Vegans of Lemmy, would you eat lab-grown meat?
Vegans of Lemmy, would you eat lab-grown meat?
The main reasons I've seen from vegans for not eating meat seem to be all about the morality of eating a sentient animal, the practices of the modern meat industry, and the environmental impact of it. And don't have anything to do with the taste of meat.
Since lab-grown meat doesn't cause animal suffering, and assuming mass production is environmentally friendly, would you consider going back to eating meat if it were the lab-grown kind?
If it’s cheap, sure.
It's a lot of effort to solve an issue that's already solved by being vegan so eh, I'm pretty indifferent to it at least at face value. If it can compete with a vegan diet in terms of climate and ecosystem impact then I'll support it but I've no interest in it personally. I don't really have any justification for not being interested, I'm just not.
I'd be much more interested in seeing artificial cheese made from proteins created by yeast or bacteria tbh.
I’ve been vegan for four years, and I would personally not be interested in lab-grown meat because I have no desire to consume meat anymore, after a while it became quite gross to me to think about, just kinda icky.
I don’t know much about lab grown meat, but if there are no animals harmed in the manufacture and it’s at least somewhat more sustainable than animal products, then I wouldn’t have any ethical objections to it.
I’d be much more interested in ethically produced dairy than meat, personally.
For sure
I've been vegetarian my whole life and vegan for ~4 years or so, and I would definitely eat lab grown meat (assuming the conditions you stated).
I almost certainly wouldn't eat it often but there is sooo many cultural dishes I haven't ever tried due to them containing meat, which I would love to try sometime.
Admittedly I expect that most things I would not end up liking, but the ability to try would be really nice.
I don't eat meat because it causes suffering in another. Plants have no concept of pain without a brain, nervous system or even nerve endings. So to me, the question becomes if the lab grown meat was ever attached to a brain that could feel suffering.
Now as far i understand it, lab grown meat isn't nessecarily grown in isolation from a cow. But in a solution primarily compromised of blood extracted from living cows. That's without question better than killing a creature, buuuuuuut we all know that when profits are involved the health of a animal is not prioritized.
So it really depends, while I don't miss meat, once lab grown becomes widely available I'll make my choice depending on the exact process of how it reached the grocery store.
I'd definitely eat it, especially over ecosystem-destroying meats and dirty meats. Especially if they can work on the price. I'd like to see more farmlands and public lands reforested and taken back to nature.
Let's take this a step farther.
Would you eat human meat that was grown in a lab, if you could know for certain that the cells that were used to form the cultures were harvested from a consenting adult that was duly compensated? What if that person not only had consented, but wanted to be eaten, because they had a vore fetish, and enjoyed the thought of people eating pieces of them?
I would eat it, but I would do so on rare occasions in the same way I might have a drink with friends once a month. I became vegetarian for health reasons in addition to the reasons listed by OP and I have grown to really enjoy meat-free eating, so I don't really miss it but would view it as a treat best enjoyed sparingly.
No, I think it's a good idea but I'm fine with plant based alts. I think it's a lot better than having to kill animals for food but still seems like a lot of extr steps when you can just eat plants and stuff mad from plants without requiring a biological reactor, and lab. I would also assume that the process requires at least some more energy or resorces than regular food processing methods. So it wouldn't win any points on that front. I was raised vegan for context, so I've never actually tasted real meat and don't see any reason to try it now, lab grown or not.
Permanently Deleted
Extracting the stem cells may or may not cause harm to animals. If it is extracted from a live animal then it would cause harm and stress to an animal.
The medium used for growing may not be vegan (like FSB which is extracted from an animals death). But reportedly companies are moving to cheaper, plant-based, mediums.
Even if the process caused no harm or stress to animals, I'm not sure i would eat lab grown meat. I've already completely replaced meat in my cooking, and learned how to make much more nutrious meals. Adding meat back in would be regressive. Not to mention i feel like lab grown meat in particular will have been made possible through animal suffering research. While I'm glad it will have potential to be a net positive in the long run, i personally don't feel the desire to support lab grown meat
I don't think so, it doesn't sound very appealing. I'm very used to going without meat, and tofu satisfies me quite well, or seitan. Being vegan to me is getting away from the idea that you need a lump of something fleshy on your plate to be satisfied.
It is a great alternative though I personally would not eat lab-grown due to the taste/texture even with plant based alternatives I find it being to close to animal meat as a turn off.
I think the actual question is do you feel you can eat lab grown meat? Ethically it meets all the requirements of vegan, as there is no animal suffering, no consent, and muscle tissue cells are less sentient than a plant.
I grew up vegetarian and I'm used to regarding body parts as belonging to a living thing and to be used in service of it, not as food.
If others cannot stop eating meat from animals then I would find it less morally wrong to eat lab-grown. Still disgusting though. And unlikely to be very resource efficient. Or safe. That's my two pennies!
I don't think that lab-grown meat will ever replace animal agriculture on a large scale, at least in my lifetime. That being the case, I'd rather leave any ethically produced meat for people who would've been eating unethically produced meat instead.
If the situation is basically full on Star Trek replicator, then I wouldn't have ethical qualms but I might still find it gross and it might not digest well since I'm not used to it. Either way, it's very distant from the actual situation we're in now.
