So I was reading the latest article I’ve found in the “vat-grown meat” debate, (found over at the excellent Futurismic blog) and I just can’t keep quiet on the subject any longer. The article discusses a proposed solution to future meat protein production and consumption that involves, instead of growing meat in vats in labs–which is apparently an icky concept to some–that we genetically create “more efficient organisms that generate muscle tissue with the properties we want” by “genetically paring away the less commercially viable bits, like the brain”.
Most of you are probably having an atavistic reaction to the visualization of this concept every bit as icky as some people find vat meat, but no worries, the words will still be here for you to read when you recover. For the few left now who are less easily squicked and interested in the argument, read on.
All due respect to the scientist writing the proposal, but they are obviously not familiar with animal science or the production end of meat theory. The very first counter-argument that leaps to mind–to rebut the idea that brainless grazing cattle are superior either physically or psychologically to meat grown in a lab tube–involves the ratio of pounds consumed per pound of gain. One would hope that the scientists would work on improving that ratio while they’re busy deprogramming the brain stem, but I don’t see anyone in these articles even giving a nod to the issue.
Put simply, a cow takes 6-8 pounds of feed, on average, to put on one “commercially viable” pound of muscle tissue. (Pigs 4-6:1, Turkey 2-4:1, Catfish 1.1:1 are other examples I recall, hopefully correctly, from my classes a decade ago.) The brain is an energy-draining organ, so sure, removing the brain is bound to improve the ratio to some extent. But on the levels that we need to be considering if we are to achieve long-term, sustainable, non-scarcity food production, it seems to me that the brainless cow model overeats quickly.
Scientists are much more likely to be able to engineer a catfish-level efficiency of pounds consumed vs. pounds gained with a variety of tissue type and texture if they can control the systems directly in the lab. A lab set-up could easily have one industrial-sized set of heart and lungs and other maintenance systems keeping large numbers of meat-vats (10?25?50? more?) churning out hundreds of pounds of consumable muscle tissue on a regular time schedule. Though vat meat is in the beginning stages of development now, and the most differentiated tissue available to date resembles the consistency of ground chuck, other research is being directed toward developing the ability to grow specific cuts of meat in quantity in the lab. The potential resources saved by removing the animal from the meat production process add up to large quantities quickly.
Vat-grown meat isn’t icky, squicky, or gross; it’s energy efficient, ethical, and ecologically friendly. Sure, the next couple of generations will have their “real meat” superiority complex, and there will exist for some time to come a specialty market for “organically grown meat” at specialty prices. But for everyday tastiness, convenience, and responsible social footprint issues, well vat me, baby! I’ll take my burger as a vurger no problem.
41 responses so far ↓
1 skzb // Apr 18, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Is there something weird about me that the idea of vat-grown meat doesn’t squick me at all? I mean, hey, serve it up! I’ll stir-fry anything that doesn’t roast me first.
This is some exciting stuff.
2 Jon // Apr 18, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Hmm. If I use my own cells to grow a vat of meat, does that make me a cannibal? I wonder how I would taste…
3 Jon // Apr 18, 2008 at 5:05 pm
My wife just pointed out something. Imagine all the different types of meat we could grow. Bald eagle. Panda bear. Dolphin! And if they manage to get a clone going, how about some wooly mammoth? Mmmm, mammoth.
4 Doctor Science // Apr 18, 2008 at 5:25 pm
*nods* People often talk about eating vat-grown microbes as food, but actually single-cell protein is not all that easy for humans to digest — there’s too much RNA and too many of the wrong kind of cell membranes. Cows can eat SCP because they already do eat it: they live on microbes that grow in their gut, eating grass for them.
Vat-grown cloned meat would be much better for the human digestion than SCP. What’s hard for me to imagine is that growing it wouldn’t cost as much as growing a whole cow, because of the huge number of picky picky requirements it would have. Tissue culture is a *pain*.
5 Shawn // Apr 18, 2008 at 5:28 pm
As a vegetarian for the last 6 years, I can say that neither one is a big draw for me… Unless they can get vat salmon to look, taste, and feel just right.
The problem with vat-grown is that you can’t just grow muscle cells; you have to exercise it or you get slime, which means you need first, a skeleton for it to work against; second, you have to grow it in actual muscle bundles so excercising it doesn’t just send all the cells moving off in their own merry directions, which means you also need to grow ligaments, tendons, and blood vessels to support and feed the inner portions of those bundles. Even if most of that infrastructure is reusable from one batch to the next, it limits both batch size and rate of production, increasing cost a good deal.
The argument wasn’t so much about which is preferable as which is feasible in the short term; it’s easy to knock out brain development genes compared with engineering all of the muscle infrastructure -except- the unessential organs.
