124 Comments
Aug 30, 2021Liked by Noah Smith

I really hope this technology moves quickly. I kind of think less of my well paid liberal meat eating friends at this point. Gives me the same vibes as the people with their liberal signs next to a nimby sign. Or the idea that voting republican means you're okay with racism (it does).

It is incredibly easy to be at least vegetarian these days. It's not the 70s hippie frontier days of vegetarianism. If you eat meat you're okay with treatment that would signify psycopathy if some kid in the neighborhood was doing it to animals in the woods.

Expand full comment

I sometimes wonder, "What things do we accept as common practice that future generations will look back on with horror?" In the same way that virtually everyone on the planet once tolerated human slavery.

It seems clear to me that eating animals is likely to be near the top of the list.

Expand full comment

Funny that you mention this—it’s actually one of my areas of expertise, given our VC firm specializes (in part) on this.

We have a post on this in part (nothing groundbreaking, but just as a general overview):

https://creativeventures.vc/2021/07/19/alternative-sources-of-protein-part-2-the-solutions/

It’s both closer and further than you expect (to contrast with the people who call it crazy/utopian).

- It’s closer because it’s necessary—not because of animal welfare, but if you project out nitrogen fixation/supplies/etc. you rapidly get to marginally diminished/crazy projections if even just China grows in meat consumption as per capita GDP goes up (in a similar fashion to Taiwan, just to model on similar cultures/countries). Economics will force it, because our productivity must massively go up, or our “standard of meat consumption” must come down on a per capita basis (and obviously price will help mediate this).

- It’s far at the moment because some of the fundamental technological challenges, including structure (meaning, a steak is actually quite complicated in terms of a mix of vasculature, fat, etc. in a very specific configuration). Ground meat is easier(ish) but given the ability to solve some of the fundamental challenges and challenges around scaling, growing human organs, etc. and other medical applications are going to be first. The same problems apply to both… but one is higher marginal value, at least until prices go up a lot

- But yes, the way bioprocess is going and solving problems in synthetic biology, it’s probably on the horizon in less than 10 years in terms of being possible, though the question of economics is harder. We still have a few breakthroughs left (so R&D problems) before the scaling issue can be solved, so likely we’ll hit medical use first in terms of protein growth.

Anyway, interesting topic!

Expand full comment
Aug 30, 2021Liked by Noah Smith

Great piece, Noah.

I would love to see us progressives be better at sacrifice when facing collective action problems, but perhaps technology will save us. Unsure.

Expand full comment
Aug 30, 2021Liked by Noah Smith

"It's okay to eat fish...cuz they/don't have any feelings"

Expand full comment
Aug 30, 2021Liked by Noah Smith

*pushes glasses up the nose and tilts head forward*

- I am a Moster.

Expand full comment

I've never understood the "don't think about it" approach to being an omnivore. I thought about it, drew the logical conclusion that I really, truly do not place any moral value on non-human animals, and that was that.

I look forward to the rise of lab meat anyway, though, if only because it might make planning meals with vegetarian friends slightly less annoying. I hope they don't stop as soon as they can make cost-competitive muscle cells, though. I also want my skin and cartilage and tendon and marrow. I hate it when people talk like making a good burger would be enough to solve the problem of meat. I never even eat burgers.

Expand full comment

Great piece Noah, but I'm not buying your defense by accepting your monstrosity. I'm a monster too, in many ways I never want to disclose, and I truly loved meat long ago. Meat of all kinds. Then I stopped eating it and never looked back. I'm lucky to have a wife who cooks wonderful vegetarian meals (sometimes fish) and that makes it easy for me, but I simply don't need meat and it's not really a sacrifice.

I'm really dismayed if those stats are true about the decrease in vegetarianism and veganism. Mostly because it's only gotten easier due to a lot of really excellent substitutes that didn't used to exist. It also horrifies my to hear that we're still many years away, but you and presumably many others can let the abominations continue unabated until then. You're halfway to not being a monster in this realm. You know how bad it is and you're willing to look it in the eye. Take action, please!

Expand full comment

Or instead of waiting on some techno-utopian dream that will almost certainly become a nightmare we could (this is crazy, but hear me out) raise animals humanely, give them a good life, a good death, and eat them in the knowledge that we didn't create any suffering.

Expand full comment

Just adding that there are ~100,000,000 cattle in the United States right now. 75,000,000 hogs/pigs. Crazy numbers of very large animals.

Expand full comment

As someone who lives in New York, can you give some good BBQ recommendations in Brooklyn? I'm always eager to try new places.

Expand full comment

It's worth noting that the cells have to be a grown in a special medium called fetal bovine serum (FBS) which is made by drawing blood directly out of a cows fetus during the overall slaughtering process. So that's another hurdle.

Expand full comment

The point that morality isn't primarily guided by what's right, but rather what works is such an underrated point. We need to examine our culture from a Chesterton's fence point of view; don't just ask what's wrong with our culture and how to get rid of the pathological parts, instead ask what's so right about it such that it persists. As Noah said, not until you realize just why factory farming is so essential to us can we figure out how to get around it.

Expand full comment

It will be interesting to see the evolution in popular thinking on animal welfare once most people aren't eating animals anymore. Pretty much all of my friends who I've talked to about these things say they dislike factory farming, but that smaller scale ways of killing animals - hunting, botique farms, etc. - are fine, and will always be with us.

I'm not so sure. Once people don't have to rationalize animal deaths to support their own lifestyle choices, I think people will become much more sensitive to any unecessary suffering or deaths. I also think this could raise some interesting questions with whether we should do anything about animal suffering in the natural world.

One thing's for sure - the culture wars over this are gonna really suck.

Expand full comment

Been on this boat for a while now. Glad to see it given voice.

Expand full comment

My expectation is that plant-based meat is going to become aesthetically indistinguishable from lab-grown meat, for all but the absolute most refined palate, within a couple decades. And given that plant-based meat will inevitably always have a substantial advantage in terms of its input/output efficiencies, this means that lab-grown meat will likely be a weird luxury item, the way a $2000 bottle of wine is. So in fifty years, some people will take pride in being able to tell the difference, and spend 10x more to eat "real" (cultured) meat, but most people will just enjoy their (plant-based) burger.

Expand full comment