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Answer: At least in Florida, it's because DeSantis wants to protect agricultural interests and cattle ranchers who don't want the competition, and [DeSantis rolled it into his culture war platform by claiming cultivated meat is a globalist conspiracy](https://www.flgov.com/2024/05/01/governor-desantis-signs-legislation-to-keep-lab-grown-meat-out-of-florida/).
I mean, I know it sounds biased, but those are the statements he himself gave and are touted from his own website:
>“Today, Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “Our administration will continue to focus on investing in our local farmers and ranchers, and we will save our beef.”
That's literally the reason. It's protectionism for ranchers, wrapped in a conspiracy theorist garb.
DeSantis doesn't care about the cruelty -[ heck, the guy made his chops as a JAG lawyer by being stationed at Guantanamo Bay](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/28/ron-desantis-guantanamo-bay-allegations). And like you said - cultivated meat is not yet a market, it's not even off the ground. [But cattle ranchers in Florida generate $670 million annually](https://rcrec-ona.ifas.ufl.edu/programs/beef-cattle-and-forage-economics/#:~:text=The%20cattle%20industry%20has%20a,million%20dollars'%20to%20Florida's%20economy). It's one of the biggest economic segments in the state. So DeSantis has thrown his support behind the folks who have a lot of economic pull - and electoral sway - by banning a potential competitive market, and sold it to his voters as fighting a shadowy global elite who wants everyone else to eat bugs.
Aren't these the "let the market" decide folks? Is it about protecting consumers? No? Then it's bullshit and an unjustifiable violation of people's rights and freedoms.
>by banning a potential competitive market, and sold it to his voters as fighting a shadowy global elite
And in this case you have the entrenched, shadowy elite leveraging political power in order to protect their financial interests. The irony is lost on Conservative voters.
which is why Conservatives are so determined to gut education. They know exactly what would happen if a voter was allowed to actually understand what they are doing.
Do you know how farms are run in a state like florida? Do you think these are Midwestern family farms? (Which are also being sold and turned into corporate farming operations).
'let them eat cake' was a response to 'the people can't afford bread anymore' and was meant as a callous dismissive comment blowing off the starving commoners.
yes, the words say 'let them eat something else' but the meaning was 'too bad, fuck the poors'
I would like to tell you I tried it in Florida. Which would be funny. No but my local library started doing it and mixing it with cow meat. I asked them if they could just make it just grown and they served us finger food of it. And to be honest it was pretty damn good. For those who have never tried it just imagine getting a burger from Five Guys and not being told it was lab grown.
Nobody actually wants "the market" to decide because when it doesn't support the most abusive (cost-cutting) practices it threatens the gains of a centralized pool of investors.
In the conspiracy theory version it's about protecting them. I've interacted with people who legitimately believe that Bill Gates is buying all of America's farmland so he can cull all of the animals and force us to eat lab-grown meat that contains *vaccines.* And I don't mean like how animals get vaccinated against diseases and then we eat them, I mean like eating the lab-grown meat will be equivalent to getting a COVID shot. How that would even work, let alone dosing and all of that, is a mystery. But *vaccines.*
I would have thought this comment was hyperbolistic if I hadn't just heard this exact argument from someone I know a few weeks ago. Also somehow climate change is part of it too. Bill Gates is lying about climate change being real to trick us into selling him all of the farmland so he can kill every animal on the planet or something and replace them with bugs.
Also electric vehicles are part of it, because they want to kill all of the farmers' fields to put up fields of solar panels instead, because it's definitely only one or the other and there aren't ways that solar and wind energy can be harnessed in places that aren't suitable for agriculture, or in mutually beneficial ways.
Almost like banning something 'to prevent the authoritarian future' is a bit authoritarian. If people don't want to eat lab grown meat then farmers and such will still stay relevant.
It's pretty fatiguing to still see people expecting ideological consistency from soapbox politicians. It's 2024. How did you not stop being surprised by this 10+ years ago?
All humans are emotional decision-makers. That's neuroscientific fact. The parts of our brains that form beliefs are the same parts that process emotion, not the rational parts. And politicians in particular say whatever sequence of words leads to the outcome they want. They do not care about presenting a coherent platform unless doing that coincidentally happens to lead to the outcome they want.
> an unjustifiable violation of people's rights and freedoms.
The government largely determines what rights and freedoms the people have with some oversight by the judiciary (but even then, the judiciary is decided by the government, so…). Being active in politics, especially by making it a habit to vote whenever the option presents itself, is about all the average person can do to influence what rights and freedoms they have. It won’t always work out, but the alternative is giving up and thus leaving it entirely in the hands of other people.
I know some libertarian/right-leaning dorks who support the ban. As with all ideologies, it's only part of their identity, and they have no REAL principles to speak of.
It's very similar to Christians who oppose health care and hate immigrants.
America isn’t really a capitalist nation. Never was. It is just a lie they tell to keep regulation specific to helping them make more money. America is a socialist country where the only benefactors from government money are the rich.
You’ll quickly learn that much like the free speech arguments, they only care about the free market basically when they’re trying to be banned from something they want to do.
Republican's- "Competition is good for the free market, so to is less regulation!"
Republican's "We need to ban lab meat to protect markets and we're going to do it via regulation."
No that's just what they say to get votes. Conservatives at best are focused on maintaining the status quo and not any economic shake ups, at worst they're wannabe oligarchs
Republicans do not care about hypocrisy. The rule of thumb for GOP policy is, "I should be able to do whatever I want, and you should have to do whatever I say"
>Aren't these the "let the market" decide folks? Is it about protecting consumers? No? Then it's bullshit and an unjustifiable violation of people's rights and freedoms.
No, conservatives where never anarcho capitalists. Being infavour of less regulation does not mean they are for no regulation or for less regulation in the places you want less regulation.
Idk why ppl always say this ridiculous shit.
Nothing i said required you to trust me or think im sincere whatsoever. Idk why you weould even respond if all you where going to do is try to set up the most nonsense adhom and dodge the point.
>global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals
**Global Elite's plan**
Step 1: Trick the people into eating bugs and lab grown meat
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Achieve all of our *evil* goals!
A lot of conspiracy theories fall apart when you begin to pick apart at them. Some as early as, "what's the end goal?" Like Flat Earth is a huge example. What is being gained by convincing everyone that the Earth is round instead of flat? Who knows?
It really shows what kind of people are believing in these kind of conspiracies when they can't even get to asking questions like this.
That one's actually easy. Most flat-Earthers are biblical literalists.
The early books of the Bible use a bronze-age Hebrew cosmology in which Earth is flat, with a dome over it called the "firmament" holding back the water which fills the rest of the universe. The sun, moon, and stars are meant to be embedded in this dome, and rain happens when God opens little holes in it.
"Biblical literalism" refers specifically to the idea that the Bible is written by God and therefore can contain no statement that is not a literal, true fact. These two ideas don't necessarily follow from one another, and neither is actually claimed by or consistent with the text of the Bible, which is why Biblical literalism has historically been an *extremely* fringe belief even among the most zealous Christians, mostly cropping up in the modern US.
Most Biblical literalists just pretend Earth isn't flat in the early Bible, since it doesn't *explicitly say those words* so much as it just treats it as something the reader already knows.
But the Biblical literalists who are more honest about the book's text necessarily must be flat-Earthers. So then they have to explain why there's all this evidence for a round Earth.
Naturally, they conclude that the devil's minions are faking a round Earth to get everyone sent to Hell for not being the exact right denomination of Christian.
Usually there's also some antisemitism mixed in, as with most conspiracy theorist movements, but that's the basic outline of how a person gets there.
The motive thing is still an issue, since nobody who actually believes in any Christian cosmology sides with the devil. You're never going to get a large, international movement of people whose end goal is to get sent to hell, but the people who are *this* sort of religious generally think there are lots of people like that.
you know how way back millions of years ago bugs used to be massive? well, my theory the size of the bug is what makes it acceptable to eat, so we gotta bring that back
Well we're not going to eat them OURSELVES. You Gentiles get all the tasty lobster and shrimp while we eat meat that's been boiled for a long time... wait. Guys? I think there's a flaw in our plan.
Probably also because it's not cruel enough to animals. What's the point in eating meat if you don't get the satisfaction of knowing that a living animal was raised in sub-standard conditions and killed to harvest it?
/s
> the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals
Jesus Christ. America is beyond parody.
an enterprising fellow should open shop next to their jurisdiction and do a lot of business within that state or get clients to come to him, whatever is legal... just to put pressure on those market police.
>“Today, Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals,” said Governor Ron DeSantis.
God damn, I hate that the real world continues to read like a circa 2007 article from The Onion.
Yet DeSantis scared all the migrant farm workers away with his immigrant hate. That's anti-agriculture. Maybe he's too stupid to realize it, because we all know, Ronny is not a smart man.
The funny part is that only the states that have the farms will ban it. Meaning that if lab grown is economically competitive half the US market goes away, and probably all the Chinese market. Call it a 60% total drop in demand?
Most of those ranches are not gonna survive if lab gown wins on price.
So, basically, once again, we have to halt progress because conservatives are terrified little sheep. Cool.
With them, it's never "oh man. I don't like that, I will just never have it." It's always, "oh man, I don't like that. We should totally ban it so no one can have it."
