“This ban is a massive win for Texas ranchers, producers, and consumers,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in a statement following the bill’s passage. “Texans have a God-given right to know what’s on their plate, and for millions of Texans, it better come from a pasture, not a lab. It’s plain cowboy logic that we must safeguard our real, authentic meat industry from synthetic alternatives.”
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Texas joins Indiana, Mississippi, Montana and Nebraska in enacting new laws this year; Alabama and Florida did so last year. In March, the Oklahoma House approved a similar bill that did not advance out of the Senate this session.
I mean, I am all in for labeling, but banning it? Is that what’s happening? why would anyone do that
Protectionism for meat companies is why.
If the meat companies had any sense, they’d be pushing for and funding it. That much moneyh and not owning the competition is just flat out stupid.
Exactly, they would profit more from planting whatever crop is needed to supply raw materials to the lab-grown facility, than the efficiency loss of raising cattle for protien
That’s the thing. It’s too late for them to get in on the real ground floor. The tech is already basically here with increasingly well established companies. Now the cheapest best optionfor the old meat companies to stay competitive is to try to block the new competition. Of course that method won’t hold up long term but we all know shareholders only care about next quarter.
Freedom.
Free market my fucking ass
You are free to bribe a politician and influence the market all you want /s
Freedom to fuck over certain groups of people who threaten their power. So brave.
Regulatory capture in action
Pretty sure beans are 1000% a bigger threat to ranchers.
Why won’t anyone let the market decide?!? 😭
It’s about control, they don’t want us deciding anything.
Call it something else, rebrand it. We could say that if it didnt come from an animal, its not meat, its just a protein cake or a red pudding, or something. Could it avoid the ban this way?
They didnt ban any vegan protein source, they banned the exact one that tries to make you feel like youre eating beef. The name “Lab-grown meat” tells those ranchers that it wants to replace them, its unnecessarily aggressive, which innevitably creates a reaction.
It’s like changing “lab-grown butter” to margarine. Lol, can’t stop people from whipping oil.
The SmAlL gOvErNmEnT GOP, playing favorites and legislating in favor of one of the unhealthiest, ecologically devastating industries on the planet… But their voters will keep voting for the corruption!
Republicans are not fit to govern.
The only place conservatives fit is in a box six feet under ground.
Lab grown meat is a dead meme imo but acting like Texan beef comes from grass fed cows in pastures and not from hellish factory farms where they get fed corn until their liver dies sure sounds stupid
Feels kinda unconstitutional to me. They could say you can’t sell it for consumption, but not sell it at all seems like an overstep.
Texans have a God-given right to know what’s on their plate
This sounds a lot like anti-vaxxing, where people want to “know” what’s in their vaccine. Like it’s a conspiracy.
If only Texans could read (labels) they would know instantly. The end of the quote is the real focus: they want to protect the ranching industry by killing competition from plant based products.
I bet the lab folks could tell you what’s in their product much better than ranchers and meat processing factories ever could. A lot of science goes into it though and some people seem to be allergic to that, at least based on the sorts of claims they make.
A scientist telling you the name of every compound of some food doesnt make you actually know whats in it. Theres a big difference between knowing the name and knowing the thing and how it affects your body.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here. Are you suggesting that lab-grown meat wouldn’t be controlled by existing laws on what can be in food and will contain some chemical with unknown effects on the human body (outside of those in natural meat)? And that we know all about the effects of whatever contaminants or bio-accumulants may end up in natural meat? I don’t believe either of those. If we went further and listed everything that went into the animal and the culture that grew the meat, for which we would know more about the effect on the human body?
To reiterate, I bet the lab folks could tell you the effect of their product on your body much better than ranchers and meat processing factories (or anyone else) ever could of theirs.
My point is about how people trust new types of food. Knowing the name of the compounds in a food doesnt help in making someone trust it. People trust alimentary habits that are centuries old more than a newly developed method that they have no familiarity with. Im talking about trust on safety regulations rather than the actual regulations.
Well if it really mimics the real thing it will probably be a type 1 carcinogen too.
