A Solution Looking For A Problem

Jack Hubbard, over at Townhall.com has an article entitled Lab Grown Meat's Promises Don't Match Reality. Lab grown meats will not be better for the environment, will not be cheaper, and I doubt that we will discover that it will be as nutritionally dense and satifying as the real thing. Indeed, one suspects that the real purpose of creating the illusion of saving the planet is to destroy the cattle industry and force us to eat bugs, while of course the kreptocratic elites are allowed to nosh on real beef

It's official: Lab-grown meat may be coming to a restaurant near you. In June, USDA gave two lab-grown meat companies the green light to begin production and sales, kicking off a flurry of public interest and gaining the attention of prominent investors like Bill Gates and Ashton Kutcher. The federal approval marks a milestone for an industry claiming to be scalable, sustainable, and healthy. Certainly, growing meat from cell cultures is interesting, technologically speaking. But consumers shouldn't swallow the hype from lab-grown meat advocates who claim it will save the planet.

...snip...

Lab-grown meat is an attempt to grow animal cells into meat–without livestock. Lab-grown meat is made by harvesting cells from live animals and then “feeding” the cells with the nutrients in a bioreactor–a sterilized metal vat in a factory.

While it’s approved for sale, lab-grown meat is going to be difficult to find because it is incredibly expensive to produce. The first “cultivated” burger cost a staggering $325,000, and the only cultivated meat commercially available is served in minuscule portions in Singapore.

In a 2021 economic analysis, a chemical engineer calculated that, even accounting for technological improvements, the lowest price for laboratory meat would be between $17 and $23 per pound of meat product. Compare that with the much lower price of natural meat, just below $5 per pound.

Well, so much for costs. But what about saving the planet? As Gentle Readers know by now, climate alarmists are super concerned that cows burp methane and CO2. That cows are merely recycling carbon that is already in the atmosphere is a fact deliberately ignored by the Karens of climate.  After all, to acknowledge that cows might actually reduce carbon in the atmosphere would punch a hole in their balloon.

According to one study, researchers found that scaling up the lab-grown meat industry could emit up to 25 times more emissions than the global meat industry. Another review of lab-grown meat found it may produce a larger share of carbon dioxide, which lingers in the atmosphere longer than methane from cow burps.

As a UC Davis professor notes, “If companies are having to purify growth media to pharmaceutical levels, it uses more resources, which then increases global warming potential.”

So much for cost and the planet saving effects of lab grown meat. But maybe they can make it super nutritious, right? Maybe not...

But scientists developed so-called “immortalized” cell lines that can replicate forever, which are used by lab-grown meat companies to keep a supply of cells available. There’s just one issue: Endless cell replication is the defining feature of cancer. It grows and grows.

Essentially, lab-grown meat could be seen as the equivalent of eating a tumor. A benign tumor, to be clear–lab-grown meat is unlikely to cause cancer in people, according to experts.

But there are also no long-term studies that we can rely on to prove that. “The best way is to give it to people and then ask them 20 years later or 30 years later, ‘Has any of you gotten cancer at a higher-than-normal rate?’ But that’s not a practical experiment,” one biologist told Bloomberg.

In truth, there is no real reason for growing meat in a laboratory. There is plenty of land available for raising cattle, as well as sheep and goats. Much of the land that is used for crops is marginal for that purpose, but is ideal for grazing animals. These additional animals could be used to feed more people. After all, meat, fish and poultry is what our ancient ancestors ate most of the time. You will not find any wild crops other than fruits and nuts in season and these could not sustain them through the year. To survive, they had to kill to feed themselves and their families.

So it remains, why lab grown meat? It seems to be a solution looking for a problem

Also see the Epoch Times piece on the same topic.