Long Live the New Flesh

June 21, 2023 7:44 PM

The U.S. Agriculture Department has approved the sale for human consumption of cultured meat . Upside Foods and Good Meat will supply vat poultry to high-end restaurants Bar Crenn and The Bazaar by José Andrés, respectively, until economies of scale kick in and bring lab-grown meat products to your(?) kitchen.
posted by logicpunk (30 comments total)

I haven't read the articles yet, but "human celebrity proteins" is a phrase that makes me feel like I'm living in the actual Future. the future is the Transmetropolitan version, but The Future none the less.
posted by Dr. Twist at 8:40 PM on June 21, 2023 [6 favorites]

Okay I have to admit that for a moment I misread the phrase “human consumption” so that “human” was the object rather than the subject.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 9:00 PM on June 21, 2023 [8 favorites]

Mmm, chikinugs™!

Dr. Twist, this is the future, but it is, without a doubt, the dumb future.
posted by Ghidorah at 9:02 PM on June 21, 2023

vat poultry

That name just screams gastronomic sophistication, doesn't it?

or maybe it just screams
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:07 PM on June 21, 2023 [4 favorites]

I actually think novelty selections like "ethical cannibalism" or "devour an extinct animal" are probably the best chance a product like this has at becoming profitable, can't imagine it will ever be able to scale up to exceed traditional meat production.
posted by N8yskates at 9:23 PM on June 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

I really hope this catches on and turns out to be both scalable and better for the environment than chicken farming. I suspect Big Ag will do its best to prevent it from ever being cheaper/more popular than murdernuggets though.
posted by rouftop at 11:31 PM on June 21, 2023 [8 favorites]

Vat Poultry sounds like the name of a band you instantly don't like. But then you realize all the cool kids are into them. What to do?
posted by philip-random at 11:39 PM on June 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

The general advice now is to eat less processed food, and there’s no way that vat grown meat is going to be anything less than an ultra-processed food that has come too late to be cool, but not too late to make a profit (link to podcast with transcript)
posted by The River Ivel at 12:18 AM on June 22, 2023 [5 favorites]

"Cultured meat" is such a euphemism. I'm sure it relates to some bio-lab technical definition of "cultured", but in the kitchen, in the world of cuisine, when I hear "cultured" I think fermented. "Cultured meat" does not sound like what it is, it sounds like a meat analogue of cultured milk. That's sneaky and deceptive.
posted by Dysk at 2:03 AM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

On the one hand, I'm extremely hopeful about what this could do. I've never been vegan, but have dabbled in vegetarian moments, and friends who are way more aggressively anti-vegetable than I have said "oh, I'd switch to lab-grown tomorrow if the cost and taste were close enough".

On the other, no one has been able to prove this at-scale and it can kind of seem like another big tech hype boom at most times, and there's a very compelling argument in this mini-doc on YouTube. Such that I had hoped someone else more science-literate would have posted that video here on the blue and I could see more science-literate folk debate it.

But then I looked through his other video titles and went "ohhhh... THAT's why no one will ever FPP that video" (spoiler : way too many pro-Jordan Peterson pieces), however the video in question strikes me as reasonably well-researched.

So, I remain cautiously optimistic, but also skeptical in the way that so many proposed technical advances over-promise and under-deliver. But, hey, we got the cost of Impossible™ meat down to very reasonable prices pretty quickly.

(also, doesn't seem like anyone yet has a low-cost solution for "I want a steak, but don't kill a cow about it")
posted by revmitcz at 3:25 AM on June 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

I went to school with a Vat Poultry. Ended up a pretty good country singer.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 3:49 AM on June 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

What you really want, and which you'll undoubtedly pay more for, is free-vat poultry.

(And if you're watching calories, perhaps fat-free free-vat might be the ticket?)
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 5:27 AM on June 22, 2023 [5 favorites]

the future is the Transmetropolitan version, but The Future none the less.

Mmm, caribou eyes.
posted by Foosnark at 7:06 AM on June 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

I like meat, but would feel better about it if it could just be cultured tissue rather than having to create, raise and then kill a living creature. If it scales, it would very likely have lower planetary impact than current livestock farming practices. It might also help create awareness of meat alternatives made from vegetables, and someday you might even hear Bubba say "Screw it, just gimme a veggieburger".
posted by Artful Codger at 7:08 AM on June 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

This will be ideal when bird flu comes around again.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:44 AM on June 22, 2023

Obligatory Better Off Ted.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:49 AM on June 22, 2023

Looking forward to my State of the Art Nixon Burgers.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 7:58 AM on June 22, 2023

"human celebrity proteins" - so much depends on which celeb.