If you want near-meat, most of the soy versions are already as close as a vat’s likely to get in the near future. Real meat texture isn’t coming from a vat until they can build artificial organisms from the ground up rather than just tweaking natural ones.
6 Yes, It Is All My Fault! » Meat in a tube for fun and profit > Reesa Brown's homepage // Apr 18, 2008 at 5:42 pm
[…] had a bit of inspiration today over at the household blog, Words Words Words. Feel free to wander over and check it out! Join in the discussion! There’s tons of […]
7 kit // Apr 18, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Doctor Science@4: I am confused by this — the article Reesa refutes also mentions the high cost and difficulty of growing vat tissue. My confusion is this — right now tissue culture has limited application right, say science and medicine. If we throw the sort of money and research at it that seems to be going into vat meat right now, why wouldn’t the costs come down? Is there something about this particular technology that works against the typical idea that mass production brings cost down?
8 Pregnant Celebrities » Vat me, baby! // Apr 18, 2008 at 5:50 pm
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9 SpeakerToManagers // Apr 18, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Shawn, I’m not sure that that’s true. Calling it ‘vat-grown’ gives a misleading vision of a giant petri-dish with a lump of undifferentiated tissue in it. I doubt that’s the way it’ll happen. There’s quite a bit of research right now going into how to grow human tissues and organs “in vitro” that would apply to growing meat for consumption. Instead of growing an entire body for the matrix in which to grow a tissue, a substrate is created with an inkjet printer that’s been modified to print not ink but cells. With multiple printheads you can print different kinds of cells in any 2D pattern you like; layer them just like is done in a rapid prototyper and you’ve got 3D structures.
10 Shawn // Apr 18, 2008 at 7:45 pm
The writers probably have a better knowledge of this field than I do and are highly optimistic; so it may not be so far off after all. I do know that the cell printer setup is just sculpting cultured cells; if you want them in some state other than what they grew into in the petri dish pre-printing you need some time and infrastructure to get them to alter their form (in this case, develop muscle tone.)
Some counter-arguments to their optimism from a biologist blogger seemed reasonable to me:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/who_needs_a_vat_when_youve_got.php
11 Doctor Science // Apr 18, 2008 at 9:08 pm
kit, PZ pretty much sums up my reaction. Yes, there’s no doubt that the cost of tissue culture will come down with time, but “down” means “so cheap you can use it for ordinary medicine”, not “so cheap you can use it for food”. Food has to be *really* cheap, and you’d still need feedstocks for meat cultures.
12 amysue // Apr 18, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Hmm..I’m reading this onions and chicken liver cook up for tomorrows chopped liver (not to mention the matza balls and chicken soup bubbling away)..and..nope..not squicked. I find the concept of “vat meat” to be less problematic than brainless cows, but mostly because I suspect that removing what cognitive skills cattle have is not likely to be conducive to healthy living on the part of said cattle.
How would you “feed” the vat meat? Isn’t part of the flavor of meat dependent on the diet of the animal?
13 rone // Apr 18, 2008 at 10:38 pm
If people think that vat meat is icky, maybe they should go look at a slaughterhouse sometime. I love meat. I have no illusions about it being pretty, like it’s lovingly harvested from a tree. If vat meat is safe to eat and tasty, what’s the problem?
You know what’s icky? Fake meat. That shit needs to be banned.
14 Miramon // Apr 19, 2008 at 1:29 am
I can’t imagine any rational objection to vat-grown meat if it tastes good and does no great harm to the consumer or to the environment. But so far as I know, it is not actually possible right now to culture meat in a way which is either economically competitive, or appetizing, compared to slaughtered meat.
I admit I’m not up to date on the latest science in the area, but last I heard, it’s not only expensive, but it doesn’t structure itself like real meat, so it doesn’t have the right texture or taste. But I presume in various labs there is much activity, so it’s only a matter of time. If a heart or other organ for transplant can be grown from scratch like various researchers are attempting to do on a lattice structure, than presumably other muscle tissue that doesn’t even need a useful function would be even easier.
Rollin’ rollin’ rollin’
Though the tanks are swollen,
Keep them pumps a rollin’,
Vat meat!
Don’t need irradiation,
Nor even irrigation,
The ranchers are protesting in the street!
The nutrient solution,
Reduces the pollution,
And it’s cheaper in the tank than on four feet.
Lube it up! Tank it in!
Tank it in, lube it up, vat meat!
Clean the tank! Slice the loaf!
Slice the loaf, clean the tank, vaaaat meeeat!
15 kit // Apr 19, 2008 at 1:43 am
Wow!! Vat meat music!
