“This ban is a massive win for Texas ranchers, producers, and consumers,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in a statement following the bill’s passage. “Texans have a God-given right to know what’s on their plate, and for millions of Texans, it better come from a pasture, not a lab. It’s plain cowboy logic that we must safeguard our real, authentic meat industry from synthetic alternatives.”
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Texas joins Indiana, Mississippi, Montana and Nebraska in enacting new laws this year; Alabama and Florida did so last year. In March, the Oklahoma House approved a similar bill that did not advance out of the Senate this session.
All the information I’ve been able to find is that lab-grown meat scaling to anything like the commercial meat industry is a pipe dream. At least in the current state, the industrial requirements make economies of scale impossible.
I think this is more Texas republicans giving their ranch-owning donors a meaningless gesture of fealty.
ETA: here is a link to an article with more information https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/
I think that’s the key. The cost has been going down over time, it’ll get there eventually.
Its kind of like solar power. That seemed like a pipe dream for a long time as well but it just kept getting cheaper and cheaper.
This kinda feels inaccurate somehow.
Admittedly I don’t know much (anything?) about this and in the 5 minutes I’ve spent skimming articles online it’s been difficult to cut through marketing.
However, it seems like there’s people producing and commercially selling specialty synthetic meats right now.
It’s natural that initially, only specialty / expensive products will be commercially viable, and it seems like that’s where we are right now.
I will be very surprised if synthetic lab-grown pork mince is not cheaper than the real stuff in 10 years time.
The barrier here is that hundreds of millions of years of animal evolution has extremely optimized their form, and the nature of growing only the muscle cells de-optimizes the system. Animals have immune systems; lab cells have to be kept in a sterile environment, a significant cost. Animals have digestive systems and can power cell growth and all other functions from common plant materials; lab cells have to be fed pre-digested and carefully proportioned material, a significant cost. Animals have circulatory systems that efficiently perfuse oxygen and nutrients, and remove waste; lab cell containers have to be centrifuged in small containers because the forces required in large containers damage the cells. And so on.
Lab-grown cuts are sold as a luxury good now, and I expect as the price comes down from 1000x animal-grown meat to more like 10x animal-grown meat they will become more widely eaten by rich conspicuous consumers.
The real opportunity for equal-tasting, cheaper, better for the environment “meat” is development of and efficiencies gained by scaling the lines of plant-based imitations like what Impossible and it’s competitors are doing.
I’ve had impossible burger and while they’re OK tasting they’re not equal tasting. Further, after eating one I felt very strange, like my body had some sort of reaction to it.
To your point, the value I see is if this process can be used to duplicate exotic meats, that could protect some species from over-harvesting and poaching. Of course, that supposes a circumstance where the environment that produces the natural specimen is not a fundamental requirement to make the meat desirable.
You’re talking about the cost to grow boutique lab grown meat that is the same as animal meat but grown in a vat. That cost 10,000 dollars a kilogram right now.
Go taste an impossible meat burger someplace and check the price and see its only slightly more expensive than animal meat, even now in the relatively early days. Beyond meat is a 4 billion dollar company. Its a viable business model.
The law is talking about lab-grown animal protein, not vegetable derived meat substitutes like Impossible or Beyond Meat.
fair point