Singapore doubles down on lab-grown meat as Silicon Valley backs off

Cell-cultured meat industry veteran (and dropout) here. If Singaporean companies are able to make a viable business out of cell-cultured meat, that would be fantastic, and a boon to the world. Some skepticism is warranted, though. It's very difficult to do this at scale, and that's regardless of unit price. Cultivating the meat that sells at a mass-market price is the real challenge and one I wouldn't bet on anytime soon, not even by 2030. The technical challenges are too many to list here, some of which are not public knowledge. Besides, the once-touted environmental advantages have turned out to be marginal at best.

One way this business might make sense would be to sell boutique cell-cultured "specialty" meats, like scallops, veal, and wooly mammoth (yes, it's been seriously considered). They're not nearly as price-sensitive, and the scale is smaller. Here's hoping we can ease the burden on endangered populations and mitigate the inherent cruelty of some of those industries with cell-cultured alternatives.

Many of the cultured meat companies are going about this the wrong way from an economic standpoint. They often try to make the new chicken nugget, a low cost mass produced food that may seem easy to replicate, because it is already so processed.

This is were Vow, and a few others are going the high-end, foods that haven't really existed before, with their Japanese Quail Parfait. Similar to how Tesla started with the roadster, and then went to the S, 3, Y, etc etc.

Imagine creating a cultured cavier or foie gras. Sold in small quantities to those who want the experience, social signaling, and opportunity to make a small difference. The companies won't make money on these items, but they can cover a higher percentage of their cost, and learn how to scale. Then move into less rare, but still coveted foods, etc etc

> The formulation of its new product uses just 3% cultivated chicken in order to sell at a lower price point so more people can try it, he said

So it’s 97% normal chicken, but 3% cultured? That doesn’t seem too interesting.

Meanwhile, in Florida: the beef protection racket bans it. Recall what happened to Oprah in 1996 when she dared to express an opinion about beef during the global mad cow scare.[0] And, also the existence of beef libel laws in multiple states.

The cultured meat industry needs better lobbyists or the beef industry is going to squish them.

0. https://www.texastribune.org/2018/01/10/time-oprah-winfrey-b...

See https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-sca... for a thorough exploration of why lab grown meat will never happen...

> Humbird likened the process of researching the report to encountering an impenetrable “Wall of No”—his term for the barriers in thermodynamics, cell metabolism, bioreactor design, ingredient costs, facility construction, and other factors that will need to be overcome before cultivated protein can be produced cheaply enough to displace traditional meat.

> “And it’s a fractal no,” he told me. “You see the big no, but every big no is made up of a hundred little nos.”

I've posted this comment before, but the linked article is relevant to every story about lab-grown meat as the entire concept is a fantasy, or less charitably, a scam.

I have had a somewhat dystopian idea (on the surface level) that is actually much more humane than our current systems.

Why don't we work, via CRISPR or aggressive evolution, to get to the point where something like a cow is much closer to a meat worm? Imagine if we could get the brain down to something where it's basically like a mollusk, to remove most of the ethical issues with slaughtering something as sentient as a cow or a pig. Then imagine if we could breed away the legs and such, and get this thing to the point that it's just a long tube of the most tender cuts of meat. Whole worm of ribeye and fillet. And it can just be suspended in a factory, hundreds of meat worms high, with food being pumped in their mouth, and excrement being swept up.

Again, sounds insane, but I want my meatworm future.

The best thing about traditional meat is the evolved immune system and kidneys.

Can someone explain how lab grown meat releases less greenhouse gasses? Seems like much more energy inefficient than the old fashion way. Are there any figures available that go into the thermodynamics of it all?

Always heard cell cultured meats don’t scale to industrial size.

I think we are re-inventing the wheel of using biochemical process to grow protein. Current meats have millions of years of evolution. Sure the types eaten most are not bred out of efficiency. Why don't we choose other starting points, possibly insect, e.g. grasshopper or maggot and grow them in the lab?