This is great.
16 BlueOx // Apr 19, 2008 at 8:33 am
I thought Disney had been using this method to produce child music stars for years, (Britney Spears?)
17 SpeakerToManagers // Apr 19, 2008 at 11:45 am
Miramon, tasty!
Dr. Science, my optimism is based on the (partly educated) guess that the enabling technologies for culturing tissues and organs (as opposed to clones of cells) will have characteristics similar to those used for commercial manufacturing of semiconductor electronics: they’ll be subject to very large economies of scale, will have high return on investment for automation, and research will be be applicable at both the design (designing more complex products) and production (manufacturing more complex and cheaper products). If that happens, and I agree, it’s nowhere near established yet if those things are true, and capital to build the manufacturing plant for the first generation of product is available, then we may see something like Moore’s Law at work, with a fast rollercoaster ride (down only) to low prices and very high volumes.
18 mojave_wolf // Apr 19, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Speaking just for me and my signif other, we both think Qorn is awesome, and that’s more or less vat grown already . . .
Plus, veggie burgers? I like as much or more than I used to like real burgers. ::favors boca burgers vegan orginal and amy’s organic california burgers::
19 jimbob // Apr 20, 2008 at 3:04 am
2 things…
The government is OK with growing vat-meat, but it’s not OK with stem cells? Perhaps I’m missing something, but it seems contradictory.
And Shawn @5: Who needs the exercised vat-meat? It’s guilt free veal!
20 Miramon // Apr 20, 2008 at 9:51 am
Some of the veggie burger things are OK, but the ones I can tolerate are not really simulated meat, they are patty-shaped things that don’t pretend to taste at all like meat. The ones I can stand to eat are typically made from a mix of ground up vegetables, including a lot of starches like beans and potatoes and stuff.
The more direct simulation of meat using soy protein in fake cold cuts (soy bologna, ew) or fake chicken breasts generally disgusts me, though. They tend to have more chemicals and fewer actual farm products on the ingredient list, too.
As for vat-meat vs. fetal stem-cells, the distinction should be pretty obvious, even if you don’t agree with it.
By the way, considering how hard it is to get irradiated food into the market, I’m not so sure the government would approve vat meat very readily in any event. There would be a huge luddite outcry from the same people who object to radiation for no good reason, and the government would respond to it because of the news publicity and vote potential. Probably it would take some other technically advanced but fascist country like Singapore using vat meat for a few years with no ill effects before there was any traction for it in this country, plus the ranchers and “cowboys” really would be protesting, along with the growers of corn, who would see demand for feed drop off dramatically.
21 Doctor Science // Apr 20, 2008 at 1:25 pm
SpeakerToManagers:
That would be really nice, but I think it unlikely: the material input needed to make vatmeat is several orders of magnitude more complex than the input for semiconductors. And I guess, thinking about it as I type, that that’s the real source of my doubts: vatmeat would need hundreds if not thousands of different chemicals as input, though hopefully many would be “pre-packaged” as e.g. corn syrup. It’s an intrinsically complex system, while semi-conductors are intrinsically simple.
22 Michael // Apr 20, 2008 at 2:40 pm
… Why would vat meat need hundreds or thousands of chemical inputs? I’d think you’d need glucose and amino acids, plus trace minerals and other simulated serum components. That should be it. It could all be organic! (Organic vat meat…)
Hey, if it’s good enough for Countess Vorkosigan, it’s good enough for me.
Shawn: I’ve read some disturbing things recently about soy protein. Since we don’t eat soy anyway, I can’t remember exactly what or where, but … watch out.
23 Ker_thwap // Apr 20, 2008 at 5:35 pm
I look forward to the day when there are vat meat hunting preserves.
Seriously, I just hope that no federal dollars were wasted on this research. To me it seems like a potential solution for which there is no problem.
24 Doctor Science // Apr 20, 2008 at 6:37 pm
I’d think you’d need glucose and amino acids, plus trace minerals and other simulated serum components
Vitamins. Hormones. Something to keep out the germs. “Growth factors” (which generally means “the cells need it and we don’t know why”). All of these are complicated PITA-type factors generally swept up into “serum”, which is usually derived from living things.
25 schmwarf // Apr 20, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Looks impressive but to me there is something wrong with the whole tampering with living things in a lab stuff.
I still would prefer if my meat used to go “moo”, “baa”, “oink”, “cluck” or “tchi-tchi-tchi” (thats a kangaroo sound btw).
I love techonology but when it comes to food and nuitritiean I think there are still too many unknowns.
26 SpeakerToManagers // Apr 21, 2008 at 11:24 am
Dr. Science,
It’s an intrinsically complex system, while semi-conductors are intrinsically simple.
