BBC journos have a specific editorial style, and no doubt it influenced this headline, but this isn't to "protect food heritage".
Food and drink accounts for a quarter of Italy's GDP. It's about money. Italy has a far-right government, which is extremely open to lobbying from that sector, and "heritage" is aligned with their nationalistic stance.
If your economy is entirely dependent on a doomed industry, maybe, instead of artificially keeping it alive, focus on modernising that economy instead?
Every industry is doomed when developing countries can do the same for half the price...
Which is exactly why Europe delocalised a lot of industries in the first place and is now mostly stuck with services, tourism and tech. And it's exactly what we should stop doing if we want to have anything of value left
I know it's hard to believe for a lot of people on HN but not every country wants to become yet another soulless cog of the globalized world
> I know it's hard to believe for a lot of people on HN but not every country wants to become yet another soulless cog of the globalized world
are you referring to Italy? a country where producers sell products all around the planet? where immigrants are almost 10% of the population? whose economy is tightly integrated into the globalised world?
> now mostly stuck with services, tourism and tech
> hard to believe for a lot of people on HN
You generalize a lot. The EU does far more than services, tourism and tech and you can't really know what a lot of people on HN find hard to believe, especially if you then throw up a strawman about their professed beliefs.
But then again services represents 73% of European jobs according to Wikipedia
HN crowd is by large pro tech and "progress" with little to no concern about ethics, culture and other issues, reading this thread is a prime example of it actually
Sure, but 'jobs' are not everything, they are just one measure and if you look at what is listed under 'services' then you'll find that a lot of those services are actually in support of the other 27% of the jobs.
I would just liket o say that I think that HN is very diverse. I come here to read tech and progress news. But this is also the best site for reading about culture, ethics and other issues that I can find. All newsmedia eg BBC, Guardian, PBS, ABC, New York Times etc., all have an editorial axe to grind. By listening and discussing here with the very people that make 'progress' and in a real sense shape culture I gain very much and am allowed to have an opinion. Most people here are awesome considerate people and the trolls don't usually stick around very long.
RE: 73% jobs - let the machines do the work so people have time to think - and to create culture - and to progress!! Yay HN, yay progress, yay culture!
Of course, but with automation and modern mass farming techniques it represents 1% of the jobs it used to, the rest of the population has been pushed out in services &co
If the future Google of lab grown meats comes in the game you'll get even more centralisation, less small/medium exploitations, and most likely 0 local production given the barrier to entry
> Every industry is doomed when developing countries can do the same for half the price...
Which is exactly why Europe delocalised a lot of industries in the first place and is now mostly stuck with services, tourism and tech.
This seems false, if there is uninterrupted farmland for hours, regardless of what % EU farms employed?
Eastern Europe is actually the opposite, lower tourism than the west and higher industry: less offshoring + western countries relocated some industries to the east to benefits from lower wages
Netherlands. Very dense cities surrounded by farm land.
One of my friends is an engineer for food manufacturing equipment. Another for payment processing, and another as a bike mechanic, and another builds gaming rigs (think sim rigs).
> are there really hours worth of travel in the netherlands?
By car, yeah. By bike? You're crazy -- but totally doable.
If you wanted to hit all the major population centers (Maastricht, Nijmegen, Enschede, Groningen, Amsterdam, Den Hague, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Eindhoven), you'd be driving for about 10-12 hours ... with lots of boring farmland in between.
If we want to leave an habitable planet for future generations we should focus more in lab meat and less in “traditions” not everything traditional is good. HN is mostly a science oriented public which is accustomed to change its views when enough proof is shown, this is the way should be.
"this is the way it's been and it will never change" always works out well.
Factory farming is an ecological and ethical dumpster fire. Animals take up a ton of land, feed, and water, and they're pretty terrible at turning feed into meat. The grain that livestock eats can feed more people than the meat from those animals.
Factory farming is expensive and unsustainable at our current population, and it's only going to get worse as time goes on.
Once the industry around lab grown meat starts to scale, the price will fall to the point that it's no longer economically viable to farm animals at scale. The lab grown meat will be cheaper, have the same or better nutritional content, and do it with a fraction of the land, water, energy, and feedstock input.
Given equivalent mass of organic matter as input, lab processes will likely output many times more edible protein. You have the extra benefits of not needing to wait years for an animal to grow up, you don't need to maintain acres of farm or clean up after the animals. You don't have to butcher the animal and deal with the waste products.
On the scale of a generation or three, factory farming is absolutely doomed. An unsustainable process can't compete with a sustainable one that operates at a fraction of the cost while producing many times more output.
Note that we're specifically talking about industrial factory farming. Small farms will likely always exist, and you can buy "real" meat as a luxury item at an appropriately high price.
I'm sorry but Italy produces some of my favourite foods, I find it ridiculous to call this a doomed industry. Italy has basically developed some of the best foods for humanity through hundreds of years of craftsmanship, from parmesan to mozarella to pasta, or crudo ham.
If anything this should be protected just from a heritage perspective, like you protect an ancient castle or temple.
This might mean that food is more expensive, but I for one would pay more for it.
We don't have to burn everything good and old to the ground to make way for tech bros of HN creating fake meat.
I'll think about that over my steak & eggs breakfast tomorrow. I thought about it over bacon this morning, but it seems almost too dumb an idea to give more than a passing thought. In the spirit of considering the opposing viewpoint, I will add a healthy amount of sausage gravy to my breakfast on the following day during contemplation, however I make no promises that my conclusions will skew in favor of seasoned insect guts and purple mystery slime patties for breakfast.
I will add that if it were not for consuming animal proteins (real meat), our species would not have survived as long as it has. Clearly, you know what is best for everyone, so while I sink my natural incisors into the steak, I will carefully consider your emotional, unscientific, and agenda-driven propaganda and petty attempt at control over the lives of others. Again, no promises.
Maybe actually try to think about it once, neutrally. If you spend any time around animals like dogs, cats, horses or even cattle, you’ll notice they exhibit signs of a character: they show affection, have bad mornings, nightmares, favourite foods and care for their offspring with what you’d call love in humans.
