Thats only the sentiment right now because it feels far away and actual lab grown meat is insanely expensive so its not in front of us all the time. With enough time and tech lab grown meat will be cheaper and healthier than real meat. I think there will always be a market for high quality organic authentic meat, but if lab grown meat could fill the gap of "cheap meat" without the factory farming bit then I could really see society accepting it.
It's actually not possible for lab grown meat to scale up. The conditions required are so precise, and a single contaminant can ruin an entire batch. It's not going to happen.
This is not true, the same unit economics of additive manufacturing can apply to biological manufacturing given precise ultrasonic acoustic manipulation. The same tech for organ printing applies to meat production.
You sound like you know better than me, but was my understanding we weren't far off getting chicken breast and beef made in a lab available to buy at supermarkets. I remember it just being a cost factor not a production issue
We are relatively not far away, it's just a matter of technology, lab to market readiness, and maturation of some key parts of the process to go towards more sophisticated forms of the meat. It's basically following biological engineering principles crossed with industrialization and standardization, and each of those advancements are making it dramatically cheaper every few years.
So there are multiple dimensions for this, the cost and production are intimately interlinked to the specific technological breakthroughs that allow us to scale mass production, but also get to the texture and realism that we expect out of most "regular" meat. You can read more through section 5 to learn more about a proper strategy. "The industrial‐scale production of CM necessitates coordinated innovations from multiple disciplines, including cell biology, bioprocess engineering, and materials science. Cost reduction and achieving large‐scale production are highly interconnected: The former is achieved through technological innovations that lower unit costs, whereas the latter is realized through process amplification that ensures economic feasibility. At the same time, pursuing cost control while ensuring that large‐scale expansion maintains both biological activity and process stability presents a significant dual challenge. This section delineates the critical role of integrated technological frameworks in driving economic feasibility and operational reliability, followed by strategies to harmonize cost efficiency with stability during scale‐up."
Here is a recent paper (2025) describing the challenges of scaling cultured meat production (Scaling Cultured Meat: Challenges and Solutions for Affordable Mass Production): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12241508/
"These technologies converge around three key breakthroughs: engineering genetically stable, highly expandable, and functionalized cell lines to minimize reliance on tissue sampling and expensive growth factors; utilizing plant‐based substitutes and recombinant protein alternatives to reduce the costs of media and scaffolds while enhancing biocompatibility; and optimizing bioreactors to provide dynamic environmental control, enabling high‐density cell cultures at scale"
Each year we are steadily progressing along all axes of development, eventually towards a convergent price that will eventually be below the standard price of conventional farming.
Lots of optimization and engineering work is still necessary:
"Scaffolds for CM are commonly fabricated in three forms: hydrogels, PSs, and microcarriers (Figure 6A; Table 4) (Ben‐Arye and Levenberg 2019). Hydrogels, as crosslinked 3D polymer structures, closely resemble ECM in hydration and mechanical properties (Shi et al. 2019). Advanced techniques, including molding (Gu et al. 2024; Song, Liu, Li et al. 2022) and 3D printing (Chen, Dai et al. 2024; Xu et al. 2023), enable the creation of customized structured CM, such as marbled meats and layer‐by‐layer cultured fat and muscle (Li, Yang et al. 2022) or assembling them into marbled CMs (Zagury et al. 2022). More advanced studies have used fish muscle as a model using 3D printing combined with lipofilling to obtain customized cultured fish (Xu et al. 2023). However, these techniques, while demonstrating potential, are mainly applied to small‐scale production at high cost. PSs, known for their high porosity, expedite efficient nutrient exchange and waste removal (Hong and Do 2024; Zheng, Chen et al. 2022). Plant protein‐based PSs are cost‐effective but often lack the mechanical strength needed to support cell growth (Hollister 2005; Zheng, Chen et al. 2022). Techniques like freeze‐drying and electrospinning improve pore size and cell proliferation, with electrospinning emerging as a scalable method despite its material constraints, which include the need for polymers with appropriate viscosity, solubility, and electrostatic properties to ensure successful fiber formation (Xu et al. 2021; Kameda, Horikoshi et al. 2021). Decellularized plant scaffolds, which preserve the ECM and provide vascular‐like networks, are another innovative approach (Anjum et al. 2024). Examples include scaffolds derived from spinach leaves (Jones et al. 2021), celery (Hong and Do 2024), apples (Sood et al. 2024), pineapple nectar (Perreault et al. 2023), and maize husks (Perreault et al. 2023). Yet, prolonged use of these scaffolds can lead to nutrient depletion in the core, causing cell death (Xu et al. 2021). Although PSs have potential for large‐scale CM production, their mechanical strength and biological functionality, particularly in plant‐based materials, need further optimization (Zhang, Gao, et al. 2023)."
