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KelBowie t1_j1xvwwn wrote

Cuisine would very likely change to just be more like vegan food. Mushrooms make good broth flavoring. They have some very cool tricks.

As far as should we? Livestock animals have more purpose than just meat/dairy to eat. In regenerative agriculture they can as a portion of a crop rotation system that improves the quality and quantity of vegetable production with the bonus of a meat crop, and this can be managed in a way that honestly shouldn’t make a vegan angry if it’s done right. Those animals should be treated as well as pets, or even better because they earn our deepest gratitude by feeding us.

If we want to stop climate change and prevent food shortages then it would be a very good idea to stop farming the way we currently do before we hit the point where the food shortages happen. We should only have a few large farms that grow corn and soybeans, and we should change the subsidies to only support the farms that keep ecological diversity and sustainability in mind.

If you want to read more about this kind of stuff look up people like Joel Salatin (polyface micro) and Jesse Forest (no till growers).

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TechyDad t1_j1xy6nm wrote

I think lab grown meat would be a great replacement for factory farm meat. You'd still have farms with free range cattle (and other animals) that grazed. You just wouldn't have cows who live their whole lives stuck in a pen all but being force-fed to get as big as possible before slaughter.

The meat from the actual animals would be a niche item that some people enjoyed. Meanwhile, the masses eating McDonald's burgers would get lab grown meat that would be just as good (if not better) than the quality of meat they get today without risk of illnesses carried via the meat and without the huge climate footprint.

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AnDraoi t1_j1zuq0n wrote

This is the likely outcome, “real” meat would become a luxury and advertised to be high end while most people get lab stuff. The masses are still better off for the reasons you said

I don’t think “real” meat would become a luxury because it would taste better though. Most likely lab grown meat will taste as good if not better than the luxury stuff because it can be more finely controlled and will contain less gristle and connective tissue. The luxury meat would be high end because it would be authentic and expensive, and if the difference was big enough it might actually put the other market out of business

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mhornberger t1_j1zzrp6 wrote

> The luxury meat would be high end because it would be authentic and expensive,

I think the complication here being that slaughtered meat will still have the risk of fecal contamination. Which will be missing from cultured meat. Even grass-fed beef often still gets antibiotics, and most of it still gets some supplemental crops towards the end of their life, with chemicals sprayed on those crops. Grass-finished beef, beef that ate only grass throughout its entire life, is a tiny sliver of the market, and many don't even like the taste.

So instead of "luxury" meat, I think "traditionalist" will be the better moniker. Some people just don't like change, and they think there's some 'realness', some spiritual authenticity, conveyed by us having had killed the animal they're eating. So they won't care about the risk of fecal contamination, since that's part of nature, and you just wash your food as we've always done.

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TheUmgawa t1_j20crsd wrote

I have to wonder if animal rights activists would latch on to places that serve slaughtered meat and then treat their customers like people who wear fur coats.

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billtowson1982 t1_j1yav5q wrote

The problem is that the type of farming you recommend is very labor intensive - which translates to expensive. It also can't be scaled up to feed 8, then 10, then 12 billion people, etc. unless people start wanting to eat a lot less meat, and probably not even then. Finally, and I mean no offense because you seem like a good and well-intentioned person, but you really shouldn't tell vegans (or anyone else) how they should feel about something. Some people oppose meat because of the vast majority of it being factory-farmed. Some have an ethical opposition to taking a mammalian life for food, some have a religious-based opposition to meat, etc. etc. Plenty of those people might oppose any animal-based agriculture, and that's fine. Just as its fine for you to eat animals if you like.

Also, having worked on sustainable farms where animals are treated pretty decently, I can say with a certainty that most are still not treated as "pets." That's just not a realistic view of how this sort of thing is right now, let alone how it could ever, under any circumstances, scale.

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happy_bluebird t1_j220exz wrote

I think the idea is this *could* be a possibility- if we have lab grown meat readily and cheaply available, we can and should absolutely drastically scale down our animal farming

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billtowson1982 t1_j223j2v wrote

Maybe. But I think the basic flaw of that sort of agriculture being extremely labor intensive and therefore expensive remains. It's hard (and unlikely) for us to scale up a very expensive labor intensive way of doing things in a world where most people in even well off countries neither want, nor can afford, to spend a lot more on food than they currently do. And while labor is cheap in poor countries, another important goal is helping poor countries become better off.

Also we reap a ton of environmental benefits by having most people live in or around cities. Move a ton of people back to rural areas so that they can work on labor intensive farms and we'll pay a big environmental cost for doing that too.

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sandcrawler56 OP t1_j1xyuq9 wrote

Yeah but its different. Mushroom broth is delicious but its not the same as chicken or beef broth. Will chicken broth just not be a thing anymore? That will change food dramatically because A LOT (and I mean A LOT) of things use chicken broth as a base flavour.

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KelBowie t1_j1y0kye wrote

I think TechyDad is right on the money with his suggestion. Chicken broth wouldn’t be nonexistent, but it would be more expensive. It would be more economical to keep your own chickens for eggs and replace them every two years when they start to slow down on laying. Retiring egg chickens don’t make great meat, but they do make great broth. There should also be more small farms doing that on the scale of a few hundred chickens at a time, not a hundred thousand chickens all in one building in cages where they can barely move around and they never get to act like a chicken.

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mhornberger t1_j20035p wrote

> Will chicken broth just not be a thing anymore?

Cultured fat is going to be be made too, long before cultured meat scales production. Primarily it will be used for hybrid products, to improve the satiety and mouthfeel of plant-based options. But stock/broth is another market.

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MrCyra t1_j217ve5 wrote

Well you need bones for good broth. When you boil bones for hours certain compounds start to seep into water. But if you can create meats and fats in lab to your liking, then you probably can create mixture of very concentrated and potent broth in lab too.

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DoktoroKiu t1_j1zn2k8 wrote

>As far as should we? Livestock animals have more purpose than just meat/dairy to eat. In regenerative agriculture they can as a portion of a crop rotation system that improves the quality and quantity of vegetable production with the bonus of a meat crop, and this can be managed in a way that honestly shouldn’t make a vegan angry if it’s done right. Those animals should be treated as well as pets, or even better because they earn our deepest gratitude by feeding us.

Such a system would be undeniably better than what we have, but that does not mean a vegan will give a stamp of approval. The idea that animals have a purpose to serve for us is completely counter to the philosophy.

Your position here is similar to arguing for human slavery as long as it is done in a "good" way where the slaves are treated well and with a lot of respect and gratitude for their "sacrifice" for the betterment of society through their forced labor. Improving an immoral situation doesn't make it moral, just less bad.

I'm not equating human slavery and animal agriculture here. I'm just using the comparison to illustrate why your reasoning is flawed with respect to vegans.

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Ok-Environment-8444 t1_j1zwx9n wrote

To the idea that livestock animals have more purpose, it's not just regenerative agriculture or a self-sustaining farm between livestock and crops, but animal byproducts are spread throughout so many of our daily products. What they give back (manure) is the backbone for our crops and their bones, blood (plasma), unwanted organs, fat, are distributed from glue, dog food, medical research (auger broth), and medicines. Without the demand of meat, we will have a shortage for all of those other necessary supplies and materials. And if we attempt to have farms solely for those materials, then we'll have excess meat. If anything, with certain populations growing, some populations may require this "lab-grown" mean moreso than others than making the near 100% switch.

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