If the stats in the article are true, 96% less greenhouse emissions, 45% less energy, 99% less land use and 96% less water used in the production of the lab meat, I think it makes perfect sense to call it clean meat. Plus it doesn't involve the death of an animal, which is pretty "clean" I guess.
"Clean" food means something very different than "clean" energy.
If I'm looking for clean food, my standards are very different than someone looking for clean energy. I know folks who wouldn't think lab grown meat was very clean simply because it was created in a lab.
All that to say: you're not wrong, but clean means something very different to the food-conscious person shopping at their local co-op.
"Clean food" generally means minimally processed--you are eating food that is as close to its natural form as possible, such this[0]. So, meat created in a laboratory is about as far aware from this sort of "clean eating" as possible.
That quoted website just sounds like pseudo-BS-science, especially since the very first thing they mention is removing gluten from diet. That particular horse has been beaten to death and then a bit more.
Our bodies don't give two shits whether the food we eat was grown outside in a natural environment or in a lab - as long as it's chemically the same then there can't be any difference to how we absorb it.
Edit: Ok, after going deeper onto this website it mentions doing juice cleanses and ridding yourself of "toxins". Stay as far away from this website as possible.
Just to be clear, I'm not advocating this website. I'm just trying to point out that "clean" food can mean different things to different people, and that's why some folks might not think meat created in a lab should be considered "clean."
Why not? As long as its vegan margarine. Its clean of at least a subset of ethical concerns that many foods are not. Clean is a very overloaded word though so I certainly see where you're coming from, but it works just fine for me.
Fair enough, but margarine is not a good analogy to in-vitro meat. It's a substance that has very little molecular resemblance to butter. In-vitro meat, however, is meat. It's not a different substance -- it's just produced in a different way.
Usually, though, lab-grown meat is actually meat. It's possible that it'd have to be labeled "synthetic" or "lab-grown" (similar to how synthetic diamonds are named), but claiming that meat is not meat is nonsensical.
This seems like a particular definition of "flesh" that's not particularly germane to meatness. Lab meat is made of the exact same animal cells that regular meat is, the tissue just happens to never have inhabited an animal. When we eat meat, we don't value the fact that the cells we're eating were once part of an animal, we mostly value the taste.
It seems to me that this isn't a necessarily property of meat but a contingent one caused by the fact that meat used to only be possible to produce from animal flesh.
>When we eat meat, we don't value the fact that the cells we're eating were once part of an animal, we mostly value the taste
You'd be surprised. We even have different names and preferences for different age stages of the animal, different varieties of the animal (regional etc), etc.
Those distinctions exist because of the perceived impact on the tastes and textures of meat. Not because of anything such as ethical preferences to old/young animals.
Diamonds are pretty simple from a chemical point of view, atoms of Carbon linked together in a particular structure. You can't compare something as complex as creating animal meat with creating synthetic diamonds.
Absolutely -- some dairy producing states like Wisconsin have forced makers of soy and almond milk to stop calling them "milk" so I'm almost positive that meat producing states would do the same.
FWIW I've seen medieval recipes containing almond milk (referred to as milk or equivalent period word), so calling such substances milk is not a newfangled idea.
> Of course such labeling concerns don't apply to an internet discussion, but they do indicate that people care about what's in a name.
Calling something clean meat, based purely on arbitrary ethical grounds, implies that what other people eat and call meat is somehow unclean. It is a value judgement on the others.
I assumed "clean" referred to the fact that lab-grown tissue would have a much lower risk of disease. Animals have digestive tracts full of bacteria, and farms aren't exactly pristine. Every year in the US, meat-borne pathogens kill thousands and sicken millions.[1]
> I assumed "clean" referred to the fact that lab-grown tissue would have a much lower risk of disease. Animals have digestive tracts full of bacteria, and farms aren't exactly pristine. Every year in the US, meat-borne pathogens kill thousands and sicken millions.
OK, let's check the numbers.
According to the CDC https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/attribution/attribution-... from 1998 - 2008 from the total of foodborn illnesses 46% were linked to plant based, 22% to meat and poultry, 20% to dairy and eggs and 6% to fish products. From the total number of deaths 23% were linked to plant based products, 29% to meat and poultry (19% to poultry).
1. The percentages you cite aren’t useful on their own, as one also needs to know how often each kind of food is consumed. Only then would we know the relative risk of eating each kind of food.
2. Most food plants are grown outdoors (often near livestock) and many aren’t cooked before eating. Cultured meat is grown in sterile environments and is typically cooked. These differences mean that it will almost certainly have a lower disease risk than any natural food.
So, I should accept your millions of sick people generality supported with a CDC link as a useful information. Why wouldn't you accept the cold hard numbers given by the same organization ?
> Cultured meat is grown in sterile environments and is typically cooked. These differences mean that it will almost certainly have a lower disease risk than any natural food.
Maybe, or maybe we'll discover in 10 years that eating lab grown meat gives you some form of cancer. Until it is used on a large scale for a number of years (as in decades) we have no idea what the effect of consuming lab grown meat has on ones health.
> Maybe, or maybe we'll discover in 10 years that eating lab grown meat gives you some form of cancer. Until it is used on a large scale for a number of years (as in decades) we have no idea what the effect of consuming lab grown meat has on ones health.
We can know it's safe without a long track record of use because of biology, chemistry, and physics. Cultured meat is the same muscle cells with the same DNA. If it caused cancer but animal meat didn't, that would tell us something new about biology, chemistry, and/or physics.
Your fear-mongering postulates unknown mechanisms of action that science would almost certainly have discovered by now. That's not just unscientific, it's anti-scientific. It's on the same level as, "What if cell phones cause cancer?" or "What if vaping is worse than smoking?"
