this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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I definitely would!
Usually, the reason people go vegan is to try to reduce (hopefully eliminate) animal suffering, and/or to reduce green house gas emissions from animal farming.
Cultivated meat deals with the first, and, depending on how it's produced, can probably entirely avoid the second as well.
I don't know the process in detail, but I would also imagine that cultivated meat is no more sourced from animals than a plant that was fertilized with animal dung, and that would still be considered vegan.
There are some analyses out there that suggest cultivated meat will actually be worse for the climate than animals - for example https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/lab-grown-meat-carbon-footprint-worse-beef
Of course the cultivated meat startups disagree: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/21/1138371310/a-taste-of-lab-grown-meat
I was going to say, all the articles and science I saw on lab meat previously had it consuming far, far less resources than the traditional beef industry. Definitely going to read more about it but I'm still team lab meat for now.
Edit:
"But in a preprint, not yet peer-reviewed, researchers at the University of California..." That's not a good start to their point.
The comments on that preprint by another expert also don't seem promising on their conclusions of lab grown.
I'll believe it's worse than traditional beef when more science substantiates that view. This article isn't that.
Even if cultivated meat was initially bad for the environment, I'd guess that it would be easy to minimize it's environmental impact versus traditional meat. There's only so much you can do to stop cows from belching CO2. However, a factory making vats of cultured meat could install pollution controls to reduce their emissions.
I'd definitely like to see peer reviewed studies backing everything up, but my guess is that cultivated meat will on par with or be better for the environment than traditional meat and will only get better.
Yeah so far it seems to be battling experts. UC Davis is a big agriculture/animal science school. On the other hand I don't trust the lab meat industry's own experts either. Hoping at some point to see a credible neutral analysis.
I've read it, and there's already two issues:
I think it's odd to even compare. One is a brand new industry, the other is a hundreds of year old process in terms of learning how to make it efficient. Over time, I have no doubt lab-grown can out-carbon footprint actual cattle raising.
That was an interesting read, thanks for the link!
But yeah, I had no idea it was so much worse for the environment. But it seems there's still the possibility it will be better one day, so I hope for the best. I guess in the meantime I'll stick with plant-based foods.
You should check out issues brought up about this article by other comments since yours.
Oh, I did see some of them later, but thank you for the heads-up!
I noticed it wasn't peer-reviewed, but when they mentioned the process and I started to imagine all it must take to cultivate meat in a lab, it started to seem that it could be a lot worse for the environment than I had really considered, and it didn't seem implausible that it could be worse than farmed meat.
Either way, at this point I would be willing to bet it definitely isn't as sustainable as just eating plant based food, so I'd rather stick with that for now; I'm accustomed to it already anyway.
They biopsy live animals to get the cells to grow meat, so I am sure many vegans will object -- but the labs theoretically never need to get more cells. The question becomes whether they do or not and how the source livestock is treated. Do they just sell the source animals to a slaughterhouse? Or do they donate them to a petting zoo? They are unlikely to tell the public.
I noticed the post's link is PR from the Upside company website. GOOD Meat is another provider. Here is an NPR link with a bit less sensationalism: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/06/21/1183484892/no-kill-meat-grown-from-animal-cells-is-now-approved-for-sale-in-the-u-s
I know they biopsy animals to get the cells, but I just assume it's a one and done thing since there's no need to go back; or at least just once for each company working on it. If it's more than that, it would completely defeat the purpose and probably not be worth it for them.
Not perfect, but assuming they only do it the one time with an animal that was already likely to be slaughtered, I think I'd still consider it vegan.
Either way, I'll probably still stick more plant based. Even if lab meat is better for the environment than farm meat, it still needs to be "fed" and so will probably always take more resources than plant based to be produced.