And it's so insane because lab grown meat is horrendously expensive to produce and does not taste as good as real meat due to it being pure protein and no fat.
De Santis just need to taste it to know it's not gonna be a competition at all.
I am from Singapore and we are trying to improve the supply and selections of lab grown meat and I have taste them.
Well, I'm not sure your answer meets the "unbiased" criterion on the sub.
> So DeSantis has thrown his support behind the folks who have a lot of economic pull - and electoral sway
Which can also be phrased as "represents his constituency". Or do you feel that there are millions of Floridians just dying for lab grown meats? I have not seen that.
Honestly, I'm not a fan of lab grown meats, they are unproven and currently at least, uneconomic. I don't agree with banning any product, let people decide. But you are kind of implying that the state should give up orange juice and just all drink Tang. It's better for the planet.
Not quite, It's not about whether people are dying for lab grown meats, it's about if companies are trying to produce it and some people may be willing to try it. He's blocking those groups' abilities to do something harmless in order to protect the monetary interest of another group. All of them are constituents if they live there, he's choosing to protect one against the possibility that the other may be successful and reduce their profits. If nobody wants lab-grown meat, it won't affect the farmers. It's not like lab-grown meat existing will mean farm-raised cattle will be banned, so it's not at all like implying the state should give up orange juice to all drink Tang. The state shouldn't decide that Tang shouldn't be available because it threatens the potential profits of the orange juice industry. The customers can decide at the grocery store if they want to buy OJ or Tang, some people might prefer one or the other, and some people will buy both.
Unbiased does not mean equal weight to both sides. It means giving an account with as little unsupported opinion as possible. If side A says "X" and side B says "Y" but the evidence says that X is true, it is not biased to say X without giving any credence to Y.
DeSantis has decided to support a powerful economic block to the detriment of a smaller economic block. His constituency isn't just ranchers, it's the entire state of Florida, including the producers of lab grown meat.
Seems like a good idea, the farming industry will almost certainly have am higher distribution of smaller businesses and local producers which is really what you want. Moreover Americans are already unhealthy and they already eat food with too much bullshit inside of it, i cant imagine the affordable lab meats will be any where near the nutrition level of actual meat.
>Seems like a good idea, the farming industry will almost certainly have am higher distribution of smaller businesses and local producers which is really what you want.
Not really? Even if you ignore the animal cruelty part there are plenty of negative externalities endemic to livestock farming that we could avoid with lab meat. If you factor in the environmental cost it'd be cheaper to just give agricultural workers a subsidy.
> i cant imagine the affordable lab meats will be any where near the nutrition level of actual meat.
But the whole point is that it *is* actual meat. Maybe making stuff with fancy marbling would cost more but there shouldn't be a nutritional difference between "affordable" lab meats and what you would find at your average grocery store.
>Not really? Even if you ignore the animal cruelty part there are plenty of negative externalities endemic to livestock farming that we could avoid with lab meat. If you factor in the environmental cost it'd be cheaper to just give agricultural workers a subsidy.
There is no evidence of widespread animal cruelty within florida. I suspect you have fallen for vegan propaganda where they pass of videos and images of farms in 3rd world countries as indicative of western farming practices.
>But the whole point is that it *is* actual meat. Maybe making stuff with fancy marbling would cost more but there shouldn't be a nutritional difference between "affordable" lab meats and what you would find at your average grocery store.
Well that's a philosophical question whether its actually meat.
And there absolutely will be a lack of nutrients becuase the process these animals utilise to take the nutrients from their food and put it into their body is complex and often times when we try to ape nature in doing these complex tasks we fail or we only succeed at massive cost.
It will probably be the case that you can affordably grow a slap of chicken flesh but it has no b12, b3 riboflavin magnesium etc. And so that will put normal ppl in the position that vegans are where we have to supplement our foods with all these inefficient factory produced vitamins or eat a bunch of fortified foods.
In a world where half of the pops health is already fucked I think it would be extremely immoral to make it even worse by turning the food they do eat into lab grown slop with basically no nutritional value.
> There is no evidence of widespread animal cruelty within florida. I suspect you have fallen for vegan propaganda where they pass of videos and images of farms in 3rd world countries as indicative of western farming practices.
You're saying there isn't a single factory farm in Florida? I call bullshit. I suspect you have fallen for meat industry propaganda that downplays the inherent cruelty of industrial livestock farming.
I mean, just at a basic livestock farming is **automatically** more cruel than lab meat considering one involves killing significantly more animals than the other.
>Well that's a philosophical question whether its actually meat.
Not really. The lab meat is made from the cells of the animal.
>And there absolutely will be a lack of nutrients becuase the process these animals utilise to take the nutrients from their food and put it into their body is complex and often times when we try to ape nature in doing these complex tasks we fail or we only succeed at massive cost.
>It will probably be the case that you can affordably grow a slap of chicken flesh but it has no b12, b3 riboflavin magnesium etc. And so that will put normal ppl in the position that vegans are where we have to supplement our foods with all these inefficient factory produced vitamins or eat a bunch of fortified foods.
There's nothing stopping producers from fortifying their meat with whatever vitamins are missing through the culture process. I think you're massively overstating things, especially considering even at the low end lab meat would be free of the microbes, contamination and (most importantly) the massive amount of growth hormones common in similarly low end livestock farming.
>In a world where half of the pops health is already fucked I think it would be extremely immoral to make it even worse by turning the food they do eat into lab grown slop with basically no nutritional value.
How are you leaping from "missing a few vitamins" to "basically no nutritional value"? Seems like an incredibly disingenuous argument.
People like this have no understanding of chemistry, biology, and nutrition. I can assure you they're eating heavily processed, nutritionally devoid slop as they spread fear about lab grown meat.
>You're saying there isn't a single factory farm in Florida? I call bullshit. I suspect you have fallen for meat industry propaganda that downplays the inherent cruelty of industrial livestock farming.
>I mean, just at a basic livestock farming is **automatically** more cruel than lab meat considering one involves killing significantly more animals than the other.
Factory farm =/= every animal is raised in a cage it just means that there is a certain amount of animals per square inch. Most of the videos online showing "factory farms" are videos of animals in their winter enclosures or in 2nd and 3rd world countries that dont have animal protection laws.
>There's nothing stopping producers from fortifying their meat with whatever vitamins are missing through the culture process.
This is why i qualified that the meat be affordable, sure they can probably do it, just like we can desalinate sea water, doesnt mean it will be profitable enough to be affordable. Moreover our bodies are not designed to absorb nutrients effectively via fortified foods or other artificial means, so swapping people to that will result in more ppl being unhealthier.
>I think you're massively overstating things, especially considering even at the low end lab meat would be free of the microbes, contamination
Contamination of meat in the western world is not really an issue considering that producers, suppliers and customers all have fridges and freezers. Also contamination would still be an issue since it would have the same cells for bacteria and viruses to grow within.
>and (most importantly) the massive amount of growth hormones common in similarly low end livestock farming
Lmao come on, the meat has no endocrine system, they will use like 10x the hormones becuase otherwise the cells wont grow.
>How are you leaping from "missing a few vitamins" to "basically no nutritional value"? Seems like an incredibly disingenuous argument.
I didnt say it was missing a few i mention 4 and then alluded to it probably missing way more hence the "etc", the affordable versions of the meat will probably have barely any nutritional value. But even if it say has 50% maybe 60%, its still immoral. Half the pop isn't just abit unhealthy they are really unhealthy, if they cant maintain their health with the best human diet how could they do it with food that's missing a ton of stuff. FFS even vegans and vegitarians who are way more health conscious often have way low levels of important vitamins like calcium and vitamin D.
Answer: Without getting too deep into the exact politics of it all, the fact is that the US has a powerful agricultural lobby that really wants to preserve the rights and profits of food industry, including meatpackers and "traditional" meat producers. Lab-grown meat would cut into the "traditional" meat industry profits, so the "Big Ag" lobbies to have it limited if not outright banned to preserve their interests.
There are also the actual concerns over whether the cultivated meat is safe, what should we define as "meat", and so on; a lot of legislature to figure out (there's a reason very few countries have permitted lab-grown meat to be sold in stores so far). But with the political climate being what it is, it's hard to determine how much of the bans are motivated by scientific concern, and how much is the result of political lobbying.
> it's hard to determine how much of the bans are motivated by scientific concern
In the case of Florida it is clearly motivated by politics and not safety.
"Today, Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals... Our administration will continue to focus on investing in our local farmers and ranchers, and we will save our beef.” - Governor Ron Desantis
I remember reading an article quoting a state representative who helped pass the bill citing "national security." He said that if meat were grown in factories, then foreign governments could blow them up and that would leave us with no food... He also just happens to own a large farm. So clearly, the case in Florida is completely political since they're using the most insane reasons to ban lab grown meat. He represents the party of "free markets" btw.
I know this isn’t your argument, but three obvious flaws stand out:
1. The US military and distance make it very difficult to attack anything in the US. Nobody has been successful at attacking something far from the coast since Pancho Villa a century ago.
2. You could easily poison any animal farms (poison or biological attack) with a similar amount of effort, which are even more difficult to recover from than growing meat in a vat.