This pretty clearly indicates some kind of sentience, meaning a feeling of subjectivity (all of this is solidly backed science-wise, by the way) and emotions. Now those animals might experience reality very differently from us, but that doesn’t even matter. What matters is that they experience some kind of subjective reality.
Is it really too foreign of a thought to try and minimise the number of animals that have to live in agony until they are killed, just for that tasty steak on your table?
I don’t want to control your life. I believe this is a logical conclusion thinking will eventually get anyone to, given the effort - and moral integrity.
Years ago I worked on a farm raising cattle. We would take great care of the animals every day, often hand feeding cows, but especially the calfs with apples and such. A very enjoyable event was at spring time, when letting the cattle out to grass, they would go completely crazy and jump around.
When an animal had the right age and weight, it would be shot and slaughtered. The process would then start over. Both then and now, I eat meat with the greatest pleasure and will continue to do so. Sorry, your anthropomorphism issues don't affect me and most others.
> I don’t want to control your life. I believe this is a logical conclusion thinking will eventually get anyone to, given the effort - and moral integrity.
How nice it must feel to be so superior :) I hope this will be enough copeism for you, to handle that 90% of the world population will continue to eat meat. As people are lifted out of poverty, they want to eat meat no matter how much you preach.
> Sorry, your anthropomorphism issues don't affect me and most others.
It's astonishing to me how the mere idea that beings other than humans do experience a subjective existence is so foreign, some people will instantly disregard it as antromorphism. Accepting that other species are not automatons doesn't automatically ascribe them human traits.
Even more astonishing to me is the observation that it seems to enrage people like you a lot to simply advocate (ie, "preach") for less cruelty towards animals; and how those people always drag the issue down to a meaningless personal level. This isn't about me, or you, or "winning" anything. I simply think less existences should have to end just so privileged people's taste buds can go nuts, so that's what I argue for.
So you're on the intellectual level of a lion, or what?
In contrary to lions, you have the brain to think about this, the alternatives to choose from, the digestive tract to handle plant-based food, and the moral capability to understand why killing living beings is bad.
Bad? Apart from your own moral opinion, how is killing bad?
Why is killing a plant better than an animal? Because their chemistry includes some sort of pain hormone? So do some plants.
This is not an argument either of us can win, because it’s a morality question to which there can be many answers.
I simply don’t see how eating only plants is more moral. For all we know free grazing animals that we eat are way more happy and stress free during their lives than in the wild. Just like humans spent most of their last 50k years on the verge of starvation and barely surviving. Our current state of abundance is about 60-70 years old (20 for third world)
No: An animal is capable of having a subjective existence, emotions and sensations. Slaughtering them needlessly (ie., for luxury purposes) is not okay to me.
The planet is warming. Biodiversity is plumetting. By not eating meat we can have FOUR TIMES the food or keep the forests in place as REALLY NICE. Its not just the animals suffering. It will be many of us suffering as we burn the earth to fill our greedy bellies.
>> just for the joy of eating something that tastes nice
That is an example of assuming the worst about someone else with whom you disagree. Taste is not a minor factor. It is a major part of life. Life rituals, commmunity are built around it. It gives life much of its diversity.
The animals robbed of their life entirely for that major part of yours would like to have a word with you. It's not like meat is the only thing tasty or joyful in life.
No, I know that. A steak is one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten, for sure.
But I still have self control, I don't have do do anything that feels good. I just don't want something sentient to die for my dinner, that's all it is.
Then you do you. I am not convinced that an animal killed for food is morally wrong, and I will continue to eat some meat, in moderation, and enjoy when people in my family hunt and fish and eat the things they get. I don't think we have to treat animals as equals to people.
That is all completely tangential to this atrocious law from an actually fascist government however. Banning animal-less meat is stupid, backwards, does nothing to protect the meat industry, and they shouldn't be artificially protected anyway. If animal-free meat companies can sell me a tasty steak for slightly cheaper then I will 100% purchase it and enjoy it, but I will likely still not be in favor of banning animal farming.
> and enjoy when people in my family hunt and fish and eat the things they get.
There is a huge difference between going out and killing something yourself, and shredding millions of chiclets a day for chicken nuggets thrown away half eaten. But that's how the majority of people get their meat.
This is incredibly counterintuitive as really what you mean is "rape feels good to a rapist". That's the important part. I feel like the majority of people, if held at gunpoint and forced to rape somebody, would not be comfortable, they would not enjoy it and it would be a scarring, traumatic experience.
What is counterintuitive in OPs statement if we're talking about eating meat?
> Rape feels good and no amount of preaching is changing that. Has similarly been part of human culture for time immemorial.
> [Meat] is tasty and no amount of your religious preaching is going to change that.
There is no ambiguity here? A rapist doesn't regard the feelings of their victims. Someone who eats an animal doesn't regard the feelings of that animal. In both cases, it's clear who enjoys that situation and who suffers for it.
Rape feels good for the victim? I was always under the impression that rape is a horrible, terrible, painful, and humiliating atrocity. I've never been a democrat, so maybe that's why I don't have a favorable view of rape and think is feels good for the victim.
Nobody described "food" as a doomed industry, but the practice of slaughtering animals for protein if better alternatives become available (which they definitely are not yet, not even long term).
> billions of animals suffering is somehow okay if it's about reputation or tasty food.
Billions of humans concur, including an overwhelming majority of Italians. But since when have progressive reformers cared about democracy? You want to impose your ideology on everybody else, even though you don't have popular support. If you did have popular support, the issue would be settled already in your favor, but you don't and so it won't be.
I somehow missed the point where I tried to overthrow the government?
Au countraire, mom ami! I use my democratic right of arguing for my opinion. You may very well disagree, but that won’t make me or the growing number of like-minded individuals go away.
Yeah "think of the economy" gets to be a very common argument nowadays, almost like "think of the children". I remember it used for refusing any covid restrictions, or used against climate protection measures... I wonder, was it used also to justify keeping slavery?