Also, when it becomes a matter of state. Fresh monarch, anyone?
posted by doctornemo at 8:35 AM on June 22, 2023

Very tasty title, logicpunk.
posted by doctornemo at 8:35 AM on June 22, 2023

Fresh monarch, anyone?

"Apres moi, le dessert?"
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:56 AM on June 22, 2023 [5 favorites]

"Cultured meat" is such a euphemism. I'm sure it relates to some bio-lab technical definition of "cultured", but in the kitchen, in the world of cuisine, when I hear "cultured" I think fermented.

In this case it means that they play Handel to the bioreactor the meat is grown in.
posted by Dr. Twist at 9:01 AM on June 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

I eat meat but I am a hypocrite who hates handling cold dead animal bits. If I could get the same flavor/nutrition without that, fuck yeah. I am mostly off pork because I hate that pigs are treated so badly and intelligent to boot. (Also the insanely toxic pig shit lakes of industrial farming). But guilt-free bacon that caused no animal suffering, yes please. Soy disagrees with me and I dislike many vegetables so I am on board.
posted by emjaybee at 9:22 AM on June 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

Generic chicken is probably an easier target for the initial product but it is somewhat disappointing. I want to be able to walk into the grocery store and have a wide range of products not regularly available.

Also chicken, as meat goes, is pretty efficient. The environmental impact mitigation is a tough target. Beef is way easier in that aspect.

"Cultured meat" is such a euphemism

Cultured equating to man made is pretty well established eg: cultured marble, stone or even pearls. Though props to the first cultured meat product to brand themselves Corinthian.
posted by Mitheral at 9:38 AM on June 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

I don’t understand how this can ever be done at scale. Like how do you deal with contamination? Wouldn’t any bacteria or virus or fungus that affects animals go wild in a vat growing meat? Does the vat have an immune system? Keeping the meat clean seems impossible to do cheaply and at scale.
posted by congen at 10:40 AM on June 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

vat poultry

That name just screams gastronomic sophistication, doesn't it?

or maybe it just screams
posted by Greg_Ace

I Have No Beak and I Must Squawk.
posted by Splunge at 12:18 PM on June 22, 2023 [5 favorites]

It would be great to have the meats I love, but grown without a central nervous system. And it would seem at least theoretically possible to do so on a way that is more efficient. Why use energy making feathers if you just want the foie gras? If they refine it to the point where they can grow perfectly marbled wagyu, that would be amazing. Or imagine wagyu-style duck breast where fine lines of fat are marbled throughout the muscle. Or a pork tenderloin grown in nuggets with chicken skin on the outside.
posted by snofoam at 2:05 PM on June 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

i am

1. strongly in favor of the production of lab-manufactured meat and dairy products, provided that it doesn’t produce significantly more carbon than other foods. this is because it’s a reasonable hypothesis that way more things are sentient than we previously thought, and because it’s easier to get people to swap from eating animals that were alive to eating animal flesh than it is to get us to knock off all the meat-eating.
2. i am in favor though not quite as strongly in favor of the production of lab-grown brains, first starting with smaller-scale brains used to do simple calculations, eventually scaling up to brains comparable in size to human brains, and then finally to producing massive omnibrains continually lost in solitary thought, living, thinking, super-brilliant realizations of the dreams of avicenna and decartes . this is because i am a dangerous sociopath who would gladly melt down each and every one of us into a fused hive mind and/or without hesitation merge all of our consciousnesses with that of a sinister machine god (luv u rocky’s b, ne thing 4 u)

posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 4:21 PM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

It hasn't been a great year for fake meats: Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat doing layoffs amid dropping sales
posted by meowzilla at 6:23 PM on June 22, 2023

Cultured equating to man made is pretty well established eg: cultured marble, stone or even pearls. Though props to the first cultured meat product to brand themselves Corinthian.

Yeah, but that's a very different context. If you Google "cultured dairy" or even "cultured food" is wall-to-wall fermentation stuff. It has a different, established meaning in the kitchen.
posted by Dysk at 11:39 PM on June 22, 2023

If you Google "cultured dairy" or even "cultured food"

Or "uncultured swine".
(not meant as insult, just word play!)
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:03 AM on June 23, 2023 [1 favorite]