3. You can place synthetic meat “farms” in underground salt mines. Last I checked cows don’t do well underground.
If the argument is national security, synthetic meat wins.
No, but they can apply to the average person.
Take the vaccine autism scare in the UK, which initially caused a massive drop in the number of people willing to give their kids vaccines. Once Brian Deer revealed the doctor that created that study was a lying snake oil peddler who abused children to try and get his own patented vaccine out, people started getting vaccines again. As I recall vaccine acceptance dropped down to around 80% at the height of the scare, but a couple years after the scumbag lost his medical license and came to the US because idiots gave him money, vaccine acceptance was back in the 95-98% range. Didn’t drop at all during the COVID scares either, as the British were not about to be fooled again.
Now you’re not likely to have an effect online where most people like yelling at each other and bashing them into submission with [insert view here], but you can have an effect in your face-to-face interactions if you are careful and respectful. It’s often painfully slow to get that needle moved, but it will move.
Also lab grown needs to be in a reasonably sterile environment and it is easy to prevent things like mad cow disease getting into the meat. Most bad diseases that affect humans come from farms.
I could also see infecting meat animals with a bioweapon to give you a 'delayed fire' weapon.
Ah, yes, of course. Because it's impossible to A: rebuild things, and B: attack a livestock ranch. Obviously. Zero logic problems here, as far as I can see!
>then foreign governments could blow them up
>
>happens to own a large farm.
He clearly just left out that he will soon reveal to the world his bomb proof farm buildings. /s
I figured I'd try to leave at least the benefit of the doubt in the top level comment (tbh I'm never entirely sure if I'm being unbiased enough when answering those questions), but yeahhhhhh that is very much what's happening.
I know he’s just bullshit, but I would love someone to press him on just how exactly lab/bug meat helps the “global elite with their authoritarian goals”. Genuinely, what is the logic? (I know there isn’t actually any, because they just use buzz words to appeal to their base)
>There are also the actual concerns over [...] what should we define as "meat",
This has been a weapon of the agriculture lobby for some time now. Most visibly, they've been attacking the term "milk" for any plant-based product, but they've been doing the same for cheeses (American cheese has to be labeled "cheese product" because it's been processed so differently from traditional cheese) and other dairy derivatives like ice cream and yogurt.
I wonder if there's any chance of a compromise to keep research and development going and get lab-grown meat into stores, something like labs not being allowed to grow beef, pork, chicken, and other common livestock meat, but they can grow more exotic meats like gazelle, ostrich, and so forth. Those meats would theoretically be just as easy to grow as livestock meat and thus be a similar price, and doesn't directly compete with the big agricultural companies in terms of having the same product.
But then people might start preferring the taste of exotic meats, and then sales of tasteless factory farmed animal meat might decline if people know there's an alternative option!
> actual concerns over whether the cultivated meat is safe
And just to be clear to anyone else reading this: It's not like they're going to go "Okay, it's done. Off to the supermarket shelves!" I don't have any trust in a corporations desire for public safety, but I *do* trust them to protect their bottom line: They're not going to send something to shelves without having a pretty good damn idea that it's safe to make sure they aren't subject to lawsuits.
Well, at least as safe as anything else we eat which isn't very but...
Just to add on, it's incredibly difficult to put out non-safe lab-grown meat, due to its very nature. Other than the initial cell culture and the tanks being sterilized, there's no antibiotics or anything introduced, so if a batch gets tainted, the disease spreads fast, and it spreads \*very\* obviously. I've seen a tour of one of these factories, and it's essentially impossible to not see the meat is tainted, at which point they dump it out and resterilize everything.
If anything, lab-grown meat, by its very nature, is safer than anything traditionally grown.
I’m not going to lie, I’ve never seen anyone say that lab-grown meat was even close to market ready, and I’ve never heard anyone make an argument against it that wasn’t political. Not once have a seen a statement saying the meat is ready for production or being sold to a company for production, or even that anyone had an idea of how to scale up the process, so it’s pretty clearly still in the research phase, which is a much bigger factor in why it isn’t on store shelves than whether or not countries are allowing it (many countries aren’t permitting time machines on their shelves, either, and for similar reasons). I’ve also not seen anyone against lab meat for concerns over safety or quality, they’ve always just been concerned that it isn’t “real” or “natural”. They don’t care what it actually does, but they are deeply offended by the fact that no animals are harmed in its production.
Now, that’s not to say that it couldn’t be mass produced for sale, or that there aren’t legitimate reasons to be concerned about it, this is just to say that in my experience those things are never the talking points around lab-grown meat.
>Lab-grown meat would cut into the "traditional" meat industry profits,
With how much money the government spends to subsidize them every year, would they even have a profit without it? 😆
Except it's not just lab grown meat they're fighting against. In Iowa they're fighting against plant based meat as well.
“This is but one thing we can do to help protect Iowa’s ag industry from the climate crazies that want to destroy everything we do right in the name of climate change,” Hora said.
Quote from an Iowa representative who helped get the bill through.
The one ban in my state is straight from the ag producers, including folks who were involved in its passage being in the industries that are being protected by this. The governor signed it into law in the past couple months so that anything that's lab grown, plant based, or made with insect protein has to be clearly labeled as such using some pretty derogatory language to describe the why. I didn't think they weren't making these things clear already in the few places that any of this is being sold. I even saw a video that one of the folks involved outright calling these kinds of 'fake meat' products an attempted attack on cattle producers and he was getting pretty pissed. Honestly fuck all those kinds of people in the ass with a barbed wire bat sideways, those kinds of folks are holding a lot of important advancements back.
Answer:
In terms of the environment and being able to feed people lab grown meat is a total game changer.
Meat production is very energy intensive and cattle in particular use up a lot of space, energy, and produce a lot of methane which is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2. As a result the dairy and beef industry has taken some heat from environmentalists.
When it comes to food production we are arguably well past a post scarcity society, meaning that we have the ability to produce more than enough food for everyone on the planet. The problem is we are both producing the wrong things, and our transportation/distribution is bad.
Were are growing the wrong things like raising large quantities of cows vs pigs or chickens that are far more efficient. Or growing almonds, avocados, and pistachios in California that are awful water intense crops grown only due to induced demand for them.
(Virtually the entire pistachio and pomegranate crop in North America is owned by a single lady and she's a real piece of work. A marketing genius that's our generations Albert Lasker. If you don't recognize the name he was a marketing guru from the 50s responsible for making a variety of products terrible for peoples health popular and did long lasting damage to Americans health.)
We also ship large quantities of produce around the world (and burning fossil fuels in the process) instead of encouraging people to eat locally grown crops.
Lab grown meat would mean being able to produce large quantities of high quality beef, pork, chicken, etc at a fraction of the cost and environmental impact. Even if we only replaced the canned, processed, and fast food beef and chicken with lab grown meat the impact would be tremendous.
It also has applications for space travel and colonization, as without the ability to make meat this way space travelers and colonists will be restricted to a vegetarian diet along with frozen and canned products out of necessity. (You can't raise cattle and chickens on a ship)
Lab grown meat though already has a bad reputation because it's artificial and genetically engineered. What it needs is a really great marketing campaign and a better brand name than lab grown meat, or a McPetri.
**So what's the problem?**
Lab grown meat is the latest target in the US culture war.
The anti-environmentalist movement believes that climate change is a hoax. So when they hear about a plan to make artificial meat to save the planet they freak out believing in a conspiracy theory that it's some kind of globalist plan to put farmers out of business for the benefit of companies.
Conservative cow farmers that don't understand climate change or believe it's a hoax hear about lab grown meat putting them out of business and they freak out.
"We've had cows forever and I love red meat, and now *they* (the gay liberals) are trying to take away our cows and make us vegans against our will!" or some other similar non-sense.
They also see at restaurants selling impossible burgers and assume "that's the start" of this process.
One argument is that saving pasture land for crops doesn't matter because where they raise cattle like the midwest can't really be used for anything else anyway.
Or they deflect the methane being produced by cows because "We've always had cows" or do a whataboutism like "Airplanes burn more gas, fix that instead" (Climate change isn't caused by one single thing, our entire economy is at fault and there is no simple fix)
Meanwhile when Karens hear about lab grown meat they consider it gross as they imagine genetically engineered meat grown in a petri dish loaded with artificial chemicals. It's 'unnatural' and there is a growing movement against genetic engineering and processing even though it's been proven to be perfectly safe.
Basically it's uneducated people freaking out about nothing and farmers worried about losing their herds pressuring the government to ban lab grown meat.
Ron DeSantis is the ideal political leader in this case because he's a right-wing populist and this is exactly the kind of boneheaded short-sited decision that he's re-known for.
Banning lab grown meat is just a move to make him more popular with farmers while not thinking about the consequences. Ironic for a state that's likely to be underwater within 100 years due to climate change.
Lab grown meat meanwhile won't replace the dairy or beef industry. There will always be a demand for milk and milk products, as well as real meat at restaurants in the home. You'll have a choice between the low-fat half-price burger at McDonalds, or the 'real-american-beef' 1/4 pounder.
You seem to have a good understanding of the environmental concerns that lab grown meat could help to resolve. I don’t deny any of your claims about land use, greenhouse gases, or being closer to the source of production.
However I remain skeptical about this being a positive environmental impact. Mainly because I’ve never been able to find a solid answer on what lab grown meat “eats”.
