Lab-Grown Meat Exists (But Nobody Wants To Eat It) (mydigitaldive.com)
- Reference: 0180822268
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/02/18/156250/lab-grown-meat-exists-but-nobody-wants-to-eat-it
- Source link: https://mydigitaldive.com/lab-grown-meat-exists-nobody-wants-to-eat-it/
> In 2013, scientists unveiled the first lab-grown burger at a cost of $330,000. By 2023, the FDA approved cultivated chicken for sale. The price had dropped to around $10-$30 per pound, and over $3 billion in investor money had poured into more than 175 companies developing meat grown from animal cells instead of slaughtered animals.
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> The promise is straightforward: real meat, no slaughter required. You could eat beef without killing cattle, chicken without industrial farming, steak without ethical compromise. The technology works. Federal regulators approved it as safe. And nearly a third of US states have banned it or are trying to. Not because it's dangerous -- because it threatens something deeper than food safety.
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> Start with a small sample of animal cells -- a biopsy, not a slaughter. Place them in a bioreactor with nutrients. The cells multiply, forming muscle tissue identical to conventional meat at the cellular level. Nutritionally comparable, same protein content, but grown without raising and killing an animal.
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> The process uses 64-90% less land than conventional meat production and drastically reduces greenhouse gas emissions. No factory farms, no slaughterhouses, no ethical compromise for people who love meat but hate industrial animal agriculture. For vegetarians who gave up meat for ethical reasons, it offers something impossible before: guilt-free steak.
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> [...] Here's where the dream hits reality. Consumer surveys show people perceive conventional meat as tastier and healthier than lab-grown alternatives. Fewer consumers are willing to try cultivated options than expected. The words "lab-grown" and "cultivated" don't exactly make mouths water.
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> Something about meat grown in a bioreactor triggers deep discomfort for many people, even those who claim to care about animal welfare and environmental impact. It's the same psychological barrier that made "Frankenfood" stick as a label for GMOs. Meat is supposed to come from animals, raised on farms, connected to land and tradition. Growing it in a facility feels wrong to people in ways they struggle to articulate.
[1] https://mydigitaldive.com/lab-grown-meat-exists-nobody-wants-to-eat-it/
Don't try to say its meat (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't try and market it as meat, and I'll give it a chance. You lie and market it as meat and I'll avoid forever. The definition of meat is the flesh of a living being. Just because it is protein simulating meat doesn't mean that it's meat. Also, I have just as much of an issue with frozen dinners calling something beef or chicken or pork when it has fillers in it. In my opinion to be able to legally use those terms (meat, beef, pork, chicken) it has to be 100% of those things except for possible hydration and spicing. Fillers should automatically force it to be called meat substitute or at least something understood to have fillers like meatloaf or something like that. Pressed and formed meat like substance can F right off.
Re: (Score:2)
in principle i agree. (similar to how all the veg/vegan stuff has to be named after meat stuff, like vegan bacon for example) but I disagree on 'it has to be 100% of those things except for possible hydration and spicing.' There are levels of nuance even I don't know about. What about sausages, are they meat ? They certainly aren't 100% meat.
Re: (Score:2)
> Don't try and market it as meat, and I'll give it a chance.
Except it literally IS meat, it even follows your own definition. This very much is living real protein. In taste tests people have found them to be delicious. It's nothing at all like the frozen dinners you compare them to. There's no reason to call it anything other than meat.
Lab grown meat is the EV of food industry. A bunch of ney-sayers without experience afraid of something they've never used or tried.
How is it not meat? (Score:2)
It's chemically the same thing. It's just as much meat as a lab-grown diamond is a diamond.
This isn't even like calling a veggie burger a burger when colloquially we refer to a burger as a beef patty in America. Never mind the fact that burger as a word has its own meaning I do understand that people in general hear the word burger and they think ground beef. Which is why you proceeded with the word veggie just like you proceed chicken burger and turkey burger and bison burger...
I'm just saying that
Confusion (Score:3)
"Growing it in a facility feels wrong to people in ways they struggle to articulate." I can articulate it just fine. This all happened around the same time as the Impossible Burger (a plant-based meat alternative) that was insanely high in salt and was considered the epitome of processed food. I think that the public just gets the two confused.
