Two U.S. food companies have received the go-ahead to sell chicken grown from cultivated animal cells in a production facility. It’s the first time meat grown this way will be sold in the U.S.
Two U.S. food companies have received the go-ahead to sell chicken grown from cultivated animal cells in a production facility. It’s the first time meat grown this way will be sold in the U.S.
Anyone have any ideas on price versus kill meat? Especially longterm?
Exactly where my head is. Assuming it is currently expensive since it is new and such little supply. But I’m wondering 5+ years down the road… Is it likely that it will be less expensive than traditional counterparts?
Bioreactors are much less efficient at producing meat than their biological equivalents. They are essentially huge buckets of liquid with nutrients without proper heart/lungs, circulatory/respiratory system that can evenly distribute oxygen and remove CO2, so you need to be constantly shaking and mixing… which doesn’t help with the heat that the reactions produce. You need to keep a constant temperature… and you also don’t have an immune system to protect from bacterial growth that could contaminate the whole batch.
This is much more expensive, more risky for health and less environmentally friendly than naturally grown meat. Natural biological organisms have evolved across millenia to be extremelly efficient at what they do. You just can’t compete using current tech.
I don’t think we would be able to get a cheap sustainable alternative to traditional meat without essentially replicating the way animals grow. And at that point, I wonder if killing an artificially designed animal is any better.
Personally, i think protein from breeding maggots is the more realistic and sustainable source of meat at the moment… starting from a simple lifeform and adapting it is likely more viable.