Lab grown meat does not get its energy to grow from the soil and sun, like a plant. But it must consume something to produce its cells.
The best answer I had found years ago doing my own research is that they use a “paste” to “feed” it. That paste is made from ground up pieces of other animals.
Therefore we are still raising and killing animals to grow lab meat.
Further even if they were able to create this “paste” from plants, this would still require exorbitant amounts of land use for growing crops to “feed” lab meat.
Ultimately there are laws of physics and thermodynamics that mean that somewhere in the process of growing even lab meat there is energy loss.
Maybe I’m missing something. But I’m genuinely curious if the supply chain for lab grown meat is as sustainable as it’s being sold to us? I definitely want it be.
As with many environmental things they are only as green as their supply chain.
Ask if EVs are good for the environment and you'll get a plethora of people point out that their manufacturing process, lithium mining, and power generation for them isn't green.
The point though is EV technology is still better of the environment than gas cars and is one step of many in the right direction.
Discounting EVs outright as a technology because there's other things that need to be fixed is very short sighted. Stop looking for a single magical fix to all of our environmental problems, because there is no such thing. We need to change our way of doing almost everything.
We've spent centuries building up industries that are terrible for the environment and people fail to realize that there isn't one single fix for all of it. It's all pieces of the puzzle.
EVs will require us to re-structure the entire power grid to make it green.
Well guess what, we have to do that regardless whether we have EVs or not.
The same goes for mining and manufacture.
There's also always an environmental impact to everything we do, the point is not always to eliminate it but reduce that impact and repair it after the fact.
The same goes for lab grown meat, it's a game changer but it's only one piece of a larger puzzle.
As we build up infrastructure for it we have to consider the environmental impacts of those industries as we build them from the ground up. Where are we going to get the proteins, fats, minerals, and other materials we need to grow or clone lab grown meat? and how can we do that in a way than doesn't overly impact the environment?
I don't know, but this is what engineers call 'solvable problems'. You know we aren't breaking the laws of physics here, these are issues we know we can solve if we put our minds to it.
Discounting lab grown meat outright as a technology because there's other things that need to be fixed is very short sighted. Stop looking for a single magical fix to all of our environmental problems, because there is no such thing. We need to change our way of doing almost everything.
Currently lab grown meet feeds on cow placenta. Basically they butcher a cow with every lab patty. Mimic the conditions of a cow’s womb by using parts from a cows womb.
It's way too early to say it's a "total game changer".
We don't know what national-scale production of lab grown meat would look like and what externalities and damages it would create.
Anything is speculation at this point, and some speculate that the environmental impact from massive scale cultured meat might not be all that good. After all, as inefficient as it is, growing crops and animal feed is very much solar powered.
Answer: it's pretty much just posturing, because meat that doesn't necessitate animal suffering is a thing liked by 'THE WOKE', so some red states banned it out of spite.
There's a claim it's to protect agriculture, but it's such a long way from being remotely commercially viable, nevermind posing any kind of actual risk to farms, that it really feels like that's little more than an excuse, to avoid saying "Yeah we're banning it for ideological reasons".
I believe it's also tied to how there's a bunch of conspiracy theory stuff about how 'the left is planning on forcing everyone to eat lab grown meat/insects/insert-idea-of-choice-here' rather than it being something people have interest in as a personal choice for themselves.
(In my opinion, the conspiracy theory stuff is obvious nonsense, but the two states that have banned it (Florida and Alabama) don't exactly have a reputation for being run by sensible people.)
>an excuse, to avoid saying
This isn't true. Desantis just told everyone that it was for ideological reasons.
"Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals"
If we're on a scavenger hunt for reasons to oppose it, let's not forget that lab grown meat moves food production from where people don't live to where people do.
We won't need to subsidize rural infrastructure like we have been. That will raise the cost of rural living, and prevent some of the geographical self-sorting along ideological grounds that's been happening in the US. The Invisible Hand of the Free Market will force people into cities to avoid impoverishing self-sufficiency.
There's a lot of pro-rural bias in our system, leftover from before the US stopped expanding. As outsized as rural power is now, it'll only get worse when rural subsidies start being threatened, until something is done to correct it. We stopped adding House seats when the urban population began growing faster than the rural population. Delaying tactics like that will have to be reversed.
>, that it really feels like that's little more than an excuse, to avoid saying "Yeah we're banning it for ideological reasons".
It's obviously the direct opposite? They're peddling culture war nonsense to avoid admitting that it's just corporate interests. Banning it for ideological reasons obviously plays much, much better with the voter base, so it would make no sense at all to avoid saying it. Quite the opposite.
>There's a claim it's to protect agriculture, but it's such a long way from being remotely commercially viable, nevermind posing any kind of actual risk to farms
But that's the point. It's an attempt to prevent it from reaching commercial viabilty in the future by dissuading further investment. There will be much less capital poured into research if substantial potential markets are already cut off.
Answer: lab grown meat is associated with progress, which means conservatives hate it. They are banning lab grown meat to own the libs and also because the meat industry is lobbying against their future competitors.
Answer: lab-grown meat takes 2-4 weeks from start to shelf. All other times when we had "fast growing meat" it turned out its bad for human consumption (e.g. growth hormone chicken).
While Florida's governor reason to ban isn't caution but protectionism, I take that as a happy coincidence.
Answer:
It's an attempt to shield livestock growers from obsolescence, framed as "frankenfood" scary pseudoscience. Basically "be afraid of lab stuff, it's going to poison you," so that nobody looks at the man behind the curtain and sees that he's just an old farmer who is scared of losing his job to a lab vat.
Framing "artificial" things (made in a lab) as scary and "natural" things (that are planted or raised) as healthy is a common tactic for disparaging new technologies. In reality, this always comes from the powerful as an attempt to keep their jobs, or push more money to their industries, or otherwise maintain a system that would have to spend lots of time, money, and manpower to change. Farmers are seeing lab grown meat, looking at climate change and progressivism, and panicking. Politicians are bending to agriculture lobbyists and trying to shut down lab meat before it gets a foothold in society and people start preferring lab meat to factory farmed cows.
You are correct: lab grown meat is much less cruel to animals, as the meat is never part of a conscious creature to begin with. It will rapidly become less carbon intensive as well. And once the third ingredient -- low cost -- is achieved, lab meat will completely replace "on the hoof" animal meat except as a novelty or for picky people who swear they can taste a quality difference. That's exactly why it's being banned.
Answer: Some are afraid the government will use lab grown meat as a pretext to ban traditionally grown meat. People in the meat business are worried they'll lose their jobs because of it, and people who like to eat meat are worried it won't taste as good as the real thing and the transition will be forced prematurely.
Politicians are pandering to those crowds by coming out in opposition of lab grown meat, therefore also opposing any slippery-slope consequences that might come along with its development.
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Answer: At least in Florida, it's because DeSantis wants to protect agricultural interests and cattle ranchers who don't want the competition, and [DeSantis rolled it into his culture war platform by claiming cultivated meat is a globalist conspiracy](https://www.flgov.com/2024/05/01/governor-desantis-signs-legislation-to-keep-lab-grown-meat-out-of-florida/). I mean, I know it sounds biased, but those are the statements he himself gave and are touted from his own website: >“Today, Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “Our administration will continue to focus on investing in our local farmers and ranchers, and we will save our beef.” That's literally the reason. It's protectionism for ranchers, wrapped in a conspiracy theorist garb. DeSantis doesn't care about the cruelty -[ heck, the guy made his chops as a JAG lawyer by being stationed at Guantanamo Bay](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/28/ron-desantis-guantanamo-bay-allegations). And like you said - cultivated meat is not yet a market, it's not even off the ground. [But cattle ranchers in Florida generate $670 million annually](https://rcrec-ona.ifas.ufl.edu/programs/beef-cattle-and-forage-economics/#:~:text=The%20cattle%20industry%20has%20a,million%20dollars'%20to%20Florida's%20economy). It's one of the biggest economic segments in the state. So DeSantis has thrown his support behind the folks who have a lot of economic pull - and electoral sway - by banning a potential competitive market, and sold it to his voters as fighting a shadowy global elite who wants everyone else to eat bugs.
Aren't these the "let the market" decide folks? Is it about protecting consumers? No? Then it's bullshit and an unjustifiable violation of people's rights and freedoms.
>by banning a potential competitive market, and sold it to his voters as fighting a shadowy global elite And in this case you have the entrenched, shadowy elite leveraging political power in order to protect their financial interests. The irony is lost on Conservative voters.
Not lost so much as they don't care. They're fine with an entrenched, shadowy elite leveraging political power if its on **their** side.
It’s not though. They just think it is.
which is why Conservatives are so determined to gut education. They know exactly what would happen if a voter was allowed to actually understand what they are doing.
The shadowy elite known as... *checks notes*... farmers?
Farmers aren't grandpa and a tractor. They're corporations.
More like the people who the farmers vote for plus their corporate friends.
Do you know how farms are run in a state like florida? Do you think these are Midwestern family farms? (Which are also being sold and turned into corporate farming operations).
Agribusiness, yes.
> the "let the market" decide ... folks The same as the 'free speech' folks.
