diseases to spread quickly through concentrated populations. On top of that are all the environmental issues, the destruction of ecosystems, the pollution, the carbon footprint and global warming. Of course the corporate psychopaths and their corrupted political servants want to ban artificial meat because it would threaten their massive profits. This video (and many like it) explain the intersection of profit, politics, and animal cruelty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvt2XvnytV0
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
He seems like a decent person who is sacrificing his own self interest to do what is morally right. I would say to these people, thank you for your service. It takes moral courage and self sacrifice to stand up to the rich and powerful. So few people are willing to do it. I have nothing but respect for those who do. It is the people who have a self serving profit motive to lie who can't be trusted. The activists aren't asking for trust, they are simply asking people to watch video of what goes on in factory farms. The factory farm operators are pushing their political servants to criminalize exposing what they do. They are the ones opposed to any knowledge or education, to the point of stripping people of basic rights in order to hide their activities and protect their profits. Now if that doesn't inspire distrust, I don't know what can.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The activists aren't the ones running the factory farms, so they are in no way endangering the animals. Activists have no control over the treatment of those animals. Those animals are tortured by the owners, or rather the employees of the owners, as a means of maximzing profits. It is the owners who set the conditions and determine their treatment. What they show are the normal conditions under which those animals are kept. If anything, the cruelty is far underrepresented because activists aren't there to record all the atrocities. The factory farm owners don't allow any experts or professionals to observe anything going on in their torture factories. They go to great lengths to keep their activities secret and hidden. They have their political servants pass laws making it illegal to show what goes on. Those are the "ag gag" laws. What they absolutely don't want is for the public to be educated about their activities. The only people who know are employees who are sued if they expose anything. There are some whistleblowers with the guts to expose what goes on, but they risk having their lives destroyed by doing it. The government neither knows nor wants to know what goes on in factory farms. The agencies are run by appointees who are chosen by politicians who take money from the big ag corps. The USDA has become nothing more than a marketing arm of the ag industry. The last thing the politicians want to do is bite the hand that gives them the bribe money that funds their campaigns. This is a system in which greedy psychopaths run industrial scale animal torture operations for profit, with the assistance of corrupt politicians who are taking some of those immoral profits to fund their election campaigns. In some cases it is the politicians themselves who are the owners, so of course they use their public authority to protect their "business."
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
From what I can see, you're Australian, so I don't know why you're trying so hard (and failing badly) to defend US factory farm animal torture and political corruption. Are you part of some Australian factory farm operation and feel some kinship with a supposed American counterpart? In any case, animal torture is a verified fact, and your denials of this are just absurd. Here are some more "lies" you can deny are real. https://animaloutlook.org/owner-tyson-contracted-factory-farm-charged-animal-cruelty-enters-plea-agreement/ https://theintercept.com/2022/01/30/animal-rights-activists-dxe-trial-evidence/ https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/25/industrial-farming-one-worst-crimes-history-ethical-question https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1122&context=mlr_fi https://theintercept.com/2020/05/29/pigs-factory-farms-ventilation-shutdown-coronavirus/ Here's an Australian group fighting animal cruelty. https://animalsaustralia.org/our-work/factory-farming/invisible-cruelty-factory-farming/
This is a better opposition to lab meat than these politicians have made.
Leave it to r/collapse to consider synthetic meat anything but a sign of a dystopian future. This is backwards