I’d argue the simplicity of the boule of pure monocrystal silicon from which a wafer is made comes at the cost of huge complexity of growing and refining the crystal, and that the number of chemicals used is probably several dozen, and the techniques used to get them into the wafer at exactly the right places are highly complex (remember that a fab plant these days costs ~$4 E9 and takes 2 or 3 years to build).
The way I envision an industrial scale meat culture plant working is via a multi-stage process: some monocellular or colonial multicellular photosynthetic organism is kept in large, shallow vats on the roof to pick up sunlight, harvested by pumps and filters, then fed to something a little more complex that can be cultured easily, like kril, which is in turn pulped and fed in solution to the cultured meat tissue, just as if it were in the bloodstream.
What I’m basically saying is that I don’t think the technological problems are anywhere near as difficult as the political and social obstacles that Miramon mentions.
My own personal tastes tend towards meat; I accept the ethical ambiguities in the same way as I accept some of the realities of politics: we evolved from troop-organized hunter-gatherers, and we ignore our inherited makeup at our own peril. But if I could have the meat without the ambiguity, I’d be very happy. TVP, however, is not an acceptable substitute. Soy baloney, fie!
27 greenie // Apr 22, 2008 at 9:03 am
soylent green
28 Shawn // Apr 22, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Michael: Most of the problems I’ve read recently about soy were isoflavone problems with developing children, more related to soy formula than adults eating soy protein. ANY kind of synthetic hormones will cause problems for pre-pubescent children and adults with hormone imbalances; Tea Tree oil needs to be avoided in children, for example, because it’s also a estrogen analogue and, used excessively by some over-zealous natural-medicine-loving parents to treat skin conditions, has caused some young boys to develop in places where only teenage girls should.
Likewise, any imbalanced diet is going to cause problems. I eat a good mixture of eggs, cheese, legumes (soy and other,) nuts, mushrooms, and bacterial proteins. Most “veggie burgers” on the market contain at least soy, dairy, and egg proteins unless you get the vegan ones.
29 inge // Apr 23, 2008 at 8:28 am
Brainless zombie cows. Immune to BSE, too! But how will a brainless bovine know how to graze, or walk, or stand, or breathe? Microprocessors?
30 Doctor Science // Apr 24, 2008 at 11:11 am
Speaker:
Why do you think it would need a krill step? Krill are shrimp — why not eat them? And why do you think cow meat has to grown on shrimp? Sticking in an extra trophic level doesn’t make any sense to me, even if there’s less than the usual 90% loss between levels.
You idea of having vat-based photosynthesizers makes a good deal of sense, though there would still be a lot of processing to get from algae to “bloodstream”.
I think you’re sort of agreeing with me about how the IC chip factory and the vat-meat plant don’t have the same sort of economies of scale: chip factories don’t have to worry about spreading disease (through a plant or through the world), for example.
31 Miramon // Apr 24, 2008 at 11:40 am
Vat meat support presumably includes some or all of the following:
* oxygenated support medium with CO/CO2 removal system; presumably this is recirculating and doesn’t need too much changeover.
* glucose drip — totally consumed
* “vitamin” additives — all required trace compounds, basically. This is rather less than a living animal would require as various organs require more nutrients than muscle does alone.
* some kind of dialysis-like toxin removal stage
That’s all that occurs to me offhand, in terms of external processing. Basically the energy input is in the form of glucose, though the removal of waste gas and soluble toxins may cost significant energy too. The oxygenation should be pretty cheap, I suppose, using just air and some high surface-area osmosis system or even just aeration, something along those lines.
I’m not sure what the cheapest glucose source is — either corn processing to make it from fructose, maybe, or else acids applied to cellulose? I don’t know how economical the production of glucose without a digestive tract may be.
32 Spherical time // Apr 24, 2008 at 12:38 pm
skzb: Is there something weird about me that the idea of vat-grown meat doesn’t squick me at all? I mean, hey, serve it up! I’ll stir-fry anything that doesn’t roast me first.
I was thinking the same thing.
And I hopefully I won’t have to worry about picking bones out ever again!
33 Doctor Science // Apr 24, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Miramon:
AFAIK the tricky bits would probably be in the non-vitamin trace compounds — the hormones & growth factors that are normally made by other parts of the body and signal to the muscles that it’s time to grow now.
You’re also forgetting an amino acid source, *very* important because you’re mostly making protein. I honestly don’t know what the best source would be.
34 Miramon // Apr 24, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Dr. S:
I don’t know how much of a problem either protein in general or hormones may be for tissue cultures. Maybe it is a problem.