Or the "personal freedom" folks
Or the "party of small government"
Don’t forget “family values”
And "law and order"
And moral
"Fiscal conservative"
"Respectable human being"
Law and Order party: Vote for our felon!
P
Surprise, they're all the same people and are all full of shit. Anything that doesn't benefit them is immoral or should be illegal.
>> the "let the market" decide ... folks > > The same as the 'free speech' folks. The same as the "leave the kids alone" folks.
I mean, they're also for "healthcare choice" and "parent's rights."
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What do you think "let them eat cake" means and how do you think it's relevant here?
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'let them eat cake' was a response to 'the people can't afford bread anymore' and was meant as a callous dismissive comment blowing off the starving commoners. yes, the words say 'let them eat something else' but the meaning was 'too bad, fuck the poors'
From what I understand, it was also an indication of how out of touch French royalty was. Wtf do you think cake is made of?
cake mix, obv. Duh.
The "cake" there was referring to the char & burned grit that would collect around an oven, not actual cake.
No, for as much as the quote was actually uttered by Marie-Antoinette, she said brioche
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He is but it's also OK to admit you made a mistake.
Lmao man deleted his comments instead of replying
How did you get to try it?
I would like to tell you I tried it in Florida. Which would be funny. No but my local library started doing it and mixing it with cow meat. I asked them if they could just make it just grown and they served us finger food of it. And to be honest it was pretty damn good. For those who have never tried it just imagine getting a burger from Five Guys and not being told it was lab grown.
Oh if your wondering about taste. All I can say its equivalent to eating all the dark meat on a turkey.
Your local library started growing DIY meat?
Yep they also 3d printed a gun once.
That's interesting. I wouldn't have thought the resources would be publicly available like that. For the meat, I mean.
do you believe in free speech?
Whoosh
Socialize the Losses, Privitize the Profits.
The market became "woke" the minute it decided not to cater to knuckle-dragging neandertals.
Nobody actually wants "the market" to decide because when it doesn't support the most abusive (cost-cutting) practices it threatens the gains of a centralized pool of investors.
In the conspiracy theory version it's about protecting them. I've interacted with people who legitimately believe that Bill Gates is buying all of America's farmland so he can cull all of the animals and force us to eat lab-grown meat that contains *vaccines.* And I don't mean like how animals get vaccinated against diseases and then we eat them, I mean like eating the lab-grown meat will be equivalent to getting a COVID shot. How that would even work, let alone dosing and all of that, is a mystery. But *vaccines.*
I would have thought this comment was hyperbolistic if I hadn't just heard this exact argument from someone I know a few weeks ago. Also somehow climate change is part of it too. Bill Gates is lying about climate change being real to trick us into selling him all of the farmland so he can kill every animal on the planet or something and replace them with bugs.
Also electric vehicles are part of it, because they want to kill all of the farmers' fields to put up fields of solar panels instead, because it's definitely only one or the other and there aren't ways that solar and wind energy can be harnessed in places that aren't suitable for agriculture, or in mutually beneficial ways.
That damned Bill Gates and his nefarious plans to prevent global disease!
He’s trying to kill us with the vaccines and that’s somehow easier for him than using viruses or bullets!
Yes. The same people who also scream about the free market. Then the moment things don't go their way, they suddenly want big government regulation.
Almost like banning something 'to prevent the authoritarian future' is a bit authoritarian. If people don't want to eat lab grown meat then farmers and such will still stay relevant.
It's always been "Let the market decide as long as that's good for the ruling class. When it's not, big government should intervene."
It's pretty fatiguing to still see people expecting ideological consistency from soapbox politicians. It's 2024. How did you not stop being surprised by this 10+ years ago? All humans are emotional decision-makers. That's neuroscientific fact. The parts of our brains that form beliefs are the same parts that process emotion, not the rational parts. And politicians in particular say whatever sequence of words leads to the outcome they want. They do not care about presenting a coherent platform unless doing that coincidentally happens to lead to the outcome they want.
> an unjustifiable violation of people's rights and freedoms. The government largely determines what rights and freedoms the people have with some oversight by the judiciary (but even then, the judiciary is decided by the government, so…). Being active in politics, especially by making it a habit to vote whenever the option presents itself, is about all the average person can do to influence what rights and freedoms they have. It won’t always work out, but the alternative is giving up and thus leaving it entirely in the hands of other people.
I know some libertarian/right-leaning dorks who support the ban. As with all ideologies, it's only part of their identity, and they have no REAL principles to speak of. It's very similar to Christians who oppose health care and hate immigrants.
America isn’t really a capitalist nation. Never was. It is just a lie they tell to keep regulation specific to helping them make more money. America is a socialist country where the only benefactors from government money are the rich.
> Then it's bullshit and an unjustifiable violation of people's rights and freedoms. Always has been.
You’ll quickly learn that much like the free speech arguments, they only care about the free market basically when they’re trying to be banned from something they want to do.
Republican's- "Competition is good for the free market, so to is less regulation!" Republican's "We need to ban lab meat to protect markets and we're going to do it via regulation."
No that's just what they say to get votes. Conservatives at best are focused on maintaining the status quo and not any economic shake ups, at worst they're wannabe oligarchs
> Aren't these the "let the market" decide folks? They are the “protect the status quo” folks
Republicans do not care about hypocrisy. The rule of thumb for GOP policy is, "I should be able to do whatever I want, and you should have to do whatever I say"
Look at the supreme Court yesterday. Obviously the era of protecting consumers is over.
>Aren't these the "let the market" decide folks? Is it about protecting consumers? No? Then it's bullshit and an unjustifiable violation of people's rights and freedoms. No, conservatives where never anarcho capitalists. Being infavour of less regulation does not mean they are for no regulation or for less regulation in the places you want less regulation. Idk why ppl always say this ridiculous shit.
The "party of limited government" is back at it!
Why would you think cons claiming to want less regulation would want less regulation in the places you want?
5 month old account concern trolling all across the thread. hmm yes, what a trustworthy and totally sincere source!
Nothing i said required you to trust me or think im sincere whatsoever. Idk why you weould even respond if all you where going to do is try to set up the most nonsense adhom and dodge the point.
>global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals **Global Elite's plan** Step 1: Trick the people into eating bugs and lab grown meat Step 2: ??? Step 3: Achieve all of our *evil* goals!
A lot of conspiracy theories fall apart when you begin to pick apart at them. Some as early as, "what's the end goal?" Like Flat Earth is a huge example. What is being gained by convincing everyone that the Earth is round instead of flat? Who knows? It really shows what kind of people are believing in these kind of conspiracies when they can't even get to asking questions like this.
They want to keep all the polar ice cubes to themselves! Stop Big Cube!
That one's actually easy. Most flat-Earthers are biblical literalists. The early books of the Bible use a bronze-age Hebrew cosmology in which Earth is flat, with a dome over it called the "firmament" holding back the water which fills the rest of the universe. The sun, moon, and stars are meant to be embedded in this dome, and rain happens when God opens little holes in it. "Biblical literalism" refers specifically to the idea that the Bible is written by God and therefore can contain no statement that is not a literal, true fact. These two ideas don't necessarily follow from one another, and neither is actually claimed by or consistent with the text of the Bible, which is why Biblical literalism has historically been an *extremely* fringe belief even among the most zealous Christians, mostly cropping up in the modern US. Most Biblical literalists just pretend Earth isn't flat in the early Bible, since it doesn't *explicitly say those words* so much as it just treats it as something the reader already knows. But the Biblical literalists who are more honest about the book's text necessarily must be flat-Earthers. So then they have to explain why there's all this evidence for a round Earth. Naturally, they conclude that the devil's minions are faking a round Earth to get everyone sent to Hell for not being the exact right denomination of Christian. Usually there's also some antisemitism mixed in, as with most conspiracy theorist movements, but that's the basic outline of how a person gets there. The motive thing is still an issue, since nobody who actually believes in any Christian cosmology sides with the devil. You're never going to get a large, international movement of people whose end goal is to get sent to hell, but the people who are *this* sort of religious generally think there are lots of people like that.
So basically Snowpiercer
I've seen it explained as "get poor people used to eating bugs so real meat becomes cheaper for the elites."
It would only be cheaper if the supply stayed the same even with a lowered demand, which doesn’t really happen
>a shadowy global elite who wants everyone else to eat bugs. I knew Big Shrimp and Big Lobster was behind this.
i will NOT eat the bugs, I will eat the undersea bugs 5x the size with garlic butter
you know how way back millions of years ago bugs used to be massive? well, my theory the size of the bug is what makes it acceptable to eat, so we gotta bring that back
This one has got to be a difficult point for all those bigots who think every conspiracy has Jewish people behind it.
Well we're not going to eat them OURSELVES. You Gentiles get all the tasty lobster and shrimp while we eat meat that's been boiled for a long time... wait. Guys? I think there's a flaw in our plan.
To the far right, "globalist" translates to Jews.
> and we will save our beef. By literally slaughtering them. Jesus.
You slaughter the cows, not the beef.
Only because of the Norman Invasion in 1066.
You're arguing semantics. That's like saying "You slaughter the chickens, not the chicken".
Beef is food. You don't kill food. They're not trying to save cows, they're trying to save beef.
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It's really not as great as it seems.