Price (Score:5)
Slightly different, but a few years ago in Canada there was a push for plant based meat replacements. The problem was not that I wouldn't be willing to eat it, it was the price. In fact, I was curious as one of my siblings is a vegan, so it would be nice if there was something we both could enjoy. "Beyond Meat" for example would sell 4 burger patties for $18. Whereas I could buy 8 ground beef patties for $15. When the company starts by charging double the price for a "meat substitute" it's hard to get people on board.
Re: Price (Score:2)
It was also worse for you in a lot of ways, so that only left vegans that didn't care about their health or their wallet as the market.
Re: (Score:3)
> Slightly different, but a few years ago in Canada there was a push for plant based meat replacements. The problem was not that I wouldn't be willing to eat it, it was the price. In fact, I was curious as one of my siblings is a vegan, so it would be nice if there was something we both could enjoy. "Beyond Meat" for example would sell 4 burger patties for $18. Whereas I could buy 8 ground beef patties for $15. When the company starts by charging double the price for a "meat substitute" it's hard to get people on board.
When lab-grown or plant-based meat substitute taste the same and cost half as much as real meat, people will find that their concerns about it not being "natural" subside and their concerns about the morality of eating "real" meat increase. Motivated reasoning FTW. Oh, there will still be some qualms for a while about whether it might not be as good as the real thing, but those will subside over time.
The real question is whether the stuff can be made and sold cheaply enough without economies of scale.
Re: Price (Score:2)
Exactly this.
It's economics.
It's always economics.
If they can offer this stuff at a discount compared to ground beef - USD $5/lb or better - they will get sales.
Re: (Score:2)
In Finland, the local burger chain Hesburger has been coming up with plant-based patty. They have been doing it for many years now, one press release (in English): [1]https://www.hesburger.com/abou... [hesburger.com]
Anyway, prices (PDF, in Finnish) [2]https://www.hesburger.fi/mello... [hesburger.fi] says that the "Veke" cheeseburger is 1,80 euros, while regular beef cheeseburger is 3 euros exact. They are probably selling it as a loss leader but someone must have come up with the math anyway to sell it at a *cheaper* price point than a regular
[1] https://www.hesburger.com/about-hesburger/responsibility/products-of-the-highest-quality/world-class-plant-protein-pattie
[2] https://www.hesburger.fi/mellow/output/getfile.php?id=5485
Visual Appeal (Score:2)
It has to *look* like a nice juicy steak at the grocery steak.
And smell and taste like one.
If it's in a tub or a frozen cube, forget it.
The lie is the problem, not the meat. (Score:2)
Traveled to the mecca of NotMeat (California) some years ago. Tried my first Impossible Burger then. It actually tasted decent. The claimed environmental impact was "95% less land, 74% less water, and creates 87% fewer greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional ground beef." The problem wasn't trying to sell the product with those environmental savings, which 99% of city slickers living in the concrete jungle barely give a shit about beyond a social media post. The problem was the lie sold with
Re: (Score:2)
I've had quite a few impossible (or similar) burgers. At first I was really impressed (taste wise), but after a while I don't know I found they started to pall a little? I've ended up deciding I prefer a good spicy bean burger or my local place's "burgaloo 2" (the place is called Meatliqor, their meat and veggie burgers are excellent). I think to me, it's better to have a really good veggie burger that's the best veggie burger it can be rather than an uncanny valley one.
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Steak smoothie...
Re: (Score:3)
You picked the right wood --- slurry -- for feaumeat. It looks, feels and tastes like possum-shite.
Ethically dubious (Score:2)
It's not quite right to say that it removes all the ethical implications that people have. A regular beef cow grazes for it's whole life, other than getting some injections to prevent diseases, until they're slaughtered at the end. Cultured meat needs a constant supply of animal stem cells, so you're constantly bringing animals in for biopsies and subjecting them to these procedures. There are definitely people who think it's a worse quality of life for these animals than existing livestock.
Call it something different, not meat. (Score:2)
If it is called meat, people will compare it with that. Get some marketing people and call it something appetizing with a marketing slogan, "You can't get fat with our stuff, fresh from the vat."
Start selling it in high end restaruants. Slap some French sounding name on it, get people to pay Veblin good prices for it. Then start opening the market.
