Lab-Grown Meat's DIRTY SECRET?

Lab-grown meat had a big week as two companies, Good Meat and Upside Foods, were given the green light by the FDA. With full approval for commercial sales within the United States, some vegans are celebrating. But others are shocked by the process to get the meat to the table.

Does the end justify the means? Is the fuss actually justified? And what does this mean for the grassroots animal rights movement?

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[thecrankyvegan]

So, is this a good step forward, or is ethically flawed, or both? Discuss

[compassioncucumbersveganpod]

Yeah, I don’t think animal activists should be getting excited about lab grown meat. While it may reduce the number of animals raised for animal agriculture, it will still be exploiting animals in some way, shape, or form. Whenever for profit is involved, the animals will lose out. Thanks for sharing the info!

[Ben-oikz]

as someone who's worked in the cultivated meat industry, i want to clear up some ideas abut fbs. clearly it's unethical but it's also very expensive. as cultivated meat is greatly going to increase the demand for cell media, there's a huge market incentive for fermentation based fbs alternatives. several companies are already developing it and more will soon. yes, some companies will still use fbs, but i hope vegans (and non vegans!) will not support those companies.

[RTS]

I definitely appreciate the potential for these products to be a decent solution to the ethical problem of sourcing ethical vegan cat and dog food.

[andrealiberation]

Been a no from me since the jump. Plants give us everything we need plus there was always going to be some animals being exploited. Reducing the number of animals killed isn't justified especially when we have options that don't exploit animals!

[carlystevenson]

Won’t be ethical, but as long as most people understand the need for lab grown meats (mostly environmental but also to decrease animal suffering) and trust that they’re not some strange frankenmeat, then I think we have progress. It’s easily the better of two evils, but I personally feel that there will be a distrust and most people will see lab grown meats just as they currently view plant-based meats.

[tamcon]

Omeat: Shades of Premarin. This crap isn't for vegans, but neither does it really solve the problem of animal agriculture; it may even make it worse unless the interim processes are eliminated or changed. I appreciate your constantly redirecting our focus on the animal uses that are easier to tackle and often overlooked. Thanks for posting!

[ChristopherGronlund]

Initially, I thought lab-grown/cell-cultured meat would be like a starter for vinegar or sourdough: this "substance" (initially from animals) they could pull from to no longer exploit animals. Like you, once I dug more, I read about FBS and blood plasma.

While lab-grown meat never appealed to me, the concept as I imagined it did. But anytime animals and money are involved, animals lose. I've already heard people say, "Well, it's just a little blood draw..." but I think most of us know those cows aren't going to have pastoral lives where they are sung in from the fields for loving attention during a blood draw.

It will be interesting to see how it's received, though. I've heard some people say they'd eat an Impossible burger before lab-grown "animal" meat. That seems like a big hurdle to clear for the industry...even if they ever DO reach a point where no animals are involved at all.

[scerb]

Embrace this technology and put activism into making it as ethical and least exploitative as possible. Not activism against demonizing this.
It is still preferable to the alternative which is what we are dealing with now.

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good here. It would be much better if the billions of animals raised and killed were instead just cells in a tank. The particulars of production can be changed here. But you cannot un-murder an living animal

[danharvey]

The purpose of lab grown meat, just like the purpose of lab grown fruit & veges, which is the next big "breakthrough". Isn't to reduce any environmental or moral impact. It's to attract huge sums of venture capital in the hope that mega corporations will buy them out in the hope they can centralise the global food supply.. Where it comes to cultured meat, even bigger than the issue of FBS, is the fact that to make it sustainable would require an almost exponential increase in global Bioreactor capacity. To produce 0.0002% of current global meat demand would require a third of the current entire global pharmaceutical bioreactor capacity. Each facility needs to be a 100% sterile facility, the exact same requirements as vaccine & medicine production, requiring huge amounts of energy to run. But just think of all the energy required in building the vats & piping alone. Then there's the huge amount of soy beans & corn needed to feed the sugars that the cells need, & the huge amounts of amino acids needed. Plus the fact that the cultures aren't living organisms with immune systems, so will require huge amounts of anti-biotics to avoid infection in even the slightest contamination incident.. At a mass market scale it is an impossible pipe dream.. To run the labs, would require potentially 25x more energy used than the global meat industry uses currently..

This has nothing to do with saving animals as you say, they in fact need dead animals to feed it. And it has nothing to do with sustainability either. At best it's just yet another silicon valley tech boom hunting for venture capital to make people rich. At worst it's about mega corporations aiming to patent & centralise the global food supply.. But it will never work at scale..

[flimphister]

Fetal bovine is actually in most cell cultured things in general. If you take medication. Most if not all were tested/currently use fetal bovine.

We will soon get to the point where we don't need FBS. Cell cultured things won't need to harm animals like you mentioned, they can just make the cell indefinitely.

[Mike-hnvc]

Thanks to for the shout-out to the DC Coalition Against Foie Gras. Subscribed.

[RTS]

On a spiritual level, what bothers me about lab grown / cell-cultured meat, is that even if it's on paper ethically legit (doesn't and didn't contribute in any way to animal exploitation), why would I want to consume a molecularly identical replica of animal flesh? It's like, if someone handed me a cup of biologically human blood, somehow produced without in any way exploiting any human, drinking it would still feel somehow perverse.

[josiecirigliano]

None should think the fight to be over with Lab ethical meat. The vegans end goal is total liberation for all animals of this Planet. That is obvious to me too 👽🗡️

[goodlad]

Thanks for continuing to share great critical insights that we all need to think deeper about!!

[JL-zmmd]

Thank you for the video. I knew pretty much none of what you said about cultured meat.

[Situayo]

Is this the vegan trolley problem?
I would flip that switch.

[TheFallNeverEnds]

Hi,
I've invested in lab grown meat. This video is accurate about FBS.
Lab grown meat whether it's land or marine life, isn't vegan.
It has also a tons of other problem (Infection risk, Energy consumption, etc.)
There is a lot of solutions to find. Mass scale and ethical lab grown meat won't happen any time soon.

But I hope that with enough time and research maybe lab grown meat that don't cause aninal harm will emerge one day.

At the end of theday, lab grown meat isn't the solution to reduce animal suffering or climate change. But it is maybe one part of the puzzle.

Thank for the video, I think that more people should be more informed and we should keep the meat industry in check.

[Laura.Sprout]

Very excited to see more development in this space. Absolutely necessary in my opinion to advance towards a better world, but doesn’t subtract from the need for grassroots activists. So keen to see cultivated pet food, especially for cats. Also loving the work of companies like Magic Valley Foods in Australia who haven’t touched FBS.

[helloworldliberationforall]

Isnt there some kind of other food for the cells?