The end of cows?

[bjn]

Cleaning up has its most recent episode interviewing Jim Mellon, Executive Director at Agronomics, who specialise in investing in precision fermentation and cultured meat. They are going to bring their cultured chicken to market in the USA this year after FDA approval, and they are going to bring cultured meat pet food to market in the UK and Europe.

https://www.cleaningup.live/ep136-jim-m ... -moos-law/

ETA: transcript on the website.

[Al Capone Junior]

Cattle farmers are an especially powerful lobby (esp here in tx) so expect the transition to go about as smoothly as gas/oil to renewables.

However I'm all for it. There are decent veggie burgers around, decent meat substitute burgers, decent vegan patties on occasion, and I'll eat pretty much any of them, sometimes substituting them for actual meat. I am consciously trying not to eat a lot of cow specifically. But I'd love to fast forward the whole thing.

Not that a medium rare ribeye isn't one of the tasty-est things in existence...

What I really want is aqua advantage salmon. I'm very happy they sold out quickly, but save some for me!

[bjn]

Where some of this will really take off is in processed foods and side markets, as opposed to direct to consumer meat/fish/dairy products. eg: if you can synthesise egg proteins cheaper than chicken eggs, all the bakers are going to buy your stuff and so reduce the market for eggs. Similarly for milk and other animal products.

Another example, people are already growing sheets of skin/collagen cells for use as leather. The sheets can be grown to any size and will be of a consistent quality. Selling cow skins is a nice little side earner for cow farmers, if that goes away they have to charge more for the rest of the cow to stay in business.

I see the meat/fish/dairy market, especially at the low end, being nibbled away at the sides, while they are reacting to the head on assaults in the burger bars.

[shpalman]

The analysis of lobbying, subsidies and regulations showed that livestock farmers in the EU received 1,200 times more public funding than plant-based meat or cultivated meat groups.