This is how lobster went from common food to being viewed as expensive.
Re: (Score:2)
And yet escargot exists on the menu because people enjoy it enough to actually pay to eat it. What you think about meat you eat and dicks you've sucked isn't magically transferable to others.
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> If it is called meat, people will compare it with that.
And they should, ... because it *IS* meat, and it is directly comparable to meat in taste tests. This is nothing like your vegan fake burger patty, or a veg sausage. Lab cultivated meat tastes like the real thing because it is actually the same.
Sure there's slight difference in taste and texture, but that is true of actual meat as well, an Angus burger tastes different from a Blonde d'Aquitaine burger which tastes different from a Wagyu burger, etc. too.
Re: (Score:2)
Call it "Soylent."
The truth (Score:1, Flamebait)
Vegans don't want a solution. They want to act superior, be angry, and have someone to yell at so they feel better about themselves. That's why they have immensely higher rates of mental illness. It has nothing to do with animals and everything to do with being an asshole and negative personality traits.
Decade long project (Score:2)
It's not enough to make it, you need decades. Don't just say it is good enough. You need:
1) Improvements in taste and health. Show us it tastes better and is healthier. Exact right amount of fat, salt, etc.
2) Cost reduction - make it cheaper than real steak.
3) A decade long marketing campaign. Talk about how cows are intelligent. Talk about the cruelty of the slaughter house.
You do any 2 of these things, then you can take over. Till then, the market is just not there.
It's the price! people want protein! (Score:3)
High Protein diets are all the rage. I have been on one since high school. Finding cheap protein is pretty hard. It seems like pork is the cheapest and my family is quite sick of pork chops. Make it cheaper than ground beef and I'll gladly buy the stuff. Chili, tacos, etc. I barely care if it tastes good. If it's edible, inexpensive, and nutritious, there's a MASSIVE market among the food is fuel crowd. We eat a fuckton of whey and that stuff tastes HORRIBLE.
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> If it's edible, inexpensive, and nutritious, there's a MASSIVE market among the food is fuel crowd.
This is why people everywhere eat beans.
Re: (Score:2)
Lentils as well (which i guess are really just different beans), also seitan, tofu, quinua.
The high protein thing is as much cultural as it is anything about health or nutrition, not saying about OP but for many it's about the virtue signal of eating meat, it's become a social signal.
Culture hasn't changed, but fitness has. (Score:2)
> The high protein thing is as much cultural as it is anything about health or nutrition, not saying about OP but for many it's about the virtue signal of eating meat, it's become a social signal.
What you're talking about has been around forever. What is new is that a lot more people embrace it. 10 years ago, high protein was for bodybuilders and serious athletes. It wasn't adopted by housewives who 20 years ago were doing yoga and pilates. Now they're squatting, doing crossfit, deadlifts, etc.
A lot of recent news and publications have indicated the health benefits of strength training and it's quite popular and rapidly growing. Men are embracing it more. Nerds are really into it now. Man
Beans are bullshit protein - they're 80% carbs (Score:2)
>> If it's edible, inexpensive, and nutritious, there's a MASSIVE market among the food is fuel crowd.
> This is why people everywhere eat beans.
Beans are absolute bullshit for protein. I fucking love them and think they taste amazing...black beans are in my top 10 of all foods..but they're not good for you. I am sick of vegans chiming in about that. They're 80% carbs. You'll get fat as fuck if you rely on them for your protein needs. For me, they're a carefully controlled special treat, like cheese.
No serious nutritionist will endorse a vegan diet, especially if you work out. It's a religious cult. Vegans have 2 options: nutritional deficie
Re: (Score:2)
Your "use case" is not normal at all and does not make for a market. You should understand that at a fundamental level before you go making suggestions based on the weirdness you have going on.
Read the news + go to the grocery store (Score:2)
> Your "use case" is not normal at all and does not make for a market. You should understand that at a fundamental level before you go making suggestions based on the weirdness you have going on.
Read the news & go to the grocery store and you'll see it...endless articles about people getting into strength training and high protein diets. Look at your supermarket...they are marketing high protein pop tarts....breakfast cereal, fake protein bars (regular granola/candy bars with peanut butter).
Have you really never been in a grocery store or target/WalMart in the last 2 years?