I would not trust anyone who tells me it's lab grown. I've had so many restaurants and people lie to me that someone ws vegan, out of malice and out of incompetence, that I just would not believe that a burger was "lab grown" instead of made with cheap meat leftovers.
If somehow I I could assure that it was made without animals being hurt, maybe. Meat is unhealthy so I would still mostly avoid it.
I wouldn't call that going back, exactly
If it’s vegan (is fetal bovine serum still an input?) then yes.
Any vegan who says no is saying so for some other reason besides veganism (ick factor, no desire, environmental considerations).
If your knee-jerk reaction to this is to downvote because "what kind of vegan eats meat?" - consider why you went vegan. Was it for the animals? Well, if lab meat allows us to produce meat without animal suffering then it's vegan...
I don't really see the point, so probably not.
Do people know for sure that consciousness emanates from the brain only?
I'm not vegan but if there were ethically sourced, sustainable and environmentally concious options for lab produced meats that were proven to be suitable and safe for human consumption, I'd willfully switch to that as a source of meat.
As an avid barbecue and smoker enthusiasts, I don't think there could ever be a replacement for a perfect cut of ribs or a high quality steak. I only get these from my local butcher from local free range, grass fed cattle. Those are special meals though, taking upwards of 12 hours start to finish of attention to detail and a level of reverance for the process. Not a daily occurrence. However, anything with/like ground beef, chicken nuggets and many other food products that don't require these specific cuts (this includes basically the entire giant filthy diseased corperate slaughter factories, fast food and so on) could easily be replaced by lab cultivated meats. I think that's inevitable and I fully support R&D of this technology.
i'm not a vegan or vegetarian, but from my experience with various plant-based proteins i honestly just do not see the point
we already have perfectly affordable vegan proteins that, while not identical to meat or even necessarily that close, are absolutely as satisfying to chew on and very tasty.
Really, all you need is a chunk of mostly pure protein of any kind and it's doubtful people are going to much notice the difference if it's part of a dish and they aren't given a chance to study the protein in detail.
The only thing you'd really need lab-grown meat for is steaks, which are overrated anyways and like.. god eating steak is such a violently bougie thing! The shelves with ground meat here are hilarious because the cheaper ground pork is constantly completely sold out while the ground beef is barely even touched, so i doubt people would even notice the disappearance of the steak that costs 6 times as much..Very relevant video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR8M4zARBXY
Yeeeah, it's not going to be environmentally friendly, probably the opposite. In the lab grown meat discussions people seem to forget how incredibly efficient cows are at converting biomass to muscle.
For lab grown meat you'd need a circulation system that can reach all parts of the meat and provide it with enough nutrients, proteins, supplements and all that while also removing by-products such as ammonia that result from chemical processes in the cells.
So you'll end up needing a circulation system, immune system, bones for the meat to not get crushed by it's own weight ideally, recycling system like the liver and logistical system to back everything up, and that's assuming the whole process will be energy efficient.
Adding a brain to it makes essentially gives you all parts of a cow except the cow can largely produce the meat without any oversight and will do all the nutrient differential equations automatically.
We're still decades away from being able to scale this up while being within the same order of magnitude in cost. It's far easier to do a decade of chemistry and biology on textured soy meat to perfectly replicate the flavor, texture and nutrient profile of cow meat. This shouldn't come as a shock since plants are more efficient than animals in creating protein.
I'm personally hoping for genetically modified soy beans that have good amount of the amino acid leucine which is lacking in most plant protein.
Sidenote: We are close to fixing the methane emissions of cows by feeding them a supplement mixed with the feed.
As a vegan, I would not eat lab grown meat.
It's mainly a texture/concept thing, my food needs to be safe from disembodied muscle, fat, skin, cartilage, bone, minced meat containing the combined flesh of thousands of raped and tortured carcasses, the faecal matter and bacterial colonies all meat is covered with, and the horrifying possibility of meat containing hidden cysts full of pus, bits of hair, teeth, genitals, eyeballs, parasites, tumours, zoonotic diseases, prions, etc.
Lab grown flesh would hopefully be exponentially cleaner, and far less problematic than the current rape torture factories and abattoir system, but I will never be able to thematically seperate labgrown meat from what meat currently is, not enough to be able to put it in my mouth and chew it anyway.
Also, all sentient life (as we know it) is made of flesh. Lab growing billions of disembodied chunks from a handful of sentient animals? There is still deep horror to this. Granted it's on a completely different scale to the current system of livestock atrocities, but it's still horrifying none the less.
Not vegan but I'd wager most wouldn't, not even because of the ethics stuff everyone memes about
Breaking down meats takes an energy investment that breaking plants down doesn't. So people who are used to a low meat or meatless diet aren't recommended to go full steam on some carnitas first time they feel like getting back on the red and pink stuff.
Literally it causes heavy fatigue and tiredness untill they re-adjust to the energy investment, and if you're already feeling fine just not eating meat then what exactly would be the point of putting yourself through that?
And I'm saying this as a total beef and pork addict, my dad's pescatarian so I got to learn about sudden diet shift health effects from his doctor when he first went for the fishes.
Nope, don't miss it.
I could have my own chickens and eat their unfertilized eggs and care for the hens like any other pet - but it all comes back to that its fucking disgusting eating other beings in any sort or form.
Any vegan that says othervise is just a paused meat eater.
Eat some beans and shut the fuck up :-)