https://grist.org/food/lab-grown-meat-approved-us-climate-chicken/
Meat grown from cell cultures has been touted as a salve for global warming. But a lot of energy goes into raising those cells.
I'm in the process of writing an article that will hopefully look into this in more detail, but from my experience working in a cultivated meat company currently, there are no alternatives that work as well as fbs. There is a company that has received around 15m usd of funding and we've tested their serum replacement, and it just doesn't work very well. So we are still using fbs. In certain applications, the concentration has to be as high as 20% in the media. Fortunately for their conscience, I don't think the scientists know the details of it's production, if they did, some would probably not come in to work anymore.
https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/amp/upside-foods-acf-cell-media/
Did they just stop using their own product or what?
Not just beans I'm afraid. The amount of protein we need in our diet is very little compared to what people eat. People want to eat nothing but meat it seems and I find that to be highly concerning.
I don't understand the reluctance from a lot of people with this if it's the exact same as 'real' meat. Once the price drops down and is available in the UK I'd be interested in mostly opting for this since i've never been able to make the switch to vegan/veggie
Relevant video about lab meat. Tldr it will not scale enough to make a difference.
I really hope that they manage to scale up and that it disrupts the meat industry. Beside better ethical and environmental footprint, meat also requires vast amounts of land. Imagine returning all that land back to nature and perhaps use some of it for housing. This would mitigate so many issues.
I don't see how it can be worse. "Energy to create the nutrients and maintain temperature for the cells" is something both the chicken and the lab have to spend. I'm happier to have a lab create meat from the cells up than farmers doing their best to create sacks of muscle that can't stand up with a poor little head poking out the top, "full-grown" and killed in six weeks. Both are working to be more efficient, but it doesn't look as good on a living being.
Neither system is good imo, that's why I think we should look at plant based meat alternatives instead, or just eat plants