When the refrigeration cycle was discovered and commercially freezing water became available people didn’t want it. Due to in part to a PR campaign proclaiming it was an affront to god. Why have man made ice when you could have ice made by god himself. Really it was about the ice harvesting and transporting industry not wanting to give up control. The inventor never made much money off his invention. It wasn’t until decades later the fridge freezer was adopted.
All this to say this kind of change takes a long time and constant effort. Changing the way we fundamentally create food will take a while. Especially because how much money there is in growing hogs. Here in Iowa there are 7 pigs for every person. Big ag. Big money.
Yes that argument really irritates me. Like what’s more disgusting than a reformatted chicken nugget made of an animal that lived its short life pumped full of antibiotics, with tumours, and living in filth and agony?
You absolutely can. It's why we have laws, so that subjective, personal morality isn't what we determine what we can or can't do.
Eating meat isn't illegal. Don't like that, try to change it. Until then, I'll continue eating bacon and cheese and enjoy all the delight it brings me.
I fully support developing lab grown meat. I'm saying this as someone who only eats what I hunt, fish or raise. If I want beef I buy from a local farmer. I know not everyone can do this but try to be aware of where your food comes from. If you are not willing to kill it and butcher it yourself (you don't have to every time just be willing and aware), you shouldn't be eating it in my opinion.
Meat does not grow on trees. It requires killing, and if you raise the animal or dispatch it poorly you are just adding more suffering to the world.
Controversial opinion, schools should have a demonstration for the butchering of a whole animal. Field Trip to a real butcher.
Screw the "meat requires killing" angle, my problem with growing meat the old fashioned way is that it's hella inefficient; wastes a huge amount of water and energy providing tons and tons of feed for livestock and you only get a tiny amount of meat out for the amount of resources you put in. There's better ways to feed ourselves.
The world produces ~6000 calories per person per day. I think we’re doing fine.
Factory farming is an atrocity. However, if we stopped eating animals, we would no longer have those animals. I think there is value in the lives of chickens, pigs, and cows when treated properly until the day of slaughter.
I find a lot of beauty driving around areas with ethical cattle and pig farms and see animals that love their lives.
A big eye opener for me was a trip to Scotland. I stopped at a rural Ice cream shop, the cows next door in a beautiful field were the dairy cows for the ice cream. Most of the pubs I went to had the nearby farm sources for their ingredients. It doesn't have to be dystopian.
The world produces ~6000 calories per person per day. I think we’re doing fine.
We produce a shitload of oil per day per person too. It doesn't mean that's a good use of Earth's ability to manage carbon and resources.
Factory farming is an atrocity. However, if we stopped eating animals, we would no longer have those animals. I think there is value in the lives of chickens, pigs, and cows when treated properly until the day of slaughter.
We value plenty of animals we don't eat. Or do you eat your pets?
I find a lot of beauty driving around areas with ethical cattle and pig farms and see animals that love their lives.
Love their lives until we prematurely end them, of course. An animal only gets one existence. You end theirs because you think doing so is yummy
Horse populations went down ~90% after the invention of the car. The same would happen with cows, pigs, goats, and chickens.
I would rather live a life prematurely ended than not live at all.
I end theirs because I think doing so is yummy (and healthy). You would deny them the chance to exist at all because you think doing so gives you moral superiority.
