I have often thought that artificial meat could be one of the most important technologies of the 21st century. This articlegot me thinking about it again.
Animals raised for meat consumer lots of land and water and emit lots of greenhouse gases.
Farm animals are a major source of infectious diseases some of which can kill humans. It would probably be a lot easier to control conditions for growing artificial meat making it potentially a lot safer.
3)The treatment of farm animals particularly in factory farming is a major ethical issue.
From a purely culinary perspective that artificial meat could potentially allow for a lot more variety allowing people to easily enjoy meat from protected species, predators etc. Tigers, dolphins etc.
As the developing countries grow richer, demand for meat is set to explode potentially making some of the above problems even more urgent. On the flip side if industrial-style processes make artificial meat cheap enough, it could be a great source of nutrition for relatively poor people especially since it could probably nutritionally fortified in various ways.
The bottom line is that artificial meat seems like a real win from a variety of policy perspectives. At the very least I think it deserves a lot more public research money. Of course the same agricultural lobbies which do such a great job gobbling up taxpayer money may not like the idea very much but perhaps green groups need to push this as a major issue.
True, but even artificial meat would require water and produce wastes. Is there a particular shortage of land so severe that we must move to engineered protein factories to accommodate our exploding population? A better solution might include logically thought out population control as well.
I agree. This would largely be beneficial.
Factory farming is a by product of demand. We should couple this program with one that does not encourage selfish indulgence at every opportunity. I’m a near carnivore but I would gladly pay more, (and do) for ethically raised meats.
Why not? Sounds great to me. I’d be curious to see how they mimic the effects of the animal’s diet though.
Agreed.
Well one problem you’d have to tackle is the “ick” factor. A lot of green groups are made up people who largely vote and act with their hearts rather than their brains. For many of them it is a simple equation of meat=bad, and that’s as far as they thought it out. You’ll need to win them over. Start with the vegetarians and pescetarians who use artificial meat products for ethical, rather than health reasons.
I don’t see why agricultural companies would be necessarily opposed to it – the smart ones are going to realize that if someone’s going to make a shitload of money on artificial meat, it might as well be them, and get into the game.
Which is exactly why, IMO, tons of taxpayer money aren’t needed: a technology like this, which has such clear commercial applications, will get plenty of private funding if it begins to look truly viable – and as yet, they’ve a long way to go. Anyone with any brains at all can see the enormous potential; even if artificial meat proves not viable for human consumption (because people find the idea icky or it proves unpalatable), the animal-products market alone is immense. I am quite confident the scientists at ADM and all the rest are staying abreast of the research in this field.
The best rationale for government-funded science is that the private sector is much less inclined to develop things which have little or no commercial application. Given the fact that government grant money is finite, I’d prefer to see those limited resources go to pure academic research, not towards supplementing Monsanto’s R&D budget.
furt I think you may overestimate the eagerness with which a company would spend risky research dollars into a huge commodity industry. If they’re going to grow tissue, it will not be for consumption but medical purposes. Maybe then, after the patent expires, we’ll get to eat cheap meat.
The article says 30% of world’s ice-free land is used to raise animals. With artificial meat some of this land could be turned to wilderness acting as a carbon sink. And there would be fewer farm animals spewing greenhouse gases like methane into the atmosphere. Of course artificial meat would have some environmental impact too but fundamentally I think it’s a lot more efficient just growing the meat you want rather than raising a whole animal for perhaps years.
The rationale for public research money is externalities. As described in my OP, artificial meat has a number of social benefits in terms of the environment and public health in addition to the purely commercial benefit. Hence the private sector is likely to underinvest in this research. Again it’s similar to medical research which would exist without government funding but which is accelerated by the latter.
You say 30% of the land area, so you are looking at an area of about 50 million km^2.
