All of those things are solved by eating legumes as well. I would rather eat protein rich vegetarian food over lab grown meat. I still eat meat but maybe only once a week, I really enjoy discovering what other cultures have created for meat free meals. Hell, hundreds of millions of Indians are vegetarians, and I would much rather cook and eat Indian food over eating some abomination of nature which only exists due to human’s destructive diet tendencies and lack of discipline. I also refuse to eat beyond meat either as those meat substitute products are very processed and far from their natural state.

▲

KempyKolibri 3 days ago | parent [-]

I'm not sure I understand this argument. The point is that there are some serious issues with the production of meat that are not (or may not be in future) issues with lab grown meat.

It's true that you could solve this by only eating legumes, but you then go on to say you don't even eat only legumes yourself, you also consume meat. So for those times where you do consume meat, lab grown meat would solve the issues that come with that.

Totally get that you may have dietary/taste preferences that preclude consumption of these meats, but that sounds different to the OP's point that they potential solve a lot of issues with our current food supply.

▲

__turbobrew__ 2 days ago | parent [-]

I consume very little meat, and when I do it is either because someone serves me meat at a meal or occasionally I will buy some meat from my local butcher which sources their meat from local free range farms.

Meat consumption is also not a binary decision, you can consume 10% of the meat you currently do and reduce the environmental side effects caused by your meat consumption by 90%. Furthermore, you can consume meat that comes from small scale local sustainable sources to further reduce your footprint.

It is the same deal with eggs, I don’t buy factory eggs, I buy them from my local farmer who has free range chickens. Sure, eggs are $8/dozen, but that is the real cost of eggs which do not preclude animal suffering and unsustainable farming practices.

My point is maybe the solution to the meat supply issues is to consume less meat, and consume meat from more sustainable sources. It is almost impossible for western society to grasp that maybe the solution to sustainability problems is to align their consumption with the rest of the world instead of turning to technology to solve all their problems. It is the same with so many other things like water management where the solution seems to be to dam more rivers and suck more acquifers dry instead of maybe not trying to grow grass and cedar trees in a desert.

	▲	KempyKolibri 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Still not sure what your contention with the OP is. They said lab meat solves problems inherent to non-lab meat. This seems to be trivially true. It could also be true that consuming 10% of the meat you normally consume would also reduce the issues of meat consumption. > It is almost impossible for western society to grasp that maybe the solution to sustainability problems is to align their consumption with the rest of the world instead of turning to technology to solve all their problems. Not sure what persuasive power this is supposed to have. In the case of lab meat, the technological solution seems outright better than the “rest of the world” solution. If the “rest of the world” solution is “eat less meat” then on an ethical basis, that is a worse option compared to lab meat. Sure, fewer sentient beings having their throats slit for taste pleasure is better than the status quo, but zero is even better than that.