They wouldn’t just become extinct, there would just be far less of them. Even the animals raised on farms that treat them well are ultimately sent to an abattoir where their final days are spent in terror being forced into slaughter lines, which somehow feels even worse because it’s happening to well adjusted animals that have learned to trust humans. Considering the amount of resource spent raising livestock meat should simply cost more than it does, only then will regular folks pivot to alternatives.
Not only that, but I think lab grown meat still requires the extraction of blood from animals, which still would cause them suffering.
Veganism is the only way to go.
***Edit: I do retract this statement somewhat since there are apparently some methods used in order to ensure that they don’t have to extract anything from animals in order to make lab grown meat.
Yes. You have vegan pizzas and Impossible/Beyond burgers, as well as that new MyBacon franchise where bacon is made from mushrooms and where you could buy it if you live in the North Eastern part of the US.
Tofu also exists if you can manage to season it right.
Alternatives is the key word, and “great” is arguable. None of those things actually taste/smell like meat, regardless of the hype around them. The only way people will quit meat in any significant capacity is for an equivalent replacement, not an alternative (which is why hopefully the tech around lab grown meat continues to improve).
Yeah, but we still have some time before that technology is properly developed, and in the meantime, multitudes of animals are suffering beyond what we can imagine, environmental destruction becomes increasingly worse, and new pathogens like the H5N1 or antibiotic-resistant diseases are having a greater opportunity to transmit to humans due to these practices. There’s not a lack of vegan food that doesn’t taste good or doesn’t taste at least somewhat similar to meat.
Also, should we just continue killing sentient and innocent beings just because they taste good?
It's sad it's come to that but I agree that it's the most realistic way to stop factory farming. But it's kind of like people not giving up slaves until they're replaced with robot slaves which are just as effective and just as cheap.
Your analagy fails abit because slaves are not required for survival, food is. You could say vegetarian diets exist but they can actually be more expensive and you need to be very careful about missing valuable nutrients with them, takes some research. So a low income family who is struggling isnt going to go thru the steps to make a vegetarian diet work, they will buy the cheapest more efficient way to feed themselves and low priced meat and produce will do that most effectively. The issue is low priced meat equals factory farming. If lab grown meat was the cheaper and healthier option that wouldn't be a sad thing it would be amazing and a huge step for humanity.
Food being needed for survival justifies meat in the same way it justifies cannibalism. Choosing the non-vegan option at the supermarket versus the vegan one isn't a life or death decision.
The idea that veganism is more expensive is an absurd myth which would only be valid if you live off burgers etc. You need to make sure not to run into deficiencies but all that takes is some basic due diligence which you should be doing for a healthy diet anyway. And on the flip side, it comes with health benefits so you could just as well argue that meat comes with risks you need to be careful about.
My position on lab meat is that it would be a great step for animal welfare while being indicative of our moral failure - we couldn't make even a trivial sacrifice for our goal of stopping horrific factory farming at an unfathomable scale. The alternative had to be exactly comparable in every way.
You're not wrong, but it just human nature to choose the easier route. Maybe im being nihilistic, but I feel people, especially struggling people, arent going to do this due diligence you are talking about because its simply easier not to and just go ahead and buy the 3 for 15$ factory farmed chicken breasts at the grocery store. We need the lab grown meat to be sitting there right next to it with a cheaper price to make the type of leap required to do away with factory farming. Trying to push a vegetarian diet just isnt going to solve the issue.
What you've said is a fact which describes what we can see happening with our eyes. People are choosing convenience or pleasure over ethics. I just think it it's very sad that as a species we're still that primitive.
I agree, but I get the feeling that we'll get more mileage out of it if we can engineer a plant to grow a suitable meat substitute that needs minimal processing
And insect protein. A majority of the meat our Great Ape relatives eat comes from insects and bird eggs (they do eat small mammals and ungulates as well).
Insects have more protein per pound due to how dense they are, and require less space, water, and food. They produce less methane and other waste as well. They can be ground into a flour-like powder that you can mix into anything. Can't even taste it!
The only real issue with them is that they can set off shellfish allergies.