Headline needs an update (Score:4, Insightful)
"Lab-Grown Meat Exists (But Nobody Can Buy It)"
It isn't available in stores -- only in restaurants, and a very select few.
I just did a search, and there is nothing available in my state. Sorry, I am not hoping on a plane to go try lab-grown meat...
Lastly, there are people that I know that *SWEAR* Diet Coke tastes EXACTLY like normal Coke. They are full of shit, the two taste NOTHING alike.
So, if this lab-grown meat is like Diet Coke, HARD FUCKING PASS. But, it looks like I want get to find out anytime soon because you can't fucking buy it.
Fish (Score:3)
The Economist's Babbage podcast has done several episodes on lab-grown meat. One of the ones that makes most sense to me is there was a company targeting fish, not beef or pork. Their reasoning was that fish is a more homogeneous meat than the other two, and also it would have a larger environmental impact since popular fish species can be heavily overfished and become endangered.
This always made complete sense to me, yet I've only ever seen plant-based steak and burger alternatives. Lab-grown fish meat seems absolutely perfect since it doesn't have to reproduce the marbled texture of land-based meat, something that the process struggles with today.
As an aside I'd love to switch to lab-grown if it were widely available and similarly priced. I'm never going to become a vegetarian, and if there's a way of supporting that without affecting actual animals...yep, sign me up please.
Well yeah, it's not ready yet (Score:2)
This is like saying nobody want's electric cars back in 2009, it's still too early and nowhere near mainstream yet so most people answering are answering a hypothetical, it's not like I can go find some lab meat in the freezer case yet, at least for myself I haven't seen that yet.
So we are left with a new product, with still unproven attributes (taste, environmental concerns, nutrition profile) and which is still more expensive than what it's looking to supplant and it's a shocker it's not gaining acceptanc
Nearly impossible to get (Score:2)
> Consumer surveys show people perceive conventional meat as tastier and healthier than lab-grown alternatives.
The perception is just nonsense, given that practically nobody has tried this stuff yet, and there are potentially many thousands of variants with different taste and structure coming.
The article really glosses over that key fact: It is effectively impossible to buy right now.
Even in this thread you see people thinking that soy burgers (like impossible burger) are the same thing, but they are quite d
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah I thought the confusion with vegan food upthread was telling. Hell, this stuff might be closer to natural meat than mechanically separated canned meat tends to be. With animal cell culture it is bound to be a little iffier than, say, hydroponic vegetables, so I wonder if that'll hurt it, since a lot of folks interested in a healthier or more ethical protein may well decide they should just be eating beans instead.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually impossible burger...
But I'm game to try it if it were actually available...
The point about plant based burgers is that they have to some extent poisoned the well. Their marketing efforts got all sorts of internet content claiming it's just like meat, and people who actually tried could generally obviously see that it wasn't true. So now if someone says 'honest, this time it will be good', they have pretty recent history telling them otherwise.
Propaganda (Score:2)
This is whiny propaganda from a failing industry propped up by paranoid lefties and angry vegans. The truth is they bypassed A LOT of food and drug testing because it's just meat. It's an existing animal and existing product. Okay, prove to me that it won't cause prion disorders, the cells didn't mutate while being grown, and the molecular makeup is 100% identical and won't degrade into a poison or contain an exotic, unexpected compound. You can't because you didn't test for it and just want to sell it. So
Hard to conclude anything about consumers... (Score:2)
The product isn't in grocery stores.. How do you know they don't want it if you don't even have a potential data point of people buying it? There's like a handful of restaurants in the entire nation that have served it, and it's treated as some exotic dish rather than a staple.
People would be understandably skeptical, both in general and particularly after people overstated beyond/impossible's "meat-like" character.
The reality is that they don't have scale and thus can't compete broadly on price. If it sca
work on price point (Score:3)
the price point isn't there yet for people to want to try it, if you're saying it's $10-30/lb, it should be cheaper if you're telling me that you're saving on farm land, cattle feed, workers that work at slaughter houses and meat packing plants, pass those savings down and if I can get a "ribeye" for $2, you'd bet i'd try it.
Re: (Score:2)
That is it exactly. It has to reach a lower price point to overcome everyone's "traditional" reservations. A low enough price point will get the curious ones, and it will only snowball from there.
