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[Starver]

The obvious kneejerk argument ("it has no soul!") actually goes in the face of other arguments ("man is alone, above all the animals...") that are used, but it'd be interesting to so if it gets trotted out without that consideration.

[wierd]

No, the religious objection will be "NOT AS GOD INTENDED!!" and "MANKIND PLAYING GOD!"

Not "Has no soul."

[Bumber]

If the meat is grown from stem cells*, I could see a possible religious objection to that.

*From aborted pig fetuses, or something?

[wierd]

Any viable tech would indeed likely be using "immortalized cell cultures", aka, "Cancer".

This would create a false "safety!!!!" hysteria, which would be right up the conservative alley.  Properly cooked, it would not be harmful in any capacity.  It would just be meat.


The reason for this, is that the number of cell divisions in the culture is otherwise preprogrammed, and after about 50 divisions, a cell culture ceases being able to grow and divide.

Cancer-beef would be the only economically viable "Just keep feeding it, and scraping it off the vat walls, then pressing it into "meat slabs" and sell them" mass production method, unless you want to be creating and aborting calf embryos, just to keep the process running.  While the latter could be an amusing way to turn veganism and pro-lifers into unlikely allies, with all the hilarity that would ensue, the former is just more economically feasible, and nobody questions that cancer is not actually proper animal tissue that needs to be "Saved."

About the only thing I see that might be wrong with cancerpatties, would be the possible production of odd or dangerous metabolites that would otherwise not be produced. (such as malformed protien, et al.)  Quality controls would solve that though.

[Naturegirl1999]

Could an example of such a quality control be an enzyme that destroys said malformed proteins? Like, test for if any proteins aren’t correct, then genetically engineer the amino acid sequence for breaking said protein, put said sequence into the cells, then all cells divided from the cells you put the sequence in will now break thst protein when produced. Repeat for other malformed proteins when found

[wierd]

More likely, just controls on temperature and PH, to prevent the conditions completely. Perhaps artificial hormones.

[Grim Portent]

Any large scale synthetic meat production would probably be prone to deviations, cell division is a failure prone process and there's no immune system to destroy anomalous cells in the culture, but food quality regulators would probably catch anything important before a given batch was sold to the consumer.

Fundamentally there's nothing about synthetic meat that should be more problematic than meat grown the old fashioned way, all the potential health risks can arise in livestock, plus a few extra ones unique to live animals and poor farming practice.

The problem I see with synthetic meat is that it won't ever actually be quite like the real thing, which will affect what kinds of dishes can be made from it. A synthetic meat slice has similar texture to a thin piece of lean meat, and tastes very similar, but the absence of things like adipose tissue, little bits of connective tissues, bone marrow and so on means it's not a direct translation of a chunk of meat from an animal. You couldn't make a duck confit out of cultured duck tissue for example, or oxtail soup from cultured beef.

Obviously this isn't exactly a super important problem, the availability of specific flavour profiles and dishes is hardly a world ending issue but I do think synthetic meat culture will only work as an additive to conventional, though hopefully more humane, meat farming because it can never fully satisfy the demand for meat.

[Max™]

Unfortunately, if global warming keeps going the way it is, the wet-bulb zone near the equator will grow. Deserts will grow. Sea levels will rise and destroy tons of cropland and houses, and this will cause mass migration to actual livable areas combined with a lack of food production. It will likely turn into a bloodbath.

Literally impossible for a planet to grow both warmer and more arid without like, blasting off huge chunks of the ocean and atmosphere into space*.

Deserts reach their largest extent during the peaks of ice ages, they retreat and disappear during the warmest parts of interglacials.


*smashing a large enough chunk of rock (or smaller chunk at sufficient velocity) would definitely raise the temperature of all locations near the surface while doing away with all that wet stuff nicely

[Arx]

I know you consider yourself more qualified to comment on climate change than actual climatologists, but the expansion of drylands isn't really in doubt, or impossible: https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2837

The article is of course pay walled, but the abstract suffices.

I feel obliged to post this even if you choose to reject it.

[voliol]

I place my bets on the antis bringing up Henrietta Lacks, whose immortal cancer cells became the HeLa line widely used for medical research, and this will be somehow equated to artificial meat being akin to cannibalism.

And I’m not even sure the HeLa cells are anything but tangentially related to lab grown meat, but I doubt they will care to know any better.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

For Christians, I would expect some kind of lazy transposition from the arguments against it on the basis that it isn't kosher or halal. I have no idea if it really is either of those things, but I suspect some significant portion of people from all three Abrahamic corners will object no matter what the material or theological basis. If all else fails, just declare it "unnatural" and stick to that position.

What I think will really be interesting is seeing if vegetarian Buddhists, Hindus, and Jains accept it or not. Jains technically abstain from meat on the basis that it comes from violence, which seems untenable for cell cultures. But I suppose if you avoid even swatting a gnat, you might want to avoid destroying the cells of an animal.

[McTraveller]

Uh... Christianity doesn't have any obligation to observe Kosher food traditions. Acts and Peter and the "don't call what I have made clean, unclean" vision from God stuff.

That said the concern I'd have with "lab grown" food is similar to concerns with all modern Food Industry: monoculture.  There's something to say for genetic diversity even in the food we eat.

The other concern I'd have with lab grown meat is the loss of agency - basically I can see people outlawing farms entirely, because they "aren't as sanitary" as meat-factories or something, meaning that there would be yet another barrier to entry for basic fundamental living.

One of my political stances is that we have far too many barriers to basic living. Forget about UBI, we need the right to produce one's own goods.  Troublesome Wickard v Filburn that said some dude ran afoul (pun intended) of interstate trade because when he was raising his own livestock, growing his own wheat to feed it was violating a quota and therefore the interstate commerce clause because it "indirectly" impacted interstate trade.

This ruling has long been criticized as given the US federal government far too much power, because any activity can indirectly impact interstate trade.

So if you wonder why you may not even allowed to grow your own food - well, there you go.

[Magistrum]

I would be happy if it would impede the farming of animals for human consumption. Either by pricing out or by competition, the death of domestic animal husbandry would be a huge drop in zoonotic diseases showing up to wreck us. In my opinion a few zoos of domestic animals suffice to preserve the old genestock.

[JoshuaFH]

I would be happy if it would impede the farming of animals for human consumption. Either by pricing out or by competition, the death of domestic animal husbandry would be a huge drop in zoonotic diseases showing up to wreck us. In my opinion a few zoos of domestic animals suffice to preserve the old genestock.

If you're talking about Covid-19, wasn't that from wild bats that were hunted for meat or something? I suppose nobody knows for sure, but that seems the likeliest origin IMO. I would think that Commercial farms, while promoting an environment of genetic similarity and tight, cramped quarters where virulent pathogens can run amok, I would think that it would serve the unintended benefit of making the pathogen population very "lazy" in that it has a set, specific environment and would naturally guide their mutations towards becoming overspecialized. A pathogen that is overspecialized would have a much harder time jumping laterally to another species of host, humans, and then thriving within the much more diverse world that humans live in.

I'm not an epidemiologist, that's just my hypothesis from the little I know about microbiology; that the really dangerous pathogens that can jump laterally to humans have to first be fermented in a separate and uncontrolled environment for a long time, to where it becomes unrecognizable to human immune systems, but to the pathogen the human is similar enough to its origin host (the bat) that it can make the leap.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Uh... Christianity doesn't have any obligation to observe Kosher food traditions. Acts and Peter and the "don't call what I have made clean, unclean" vision from God stuff.

I know. That's why I called it a "lazy transposition".