Will Meat Just Be Obsolete Some Day?

Great Debates
21

We certainly can’t get much bigger than we are without some drastic changes, in fact, we can’t really sustain our current population with most of them anyway.

If we can reduce everyone’s carbon footprint, while maintaining or even increasing their standard of living, then we can get to whatever arbitrary number of peoples as we want. (I think that calculations show that when we get into the quadrillions, waste heat starts to be a serious issue.)

By “manufacture” water, I assume you mean desalination? We can do that now, it’s just energy intensive. Get some Thorium reactors rolling and we can have all we need. In fact, that gives us all the carbon free energy we need too, which saves the forests and jungles as well.

Food production is certainly going to be a part of that, the way we make beef in this country is not sustainable. Maybe we can make some improvements on that front, but it would be much easier (once it is developed) to just make out meat in a machine, rather than in a living mammal.

22

I predict it will happen. Fake meat, using different technologies, is already “pretty good.” It will only get better and cheaper, and it will be better for the environment. I’m pretty sure we’ll see this happen, and I’m perfectly fine with it.

23

We are draining our aquifers at an alarming rate that is not sustainable. Plant farming depends on these. Areas of the world already are facing severe water shortages. The Molecule That Made Us was an excellent PBS doc on our water crisis…

There will be wars fought over water. Im not sure desalinization will be of any use in farming because of distance. Maybe im being too pessimistic but Im glad I wasnt born in the 2020s.

24

That would be part of our unsustainable practices. There are ways of drastically reducing the amount of water needed to grow food, though most require enough infrastructure that they cannot economically compete with just drawing water up out of the ground.

We ship vast quantities of oil all over the country in pipelines, we can do the same with water, especially if there are bunch of oil pipelines no longer being used for oil.

I’d have much less concerns about a water pipeline going through an aquifer than an oil pipeline as well, as there is a good bit of difference in the effects on the environment if there is a leak.

I see the water problem as one that can be dealt with, if we choose to do so. If we just leave it to resolve itself, as we seem to do with a number of problems, then it’s not going to go away.

25

That is correct. It will not happen.

In a Mad Max scenario.

And this is one of two problems with veganism: it’s a religion. You don’t have to believe in a god to be religious. It has its own set of “facts” such as the ones you just described. As an adult, I can eat something unhealthy, indeed all the time if I feel like it, even if it’s expensive and unsanitary, but meat is not unsanitary or more expensive than the more exotic vegan foods. It’s also a huge stretch to call meat carcinogenic.

At a price dozens or hundreds of times more expensive than factory-farmed meat, and it’s dry due to a low fat content. This may be corrected some decades into the future, in which case people will still eat meat, just without slaughter. If that was the goal, it may happen.

Yes (unless you’re okay with lab-grown meat).

The second issue with vegans is a lack of scientific knowledge, since much of the “scientific knowledge” that they repeat is bogus. You probably don’t know what BCM-01 is. It’s an enzyme that converts carotenoids (such as beta-carotene) into retinol (aka Vitamin A). You will have to eat something exotic (and therefore expensive) to get a vegan source of vitamin A. This is only an issue for some vegans, specifically those with a polymorphism of BCM-01 preventing them from converting beta-carotene into vitamin A. Vitamin A, which is fat-soluble, lasts a long time, and few vegans were raised that way. As a result, if they become vegan they have a large store of vitamin A. It can take months or years to deplete it, and when that happens they become sick. There’s a reason why there’s so many ex-vegans, and it’s not just a case of “they did it wrong”. I don’t see how not having the best genes counts as “doing it wrong”.

I could go into iron metabolism as well, but I’ll leave out some of the details. I will just say there’s only one vegan source of heme-iron: the impossible burger, which includes yeast that have been genetically engineered to produce heme-iron. (Not that I have any problem with genetic engineering.) Again, just like with vitamin A, this is only a problem with some vegans. Some people can easily absorb and convert non-heme iron into heme-iron, but others can’t. These vegans eat lots of spinach and other iron-rich plant foods, get their blood tested, and are told their iron levels are too low. They get sick and reintroduce meat (or eat a lot of impossible burgers). Or they have no problems with heme-iron and can run marathons at age seventy.