As with all poisons, it's a question of concentration. Greed and nationalism are bad, in the same way that eating a kg of table salt is bad. That doesn't mean that salt in and of itself is bad.
Maybe, but luddism and hiding your head in the sand is not the best way to ensure the long term future of your economy. Of course politicians don't have to think about the long term, just until the next election...
Yeah, pretty dubious phrasing. On the other hand, "protect food heritage" is so obviously a reframing that I didn't even concider that as the whole story.
> BBC journos have a specific editorial style, and no doubt it influenced this headline, but this isn't to "protect food heritage".
I roughly checked the french press (I don't read italian): there is no account of the "food heritage" argument, but I wouldn't be surprised if the right did put forth the argument.
Europeans are always going on about how their right wing is to the left of America's left wing (as if any American should care).
So when I hear "soandso European is far-right!" then shouldn't I be forgiven for thinking, "well, then it's no big deal."
If Mussolini III is indeed to the left of Joe Biden (as they keep telling me over and over and over and over and over) then...nothing to worry about, right?
There are more than 40 countries in Europe, each with its own constitution, electoral system and political landscape. If you don't like nuance, stay with your republican=right, democrat=left and feel safe.
If and when lab grown meat will be a thing for the masses, Italy will follow suit because "Italy would not be able to oppose the sale of synthetic meat produced within the EU when it does gain EU approval, because of the free movement of goods and services." Furthermore governments change and legislation follows them.
Anyway, people will decide which kind of meat they prefer. Taste, cost, availability, etc.
Italy didn't have to ban Starbucks when they eventually opened in the country. It did no harm to its espresso heritage. Some people went to Starbucks, nearly everybody didn't, even in the few cities where they had a shop. I think they have less than 20 shops in all the country. Espresso is still well alive, bars survived Covid, Starbucks too.
> Italy would not be able to oppose the sale of synthetic meat produced within the EU when it does gain EU approval, because of the free movement of goods and services.
I'm not a EU expert, but I think freedom of movement means you can't ban based on country of origin, not that you can't ban a product generally.
I believe you are right as there are various products that can be bought in Poland that are not available in Germany and there’s a booming industry of specialized shops right in the border for this kind of products.
As an Italian, I can tell you this is just a move to grab some votes from their supporters. Lab meat is nowhere close to mass production so there is no real impact of this ban right now. When (and if) lab-grown meat becomes commonplace and, hence, cheaper than regular meat then the ban will be reverted as it would have negative implications on the country economy.
I'm not saying this ban is right or not, but if you're gonna ban something, doesn't it make sense to do it as early as possible, in order to minimize the negative effects from the ban itself?
If alcohol was to be banned today, we'll probably see protests and black markets appearing very quickly. But if alcohol was just invented yesterday and today a ban is implemented, the reaction would be much smaller.
In that view, it makes sense to ban as early as possible, when the ban as the least amount of effect and used as prevention, rather than to hammer down something that is already large.
But again, I think the whole ban is stupid, just trying to understand why it'd be implemented so early.
Lab grown red meat is actually closer than you think. Factories are being set up around the world. My guess is that in around a year, two years tops, you'd be able to see some general availability.
Yeah and I can get impossible burgers at every store and burger king, but are they competitive with regular meat? I would say no, and the companies are struggling.
I think the majority of people won't buy animal-free meat unless it is both tastier and cheaper than beef. Most people care about animals but not enough to commit to blowing out their budget.
I am italian, not sure i agree with this. I would have rather allow it (even if I would have probably not bought lab grown meat) and be sure it's well communicated during the sale (either on the package or from the vendor in case it's a butcher shop).
Especially because we can't ban Monsanto's GMOs and I don't see how this is worse...
Yeah, allowing Monsanto or other seed tyrants to operate with impunity is not indicative of protecting "food heritage."
This is just another example of an old but still powerful industry attacking what it perceives as a threat. The same sort of thing happened to absinthe in France, and that campaign was so successful absinthe became taboo for over a century.
GMO banning is another example of protectionism masquerading as something else. The demonization of Monsanto is diagnostic of the derangement/dishonesty.
I'm not in favor of banning GMOs, incidentally. The part of the-company-formerly-known-as-Monsanto I take issue with is their predatory practices, like suing farmers for inadvertently cross-pollinating their crops from Monsanto-copyrighted seeds from a neighboring farmer's fields.
You're being a useful fool here, repeating that outright lie, which has been well debunked even here on HN. The scoundrels committing this blood libel against Monsanto and GMOs count on people like you to propagate their poison.
Monsanto is very aggressive to the environment, the farmers, food heritage and common decency. This twisting of reason and aggression you commit is a serious farce. "Blood libel" WTF??
Monsanto is subject to outrageous politicized libel of the sort you parrot there. For example, your "to the farmers" there is likely a repeat of the brazen lie that they sue farmers for inadvertent GMO contamination.
Comparing people being fooled by propaganda to "Blood libel" is atrocious and just as stupid, hollow, and heartless as the american conservatives who said not being able to get a haircut during the pandemic was comparable to the holocaust.
Get a fucking break man. You can educate people that GMOs aren't on their own a danger and that there is a lot of misinformation about these things without being a miserable asshole.
It's two groups of people fooled into demonization for political purposes. And in each case, there is significant harm as a result. I will grant the Holocaust was likely a larger harm, but don't dismiss the harm caused by GMO negativity (which is inextricably bound to Monsanto demonization). Golden Rice blockage alone is arguably an act of genocide.
Their RoundupReady crops seem to have another poison hidden inside them (literally!)
The Roundup pesticide that those crops are sprayed with is made of Glyphosate, and testers keep finding that pesticide showing up inside corn, wheat, and oat products. Seems like those crops don't just ignore the pesticide, they actually absorb it into their grains
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/glyphosate-contaminat...
Conflating the two? Maybe. But here on HN you must assume people understand the difference: that Monsanto is dodgy as a company, but this doesn't generalize to GMOs as a technology.
