lab grown meat is a vaguely EA/rationalist/self IDed neolib meme. in theory it will save the environment (ok) and prevent suffering (yay) in a way that concentrates capital (double yay) and involves a lot of tech magic (triple yay).
hot luigi is a big fan apparently. seeing this discussed reminded me of this excellent article which shreds the concept of mass produced lab grown meat. I haven’t really seen this circulate much over the years, but it is really a masterwork of grift dissection. please enjoy
archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20241208141305/https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/
In short, lab-grown cannot realistically replace a significant portion of the meat industry, for a variety of reasons. First of all, it’s far too expensive and doesn’t scale well because so much active machinery is required at each step in the manufacturing process. There are also issues regarding infected vats and if the cells’ nutrition compares to that of natural meat.
At least it’s possible in theory? I’m glad we’re that far. But it clearly isn’t going to happen at a large enough scale for lab-grown meat to start appearing at grocery stores.