Re protein, I’m not sure where amino acid synthesis in herbivores takes place, but I gather that for whatever reason they need much less protein than carnivores and humans, who are mysteriously unable to synthesize some key amino acids, no doubt due to intelligent design.
So however cattle do it, somehow they can get by on grazing on what amounts to a lot of cellulose and a little starch — though I suppose they have an enriched diet in a typical dairy farm, and they must eat some protein in the wild.
Anyhow, assuming some substantial external source of protein is required, I suppose soy would do. Presumably that has everything a cow or a pig would need? I suppose it might be efficient to have a cultured gut system somewhere to generate useful enzymes for soy protein processing, unless it’s easier to synthesize them directly.
As for hormones, I understand that tissue cultures have been commonplace in medical experimentation for a very long time, and I don’t know that they actually require growth hormone. Perhaps such hormones would increase growth rate to a useful industrial level?
So I guess if the hormone is necessary then pituitary cells could be cultured in an tank next to the muscle tissue?
35 Doctor Science // Apr 25, 2008 at 10:48 am
Miramon:
Actually, a lot of what a cow *actually* lives on is single-cell protein from the microbes in its gut that do the real work of digestion. AFAIK, no multi-cellular organism can break down cellulose on its own.
As for hormones, I understand that tissue cultures have been commonplace in medical experimentation for a very long time, and I don’t know that they actually require growth hormone.
Sekrit science fact: no-one knows what they really require. AFAIK there are *no* completely defined media for growing mammalian cells. Even if you mostly use a defined medium (that is, one with a strict chemical recipe) you always end up “topping it off” with blood serum or other body fluids. Dancing in circles waving a dead chicken and then adding the chicken feet to the mix may also be involved. “Black art” is what other scientists call it.
“Growth factors” are the things that are in the blood serum that are necessary but you have no idea what they are. It’s fancy science talk for “stuff. that you need. to grow!” Growth hormone may be involved, as well as other hormones *hands wave wildly* — and stuff! that you need!
Yeah, you could add pituitary glands, thyroid, etc. — but then you’d have to add other tissues that *they* depend on, and they would depend on others, and before you know it — you’re growing a cow.
36 Goat // May 4, 2008 at 6:11 pm
You know, it seems most people commenting are on board, but I have what I’d like to think is a healthy amount of skepticism. I am not squick, just wary. I am in favor of just about anything that is ecologically friendly, but the idea of vat grown meat seems unnatural to me… probably because meat doesn’t naturally grow in vats.
As a fan of science fiction almost anything so fantastic as vat-grown meat holds a certain allure, but I’ve seen the “harmless” holodecks on Star Trek malfunction too many times to think that this scientific miracle food wouldn’t do similar. I am talking of course of meat-monsters! Sentient masses of meat bent on the destruction of the human race! Ok, maybe not meat-monsters, but something more along the line of ill effects on the human body.
Third arms, third legs (hehe), third eyes, it all sounds cool until you sprout one… then it stops sounding cool and starts BEING cool! Heh, I don’t know, I think I’d rather eat less meat than eat something that didn’t naturally come from the earth. Am I alone in my dubiety?
37 skzb // May 4, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Goat @ 36: I’m wondering if you’ve ever in your life eaten anything that “naturally came from the earth” without a good dose of human intervention. I think I did three times: I had some moose sausages, a venison stew, and some shark steaks. That’s about it, though.
38 Goat // May 6, 2008 at 1:15 am
Human intervention yes, but to the degree of growing meat in a vat? And what intervention has taken place is intervention I’d rather do without. Ideally, I’d be raising my own cattle, but due to current… financial deficiencies, this is not a dream I will be realizing soon. I have eaten a number of things that were natural by your definition though, thanks largely to my brother’s in-laws who are hunting enthusiasts. Oh, and my own meager fishing efforts.
I’m not saying I’m full on against it, just that I am wary, as I am with most all new technology. Do you have any idea how long I kept my walk-man before I upgraded to a Disc-man? *shrug*
You know though, it just occurred to me that I eat a great number of things that I try not to think about while I am eating them (bottom shelf hot dogs, the kind that simply say “meat”, but not what kind), perhaps I’m already eating vat meat. Or something infinitely more disturbing.
39 BigUglyManDoll // May 6, 2008 at 2:22 pm
To Goat: “To Serve Man” is a cookbook! A cookbook!!!
40 Goat // May 6, 2008 at 4:44 pm
It’s people. Soylent Green is made out of people!
41 Shelley // May 7, 2008 at 10:18 am
Sounds a little too much like the Face Dancers axlotl tanks from the Dune series.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axlotl_tank
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