It's commonly asserted that Monsanto is dodgy as a company. I'm telling you this is a deliberately crafted and propagated deception, used as a weapon against GMOs. It's not something that can be separated.
It's as if you'd never heard of ad hominem arguments. They can be highly effective in the rough and tumble of politicized conflict. If Monsanto tried to defend itself on its merits, all its arguments could be dismissed by saying they're bad and you can't trust anything they say.
Can you give some examples of what Monsanto does that makes it such a "shit company"?
I totally reject your opinion on plant/seed patents. They're necessary to have GMOs at all in a market economy, and GMOs have tremendous potential for positive contribution to our society.
> Especially because we can't ban Monsanto's GMOs and I don't see how this is worse...
why should GMOs and Monsanto, which has now been taken over and is one of the lesser producers, be banned? and why do we always have to make ourselves known with our mediocrity of repeated bar ideas, dear fellow Italian?
Thanks for the free-of-charge judgement, i am not against GMOs, I am against monsanto policies and monopoly that are sales focused and not quality focused (like gmos that only last one crop so you have to buy them again :) ).
We tried to block them but eventually they won the right to sell. I just used that as an example on how we allow terrible companies and their terrible product (not gmo in general) to be sold, but not lab produced meat...it seems a bit weird to me!
I am not Italian but think it’s a step in the right direction, but overreaches. I think they should make it law that synthetic meat can’t be called “meat” and that insect ‘flour’ can’t be called “flour”. And should have to be prefaced with “unnatural food product” or similar on all sides of packaging.
Well, it’s unnatural to begin with. Other good movements like “organic” worked hard for that label and the producers of those products work hard.
I don’t believe oat milk should be allowed to use the word “milk” and if it wants to then should be prefaced with words describing it as “imitation milk” or similar.
You keep using that word, but you haven't explained what makes it unnatural. There are people who eat insects right now, and I'm willing to bet people have been eating insects as long as there have been people. It seems more "natural" to me than drinking another aninals lactations. I don't want to eat insects, but you've offered no explanation why it is insufficient to list the ingredients (which is already required, making it different from your "organic" example).
Also, "milk" has referred to any thick, white substance for centuries now. Consider "milk of magnesia". It's the cow dairy industry that is trying to appropriate the word.
> It's the cow dairy industry that is trying to appropriate the word.
The word milk can be traced back thousands of years to the indo-european form h₂melǵ- which means... milk. Your attempt to re-frame this is ridiculous.
> Also, "milk" has referred to any thick, white substance for centuries now. Consider "milk of magnesia".
These are called metaphors. They do not attempt to mislead and confuse people.
The whole point of calling almond juice "milk" is to confuse people.
> The word milk can be traced back thousands of years to the indo-european...
Well, if you develop time travel, then this information will come in handy. That has no bearing on how the word is used now or has been used for 100s of years.
> They do not attempt to mislead and confuse people.
I'm not sure how you can accuse "Oatly" or "Almond Breeze" of trying to mislead. The biggest word on their packaging is the main ingredient. Most non-dairy milks have a picture of the main ingredient on it. If people are confused by that, then they'll just as easily confuse orange juice for milk.
> The whole point of calling almond juice "milk"...
Is because it is a milk, and people can use it like any other milk.
I’m referring to lab grown meat as unnatural. Insects are just plain gross to me. Although they are natural. But shouldn’t be called “flour”. It’s not.
How is “insect flour” misleading? The word “insect” is right there in the name! And who cares if it’s normalized or not? If it’s useful and makes healthy, delicious food, I don’t care what it’s made out of.
Like… you do realize the parts of animals we eat are pretty gross right? The things that go into sausages and such? Bone marrow is a delicacy for gods sake!
There’s foods that I think are gross and won’t eat… calimari for instance… but they usually come down to sensory things like taste, texture or smell. The ingredients don’t usually come into play.
please don't assume that all languages have the same sneaky sub-meanings, or, if we speak the same language[1], don't assume that everyone is as ignorant or stupid as you are
There is absolutely nothing misleading about the phrase "insect flour". And people are allowed to try to normalize things. See "part of a balanced breakfast" from cereal commercials.
But what's so inherently dangerous about it being "unnatural" that it should require a similar level of mandated warnings on the packaging as cigarettes?
Do you think unnatural medicines produced in a lab should carry a similar warning compared to their natural remedy counterparts?
The "organic" label is often meaningless, and a marketing gimic, and organic food producers are worse for the environment, and there are no health benefits to most organic food.
I'm not a fan of nut milk being called milk, because I enjoy meaningful categories and strict categorization, but nut milk has been called nut milk for literal centuries.
This whole insect flour debate is so braindead. We have billions of people to feed. Dried and shredded insects provide a great protein yield, can be produced incredibly efficient, and aren’t as destructive to the planet as lifestock. Many cultures have been consuming insects for ages.
There is nothing unsafe, unnatural, or otherwise „bad“ about using insects for food - other than an embarrassing, unreflective revulsion.
I think there is an argument to be made about validity in names. Calling something flour that is actually not at all flour, stretches the meaning of the word. I can no longer go to the grocery store and assume my flour contains grains.
I think things should be packaged properly and with proper descriptions. The same as I don't want to go to the store and buy Parmesan cheese only to find it's actually chemically altered tofu. That's not what I bought nor what I wanted.
If I wanted tofu cheese I would go buy tofu cheese.
We've become accustomed to accepting labels at face value, so I believe there is a requirement to continue that practice.
Flour comprised of mostly insects should say that, just like whole wheat flour is separated from pizza flour, as they contain different grain milling and grains.
But we should teach us that there is absolutely nothing wrong with eating insects, it's not gross. We just think it is because of cultural reasons. And those can be changed over time.
You're absolutely right -- the annoying thing about the "insect flour" debate is that nobody in their right minds suggested wheat in ordinary flour will be replaced or diluted with insects, because that would not even work for baking!
It was media outlets that spun the story this way - but in reality, insect flour is just another ingredient you can use for cooking, but not baking.