How do you propose to fund this wilderness area? Wilderness doesn’t just stake care of itself. To have any actual value it needs infraststructure. It needs constant weed and pest animal control. It need slaw enforcement. It needs management. The budget for national parks in the US is about a billion dollars a year, for an area of less than 50, 000 km^2. Your proposal would require a budget of at least a trillion dollars a year. It would actually be an order of magnitude larger than that, because US national parks are so small that they largely don’t need their own infrastructure or law enforcement. Once you convert area that are 1/4 the size of the lower 48 into uninhabitable wilderness, those areas are going to need their own roads, their own police, their own emergency services etc. But they will have no income base at all to support such things. Where is this money coming from?
Why would the land be returned to wilderness? Are you proposing to forcibly acquire this land under eminent domain? If so, add several trillion dollars to your required budget? If you don’t do so, then people are just going to keep farming the land. If they can’t compete with synthetic meat, they are going to turn to producing crops on what is marginal farming land, leading to severe environmental problems.
On a global scale grazing land is a major carbon sink. When the land ceases being grazed, it becomes a carbon source. Far from your wilderness acting as a carbon sink, exactly the opposite would occur. It would lead to a massive increase in greenhouse gas emissions.
From an environmental perspective, if we could somehow revert all grazing land to wilderness it would be a catastrophe unprecedented in the past 10, 00 years. From an economic and social perspective it would probably be more catastrophic. The social upheaval, loss of control of vast tracts of land and economic restructuring would be devastating.
Which highlights why it’s always worth considering actual consequences rather than working from an assumption that humans are eeeevil.
Can you please point me in the right direction here?
That seems to be creating a mountain out of a molehill of an OP. Even if it isn’t used for wilderness, if we make meat cheaper to produce the next best use (which for some of it could indeed be wilderness) would step up, giving whatever was just edged out better resources.
Which highlights why it is always worth considering actual consequences etc.
There likely wouldn’t be “a” patent. We’re talking about a potential whole sector, not one specific product, and the process for growing prime rib in a lab is not going to be exactly the same as that for growing a human kidney; even if it were, if the artificial meat is viable as a comestible, there’s no reason the company in question wouldn’t do both (and if it’s not viable, nobody would).
I’m not opposed to it per se; there are no doubt much more stupid and useless things that get funded by federal grants, but IMO, it’s less deserving of federal funds than, say, astrophysics or pure microbiology or other things that are much, much farther down on the commercial-potential scale. Yes, it has potential positive externalities; but nearly all research does (including astrophysics). It’s also likely decades away from even getting close to realizing them (if it ever does), but when it does get close, everyone knows exactly how big the market is.
Unless you’re going to say that all research into everything should be funded (presumably by the money fairy), making artificial meat a major R&D priority means taking money away from something else it’s currently being spent on.
To the extent it takes away from baldness-prevention research, it’s a win in my view. To the extent it takes away from exploring subatomic particles, it’s a loss. IMO, the second is much more likely.
Nevertheless, they’re going to rush to some other market full of their cronies first, which is not going to be the local discount supermarket. But of course, given the level to which our government has been captured, even if we did fund it, we still let everyone keep their patents anyway.
There are interesting economic reasons why government would consider funding research. Some even put forward by conservative economists. But I guess someone who is already at the ready to bring up money fairies isn’t actually interested in such a discussion. It’d be a hijack anyway, I guess.
Of course. Pretty much all new products become first available to those with the most resources, regardless of who (if anyone) funded the research. That’s basic economics.
Often enough. Seems like a pretty good reason to not use government money to do commercial research to me.
I’m well aware of them, and I’ve said twice that don’t have a problem with government-funded research per se. I’m less enthusiastic, however, about government-funded research which prioritizes the development of commercially-viable products. ISTM that’s primarily the job of whoever aims to sell said product.
If you’re of the opinion that government funding is not finite, then I agree that I’m not interested in discussion.
I would like to point out that it will probably take decades before lab meat is economically viable, but you can reduce the environmental footprint by switching from beef and lamb to chicken and pork. The methane produced by ruminants is a significant source of greenhouse gases.
This article says the GHG footprint of beef is 13 times that of chicken.
I actually tried to compute the GHG footprint for cheese, but my numbers are very rough, since it is difficult to compute how many ounces of milk go into an ounce of cheese.
