I think like there's two big questions lab grown meat has not answered:
1) I've heard people say that it would eventually undercut the price of conventional meat. However, once the technical challenges were overcome, the game would become whether these manufacturers could create the glucose the cell's need to grow cheaper than the animal could. I don't see how this happens for ruminant derived meat as with few economic alternative uses, pasture rents would eventually drop as downward demand pressure was applied to the beef and lamb supply chains. So lab grown meat could lower cattle and sheep prices, but the predictions of total displacement seem overstated.
2) If you're trying to grow a whole muscle, why target meat? It's not an exaggeration to say that the biomedical uses of growing a muscle, particularly if you could take someone's own cells to create a rejection free transplant, would have a value hundreds or thousands of times the equivalent animal muscle. It seems like if grown meat ever comes into commercial viability it would make sense to be piggybacking off of advancements in biomedical research.
Apparently there were enough years between the pink slime debacle and lab based meat articles, that a generation forgot where we are going in the future with protein!
I can still remember the Jetson’s and the protein pills of that era. Flying cars are a thing for only a few as well, most of those folks are on the left coast also!
Sorry for the bias, but I really like your mind stimulating articles!
I think like there's two big questions lab grown meat has not answered:
1) I've heard people say that it would eventually undercut the price of conventional meat. However, once the technical challenges were overcome, the game would become whether these manufacturers could create the glucose the cell's need to grow cheaper than the animal could. I don't see how this happens for ruminant derived meat as with few economic alternative uses, pasture rents would eventually drop as downward demand pressure was applied to the beef and lamb supply chains. So lab grown meat could lower cattle and sheep prices, but the predictions of total displacement seem overstated.
2) If you're trying to grow a whole muscle, why target meat? It's not an exaggeration to say that the biomedical uses of growing a muscle, particularly if you could take someone's own cells to create a rejection free transplant, would have a value hundreds or thousands of times the equivalent animal muscle. It seems like if grown meat ever comes into commercial viability it would make sense to be piggybacking off of advancements in biomedical research.
Apparently there were enough years between the pink slime debacle and lab based meat articles, that a generation forgot where we are going in the future with protein!
I can still remember the Jetson’s and the protein pills of that era. Flying cars are a thing for only a few as well, most of those folks are on the left coast also!
Sorry for the bias, but I really like your mind stimulating articles!
Thanks again,
Jim