> Flour comprised of mostly insects should say that, just like whole wheat flour is separated from pizza flour, as they contain different grain milling and grains.
This seems like a fictional problem. Who is trying to pass off insect "flour" as wheat flour? What possible motivation would a company have for doing so? Cricket "flour" costs like 10x as much as wheat flour
There are valid health concerns of insect based "meat" and insect derived flour. Including: higher baseline contamination of harmful bacteria, high levels of arsenic, questionable nutritional value, digestive issues with the hardshells common to the types of insects used for these products.
What does that have to do with whether it should legally be called "Flour" or not? Nobody here is arguing that you should replace your preferred baking and thickening substance with it.
You say that like those aren't the most important factors to consider in light of Italy's obvious economic and cultural interest in preserving the reputation of their culinary industry and heritage.
While you are conveniently ignoring that lots of things are called flour that aren't necessarily wheat flour, but nobody bats an eye.
For that matter, nobody ever suggested replacing wheat flour with insect flour because it has none of the properties required for baking stuff, but rationality was never really relevant on that topic...
If you do not want to be part of the greater community of the whole of earth, you are welcome to leave. I hear there is a guy trying to live on Mars instead.
It's gross. That's it. Why should I, or anyone else, have to explain personal food choices to you? If finding insect-eating to be repulsive is embedded in a culture, who are you to question it or demand change/an explanation?
I didn't demand anything, but merely ask if you'd like to provide a little more detail. I see that you're not open for intellectual discussions that question your beliefs though, so I guess we can cut this thread here.
I don't understand this need to push eating insects onto people. The "intellectual" point of view makes it even funnier.
Food is not just the sum of proteins and carbohydrates. It is wrong on so many levels to suggest that because insects are protein rich then they must be good.
I was honestly shocked by Americans not being aware of the quality of their food - it's horrible. Even in Whole Foods, or more expensive supermarkets, most of the food products are just processed crap that comes in a box. Even the quality of vegetables and fruit is questionable, the bacon is by default sweetened with sugar.
Every single European or far Easterner that comes to the US will gain 10kg without chaing their dietary habits. The reason is not too much food, or eating fast food, it is because the quality of food in the US is dreadful, all the way from the seed until the plate.
So maybe you want to eat insects, but we do not, and there is an absolute consensus about that. Hopefully one day Americans will learn what food is really supposed to be like, and start fixing their country (and health).
Jokes a bit on you, though, for I'm no American, and I certainly value good cuisine. But reflexively excluding insects from your meal options just because they "look scary" is just... not that smart. I suppose you eat shrimps just as fine as anyone, don't you?
I never said that you were American, and I didn't say insects looked scary.
Insisting on pushing insects for food, because of the fear that a regular western diet is not sustainable, or eco-friendly, is not smart, and is actually scary.
My critique of Americanism does not only target America, but the global American culture, which is essentially California or Bay culture, which most of this bord adheres to. I am shocked by how many people on this website disregards the fact that a total and absolute majority of Italians (and all Europeans and many others) are against allowing insect for human consumption, and do not want moral lectures from people whose food is literally criminal, highly processed, completely unregulated and very unhealthy.
Again, food is not just a sum of calories and proteins, there are no magic pills which regulate your total daily nutritional intake.
My rationale is my culture doesn't do it so I don't do it as it would be an inauthentic life for me and disrespectful to those who valiantly carried my culture to the point where I get to exist. I'm connected to my culture's history and traditions due to my respect for my ancestors. You may be a rootless wanderer from a broken culture that has been made subservient to other forces and I pity you for it if so, but please do not assume we all are or want to be.
Ha, that's nothing. I've been to Italy and there are places where they eat snails, horses and sea urchins, things most Americans would be disgusted by.
Not to forget also that the island that invented delicious maggoty cheese aka "casu marzu" also belongs to Italy.
HAHA and I've been to countries where they eat the most disgusting and unnatural two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese and washed down with a sugar liquid of PH2 rotting teeth and guts! Oh my god it was aweful!!!
Define 'natural product'. I bet there are thousands of items on shelves now that aren't 'natural' but still escape this scrutiny, just due to having been around a while and flying under the radar.
How is insect flour any more or less natural than processed and bleached wheat flour? I legitimately do not understand, other than the long tail of cultural norms. It's not any less natural.
As another Italiano I can totally confirm this.You can find here the most disparate and crazy proposals that are just clickbait nor will never be approved.
I was reading somewhere that Poland will overtake Italy in GDP pro capita in 10-20 years. True or not Poland is doing much better than Italy already. I think it’s interesting that a country that was 50 years under a dictatorship was able to take over on a country that has not only had freedom and democracy, but also help and financial support from US and EU. Italy is not hungry for growth and it keeps consuming whatever capital is left. The ban on lab grown meat is basically that, no interest in growth or change, no interest in working for a better future, just nostalgia and protecting the “past”.
One thing only is needed by this government to make things right: start enforcing payment of taxes. There's a gaping hole in our economy due to the fact that it's too easy to hide and no government is going to tackle the issue for fear of losing consent.
Until then, everything will slowly fail as it is happening already.
Italy was a dictatorship not that far back, and the current government is in power primarily because fascist sympathies were never eradicated in the country.
It's one data point, sure. But it would take more than a passing resistance to lab-grown meat to convince me of some national character flaw. Maybe overstated?
Italy was the lab for modern populism in politics for 20-30 years. The nation is suffering from corrupt politicians like Berlusconi having tight bonds with the mafia.
Don't put this on "the people" who can barely do much if the whole system is undermined by their leadership for decades.
Germans also did elect Hitler's party as a majority in the last couple of elections before he assumed power. That's not the point.
The point is that some stakeholders of the political class worked on hollowing out the Italian political system for 2-3 decades. And corruption is an issue in economical growth.
Neither NSDAP nor Hitler as an individual ever got a majority in a free federal-level election. Hitler lost to Hindenburg in a presidential election 1932. In the Reichstag parliament election of March 1933, which was shortly after Hitler was appointed chancellor by Hindenburg, and which one can't really call free at this point due to violent suppression of the political left, the NSDAP still only got 43% of votes. They only got a majority of seats after they managed to remove the KPD seats through violence and arrests, and then quickly made a vote to make the Reichstag irrelevant for making new laws (with help of other parties as they needed a two-thirds majority).