People are not all the same, no matter what the vegan movement says.

26

Even if we go 100% all “what is best for the environment” that will only reduce meat consumption.

Some meat is grazed on land that is unsuitable for farming, and you can feed many animals on silage and waste materials.

27

The problem with meat vs sustainability (like most problems with sustainability) is entirely about the sheer number of humans needing whatever unsustainable practice we’re discussing.

e.g. The North American Plains Indians could have been sustainably stampeding buffalo off cliffs for the next several millenia. It was sustainable because the buffalo were many and the humans were few. What’s not sustainable is millions of humans trying to eat feral cliff-killed buffalo.

So, a modest proposal:

Soylent green is the easy answer. Its production is fully sustainable in the near term, and as it becomes unsustainable for lack of feedstock we can switch back to beef, etc. Which will be fully sustainable given the then much lower human headcount. As necessary over the centuries we can alter the mix of these two food sources until we achieve an equilibrium.
You're welcome. Next hard problem?

FTR: Yes I’m kidding. But at the same time it IS true that every example of “Activity XYZ is unsustainable.” is really just an incomplete statement that is more correctly rendered as “Activity XYZ is unsustainable beyond volume ABC.”

28

Right, but the problem is that “volume ABC” is lower than what we are currently at. When it is said something is unsustainable, it means that what we are doing, right now, cannot go on indefinitely, and therefore, something that we are doing, right now, needs to change.

Tell me more about this Soylent Green. I’ve heard that it is made of Peeps?

29

Doesn’t matter if you are right or not. Why do you feel obligated to dictate other people’s behavior? Look to your own instead and leave others alone to to find their own way.

30

Depends on the meat.

I think chicken nuggets and hamburger meat will be replaced within the next decade or two.

But I don’t know if various cuts of steak will. Maybe if we have 3D printed steaks it will.

Same with fried chicken. Meats made from processed meats will be easier to replicate than fried chicken or steak.

31

Because some things we do are unethical and bad for the environment. Meat is one of them. Meat should be phased out the same way coal is being phased out.

If we have lab grown meat that tastes the same or better but it is cheaper, requires less resources, doesn’t pollute as much (cows are a major source of climate change, and a lot of land is required for animal farming) and doesn’t involve animal suffering we need to prioritize it.

32

We also do not have to tell anyone what to do.

If hamburger meat from a cow is $10 a pound, and lab grown is $2 a pound, and there is not a significant difference, then people are going to go with the lab grown stuff. No need for enforcement.

And for those who prefer to have actual beef from cows, I don’t see that going away. It will probably become much more expensive, but it will be there for those who want to treat themselves to it.

33

There are a lot of ethical systems, so it’s hard to define any specific behavior as “unethical”. In mine, dictating someone else’s behavior is a far larger flaw than eating meat. As for the environment, like us, it has a habit of adapting. One of the essential truths of life is it is at the expense of other life. Vegetable life may be just as valuable to Gaia as animals (and maybe more so). So consider eating some meat and leave the potatoes alone.

34

Who is dictating someone’s behavior here? I see people talking about how meat may become obsolete, expensive, or no longer all that enticing, but I’ve not seen anyone in this thread call for a ban or to make it illegal.

The environment has a habit of adapting, sure, over periods of tens of thousands of years or longer, not really all that useful to us who want to eat sometime this week.

Do you actually have a belief in Gaia here that you are expressing? Or is that just meant as a very poor understanding and mockery of someone else’s beliefs?

And are there any limits to your ethical system? Is, for instance, telling someone not to murder a far larger flaw than murder? I assume and hope the answer is yes, but I’m just trying to get a gauge here.