When some folks wondered "how could you possibly persuade people to pay more for hydroponic vegetables?", my first thought was "get your vegetables, now with fewer bacterial brain cysts!" Vat meat vs incompletely cooked meat, is similar to hydroponic vs incompletely washed vegetables in this. I've no idea what the current state of research is on cysts vis autoimmune diseases.
It does confuse me, as a term. Pretty much every bit of meat that I eat was harvested and processed by myself or my neighbor. Given that we are going to be the folks eating it, it's pretty clean.
I clean my fish, deer, moose, beef critter, fowl, etc... I clean them very well. (They are delicious.)
>Pretty much every bit of meat that I eat was harvested and processed by myself or my neighbor
You do understand that you are the very definition of an outlier, right?
So it would OK if the term only confused you, since you are supposed to be confused, given that you do these things differently than 99.99% of the population.
But I think the term is confusing in general, not just to people who "kill and clean their own meat".
That's certainly true, but I suspect I'd have been just as confused even before I moved here. Today, I know my meat is pretty clean. Back then, I'd have assumed it was clean because it hadn't made me sick.
I think it's incredibly naive of people to assume that we can artificially replicate a food natural source. So much is unknown about the stomach microbiome and such things that I will be staying far away from this and the likes of Soylent for a long time.
I think it's safer, probably harder to get mad cow disease or salmonella, don't you think? Also, today we get it from animals pumped full of antibiotics, hormones living in their own excrement.
First if I eat meat or not is none of your business. I think it is judgemental to qualify a person that you potentially don't agree with as close minded. A close minded person is a person that can't accept that other people can have a different opinion.
An open society is a society that accepts diversity and doesn't try to shame people into conforming to a single way of thinking.
> I think it's safer, probably harder to get mad cow disease or salmonella, don't you think?
Not really, you have a good chance to get sick (I'm talking about foodborn disease) no matter what you eat. According to the CDC from 1998 - 2008 the percent of deaths/illnesses is about 46% - 54% between eating plants vs animal products https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/attribution-image.html#f...
> or any kind of processed food which contains "meat"
Not really, you have a good chance to get sick (I'm talking about foodborn disease) no matter what you eat. According to the CDC from 1998 - 2008 the percent of deaths/illnesses is about 46% - 54% between eating plants vs animal products https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/attribution-image.html#f...
I talk as someone who's been there and done it. Perhaps I'm just picky with who I work for, but typically I do the initial job and then move to paypal, I've not had anyone not pay me yet for my work.
It is not as simple as creating a website. If you want to create a good environment for both coders and buyers you will need lawyers and a good support team. What I'm saying is that you will need to invest a lot of money in something that can be easily crushed (or bought) by the competition.
True, I've seen a few writer jobs (projects) where the buyers expect to pay as low as $2 per article ... Looks worse than the coders situation were, if you have a good reputation, you can at least be paid a decent wage.
There are similar (some of them better) alternatives, the problem is that once you have a good history/reputation on one of these sites you can't transfer this to another one. You start from zero.
I kinda dig oDesk. I got many decent clients off it. I was shooting for small, very short term projects - the kind that can be done within a day - so YMMV.
This very site's monthly freelancer thread is also worth checking out. I got a few decent leads out of it.
Your advice, while logical, has a small problem. A coder usually has a history/reputation on this kind of sites. Once you stop using it you start basically from zero. The reputation is not transferable to similar websites.
Tying your entire professional reputation to a single website is an unbelievably bad idea. Not only does it let companies get away with what Freelance et al are doing, but it keeps you making artificially low rates. Contribute to open source, network in your community and online, and do pro bono work for charities. If you're good, your reputation will rise and your business will not have a single point of failure.
Importantly: it is both not true that your reputation will necessarily be improved by working for charities/contributing to OSS, and not necessary that one has "a reputation" to successfully get consulting gigs.
To get a consulting gig, you need to a) identify a person who has the authority to say yes to a consulting gig, b) convince them to say yes. Even if you have a reputation, you don't get to skip these steps. Reputation as being among the top in the field will get you more inbound leads, but you'll still have to sift down to people who can actually say yes to gigs, and then sell them.
How do you think your average accountant sells accounting services? By having a reputation as being one of the best accountants available for hire? No. They meet with business owners, winnow down to the ones who have money and problems with it, and then say that they'll trade solutions to problems for money.
Your reputation with this site is essentially no more than internet points. Your work, your experience, and your ability stays with you.
The ultimate goal of any agency-type business is to take the maximum amount of money from their clients while doing the least possible amount of work for them. If the clients feel locked-in (as you do), that's brilliant for them, because they can abuse you in this way and they know you won't change your behaviour apart from grumbling on some forum.
Although others are suggesting you use a competitor, I think you should consider whether this is a business model you want to support in the future.
Yes, but if your whole reputation is tied to a single site, you're doing something very wrong. Building an entire freelance business around a single site, never doing any open source work, never networking, and never doing any pro bono work for local charities is a very bad business practice.
doesn't matter. if you have a good reputation from previous work you've done then you should ask your previous partners for referrals/reviews that prove it. you don't need to be locked in to any one website.
When I bought ruby motion I was a bit in provisioning_profile hell. I shot off a support Ticket and got an answer within 4 minutes from Laurent Sansonetti. When I told him in a second Mail that I'm not too chummy yet with Xcode he came up with some really useful links half an hour later.
By now there is a very active Google Group.Wrote a question yesterday and had an answer within 10 Minutes. Very friendly vibe, mostly Rubyists dabbling into Xcode, but also some very nitty gritty in depth topics.
