this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2024
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Lab grown protein: if created, would you move to it? (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by qyron@sopuli.xyz to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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As a thinking experiment, let us consider that on the 1st of January of 2025 it is announced that an advance making possible growing any kind of animal tissue in laboratory conditions as been achieved and that it is possible to scale it in order to achieve industrial grade production level.

There is no limit on which animal tissues can be grown, so, any species is achieveable, only being needed a small cell sample from an animal to start production, and the cultivated tissues are safe for consumption.

There won't be any perceiveable price change to the end consummer, as the growing is a complex and labour intensive process, requiring specialized equipments and personnel.

Would you change to this new diet option?

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[–] MarxMadness@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

That said, price-wise, real meat will have to become very very expensive before lab-grown meat will be competitive.

At least in the U.S., meat production/pricing is heavily subsidized.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

That article is highly suspect. The prices of beef cows sans tax credits is readily available, as is the average meat yield. A Big Mac uses 1/5 of a pound of lean cooked meat (2x 1.6 oz patties). So let's be generous assume that it's one quarter pound uncooked. $30 per quarter pound would put your average beef cow up around $54,000. At that price, The farmers would be getting 1 million a year per 19 head of cattle.

And all that's assuming that we're just grounding up all the random beef into ground beef. Ground beef is generally taken from the trimmings of the steaks and roasts or we're volume is required at least the cheapest of the roasts.

Certainly the subsidy is there, But it's more like pennies on the dollar rather than dollars on the penny.

[–] MarxMadness@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

$30 per quarter pound

The second sentence of the article gives $30 as the unsubsidized price of one pound of hamburger meat, not 1/4 pound. You have to read it more carefully if you want to get into the details.

Setting aside the details for a minute, how would a subsidy of only pennies on the dollar even be plausible? One purpose of agricultural subsidies is to stabilize prices; pennies on the dollar can't do that.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 1 points 10 hours ago

Ok, had to go to a computer to properly answer this.

First, subsidies aren't explicitly designed to make meat cheaper. They're intended to keep farms in business and provide a safety margin for food stocks. They subsidize cheese, wheat, meat, soya, corn, everything. In some cases, they pay farmers not to grow crops. It's about food security. If a farm goes under, it becomes housing land, and we lose that growing capability. That said, most of the subsidies aren't going to individual farmers, but we'll get to that later.

A calf costs somewhere in the range of $300. They can have their first calf around 2 years old. And every year after that. They cost about $2-3 a day each to feed. Given there are veterinary needs, hay in the winter, After a year of growth, they sell for ~$3000-$4000 and provide about 450 lbs of meat. That's somewhere around 30-40% profit calf to slaughter.

If you're just buying them to slaughter, that's $6-$8 / lb average, then butchering and transport. But that includes ribs, roasts, steak, filet, liver, and tongue. Tenderloin sells for $15-$20/lb. Steaks sell for closer to $12.

If you managed it calf to beef, that's closer to $4 a lb at cost.

The caps on the subsidies to the individual farmers are insanely low (something like 150k / farmer). Most of those billions go to the mega-corps who can skirt the caps. Those subsidies are primarily funding the oligarchs.

So let's reverse that again with the proper claim as you pointed out. $30/lb. 450lb/cow. That's a $13,000 cow. They're not getting that much in subsidies either. That would cap out at 11 head.

I think our problem is that the paper is trying to calculate a societal cost, while we're arguing fiscal cost.

https://sentientmedia.org/government-subsidies-make-meat-cheaper/

It’s also frequently argued by vegan and food justice activists that the price of a Big Mac would jump from $5.00 to $13.00 without federal subsidies. This claim, however, is based on a misreading of the aforementioned UC Berkeley paper.

What the paper actually says is that a Big Mac would cost $13.00 “if the retail price included hidden expenses that meat producers offload onto society.” That’s a much broader category than just subsidies. It includes things like the health and environmental costs associated with meat production and consumption, neither of which are subsidies.

If you want to lump in health costs, every high-fat, high-sugar food skyrockets. French Fries, oils, eggs, bread, cookies.

Lab-grown meat will still have all those hidden health costs. The only true win is for the environment, and to be clear, I want lab-grown meat for all the environmental and ethical considerations, I'm just saying the article is trying to paint a picture that's much worse than it really is.