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'No longer kill animals': Bill Gates, Richard Branson back 'clean meat' startup (theage.com.au)
22 points by hitr on Aug 29, 2017 | hide | past | favorite | 14 comments


How will this work itself out? A few large companies owning the supply-side of lab meat? Government legislation to prevent people from raising animals for food? Lab-meat for city folk, and regular meat for rural folk?


It's an interesting question. At Infinite Food[0] we believe the key thing we can certainly bet on is change, so we're building supply chains that support both conventional and emerging proteins, and total end customer transparency. We then expect to develop a sideline in assisting emerging protein providers analyzing the market response to new products as they emerge, in different sub-market demographics.

Wild, conventionally farmed, locally raised, imported, free range, organic, insect, lab-grown, algae or plant-based proteins all have strong economic, ethical, environmental, technical or health arguments... and limitations!

[0] http://infinite-food.com/


It would be nice if you could make this reply more generic.


Agreed. If you come up with any ideas let me know :) Seriously though, in a 'software person does hardware' scenario, is aiming for a generic and modular solution not the de-facto approach?


Or how will it work for our pets and the pet food industry?

Cats are obligate carnivores and dogs are scavenging carnivores. They need real meat to survive and thrive. People with pet snakes also need to feed their snakes meat.

Are we going to ban pet ownership?


There need not be a structural difference between this and "real" meat, no reason why they wouldn't be able to survive on these products.


I suppose if it is real "cloned" meat/organs. But if it is plant-based "meat", then it won't work for pets.

But I'm not holding my breath on real lab meat being less expensive than animal meat, even in 30 years.

I'm sure they'll try to create a "meat tax" of some sort to make meat more expensive.


It will more likely be rich people still eat regular meat.


When it comes to designer meats I think there will always be a really _high end_ market for exotic meats, 'dangerous' meats, or chef-designed custom recipes for making meat that isn't like anything tasted before.


[flagged]


We've asked you many times not to post like this, so we've banned the account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


What do you mean by victim culture in this context?


"I believe that in 30 years or so we will no longer need to kill any animals and that all meat will either be clean or plant-based, taste the same and also be much healthier for everyone."

Okja, anyone? :)


On cultured meat, the biggest win will be environmental because CAFOs are flatulent-powered atmosphere procession stations, e.g., "climate change" is a nice manta but it's more honest to say "we're currently terraforming ourselves onto an inhospitable planet."


From what I understand, people have been growing meat in laboratories for decades, but it's always been extremely expensive.

Does Memphis Meats have some special technology such that investors think it can produce meat at a reasonable price? Anybody know what it is?




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