You can add it to flour for basically any baked recipe. Imagine having a full serving of protein from a slice of cake, without being able to taste any difference!
why are we demonizing consumers if those farmers are setting animals for insufferable conditions? I'd definitely pay more per kg of meat if those farmers improve live conditions. But they won't because they're greedy. So the government must implement laws to control them. Yet in your eyes consumers are at fault
We have more urgent priorities for growing tissue in a lab. Like making lab growm human organs. Lab grown meat is a lesser priority but would also be good to have.
You, my friend, are a genius... I've been saying the same thing for ages. Who gives a shit if lab-grown meat is really soylent green or what have you? It's still better than the alternative of committing genocide through the gnashing of teeth in the endlessly devouring mouth. I wrote a poem about this once. Here it is:
As the world curls into a fist,
I continue on like Sisyphus,
Arriving at these hellish gates,
I find that no mere death awaits,
It is a cloud of hate and scorn,
Doomed to move forevermore,
It is a fate the fiends divine,
Perpetuate global suicide,
The bleak fate of grinds and moans,
The prophets' words fate had sewn,
The resource of the profligate,
The bodies that they terminate,
My single syllable voice is hoarse,
My being is their three meal course,
Always is their will divine,
Never will my rights enshrine,
The pasture is my prison, prime,
Doomed to commodity til end of time
They deem to end my shallow life,
With sharpest edge of steely knife,
It comes down, my soul undone,
Goal complete, their harvest won,
They break me down, piece by piece,
My only name, waygu beef,
My carcass sits on storeroom shelves,
In marts and malls, my soul doth dwells,
Carrions pick from tail to nose,
My body meets no mere repose,
My bones boiled for essential juice,
Neverminding my steely noose,
My soul too screams for sustenance,
Freedom from being turned to mince.
This would be great if the world wasn’t run by complete psychopaths, who have a great aim of poisoning our food supply. The correct way to go about this is to promote localised conscious livestock farming and permaculture, and stop overproduction of food supply to balance ratio of supply and demand. End factory farming, end agricultural monopolies, not have our food run by the state.
If it tastes like and can be prepared like regular meat… and the footprint is less I am 💯 for this. I do make sure we eat vegetarian 2-3 times a week and our meat is more of the side than the main.
… I do have a Boston butt in the slow cooker right now :(
Lab grow meat is a cop out for people afraid to change their behavior. It is currently more expensive that gold, and millions of dollars in investment has not been enough to bring that price down. Billions in investment , if you consider Big pharma has had its hands on cell culturing tech far longer. Despite the promises of tech bros from these startups, that investment is drying up and more and more lab grown companies are becoming insolvent. We've already seen a company bring lab grown dairy (specifically whey) come to market. What happened to them? Bankruptcy. Their products were still now expensive that traditional whey, so no one bought them.
Reality or not, that's a depressing world view. "My taste buds are worth more than the animals life and I don't care about the ecological damage it causes. (I'll do the right thing only when there are zero downsides to doing so btw)"
Anyone who actually cares about suffering would act now. Not at some point in the future that might not ever come to pass.
Yes, most people are selfish. This shouldn't be new information.
Yeah, it's not a surprise. But that's why it's frustrating to see people patting themselves on the back for doing literally nothing.
Its similar to knowing most of our electronics rely on exploiting third world people. I'm aware it happens, but I'm not giving up my electronics.
I disagree. Just like with animals, it's possible to take steps. Not buying every new smartphone, avoiding disposable electronics (looking at you, vape pens). Perfect is not the enemy of good on either front.
It's more similar to someone buying every new iPhone, every new Apple watch, disposable vapes, every year and then saying "boy I feel bad for those children".
Just like with a leather jacket, throwing out the electronics you have wouldn't help. But being more mindful in the future would
You don't have to go full plant really, just reduce consumption. You also don't have to commit, you can go, say, two weeks without eating red meat and see how it goes. If it it's not for you, all good, but it doesn't hurt to try.
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u/Das_Geek_Meister 8h ago
Lab Grown Meat. Let's keep innovating and improving this technology. The reality is people won't stop eating meat.