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TechyDad t1_j1xy6nm wrote

Reply to comment by KelBowie in What would food look like if we could scale up lab grown meat? by sandcrawler56

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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