But yes, they were met with little enough resistance from the conservative establishment that they could execute their power grab.
I think we disagree on the problem and I understand I have a strong opinion which might be wrong. But I think that kind of thinking is exactly the issue in Italy. I think if the "people" took responsibility for their actions Italy would not be in this situation. In fact, I think Italy and Italians never took responsibility for terrible stuff like Mussolini and the Holocaust, so from my perspective this is an old, old, problem.
Though the lab grown meat dream in itself represents nostalgia, protecting the past and no interest in change as well (you could very well switch to a more plant based diet)
A family member of mine used to be a buyer for the Italian foods department of a mid-market grocery chain in the US. His merchant for San Marzano tomatoes was a really down-to-earth dude. Occasionally, he would host my family member at his villa(s) in south-central mainland Italy. After just a couple of visits and tours of a few farms, it became clear to my family member that the business model of his supplier was more or less a legal Mafia, and the people at the top had a stranglehold on the farmers. I'm sure that _some sort_ of heritage will be protected with this ban.
If food heritage is so important to the people of Italy, and they agree that lab-grown meat is vastly inferior for all of the claimed reasons, I imagine lab-grown meat as a product would just flop. Why ban it, unless it's all just political theatre?
because in government right now are far-right populists who have to distract the masses from the fact that they are not doing anything they promised in the election campaign
in recent months the issues have been banning rave parties, banning documents for children of lgbt couples and war on cricket flour
If “climate” is so important to the people of California, and they agree that the ICE vehicle is vastly inferior for all the claimed reasons, I imagine ICE vehicles as a product would just flop. Why ban it, unless it’s all just political theater?
Negative externalities require external interference in market economies to produce the socially optimal outcome. Climate change and pollution are clear examples of negative externalities.
As it happens, the farming of meat actually has severe negative externalities in this case. If anything, it's farmed meat that should be restricted by the government in that model.
Interesting. Thanks. I think the following was particularly pertinent:
> Indeed it’s hard to imagine that people who survived the second world war eating chestnuts, as my grandfather did, would be concerned about using pork jowl instead of pork belly in a pasta recipe. Or as Grandi puts it, “Their ‘tradition’ was trying not to starve.”
I think it's wise to remember that for most of history the majority of people have been too poor to be picky.
this article is what i thought of when i saw this post to HN. I am dying to hear an Italian tell me how controversial this opinion / person is and what conversation is around it/him
that article here in italy sparked endless controversy, low-level dumbass jokes and even some minor politicians had to have their stupid say; obviously, as italians, no one read the article or even a single line. that said, for those in the industry, nothing in that article is new.
regarding some things about food, here in italy the rule is don't ask and don't tell
This is comical. Even when ignoring any ethical reasons.
I'd would dare guess that climate change will make farming animals much less feasible in many parts of Italy in the very near future.
Lab-grown meat will become the only option for cash-strapped locals who want to cook (and thus preserve) local cusine meat dishes. Meat from livestock will have become too expensive for most people by then.
I.e. when that happens you have to decide what 'heritage' you want to preserve: parts of Italian cusine that require meat to prepare or farming animals for meat production.
The amount of water required to produce meat from livestock then will be so much that people will suffer water shortages because of it.
FYI.. italy banned PRODUCTION of lab-grown meat.. but not IMPORTATION. We have a similar law for banning GMO, we cannot produce them but we purchase them from nations outside italy. pretty silly uh?
If traditional food production is such a foundation of Italian culture, why exactly do you need to ban synthetic products rather than merely demanding they be labeled cleary so that people can make an informed decision?
The weakness of these culture warrior-ish positions is always proportionate to how quickly its proponents reach for the law.
Just seems like grandstanding, but it's a strange issue to grandstand over.
Lab-grown meat isn't even remotely competitive with real meat, neither economically, nor aesthetically, nor nutritionally. The differentiating selling point for lab-grown is "cruelty-free", and the largest cohort who this selling point appeals to is vegans, who are a relatively small cohort anyway. Real meat and lab-grown aren't even in the same market - they're each targeting completely different prospects.
Does the Italian government seriously think it's a threat?
I am Italian, so I can provide a bit of context to better understand this decision.
The right-wing government won the election with few key promises: reject the immigrants coming by the sea with a naval block, a sort of victimhood against UE that want to "fight" Italian habits (like forcing us to eat worms instead of pasta), and penalize Italian companies (like force Italy to liberalize sectors like taxi licenses or bathhouse concessions).
Right now, the situation with illegal immigration is out of control and we are approaching a new record in the arrives with many tragic wrecks; moreover UE is menacing Italy to get back the funds from NextGenerationUE because the government is not able to spend them on the right way and time.
So, as a populistic politician, what is the best solution to divert public opinion and keep consensus high? Talking about an attack on our traditions and our food.
It's just internal propaganda, nothing more by someone that would like to live in the 80s
Sorry I wasn't trying to be shitty, I'm just moderately ignorant of italian politics but aware that internal political vocabulary doesn't always line up with external expectations.
Also, idk, maybe there is a much more right party I'd never heard of. Or like, I would describe the US as having a center-right party and a far-right party, could be a rhetorical choice like that.
> You are calling Meloni's government "left-wing"? Italy has not had a government so far right since WW2.
Sorry, just a typo. I obviously would like to say right wings.
> Nobody is "forcing" you to anything. That's misrepresenting reality to a degree that's not even funny had you used /s tags.
It seems that you don't get my points: I am not saying that EU want to force anybody to eat worms, I am saying that right wings is saying so for propaganda.
This is happened just couple of days ago: https://www.repubblica.it/politica/2023/03/25/news/ambrosi_d...
For not italian speakers: a representative from FdI (Meloni's party) said that left-wing is for eating worms and taking drugs, while left-wing people are enjoying good food and wine.
