crawling-alreadygirl t1_iqyk8l6 wrote on October 4, 2022 at 1:10 AM

Reply to comment by SlingOfDavid in Will lab-grown meat be an animal friendly and sustainable future food? - Copenhagen Institute For Futures Studies by CPHfuturesstudies

What social consequences could arise from lab grown meat?

SlingOfDavid t1_iqz0il6 wrote on October 4, 2022 at 3:15 AM

Monsanto engineered crops that don't produce seeds so that farmers would have to continue buying from them. I already mentioned the mosquitos that deliver vaccines (which is unethical). Undercutting ranchers so that it's impossible for them to turn a profit, which can have broader economic impacts on certain communities. Creating a proprietary(black box) process for growing this meat that may end up being carcinogenic/dangerous. A concentration of the meat production that give faceless corporations more leverage over the general population. Producing meat with hormone ratios that are different(either knowingly or inadvertently) from what humans have grown accustomed to, causing unexpected health issues. It'll require legislation that bureaucrats will for sure get wrong causing even more issues, or worse, some ideologue will engineer based on their beliefs. Imagine someone deciding we need to decrease the amount of testosterone in red meat, or add estrogen to chickens, or put dopamine in pork, or some other crazy shit. I'm not saying it should be illegal, but I won't support it. I won't buy it, and I won't eat at restaurants that serve it.

Plus, something about it just seems wrong.

crawling-alreadygirl t1_iqz63zn wrote on October 4, 2022 at 4:07 AM

Eh, nobody needs meat in the first place, so I wouldn't be too concerned, although I doubt hormone-based social engineering is much of a threat, especially compared with the environmental devastation of animal agriculture. Cheers.

SlingOfDavid t1_iqz6sf7 wrote on October 4, 2022 at 4:13 AM

It's only devastating when it's a giant multinational. Local ranchers can raise animals in a very green fashion that is actually beneficial to the ecology. And, people(along with most other animals) have been eating meat literally forever. Before we dragged ourselves out of the oceans with flippers, we were eating meat. Yes, fish is meat.