Have they actually been selling it? (Score:2)
I live in a state that its not banned in yet I have never seen it in any store. Searching around apparently the only places you can find lab grown meat here (at least from what Ive found online) are maybe one or two butchers, and a single restaurant that offers it. Its hard to say no one wants it when you aren't selling it in the place 99.999% of people go to buy meat.
Deeper than food safety (Score:1)
> And nearly a third of US states have banned it or are trying to. Not because it's dangerous -- because it threatens something deeper than food safety.
They banned it because it competes with the existing commercial meat industry in those states. Governments don't ban foods just because they taste bad.
The EV of the food industry (Score:2)
A bunch of people who have never tried it, never seen it, never tasted it, with no information calling it bad refusing to eat it for reasons they have zero possibility of actually justifying with facts.
And just like EVs there are those who have tried it who think the stuff is directly comparable in taste and texture to the real deal. The fact people eat burger patty shaped shit like McDonalds shows that lab cultivated meat consumption has nothing to do with taste or quality and everything to do with ignoran
Wrong target market (Score:2)
If they can produce it at a price competitive with the alternatives, it could be added to animal feed as a protein source. Then humans could eat the animals it was fed to. Yum!
8X the price (Score:2)
The cost for lab-grown beef has dropped from a ridiculous 1,000,000X to 8X that of farm beef. It is not that no one wants to eat it, it is that no one wants to eat it at the current prices. The price needs to be less, not more than farm beef. The price curve is falling fast enough that farm producers are trying to get protectionist, but with modern shipping capabilities, only one state has to allow this for it to be everywhere if it is cheap enough.
Grown in a facility... (Score:2)
> Growing it in a facility feels wrong to people in ways they struggle to articulate.
Just wait until they find out where yoghurt, cheese, bread, pickles, and beer come from!
Actually, if most people toured a facility that manufactures any food that comes in a box or sealed bag, they'd probably start feeling queasy as well. I'm not an absolutist - I eat Cheerios, ice-cream, tortilla chips on occasion - but I prefer to make most of my meals from ingredients I can readily identify as food: fresh produce, dried legumes and rice, olive oil, flour, natural peanut butter, etc. I don't identify
Where's the Beef? (Score:2)
All of the environmental benefits are nice, but for me the main selling point is the sales point. Once it gets to the point where nutritious lab-grown meat can be sold for less than actual beef, then I'm sold. Taste and mouthfeel are also important, of course, but price is king.
Nobody wants to eat it? (Score:1)
I would love to eat cultured meat. I can't get any for anything short of a plane ticket and a booking at a restaurant I would likely never patronize otherwise.
I've also heard from people who have tried it that it does taste like meat (because it is) but the fat portions of it are wrong so it's resting in an uncanny valley currently where it tastes like meat (again, because it is) but the lattice of fat that you normally have in a regular cut of meat is missing so it very much doesn't trigger "MEAT" in your
flawed concept (Score:2)
It doesn't taste as good and it's more expensive = bound to fail. Bringing down costs require growing meat approaching the cale of actual consumption. We consume in excess of 220 #'s (that's short for "pounds" for all you post hashtag kiddies) of meat per person, that's 50 billion #'s of chicken alone per year. There is no measurement that production on that scale produces less greenhouse emissions or is more efficient. The energy, nutrients and infrastructure required at that scale haven't been worked
So... (Score:2)
Where do I get human animal cells? Asking for a friend...
Vegetarian here (Score:2)
And I didn't give up meat to shave the whales or because I joined Petah. I just don't like the way it tastes. I have a weak sense of taste so that any of the more complex flavors in meat get lost to me and it just tastes like chewy styrofoam. Heavily processed meats don't taste like that but if I want one of those from nostalgia I can just have a veggie burger. I do still occasionally eat fried fish but it's such a pain in the ass to fry fish I rarely do it. And while I love vegetable tempura same deal it's
Good old dualisms (Score:2)
Even with decades of education, most of us are incapable of moving past dualistic, oppositional thinking that is bogged down in emotionally based value judgements. Cooked vs. raw, Natural vs. artificial, clean vs. dirty, pure vs. corrupted, brave vs. cowardly -- and on and on. That's all this is. We will not adapt to our own technological and reproductive success because we lack the emotional flexibility to do so. As a result, we are turning the world outside of the most elite enclaves into a trash-filled,
Re: (Score:2)
Rationality is way over-valued ... humans live happily or die-badly on emotions. Think of the night sky ... think of the trout stream ... think of your loved ones. It's all emotion.