Yes, that’s basically the idea, I guess.
Like with vaccines.
It doesn’t fit in a Tweet though.
More freedumb.
Its a zero win. I would have eaten this because I’m vegan. Meat eaters would prefer normal meats. Now I go back to just beans. Fuck rather I won’t even say what I eat. That way the retards leading this stupid Rednoseance won’t ban whatever I plan to eat next. Heck you know what? I’m totally going to eat beef. The most expensive kind of beef and chicken. Yeah! Totally. I’m a vegan and I will go eat the most popular meats out there!
I’m pretty sure this is a huge self own and in a decades time Texans who enjoy knowing what’s on their plate will be envious of their interstate bretheren enjoying tastier healthier cuts at a reduced price.
I’m pretty sure this is a huge self own
Congratulations, you understand every Texas legislative session since Ann Richards was governor.
Reduced price seems like a massive stretch.
The costs of production are decreasing dramatically.
The most recent development is switching to a plant based growth medium instead of fetal bovine serum (?) which will reduce costs by 80%.
So long as there are multiple producers they will compete on price.
The fact that you think it’ll be cheaper shows you havent been paying very much attention to capitalism.
Everytime a thing like this comes along, that promises a cheaper, better solution… It ends up being neither .
This isbpatently false, and disregards the fundamentals of economics. Well done.
Oh well, if you say it, it must be true… even if it flies in the face of established capitalist behavior and precedent.
Yes capitalists are profit maximisers.
However, many competing producers will minimise the cost to consumers.
This is true of any technology ever developed.
The goal is ALWAYS a more PROFITABLE product, with good marketability potential.
Quality, service, reliability, affordability, etc., are all secondary. It’s nice when they are positive, too, but they can all be compromised for more profit.
Yep.
All that matters is profit.
And they arent gonna leave profit hanging on the vine by pricing their producting below the product they are competing against, even if their hypothetical costs are 90% less.
If cutting profit per sale in half results in 2.5x more sales they will.
Right, which is why if there were more than one company producing lab-grown meat, they would in fact compete against each other.
Of course, anti-monopoly legislation is rarely enforced in the US, but sometimes it is.
Lab grown animal cells will always be more expensive than animal-grown animal cells. Animals have immune systems; lab cells have to be kept in a sterile environment, a significant cost. Animals have digestive systems and can power cell growth and all other functions from common plant materials; lab cells have to be fed pre-digested and carefully proportioned material, a significant cost. Animals have circulatory systems that efficiently perfuse oxygen and nutrients, and remove waste; lab cell containers have to be centrifuged in small containers because the forces required in large containers damage the cells. And so on.
The real potential for equal-tasting, cheaper, better-for-environment cuts is in plant-based imitations like what Impossible brand and its competitors are doing.
These laws banning lab grown cells are banning designer lab-grown cuts as a luxury good. Once that market matures, I am sure the wealthy people who jump on the conspicuous consumption bandwagon will not have any problem getting the law repealed or exceptions carved out for them.
Your entire comment assumes the state of the art for lab growing proteins is static and will not enjoy economies of scale.
I used to argue with a guy who thought that nuclear was the only power for the future, and things like solar and wind were too small and inefficient to bother with. I always said that he was arguing about a future where none of these solutions had any development or growth
Sure, back then solar and wind were tiny, but that doesn’t mean that you chuck it all out. You stick with it, do the research, and eventually it becomes a viable option, which is exactly what happened.
The same will happen with meat. Now it’s cost-prohibitive, but one by one, they’ll conquer the bottlenecks and inefficiencies, and eventually it will become a viable option.
That guy was right. And if we completely switched over and ignored the fear campaigns promoted by coal/oil/gas we’d have one of the safest and greenest electrical grids.
i would argue nuclear isn’t the only power for the future, but it’s a great backbone for a flexible green grid also with solar, wind and hydro.
Not really.
Yes the fear campaigns have been detrimental and it’s unfortunate that Nuclear has often been set aside over the decades because of the risk of mismanagement.