Just to explain the level of Italian political debate.
Italian here: that's such a stupid move. They recently got scared with a couple articles about how some types of flour or dyes are made with animals and "insects", this triggered a bigger discussion about real food and fake food and now they have had to make this power move to show the people that they want to "respect" Italian history and food heritage. Soooo dumb.
A nation that has a huge investment in food production establishes protectionist policies to secure those industries in the name of protecting its culture and its people's livelihood. Whether people on "the left" or "the right" agree or disagree comes down to the industry in question and never has anything to do with principle. Hypocrites all the way down.
fun fact, the draft decree (yet to be presented to the parliament and voted upon, and likely to get lost there as this is mostly a propaganda stunt) seeks to ban "food derived from cultured vertebrate cells".
So technically if you can derive meat from slugs, you're good.
Imagine a hypothetical world where lab-grown meat and real meat taste the same and cost the same (externalities and animal cruelty accounted for)
Which is better? On the one hand, there is no death and killing with lab grown meat. On the other hand, there is less life as well. Is it better for all those cows and chickens to never live at all than live and be killed for food? I'm not sure.
- A scarcity based mindset would argue that more life is inherently bad, see Malthus.
- A longtermist would argue that more life at any cost is better because it increases the statistical likelihood that some good would happen even as it increases the scope of potential catastrophe.
- An existentialist would argue that a life of captivity, born to die with no right to self-determination is not a life worth living
- Socrates would likely argue it doesn't matter because the chickens and the cows won't examine their life to extract any meaning at all
- Utilitarians would say people are getting fed either way, so go for the most efficient means.
- etc etc
This is a question of subjective valuation, and as such will never have a definite answer. It will also be subject to whatever framework the reader subscribes to.
The questions surrounding environmental impact, scale, food pipeline stability, et al are more measurable and able to deliver a quantitative "better or worse" conclusion given sufficient framing. To my mind that makes them more interesting.
Italy: The population is projected to drop from 60.5 million in 2020 to 54.4 million in 2050, a 10.1% decline. Hopefully they don’t ban lab grown people!
Unpopular opinion: some controversial cultural heritages need protection. I single out tauromachy, which is incomprehensible to most, moreso the younger generations. The world is a tangle of Chesterton fences, and our righteous moral clariy is our own's worst enemy.
There's many adjacent practices to bull fighting that are legal.
So for consistency sake we will need to look into farming, we will need to look into carnivorous animals, we will need to look into supplying air conditioning to animals in a hot day for the sake of their welfare
Tauromachy isn't "bullfighting". It's circus and drama; it's adjacent to religious sacrifice (rather, than, as some seem to think, betting on dogfights). But it's not religion either.
Animals have to die. The bulls in tauromachy are of a special type that's bred out in the open; they live lives that no other bovine lives -- not even in India, where sacred cows are still beasts of burden.
There's a kind of carefree righteous kind of person that reacts at events rather than systems. So they're agitated by the bloodshed of bulls or tiktoks of cobalt mining in Africa agitates them, and this makes them good people. Isn't it good to be a good person?
I don't quite know where you're going with this. Are you saying killing those bulls is okay if it's for circus and drama, and those bulls live a few nice years before being hunted through the streets and stabbed to death, because animals die all the time anyway?
There's a kind of carefree righteous kind of person that thinks they are reacting at events rather than systems. So they're agitated by other perspectives than their own, because they alone can see how the world works, and this automatically makes them good people. Isn't it good to be a good person?
Why do they need protection? What's the difference between one morally repugnant cultural heritage like bullfighting and another morally repugnant cultural heritage like dog fighting or cockfighting? How about footbinding? Eating sea turtles? Female circumcision?
Doing something shitty for a long time doesn't affect how bad it is, just how hard it will be to stop.
Are we counting on the same regulatory authorities to determine the safety of lab meat as we did for things like the food pyramid, sugar intake, and so on?
Ok, but then Europe should expect the rest of the world to neither conduct free trade with it, nor subsidize its defense. You want those benefits? You don't block out the products of our highly productive agriculture.
One of the EU pillars is free movement of goods, meaning that you generally can't prevent someone from a different country from selling goods in your country.
This means that the decree is either incompatible with EU law, or it is pointless as you'd just be killing your own domestic market while exposing yourself to other EU countries anyway
GP's mistake was assuming that this isn't pure virtue signalling, the decree is compatible with EU law because it applies only to italian producers
exactly the laws a rightwing government would create, protectionism at its best. meanwhile many countries around will build up the new high-tech industries and once surpassing the "traditional" thing in price/quality/quantity/coolness/... leave the protectionist in the dust.
> short term populism, long term damages, as always
I worked for a lab grown meat company and the CEO would give "Lab Grown Foie gras" to the media and investors, that was actually Foie gras. They could feel good about climate change, and he would take your money. Have you ever looked into the inefficiency of a bioreactor? Probably not.
TLDR: The Italians only want to participate as a control group in a study of the long-term health risks of lab-grown meat. And they want to preserve the Mediterranean diet.
This seems no different than the ridiculous laws proposed in some US states recently that would ban EV sales to protect the oil and gas industries.
I’m sorry that people could one day lose jobs over this, but if lab-grown meat is proven to be a safe and cost/energy/carbon efficient alternative to raising and killing animals, then it would be insane to not pursue that.
There's no "protection" of anything, this is populist vote-grabbing. Lab-grown meat isn't even a reality and won't be for like a decade at least on supermarket shelves.
Also, that's not even the worse of the things introduced by our government yesterday, administrations do not need to publish a public contract for works up to 150k euros.
Now every single administration can spend and gift corrupted money left and right without any need for any accountability and rules.
Yes. If you live in any form of democracy this is a real problem and you need to watch out for it. Make sure you watch out for it in yourself - there are a lot of things that make your life better at the expense of society has a whole. There are also a lot of unintended effects of things that should be good that can make them worse than the alternative that feels evil.
