By the way, it's stupid to try to say we should all stop eating meat. But going full Republican and justifying the massive exploitation of animals by appealing to the food stamp people is so disingenuous.
By the way, it's stupid to try to say we should all stop eating meat. But going full Republican and justifying the massive exploitation of animals by appealing to the food stamp people is so disingenuous.
Thought experiment: if they could make genetically identical, lab-grown human meat, would you eat it?
Why are they stupid? Vitamin B12 aside, you can get most required nutrients from plant based foods. In fact, there is more calcium in kale than there is in milk.
Is it not a bit weird that we drink cows breast milk? That stuff is for developing a 100lb calf into a 1500lb cow. Don't see many people chucking back a glass of human breast milk or horse milk.
But that quantity of species is only alive due to human interruption. Those cows haven't seeked us out to survive. We artificially inseminate them to increase their breeding levels to a mass scale way above what is 'natural' for their species.
It's like when the buffalo were nearly made extinct back in the late 19th century. The settlers went through some much buffalo, but they didn't have the knowhow back then to artificially increase the bufallo population, which nearly wiped them out. Went from 30 million bufallo down to 100.
I'm sure you're a different species, Quince.
A handsome one.
People are stupid to reject food technologies that have vast environmental and ethical benefits on the basis that "it's not natural ohmagawd." Each and every person who believes cultured meat is some abomination is an idiot.
Pepe, were the meat industry as it stands to be outmoded by cultured meat, then a majority of the existing animals would likely be slaughtered for no longer being necessary as opposed to merely being slaughtered for their byproducts. Sunk cost. They'll die either way, but only one way perpetuates it.
But future animals can have a happy life on a much smaller scale because they'll only be necessary for providing cell samples.
This is perfect for feeding the MELTDOWN fred. Oi Merse cows are shit and should be eaten.
I do both understand them and give a shit about them. I just don't think that not eating meat for 'animal welfare' purposes is a particularly strong argument.
Except that we have thought about it. A lot. I think about it all the time. I have even written articles on it and plan to teach a course on it.
I agree with that, if cultured meat ever becomes a thing, mass extinction of farm cows will ensue. I'm ok with it. I wonder if the animals rights crew will be.
I imagine it'd be more of a gradual thing where it's either phased out and the cows are just prevented from breeding, rather than the farmer waking up one day and being like 'alright cows you're not needed no more so get in the furnace lol'
The real question is: Why do we eat so much chicken when duck is way better?
Because they're easier to rear and have higher yields per animal.
And you get a secondary product from them.
Yeah because ducks don't lay eggs.
No you don't, egg and meat birds are seperate. Egg layers tend to go into animal foods once they 'retire'.
Duck feathers/down though.
1-0 ducks?
Sorry, mainly geese.
Duck eggs are class.
The entire debate over unconscious biological imperatives (sorry, desires) vs conditions animal groups adopt in the absence of humans is anthropomorphic. The two are intertwined and humans are the only group implying the former from the latter. Animals are just acting on the immediacy of the latter. Unless I’ve missed the Revolutionary Fowl Biological Imperatives Council where they register volunteers for poussin duty and hold struggle sessions for those birds hanging on past six years old. It is all an x/y axis of human opinion.
Those are some nice words mate.
That's Clarksonism.
The bots normally post about logging into Gmail.
I'm pretty sure his name is Parkinson.
Well, yeah. We're already playing God by making these animals breed on a mass scale so that we can harvest their byproducts.
My major concern with raising livestock is that it is a resource-intensive process. Factory farming/intensive animal farming may be more efficient than traditional ranching, but their animal welfare regime is far worse. Chickens may be stupid, but they still experience their version of emotions like "joy", "fear", and "stress". I would rather see factory farming become cultured meat production. There's no point for millions of animals to be born, ingest resources that could be better used, and be slaughtered when there's a more resource-efficient, cruelty-free process available. As Pepe mentions, the big problem is scaling the technology over the coming years.
Were cultured meat to be the norm, then the vast majority of meat would come from these facilities. Traditional ranching would become a boutique industry, and I am okay with this because it is likely that these animals will have high standards of living.
I don't mind vegetarian stuff. I aim to eat less meat. Had a clotted cream pasta dish with mushrooms and parsley tonight. It was good, but was crying out for some panchetta.
Clotted cream in a pasta sauce?
Was it not heavy as fuck?
No, not really. Had 100g of Parmesan, bit of the pasta water, mushrooms, cornflour and butter.
I don’t insist on it. Most of what I eat accentuates the veg. A small amount imitates meat to lesser or greater extent. But there’s a reason why. The food stuffs in the mock meat market are full of protein for a start, and as for those such as the Beyond Meat burger I mentioned, well, meat is fucking tasty and if you get close to it with plants then why wouldn’t you eat it? It’s not some kind of culinary role playing exercise, it’s just about taking a good formula for taste and texture and applying it with a different raw material.
Again, why suggest a view that if you did any research into it, you would see is not apparent?
It’s well accepted amongst vegans that agricultural livestock will almost vanish. Save for a few grazing herds across moorland. Of course no one is up for mass starvation but no one is suggesting that - no one is yet even proposing managing the population into a decline yet, because it’s still too unrealistic an aim across the western world. There’s plenty of suggestion on the ‘how’ though, and that will become a proposal when a realistic view of the ‘when’ becomes clear.
If it ever becomes clear.
As usual, I know that there are sensible people out there. Those won't be the ones shouting the loudest. Not that we'll get to see any of it, which is a shame.
If everyone were to go vegan, then the animals either live out their lives or people commit mass euthanasia.* That's unlikely as meat consumption is rising around the world as it becomes available to emerging middle classes in countries like China and India.
If the world were to shift towards plant proteins and cultured meat, then cows and livestock would be phased out over time. Producers, large and small, would scale down "production" of live animals (e.g. increased sterilization, fewer opportunities to breed) in relation to their capacities to produce plant proteins and cultured meat.
* euthanasia is the practice of killing to relieve suffering--voluntary euthanasia takes the form of suicide or assisted death
I'm not sure it would be quite that simple, whoever perfects cultured meat it's unlikely to be cattle farmers. They'd go on for a good while selling into other markets and being propped up by subsidies (because farming) before declining or carving out different sectors of the market for themselves.
You'd probably get things going more organic/artisanal than now, where people would pay a premium for "real" meat.
I went to a place in Amsterdam the other day that offered "bugs" (I think it was something like crickets and larvae) as an optional bagel topping