35

Sure it’s technically feasible. Although if it costs the same as it does to pump oil, that’s 12 cents per gallon.

For a household that uses 80-100 gallons per day, that’s pretty expensive. Never mind agriculture.
Last I checked, desal was prohibitive at mils per gallon.

36

I kind of laughed at Burger King’s ads saying that people can’t tell the difference between what is basically smashed up peas and their real ground beef Whopper. To me that’s more an indictment of how terrible a Whopper is (frozen) compared to say McDonald’s or Wendy’s fresh, never frozen beef than an endorsement of their veggie “burger”. If a place that used fresh beef ran those ads I’d be more inclined to pay attention.

Maybe meat will be obsolete when they have something as cheap as and is completely indistinguishable from pan fried bacon. I don’t think we’re close yet.

37

… and here’s the final part in my admittedly long essay:

Economics
This is what’s going to make the difference in reducing meat consumption in our world

You’re not going to get much traction arguing with confirmed meat-eaters that something they’ve been doing and enjoying all their lives is unethical. Hell, we can’t get humans to wear a piece of cloth across their face to protect other humans during a pandemic, we’re definitely not going to get those folks to give a damn about animals. Ethics will work with a few, but not the masses.

You’re not even going to get traction with arguing about sustainability or protecting life or even the source of their enjoyment - sushi enthusiasts are busy eating the bluefin tuna into extinction as just one example.

I suppose you could just BAN animal based foods to reduce availability, but an underground supply and black market would spring up - look at every banned drug, substance, or thing whatosever in history.

Even in places where meat/fish were scarce they were never eliminated as food sources. India has always had plenty of meat-eaters living next to the vegetarians.

What will work is hitting people in the purse.

One reason domestic meat is so wildly popular is that hunting is an expensive and uncertain way to get food. Even in pre-money societies a lot of time, effort, and resources went into hunting in comparison for the food obtained. That’s why most of those societies ate mostly plants.

Even now, factory farmed meats dominate the market. Ethically and sustainably raised meat is arguably so much better, but it’s so damned expensive compared to factory farming that, for the poor it might as well not exist. When you’re poor, you’ll buy the cheap ground beef over the grass-fed beef that costs four times as much because that’s what makes sense for you. Faux-meats also usually cost more than cheap factory-farmed meat at this point so again, the poorest folks - and there are a lot of them - are going to buy the real meat that’s cheaper.

But if you forbid the nasty, dirty, disease-promoting factory farming practices that WILL increase the cost of meat overall. People will buy less because they can’t afford as much. Meanwhile, promote meat alternatives - not just the faux-meats (which have their place) but vegetarian eating that tastes good but doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. Eventually, the cost of real meat will meet or exceed the cost of faux-meats. If you can get petri-meat taste acceptable and prices down to match or be lower than real meat people will start to convert to them simply because it makes economic sense for them.

At that point you won’t need to ban meat - it will slowly (or maybe not so slowly) become less and less common in humanity’s diet. People might still indulge occasionally, and you’ll have the occasional wealthy carnivore, but just as people don’t eat caviar or Wagyu beef every day, people won’t eat real meat (domestic or game) every day. As production of domestic meat becomes smaller the economy of scale will be lost and it will become a true luxury that most people won’t bother with because of the price.

You won’t have to ban meat at all in those circumstances, you’ll have less of a social backlash (those who really, really want to have meat will be able to obtain it - it will just be expensive), and new social traditions will evolve around the new dietary customs.

38

Burgers at McDonald’s - indeed, all the meat at McDonald’s - is delivered frozen. Perhaps you should re-evaluate your source of information on that.

39

Even if you don’t agree that the environmental and humane aspects of eating meat are an issue, people who do should still put enough financial capital and human capital into lab grown meat until it becomes the better alternative to factory farming.

Eventually for most people there won’t be much incentive to eat animal grown meat the same way there isn’t much incentive to own slaves or burn coal.

40

Considering that civilization is collapsing, no.