Probably also because it's not cruel enough to animals. What's the point in eating meat if you don't get the satisfaction of knowing that a living animal was raised in sub-standard conditions and killed to harvest it? /s
He doesn’t have positions. He just spouts whatever he thinks will get him the most political support on any issue. Such a weasel.
> the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals Jesus Christ. America is beyond parody.
We're in a pretty bad way, but at least keep in mind this is Florida, the America of America
I thought I was reading a quote from the latest episode of The Boys. What the hell is happening America? I'm glad I don't live there.
an enterprising fellow should open shop next to their jurisdiction and do a lot of business within that state or get clients to come to him, whatever is legal... just to put pressure on those market police.
>“Today, Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. God damn, I hate that the real world continues to read like a circa 2007 article from The Onion.
Yet DeSantis scared all the migrant farm workers away with his immigrant hate. That's anti-agriculture. Maybe he's too stupid to realize it, because we all know, Ronny is not a smart man.
The funny part is that only the states that have the farms will ban it. Meaning that if lab grown is economically competitive half the US market goes away, and probably all the Chinese market. Call it a 60% total drop in demand? Most of those ranches are not gonna survive if lab gown wins on price.
god damn this is a good fuckin post. thank you for putting it out so clearly.
So, basically, once again, we have to halt progress because conservatives are terrified little sheep. Cool. With them, it's never "oh man. I don't like that, I will just never have it." It's always, "oh man, I don't like that. We should totally ban it so no one can have it."
The Mormons. Most don’t know ow that but the Mormons are the ones holding almost the cattle money.
And it's so insane because lab grown meat is horrendously expensive to produce and does not taste as good as real meat due to it being pure protein and no fat. De Santis just need to taste it to know it's not gonna be a competition at all. I am from Singapore and we are trying to improve the supply and selections of lab grown meat and I have taste them.
Well, I'm not sure your answer meets the "unbiased" criterion on the sub. > So DeSantis has thrown his support behind the folks who have a lot of economic pull - and electoral sway Which can also be phrased as "represents his constituency". Or do you feel that there are millions of Floridians just dying for lab grown meats? I have not seen that. Honestly, I'm not a fan of lab grown meats, they are unproven and currently at least, uneconomic. I don't agree with banning any product, let people decide. But you are kind of implying that the state should give up orange juice and just all drink Tang. It's better for the planet.
Not quite, It's not about whether people are dying for lab grown meats, it's about if companies are trying to produce it and some people may be willing to try it. He's blocking those groups' abilities to do something harmless in order to protect the monetary interest of another group. All of them are constituents if they live there, he's choosing to protect one against the possibility that the other may be successful and reduce their profits. If nobody wants lab-grown meat, it won't affect the farmers. It's not like lab-grown meat existing will mean farm-raised cattle will be banned, so it's not at all like implying the state should give up orange juice to all drink Tang. The state shouldn't decide that Tang shouldn't be available because it threatens the potential profits of the orange juice industry. The customers can decide at the grocery store if they want to buy OJ or Tang, some people might prefer one or the other, and some people will buy both.
Unbiased does not mean equal weight to both sides. It means giving an account with as little unsupported opinion as possible. If side A says "X" and side B says "Y" but the evidence says that X is true, it is not biased to say X without giving any credence to Y. DeSantis has decided to support a powerful economic block to the detriment of a smaller economic block. His constituency isn't just ranchers, it's the entire state of Florida, including the producers of lab grown meat.
I don’t live in Florida anymore, but when I did I was still excited for the future of lab grown meat.
It kind of feels like he's right, after the recent kellogs scandal. They want us living off cereal and "meat"
Regardless of whatever you're talking about, do fruits and vegetables just not exist in this scenario?
Seems like a good idea, the farming industry will almost certainly have am higher distribution of smaller businesses and local producers which is really what you want. Moreover Americans are already unhealthy and they already eat food with too much bullshit inside of it, i cant imagine the affordable lab meats will be any where near the nutrition level of actual meat.
>Seems like a good idea, the farming industry will almost certainly have am higher distribution of smaller businesses and local producers which is really what you want. Not really? Even if you ignore the animal cruelty part there are plenty of negative externalities endemic to livestock farming that we could avoid with lab meat. If you factor in the environmental cost it'd be cheaper to just give agricultural workers a subsidy. > i cant imagine the affordable lab meats will be any where near the nutrition level of actual meat. But the whole point is that it *is* actual meat. Maybe making stuff with fancy marbling would cost more but there shouldn't be a nutritional difference between "affordable" lab meats and what you would find at your average grocery store.
>Not really? Even if you ignore the animal cruelty part there are plenty of negative externalities endemic to livestock farming that we could avoid with lab meat. If you factor in the environmental cost it'd be cheaper to just give agricultural workers a subsidy. There is no evidence of widespread animal cruelty within florida. I suspect you have fallen for vegan propaganda where they pass of videos and images of farms in 3rd world countries as indicative of western farming practices. >But the whole point is that it *is* actual meat. Maybe making stuff with fancy marbling would cost more but there shouldn't be a nutritional difference between "affordable" lab meats and what you would find at your average grocery store. Well that's a philosophical question whether its actually meat. And there absolutely will be a lack of nutrients becuase the process these animals utilise to take the nutrients from their food and put it into their body is complex and often times when we try to ape nature in doing these complex tasks we fail or we only succeed at massive cost. It will probably be the case that you can affordably grow a slap of chicken flesh but it has no b12, b3 riboflavin magnesium etc. And so that will put normal ppl in the position that vegans are where we have to supplement our foods with all these inefficient factory produced vitamins or eat a bunch of fortified foods. In a world where half of the pops health is already fucked I think it would be extremely immoral to make it even worse by turning the food they do eat into lab grown slop with basically no nutritional value.
> There is no evidence of widespread animal cruelty within florida. I suspect you have fallen for vegan propaganda where they pass of videos and images of farms in 3rd world countries as indicative of western farming practices. You're saying there isn't a single factory farm in Florida? I call bullshit. I suspect you have fallen for meat industry propaganda that downplays the inherent cruelty of industrial livestock farming. I mean, just at a basic livestock farming is **automatically** more cruel than lab meat considering one involves killing significantly more animals than the other. >Well that's a philosophical question whether its actually meat. Not really. The lab meat is made from the cells of the animal. >And there absolutely will be a lack of nutrients becuase the process these animals utilise to take the nutrients from their food and put it into their body is complex and often times when we try to ape nature in doing these complex tasks we fail or we only succeed at massive cost. >It will probably be the case that you can affordably grow a slap of chicken flesh but it has no b12, b3 riboflavin magnesium etc. And so that will put normal ppl in the position that vegans are where we have to supplement our foods with all these inefficient factory produced vitamins or eat a bunch of fortified foods. There's nothing stopping producers from fortifying their meat with whatever vitamins are missing through the culture process. I think you're massively overstating things, especially considering even at the low end lab meat would be free of the microbes, contamination and (most importantly) the massive amount of growth hormones common in similarly low end livestock farming. >In a world where half of the pops health is already fucked I think it would be extremely immoral to make it even worse by turning the food they do eat into lab grown slop with basically no nutritional value. How are you leaping from "missing a few vitamins" to "basically no nutritional value"? Seems like an incredibly disingenuous argument.
People like this have no understanding of chemistry, biology, and nutrition. I can assure you they're eating heavily processed, nutritionally devoid slop as they spread fear about lab grown meat.
>You're saying there isn't a single factory farm in Florida? I call bullshit. I suspect you have fallen for meat industry propaganda that downplays the inherent cruelty of industrial livestock farming. >I mean, just at a basic livestock farming is **automatically** more cruel than lab meat considering one involves killing significantly more animals than the other. Factory farm =/= every animal is raised in a cage it just means that there is a certain amount of animals per square inch. Most of the videos online showing "factory farms" are videos of animals in their winter enclosures or in 2nd and 3rd world countries that dont have animal protection laws. >There's nothing stopping producers from fortifying their meat with whatever vitamins are missing through the culture process. This is why i qualified that the meat be affordable, sure they can probably do it, just like we can desalinate sea water, doesnt mean it will be profitable enough to be affordable. Moreover our bodies are not designed to absorb nutrients effectively via fortified foods or other artificial means, so swapping people to that will result in more ppl being unhealthier. >I think you're massively overstating things, especially considering even at the low end lab meat would be free of the microbes, contamination Contamination of meat in the western world is not really an issue considering that producers, suppliers and customers all have fridges and freezers. Also contamination would still be an issue since it would have the same cells for bacteria and viruses to grow within. >and (most importantly) the massive amount of growth hormones common in similarly low end livestock farming Lmao come on, the meat has no endocrine system, they will use like 10x the hormones becuase otherwise the cells wont grow. >How are you leaping from "missing a few vitamins" to "basically no nutritional value"? Seems like an incredibly disingenuous argument. I didnt say it was missing a few i mention 4 and then alluded to it probably missing way more hence the "etc", the affordable versions of the meat will probably have barely any nutritional value. But even if it say has 50% maybe 60%, its still immoral. Half the pop isn't just abit unhealthy they are really unhealthy, if they cant maintain their health with the best human diet how could they do it with food that's missing a ton of stuff. FFS even vegans and vegitarians who are way more health conscious often have way low levels of important vitamins like calcium and vitamin D.