However, it’s only part of a reliable electrical grid, it’s not “the solution”.
In Australia for example, our population density is too low. Too much power would be lost in transmission. Perhaps in a few major cities it might be appropriate but it’s too costly to support a nuclear industry for only a few installations.
Nuclear might be a great solution in many instances but it’s probably not in Australia.
To be fair: People used to argue that Nuclear would get much cheaper and so cheap and safe that you could even power your car with it. They thought that everyone would have their own nuclear reactor at home giving them close to infinite cheap and clean energy.
That didn’t exactly turn out that way.
That’s the issue with using future developments as an argument. We don’t really know where the future leads the technology and which limitations will be overcome with development and which ones won’t.
There are thousands of cool things that were posed to become the future revolution. Some of them did, many more of them didn’t.
20 years ago, hydrogen fuel cell cars were to become the future. Now the technology is completely dead.
From a current tech standpoint economy of scale is not nearly enough to get the price of lab meat to the price of animal meat. The ingredients are just much more complex and thus expensive.
From a future tech standpoint, who knows? Could be that some revolutionary breakthrough happens. Or could be that it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, it won’t get cheaper.
I am sure it will enjoy economies of scale. Lab grown meat is currently something like 1000x the cost of animal-grown meat: I am confident they can get that down to 10x, maybe single digits. I am equally confident the inherent inefficiency of growing muscle cells without the integrated functions of the rest of the animal mean the lab cost will never be lower.
1,000×? That’s ancient history. In 2013, yeah, the first cultured burger was $330,000 (Wikipedia). Now?
SuperMeat is running full 25,000 L tanks at $11.79/lb (Green Queen, AgFunderNews) — that’s premium chicken territory, not sci-fi pricing.
Believer Meats is modeling $6.20/lb with TFF tech (Green Queen) — organic chicken prices.
Average industry cost right now is $17–23/lb (Katie Couric Media) and even a conservative academic model puts big-scale production at $28.50/lb (ScienceDirect). Still single-digit multiples, not thousands.
So no — we’re not talking “someday maybe.” We’re already at 2–4× conventional chicken for the best setups, and the price curve is still falling. Will it ever be cheaper than farm-grown? Maybe, maybe not — inefficiency is real. But “never” is a bet against tech that’s already crushed costs by over 99.99% in a decade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosa_Meat
https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/supermeat-cultivated-lab-grown-meat-cost-process
https://katiecouric.com/news/sustainability/what-is-lab-grown-meat-benefits-and-challenges
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666154322000916
You’ve really just enumerated some of the advantages traditional production has over synthetic meats.
Animals need arable land - something which will be in very short supply given climate change.
Animals are a significant source of greenhouse gas production.
Raising animals is in many cases unethical.
Synthetic meat production is not as dependent on regular climate cycles.
Animal husbandry is a mature technology with little opportunity for advancement.
I wish my stomach could handle impossible meats but they just immediately go through me. For me going towards a more plant based diet will require avoiding highly processed meat replacements.
That’s interesting, I hadn’t realized they affected some people that way. I have noticed their “beef” and “pork” products include a lot of fat, maybe the greasy slipperiness contributes to the effect? I’d like to think use in dishes where the other ingredients are low-fat would balance things out, but if not that’s sad for that brand.
In my case it’s the pea protein isolates. That burger spent so little time in my belly that I doubt I digested much of it.
edit: pea proteins are a known problem for my family
that explains a lot. there’s that restaurant down in santa nella that you either love or it gives you the runs and i never thought it was a heritable pea protein thing.
It’s specifically the ultra processed isolated proteins from peas. I can eat cooked peas or raw in pod peas without a problem but vegan pea based “ice cream” is in my belly for minutes at best. For ice cream replacements it has to be oat or coconut based.
thank you for sharing more info. i’ve not explored it too much myself.
We need to be funding this stuff.
Move all meat subsidies into lab-grown meat to save animals and still have meat. Easy.
Everybody trying to act like it’s bad is lying and likes animals getting hurt.
It’s just plain cowboy logic!