Only wankers and nekbeards and monsters see value in anything else. Think of lambs silence .. and biting off tongues. That's what rationality brings you ... the curse of duality along with a cold heart ...
Meat derives its flavor from.. (Score:2)
What the animal eats, and how much exercise the animal gets.
Lab grown meat has had no exercise, and hasnt eaten anything to acquire other flavors.
Not to mention meat that has done no work is extremely soft and has no texture.
I dont see it having the same flavor, nor the same texture as a steak, porkchop, or chicken breast.
in other words ... (Score:2)
> Growing it in a facility feels wrong to people in ways they struggle to articulate.
... superstition, selfishness and entitlement, as 95% of posts eloquently corroborate. slashdot never disappoints!
i don't care because i've done away with meat years ago anyway. i used to love it but i long don't crave it anymore, it actually started to disgust me pretty soon after withdrawal. physically i'm fitter than i ever was in my lifetime despite my age. however, turn that vat meat it into some spicy chorizo or llonganissa or some tasty morcilla or jabugo (shouldn't be hard, if you manate to get the
No compelling reason to switch (Score:1)
The boycott-for-ethics target market is too small. For any other market you'll either have to make it seem "better than meat" (i.e.a premium product at a premium price) or price it no higher than meat AND make the eating experience at least as good.
Good luck on trying to make it a premium product.
If you can get the price down and make the taste/texture the same and either make the cooking process the same or make it easy to cook then I'll try it. Until then, unless there is a supply shortage of meat (which
Deeper than food safety (Score:2)
1) Convince us it tastes the same.
2) Obviouslty this threatens ranchers everywhere and they're not going to go quietly
Re: Deeper than food safety (Score:2)
3) And don't tell me it's lab grown meat or 1) can never be true
Re: (Score:2)
no, this is not enough. I expect something engineered by man to taste BETTER than something made by random processes in nature.
Re: (Score:2)
> something made by random processes in nature.
Cows aren't derived from random processes in nature, they were bred into existence from another animal. Still, I'm not going to eat lab-grown meat. I do , however, support developing the technology. For one, it puts en end to vegan douchebags, and two, for space travel. You can't bring a cow with you to Mars. You can bring a mechanism that grows meat with you if it's small enough. I imagine the first voyages to Mars are going to require a large enough space station to make it work.
Re: (Score:2)
We evolved to enjoy meat, because it's efficient to eat it.
Those processes both are and aren't random. That is to say, they are orderly and work based on rules. This is not different from vat-grown "meat", except that the rules are different. An animal grows in an egg or a womb, the conditions differ from a vat (or another container) even if you put in all the same stuff, which they don't.
My concern about vat-grown "meat" is that when the proteins go wrong the animal becomes nonviable and probably isn't eve
Re: (Score:3)
It needs a version of the "Pepsi challange" blind taste test from yesteryear. I'd certainly take that if given the opportunity, but have yet to find anywhere with the stuff to try in the first place, let alone to do so in a blind test. If it's equally as good as they claim (and the science says it *is* the same, right down to the cellular level), then they shouldn't have any problem convincing people that it's a viable option to regular farmed meat, and if they can do that, then the cheapest option should
Re: (Score:1)
I've tried fake meat. It's not really something I'd eat again. I'd rather eat humans first. I might try it if bugs were the other option, assuming I can't hunt humans for food or sport. I'm not even sure what people taste like.
Re: (Score:2)
Supposedly, pork. "Long pig" is the literal translation of the word that was used in many South Pacific cannibal cultures and was used by European explorers to refer to the practice.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think ranchers are feeling threatened. Very, very few people are vegetarians for "ethical" reasons. The vast majority still want actual meat.
Taste, is certainly an issue. We've all tasted highly processed meat products like bologna and hot dogs. While many people eat such products, no one would say they could replace "real" meat. This "cultured" meat is likely to be more like highly-processed meat products, than actual meat.