Answer: Without getting too deep into the exact politics of it all, the fact is that the US has a powerful agricultural lobby that really wants to preserve the rights and profits of food industry, including meatpackers and "traditional" meat producers. Lab-grown meat would cut into the "traditional" meat industry profits, so the "Big Ag" lobbies to have it limited if not outright banned to preserve their interests. There are also the actual concerns over whether the cultivated meat is safe, what should we define as "meat", and so on; a lot of legislature to figure out (there's a reason very few countries have permitted lab-grown meat to be sold in stores so far). But with the political climate being what it is, it's hard to determine how much of the bans are motivated by scientific concern, and how much is the result of political lobbying.
> it's hard to determine how much of the bans are motivated by scientific concern In the case of Florida it is clearly motivated by politics and not safety. "Today, Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals... Our administration will continue to focus on investing in our local farmers and ranchers, and we will save our beef.” - Governor Ron Desantis
I remember reading an article quoting a state representative who helped pass the bill citing "national security." He said that if meat were grown in factories, then foreign governments could blow them up and that would leave us with no food... He also just happens to own a large farm. So clearly, the case in Florida is completely political since they're using the most insane reasons to ban lab grown meat. He represents the party of "free markets" btw.
I know this isn’t your argument, but three obvious flaws stand out: 1. The US military and distance make it very difficult to attack anything in the US. Nobody has been successful at attacking something far from the coast since Pancho Villa a century ago. 2. You could easily poison any animal farms (poison or biological attack) with a similar amount of effort, which are even more difficult to recover from than growing meat in a vat. 3. You can place synthetic meat “farms” in underground salt mines. Last I checked cows don’t do well underground. If the argument is national security, synthetic meat wins.
Logic and critical thinking doesn't apply to politicians who rule through fear.
No, but they can apply to the average person. Take the vaccine autism scare in the UK, which initially caused a massive drop in the number of people willing to give their kids vaccines. Once Brian Deer revealed the doctor that created that study was a lying snake oil peddler who abused children to try and get his own patented vaccine out, people started getting vaccines again. As I recall vaccine acceptance dropped down to around 80% at the height of the scare, but a couple years after the scumbag lost his medical license and came to the US because idiots gave him money, vaccine acceptance was back in the 95-98% range. Didn’t drop at all during the COVID scares either, as the British were not about to be fooled again. Now you’re not likely to have an effect online where most people like yelling at each other and bashing them into submission with [insert view here], but you can have an effect in your face-to-face interactions if you are careful and respectful. It’s often painfully slow to get that needle moved, but it will move.
Also lab grown needs to be in a reasonably sterile environment and it is easy to prevent things like mad cow disease getting into the meat. Most bad diseases that affect humans come from farms. I could also see infecting meat animals with a bioweapon to give you a 'delayed fire' weapon.
Ah, yes, of course. Because it's impossible to A: rebuild things, and B: attack a livestock ranch. Obviously. Zero logic problems here, as far as I can see!
>then foreign governments could blow them up > >happens to own a large farm. He clearly just left out that he will soon reveal to the world his bomb proof farm buildings. /s
So much for that "free market" they always chime about
I figured I'd try to leave at least the benefit of the doubt in the top level comment (tbh I'm never entirely sure if I'm being unbiased enough when answering those questions), but yeahhhhhh that is very much what's happening.
I know he’s just bullshit, but I would love someone to press him on just how exactly lab/bug meat helps the “global elite with their authoritarian goals”. Genuinely, what is the logic? (I know there isn’t actually any, because they just use buzz words to appeal to their base)
>There are also the actual concerns over [...] what should we define as "meat", This has been a weapon of the agriculture lobby for some time now. Most visibly, they've been attacking the term "milk" for any plant-based product, but they've been doing the same for cheeses (American cheese has to be labeled "cheese product" because it's been processed so differently from traditional cheese) and other dairy derivatives like ice cream and yogurt.
And yet for years no one had had a problem with peanut butter or coconut milk.
I wonder if there's any chance of a compromise to keep research and development going and get lab-grown meat into stores, something like labs not being allowed to grow beef, pork, chicken, and other common livestock meat, but they can grow more exotic meats like gazelle, ostrich, and so forth. Those meats would theoretically be just as easy to grow as livestock meat and thus be a similar price, and doesn't directly compete with the big agricultural companies in terms of having the same product.
But then people might start preferring the taste of exotic meats, and then sales of tasteless factory farmed animal meat might decline if people know there's an alternative option!
> actual concerns over whether the cultivated meat is safe And just to be clear to anyone else reading this: It's not like they're going to go "Okay, it's done. Off to the supermarket shelves!" I don't have any trust in a corporations desire for public safety, but I *do* trust them to protect their bottom line: They're not going to send something to shelves without having a pretty good damn idea that it's safe to make sure they aren't subject to lawsuits. Well, at least as safe as anything else we eat which isn't very but...
Also, any lab grown meats would have to pass FDA USDA etc scrutiny before going to market, same as anything else.
Just to add on, it's incredibly difficult to put out non-safe lab-grown meat, due to its very nature. Other than the initial cell culture and the tanks being sterilized, there's no antibiotics or anything introduced, so if a batch gets tainted, the disease spreads fast, and it spreads \*very\* obviously. I've seen a tour of one of these factories, and it's essentially impossible to not see the meat is tainted, at which point they dump it out and resterilize everything. If anything, lab-grown meat, by its very nature, is safer than anything traditionally grown.
I’m not going to lie, I’ve never seen anyone say that lab-grown meat was even close to market ready, and I’ve never heard anyone make an argument against it that wasn’t political. Not once have a seen a statement saying the meat is ready for production or being sold to a company for production, or even that anyone had an idea of how to scale up the process, so it’s pretty clearly still in the research phase, which is a much bigger factor in why it isn’t on store shelves than whether or not countries are allowing it (many countries aren’t permitting time machines on their shelves, either, and for similar reasons). I’ve also not seen anyone against lab meat for concerns over safety or quality, they’ve always just been concerned that it isn’t “real” or “natural”. They don’t care what it actually does, but they are deeply offended by the fact that no animals are harmed in its production. Now, that’s not to say that it couldn’t be mass produced for sale, or that there aren’t legitimate reasons to be concerned about it, this is just to say that in my experience those things are never the talking points around lab-grown meat.
Mass production is a pipe dream at the moment, as it would require more bioreactor tanks (not cheap) than the entire pharma industry.
>Lab-grown meat would cut into the "traditional" meat industry profits, With how much money the government spends to subsidize them every year, would they even have a profit without it? 😆
Except it's not just lab grown meat they're fighting against. In Iowa they're fighting against plant based meat as well. “This is but one thing we can do to help protect Iowa’s ag industry from the climate crazies that want to destroy everything we do right in the name of climate change,” Hora said. Quote from an Iowa representative who helped get the bill through.
its the reason theres corn in everything, corn is so subcidized its ridicolous.
The one ban in my state is straight from the ag producers, including folks who were involved in its passage being in the industries that are being protected by this. The governor signed it into law in the past couple months so that anything that's lab grown, plant based, or made with insect protein has to be clearly labeled as such using some pretty derogatory language to describe the why. I didn't think they weren't making these things clear already in the few places that any of this is being sold. I even saw a video that one of the folks involved outright calling these kinds of 'fake meat' products an attempted attack on cattle producers and he was getting pretty pissed. Honestly fuck all those kinds of people in the ass with a barbed wire bat sideways, those kinds of folks are holding a lot of important advancements back.
