[LMB] Sorry, Cordelia! Here, have a real steak.

[Raymond Collins]

It's possible lab grown meat would be a popular alternative for space
stations where raising beef would be impossible and the price of shipping
steaks up from Earth gravity prohibitively expensive.

On Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 9:18 PM Damien Sullivan <phoenix at mindstalk.net> wrote:

> On Sat, Sep 25, 2021 at 01:01:42PM +0000, Karen A. Wyle wrote:
> >  I glanced at this article, though I didn't read it thoroughly or
> >  completely. I noticed that it seemed at least partly concerned with
> >  the idea of replacing meat entirely for environmental reasons, rather
>
> Almost entirely concerned with environmental reasons, yes.
>
> >  than offering an affordable option at the grocery store. Did it
> >  demonstrate that the latter is and will remain impractical?  Karen A.
>
> It depends what you mean by 'affordable'.  "Competitive with
> traditional" meat, yes unlikely.  Even a favorable and optimistic
> industry report basically concedes they can't compete.  "People can pay
> several times current prices to feel good" might happen.  An Israeli
> company, Future Meat, says they can culture chicken for only $18/pound
> (that's *production* cost, so retail probably $30+), but see no room for
> improvement.
>
> Well, and that number is lower than the ones I see in press-releases,
> $7.50 for a quarter-pound of chicken, so $30/lb.  And that's blended
> with "some" plant proteins.  And no actual products on the market yet.
>
> So basically you could pay more to know your meat came from 'happy'
> animals, or pay even more to know your meat didn't come from an animal
> at all.
>
> >     On Saturday, September 25, 2021, 07:44:57 AM EDT, Pat Mathews <
> mathews55 at msn.com> wrote:
> >
> >  https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/
>
> Long article, but worth reading.
>
> Feeding the cells is hard, getting them to not wallow in their own waste
> is hard, keeping them sterile of contaminants is hard, getting them to
> not depend on serum from slaughtered cow fetuses is hard, building
> enough and big enough bioreactors for food markets ishard.  Culturing
> animal cells is basically what many vaccine companies do, so there's
> already a lot of experience in just how hard the problems are.
>
> -xx- Damien X-)
> --
> Lois-Bujold mailing list message sent to rcrcoll6 at gmail.com
> Lois-Bujold at lists.herald.co.uk
> http://lists.herald.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lois-bujold
>