In the book “The Ministry for the Future”, a group uses drones at industrial cattle farms to infect the population of cows with mad cow disease. They do it at random and are never caught. Demand for beef plummets.
What ever happened to synthetic meat? There was a lot of chatter about it years ago, and then it faded into obscurity. We desperately need it right now…
Culture meat is still in the works. In the meantime, we should be looking at the wide variety of plant-based foods out there because if we only wait, harm will continue to be done
Has there been a problem in developing it? Or perhaps in getting the cost down?
From what I understand, yes it’s in scaling and getting the cost down. It’s not that it is not technically possible, it’s that it’s hard to do at scale and at a low cost
While not quite culture meat, there is one thing that’s pretty cool that’s already here: precision fermentation. Essentially you can get biologically identical proteins from it so there’s stuff like non-animal whey ice creams you can get right now
Oh, nice. Bacteria save the day again. Has there been any progress on making a meat-like substance that way?
Impossible meat uses precision fermentation to make its heme
Just earlier this year one company got FDA approval for one specific type of cultured meat. So there are regulatory hurdles and there is the issue of producing enough of it at scale at a reasonable price. But there has been progress in the field and we could see more products in stores in the next couple years. I really hope a big transition to cultured meat and dairy happens because I think it would have an enormous impact on carbon emissions and water use from agriculture.