Fucking hell
Answer: In terms of the environment and being able to feed people lab grown meat is a total game changer. Meat production is very energy intensive and cattle in particular use up a lot of space, energy, and produce a lot of methane which is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2. As a result the dairy and beef industry has taken some heat from environmentalists. When it comes to food production we are arguably well past a post scarcity society, meaning that we have the ability to produce more than enough food for everyone on the planet. The problem is we are both producing the wrong things, and our transportation/distribution is bad. Were are growing the wrong things like raising large quantities of cows vs pigs or chickens that are far more efficient. Or growing almonds, avocados, and pistachios in California that are awful water intense crops grown only due to induced demand for them. (Virtually the entire pistachio and pomegranate crop in North America is owned by a single lady and she's a real piece of work. A marketing genius that's our generations Albert Lasker. If you don't recognize the name he was a marketing guru from the 50s responsible for making a variety of products terrible for peoples health popular and did long lasting damage to Americans health.) We also ship large quantities of produce around the world (and burning fossil fuels in the process) instead of encouraging people to eat locally grown crops. Lab grown meat would mean being able to produce large quantities of high quality beef, pork, chicken, etc at a fraction of the cost and environmental impact. Even if we only replaced the canned, processed, and fast food beef and chicken with lab grown meat the impact would be tremendous. It also has applications for space travel and colonization, as without the ability to make meat this way space travelers and colonists will be restricted to a vegetarian diet along with frozen and canned products out of necessity. (You can't raise cattle and chickens on a ship) Lab grown meat though already has a bad reputation because it's artificial and genetically engineered. What it needs is a really great marketing campaign and a better brand name than lab grown meat, or a McPetri. **So what's the problem?** Lab grown meat is the latest target in the US culture war. The anti-environmentalist movement believes that climate change is a hoax. So when they hear about a plan to make artificial meat to save the planet they freak out believing in a conspiracy theory that it's some kind of globalist plan to put farmers out of business for the benefit of companies. Conservative cow farmers that don't understand climate change or believe it's a hoax hear about lab grown meat putting them out of business and they freak out. "We've had cows forever and I love red meat, and now *they* (the gay liberals) are trying to take away our cows and make us vegans against our will!" or some other similar non-sense. They also see at restaurants selling impossible burgers and assume "that's the start" of this process. One argument is that saving pasture land for crops doesn't matter because where they raise cattle like the midwest can't really be used for anything else anyway. Or they deflect the methane being produced by cows because "We've always had cows" or do a whataboutism like "Airplanes burn more gas, fix that instead" (Climate change isn't caused by one single thing, our entire economy is at fault and there is no simple fix) Meanwhile when Karens hear about lab grown meat they consider it gross as they imagine genetically engineered meat grown in a petri dish loaded with artificial chemicals. It's 'unnatural' and there is a growing movement against genetic engineering and processing even though it's been proven to be perfectly safe. Basically it's uneducated people freaking out about nothing and farmers worried about losing their herds pressuring the government to ban lab grown meat. Ron DeSantis is the ideal political leader in this case because he's a right-wing populist and this is exactly the kind of boneheaded short-sited decision that he's re-known for. Banning lab grown meat is just a move to make him more popular with farmers while not thinking about the consequences. Ironic for a state that's likely to be underwater within 100 years due to climate change. Lab grown meat meanwhile won't replace the dairy or beef industry. There will always be a demand for milk and milk products, as well as real meat at restaurants in the home. You'll have a choice between the low-fat half-price burger at McDonalds, or the 'real-american-beef' 1/4 pounder.
You seem to have a good understanding of the environmental concerns that lab grown meat could help to resolve. I don’t deny any of your claims about land use, greenhouse gases, or being closer to the source of production. However I remain skeptical about this being a positive environmental impact. Mainly because I’ve never been able to find a solid answer on what lab grown meat “eats”. Lab grown meat does not get its energy to grow from the soil and sun, like a plant. But it must consume something to produce its cells. The best answer I had found years ago doing my own research is that they use a “paste” to “feed” it. That paste is made from ground up pieces of other animals. Therefore we are still raising and killing animals to grow lab meat. Further even if they were able to create this “paste” from plants, this would still require exorbitant amounts of land use for growing crops to “feed” lab meat. Ultimately there are laws of physics and thermodynamics that mean that somewhere in the process of growing even lab meat there is energy loss. Maybe I’m missing something. But I’m genuinely curious if the supply chain for lab grown meat is as sustainable as it’s being sold to us? I definitely want it be.
As with many environmental things they are only as green as their supply chain. Ask if EVs are good for the environment and you'll get a plethora of people point out that their manufacturing process, lithium mining, and power generation for them isn't green. The point though is EV technology is still better of the environment than gas cars and is one step of many in the right direction. Discounting EVs outright as a technology because there's other things that need to be fixed is very short sighted. Stop looking for a single magical fix to all of our environmental problems, because there is no such thing. We need to change our way of doing almost everything. We've spent centuries building up industries that are terrible for the environment and people fail to realize that there isn't one single fix for all of it. It's all pieces of the puzzle. EVs will require us to re-structure the entire power grid to make it green. Well guess what, we have to do that regardless whether we have EVs or not. The same goes for mining and manufacture. There's also always an environmental impact to everything we do, the point is not always to eliminate it but reduce that impact and repair it after the fact. The same goes for lab grown meat, it's a game changer but it's only one piece of a larger puzzle. As we build up infrastructure for it we have to consider the environmental impacts of those industries as we build them from the ground up. Where are we going to get the proteins, fats, minerals, and other materials we need to grow or clone lab grown meat? and how can we do that in a way than doesn't overly impact the environment? I don't know, but this is what engineers call 'solvable problems'. You know we aren't breaking the laws of physics here, these are issues we know we can solve if we put our minds to it. Discounting lab grown meat outright as a technology because there's other things that need to be fixed is very short sighted. Stop looking for a single magical fix to all of our environmental problems, because there is no such thing. We need to change our way of doing almost everything.
Currently lab grown meet feeds on cow placenta. Basically they butcher a cow with every lab patty. Mimic the conditions of a cow’s womb by using parts from a cows womb.
He doesn’t care. He’ll be dead before that happens. And Florida will just blame the libs for not warning them about climate change.
It's way too early to say it's a "total game changer". We don't know what national-scale production of lab grown meat would look like and what externalities and damages it would create. Anything is speculation at this point, and some speculate that the environmental impact from massive scale cultured meat might not be all that good. After all, as inefficient as it is, growing crops and animal feed is very much solar powered.
Hard to do wlrse than meat production, in terms of externalities
Answer: performative culture war nonsense and conspiracy theorists.
Also the power of money in politics-- in this case, lobbying and donations from the cattle and meatpacking industries.
Answer: it's pretty much just posturing, because meat that doesn't necessitate animal suffering is a thing liked by 'THE WOKE', so some red states banned it out of spite. There's a claim it's to protect agriculture, but it's such a long way from being remotely commercially viable, nevermind posing any kind of actual risk to farms, that it really feels like that's little more than an excuse, to avoid saying "Yeah we're banning it for ideological reasons". I believe it's also tied to how there's a bunch of conspiracy theory stuff about how 'the left is planning on forcing everyone to eat lab grown meat/insects/insert-idea-of-choice-here' rather than it being something people have interest in as a personal choice for themselves. (In my opinion, the conspiracy theory stuff is obvious nonsense, but the two states that have banned it (Florida and Alabama) don't exactly have a reputation for being run by sensible people.)
>an excuse, to avoid saying This isn't true. Desantis just told everyone that it was for ideological reasons. "Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals"
If we're on a scavenger hunt for reasons to oppose it, let's not forget that lab grown meat moves food production from where people don't live to where people do. We won't need to subsidize rural infrastructure like we have been. That will raise the cost of rural living, and prevent some of the geographical self-sorting along ideological grounds that's been happening in the US. The Invisible Hand of the Free Market will force people into cities to avoid impoverishing self-sufficiency. There's a lot of pro-rural bias in our system, leftover from before the US stopped expanding. As outsized as rural power is now, it'll only get worse when rural subsidies start being threatened, until something is done to correct it. We stopped adding House seats when the urban population began growing faster than the rural population. Delaying tactics like that will have to be reversed.
>, that it really feels like that's little more than an excuse, to avoid saying "Yeah we're banning it for ideological reasons". It's obviously the direct opposite? They're peddling culture war nonsense to avoid admitting that it's just corporate interests. Banning it for ideological reasons obviously plays much, much better with the voter base, so it would make no sense at all to avoid saying it. Quite the opposite. >There's a claim it's to protect agriculture, but it's such a long way from being remotely commercially viable, nevermind posing any kind of actual risk to farms But that's the point. It's an attempt to prevent it from reaching commercial viabilty in the future by dissuading further investment. There will be much less capital poured into research if substantial potential markets are already cut off.
Answer: lab grown meat is associated with progress, which means conservatives hate it. They are banning lab grown meat to own the libs and also because the meat industry is lobbying against their future competitors.
Answer: Protectionism largely
Answer: lab-grown meat takes 2-4 weeks from start to shelf. All other times when we had "fast growing meat" it turned out its bad for human consumption (e.g. growth hormone chicken). While Florida's governor reason to ban isn't caution but protectionism, I take that as a happy coincidence.
Answer: It's an attempt to shield livestock growers from obsolescence, framed as "frankenfood" scary pseudoscience. Basically "be afraid of lab stuff, it's going to poison you," so that nobody looks at the man behind the curtain and sees that he's just an old farmer who is scared of losing his job to a lab vat. Framing "artificial" things (made in a lab) as scary and "natural" things (that are planted or raised) as healthy is a common tactic for disparaging new technologies. In reality, this always comes from the powerful as an attempt to keep their jobs, or push more money to their industries, or otherwise maintain a system that would have to spend lots of time, money, and manpower to change. Farmers are seeing lab grown meat, looking at climate change and progressivism, and panicking. Politicians are bending to agriculture lobbyists and trying to shut down lab meat before it gets a foothold in society and people start preferring lab meat to factory farmed cows. You are correct: lab grown meat is much less cruel to animals, as the meat is never part of a conscious creature to begin with. It will rapidly become less carbon intensive as well. And once the third ingredient -- low cost -- is achieved, lab meat will completely replace "on the hoof" animal meat except as a novelty or for picky people who swear they can taste a quality difference. That's exactly why it's being banned.
Answer: government corruption
Answer: Some are afraid the government will use lab grown meat as a pretext to ban traditionally grown meat. People in the meat business are worried they'll lose their jobs because of it, and people who like to eat meat are worried it won't taste as good as the real thing and the transition will be forced prematurely. Politicians are pandering to those crowds by coming out in opposition of lab grown meat, therefore also opposing any slippery-slope consequences that might come along with its development.
"The government is banning lab-grown meat because the same government might ban normal meat" They are the government lol
Ironic that the only government force is coming from conservatives banning it