1/3 third of the population being vegetarian is actually a very high percentage compared to anywhere else - your own cite indicates that India has the highest percentage and number of vegetarians than anywhere else. It also indicates that even among non-vegetarians meat consumption is lower than elsewhere.
Some Jains are vegan due to concerns about animal welfare. This may be more common in the West with factory farming than in India where cows are raised and cared for in a much different manner. Jainism does not require veganism, but some are and, in addition, it’s not a large group of people overall.
I don’t mind a bit of hunting. In the UK this is mostly hunting pheasant and deer- the pheasant are specially bred for the purpose, and the deer that get shot are privately owned. We used to hunt foxes, but that wasn’t really a good idea. You can’t eat them, and they do keep the mice down.
In a future where farmed meat is absent, hunting deer and other animals for culling purposes would only supply a small amount of food, and would probably be a luxury item, or perhaps the hunters themselves would consume most of it.
Nature herself (yes, I’m personifying here) has ways of dealing with unnatural situations like an overpopulation of deer due to human intervention and in general I’m happy to let her manage things on her own.
I’m with you on this, except it’s less about my compassion about them dying of starvation, and more my desire to not be inconvenienced by hitting them in the road.
Agreeing; and adding that it also causes massive damage to other species, because before they die the starving deer will eat anything and everything they can reach; killing some plants directly, depriving other plants of the ability to reseed, and preventing members of other animal species from being able to find anything to eat.
So, a bit of a contradiction in your OP is where I’d like to start. Why would meat grown in a dish not be meat? And would vegans eat such a product, whether it’s grown in a dish or taken from an animal? I’d say that’s a no.
I could see lab grown meat becoming a thing going forward. But I seriously doubt that this will mean meat is ‘obsolete’, depending on what you mean by that. My guess is that if we ever get serious space colonization, that lab grown meat will probably be the best viable alternative, but I’d say that rich people will still want the real stuff. Back here on Earth, I think meat will always be a staple, especially as countries and societies become more wealthy. That’s been the trend after all, as meat has actually grown in popularity as countries and people become wealthier. That said, I could see the lab grown kind becoming a niche market…similar to the current craze for not-meat burgers and no-sausage breakfast sandwiches.
Price will be the key there. Currently, the not-meat choices are just as expensive, and really don’t taste better than their meat counterparts. They don’t taste bad, mind, but unless you really couldn’t tell the difference (and even my unsophisticated palate can) AND it’s cheaper it’s just not going to be more than a niche market.
Well, that’s not certain. Many vegans don’t eat meat for ethical reasons. But vat-meat has no ethical concerns (as far as I can see). I’d be much more ready to eat vat-meat than death-meat.
Maybe, though my own experience with vegans is that they wouldn’t. Vegetarians might. But assuming that vat grown meat is basically the same properties, taste and effect, which I think it would have to in order to be a viable alternative in a mass market, a lot of vegans wouldn’t eat it because of what it would do to their digestive systems, especially initially. They also wouldn’t enjoy the taste and texture, assuming, again, it was indistinguishable from animal farmed meat.
I could be wrong on this…I’m going based on people who I know who are vegans, including my sister and her family (and her husbands family who have been vegan for a long, long time).
[quote=“XT”] My guess is that if we ever get serious space colonization, that lab grown meat will probably be the best viable alternative, but I’d say that rich people will still want the real stuff.
[/quote]
As a sci-fi worldbuilder I’ve considered lots of bizarre attitudes to meat-eating. Some planets just eat meat from non-sentient cows with recyclable robot brains. Some planets don’t agree that culturing cells from other animals is ethical, so they only eat meat from cells cultured from the consumer’s own body. And so on. In a universe where there are alternatives to eating dead animals, I think we should take them all.
Or, to me more probably, you’d have rotating habitats with their own environments, with some dedicated to meat producing animals along with habitats for processing the meat (or large habitats for various endangered species to live in). I’m not sure if this would be more economical than vat grown meat in space…my WAG is both would need similar infrastructure, and, basically, if you have the technology to build such a structure then the sky is the limit. You could have incredible numbers of the things with just the resources in the various asteroid belts or NEOs, and power wouldn’t be a serious issue either with solar or even nuclear being available in almost unlimited quantities.
Vat meat could probably be done in a cupboard.
You could keep the pastures as parklands. Maybe a few deer and hedgehogs - eat them if you must when they get too crowded, but don’t deliberately pack herds of them into the habitats in order to harvest venison.
Or, if it tastes good enough, and it’s way cheaper.
I see such technologies driving down the price of artificial meats, and I also think that we do not pay the true price for the real meats that we consume.
If it’s $2.00 for plant based ground meat like product, and $10 for real ground beef, many will make the switch, even if they prefer the real thing.
Maybe special occasions they may splurge, just as I splurge on my favorite cuts of meat sometimes now.
Depends on the reason for currently abstaining from meat.
People who like meat but abstain for ethical reasons might well chow down on the lab-made product because 1) it tastes like meat and 2) has never been an animal.
On the other hand, someone like my mother-in-law who didn’t eat meat because she just didn’t like the taste/texture would not eat vat-meat because she probably wouldn’t like it any more than real meat.
Which is why in my first post here I asked the OP about ethics and why they were vegetarian vegan but I don’t recall getting a response. (It is possible I missed it)
In the Indian context, the vegetarians may or may not eat it but they will allow others to eat it unhindered.
For example: poor pregnant vegetarian women, in India, routinely get advised to eat eggs by medical practitioners,because it is the cheapest protein but families object. Having vegan meat will remove the stigma.
Jains (as mentioned by @Broomstick ) are predominantly vegetarian and wherever they are in majority, they lobby to exclude eggs/meat given for free to underprivileged children at schools, even if the children want it . This problem could also be addressed.
We no longer have to dug up guano (bat manure) to make gunpowder.
We no longer have to harvest whales to get essential oils.
I can see soon where some small heavily populated countries like Taiwan or Japan might switch to growing its own proteins in order to feed its population while not having to import food or set land aside for it.
[quote=“urbanredneck2, post:118, topic:913515, full:true”]We no longer have to harvest whales to get essential oils.
I can see soon where some small heavily populated countries like Taiwan or Japan might switch to growing its own proteins in order to feed its population while not having to import food or set land aside for it.
[/quote]
Yet Japan is one of the few countries where there is still a market for whale meat. Tradition has long legs.
The whale oil was largely supplanted by petroleum oils - if petroleum had not grown up as an industry I’m not sure what would have replaced whale oil.
Meat may become “obsolete” in one sense, but I don’t think it will entirely disappear. I mean, we still have humans who knap flint. Granted, that’s more of a hobby than a requirement, but the point is that there is a subset of people who want to maintain knowledge of the, for lack of a better term, “old ways”.