Democracy is still the best form of government I know of though. So if you don't live in one it is worth moving to one. Hopefully you can learn from the mistakes of those of us who have gone before and design protection for some more downside.
> there are a lot of things that make your life better at the expense of society has a whole
There's no better example of this than the discussion on health insurance here on HN a few days ago, where people with health insurance were opposing universal healthcare because they'd have to "compete with the general public for treatment access".
How do you fight it though? There's no incentive for anyone to willingly choose to have a worse personal situation for a greater good.
There are incentives. Selfishness isn't everyone's driving factor, unlike what extremely selfish people want you to believe. Plenty of people believe in morals and other reasons to help their neighbor at their own expense, and these feelings seem to follow a high level of education and awareness of your fellow human beings.
As long as you don't think that just because someone doesn't agree with your way of helping fellow human beings, they are necessarily uneducated or heartless.
As an example, just in the last six months or so, I took considerable time and effort out of my day to help absolute strangers in two different occasions to change their flat tires. Both times I was soaked through in sweat by the time I was done, but I was happy to help. Does it follow from my willingness to do this that I would be in support of, say, a government program for roadside assistance (call it AAA-for-All)? Hell no.
America once excelled at civil society, but over time government has subsumed more and more of those functions; to everyone's detriment, if you asked me.
Here's the problem: we can't rely on "civil society", because people love to gatekeep who is "deserving" of help and who should be left to suffer. Usually on racial or gender lines.
I'm not calling you prejudiced, to be clear, but your example of "we should all rely on each other to help out" is exactly what racists use to justify cutting welfare and saying communities and churches should handle it, for example, with the dogwhistle that only those "deserving" will get assistance. But "welfare queens" who dare to be Black? No support for them!
I fully admit that this country used to have that problem in the past. Here and now, I don't think nearly as much, though it seems like mass media has been doing its level best to fan the flames of a race war ever since George Floyd.
I'm not sure what part of the country you live in or what your background is, but it is my sincere belief that there are not nearly as many racists in America in this day and age as you imply. I live in a majority black city in a Deep South red state (and I myself am visibly nonwhite), and I observe nothing but pleasant interactions between people of all skin tones. It's honestly a strange difference from back when I lived in a stereotypically "coastal liberal elite" city in a blue state, where every other lawn had a BLM sign but approximately zero black people lived there. Here? Approximately zero BLM signs but people of different races being neighbors and getting along just fine.
Perhaps I'll be proven wrong, but it is my experience that outside of small pockets, there is no racism of the sort you describe, where someone may not extend private kindness to another because they're black or any other race.
Your experience is in urban areas that are predominantly liberal. You realize that in rural areas people are discriminated against regularly or even killed for being a different color?
I promise you the city I live in now is not accurately described as liberal, and I'm minutes away from rural areas. This state is in fact one of the top 10 most rural states.
I'm familiar with the Arbery tragedy. You're extrapolating from this and maybe other high-profile cases to make the argument that there are racists all over the country who are willing to kill. The actual data paints a different picture, with there having been anywhere from five to ten thousand reported hate crimes annually over the past decade or so, with only a few tens of those being murders. Statistically you're about as likely to be killed by a lightning strike as someone murdering you due to your race.
Your claim that people are "discriminated against regularly", of course, is too vague for me to counter.
Populism is part of democracy and some people even like it. But riling up your voter base to be excited about one bombastic law without (1) considering second order effects or (2) talking about what might be more pressing but unpopular problems, is not something I (and, seemingly, OP) like. And this does not even go into the usual malicious uses of populism.
how is it moving goal posts. gp's response as i understood is that this has something to do with 'riling up' which makes it 'populism' ( vs democracy) . I am asking where they got there was any 'riling up' involved in this case.
I guess i don't really understand 'riling up' means.
That is why many rational people do not support this idea of unlimited democracy. The founders of he US knew very well the perils of unlimited democracy and that is why they not only attempted to check government power, but check the power of the majority
I dont want to be ruled by either a government in washington, nor a majority of my neighbors
Switzerland is very much an exception to the rule, and even it has a written constitution limiting the government's power. "More power to the people" works when operating within a culture that values attributes that lead to a stable, wealthy society over time, and with limits to what the people can make government do. Otherwise it becomes, as they say, two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner.
The Swiss do have a popular vote on things, but they aren't, for example, voting themselves free lunch and ponies for all. I don't know whether that's because the government is prohibited from providing free lunch and ponies or because the majority of people culturally value hard work and saving over immediate gratification and are educated enough to know that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Either way, it would not work out as well in places where one or both of those things are not true.
Let's pick out some recent results from Switzerland:
In 2022, voters rejected "Ban on animal and human experiments" and "Popular initiative against factory farming", and approved "Limiting tobacco advertising".
In 2021, they rejected "Federal Act on greenhouse gas emissions" and "For clean drinking water and healthy food", and approved "Ban on full facial coverings".
In 2020, they rejected "Affordable housing" and "Ban on financing weapon production" and approved "Paternity leave".
In 2019, they rejected "Stop the Sprawl", and approved "Gun control directive".
From this, I can gather that the Swiss as a whole are sensible people who understand that voting for things that sound good on the surface like "ban factory farming" or "more affordable housing" might lead to worse problems down the road than what it is they are trying to fix; and that they have a strong sense of cultural identity, as shown by the ban on full facial coverings.
I would imagine the same questions would yield vastly different results in other places. The proposition system in California resulted in Prop 13, arguably one of the worst policy disasters ever in that state, looking back almost 45 years later. Now the San Francisco city government is talking about paying every black resident a lump sum of $5mm and a guaranteed high income for the next 250 years; what do you think a binding popular referendum would do in that city?
Regarding your question. I would believe the citizens would roll back disastrous legislation much faster than a cabal of powerful people who have staked their career on whatever the issue.
I believe Switzerland is so successful as a direct result of their decentralized & direct democracy.
I'm no expert on Switzerland, but can it really be described as a monoculture? There are four language groups, after all. I cannot speak to the existence of an overriding Swiss ethos that people identify with.
Believing in tightening immigration controls is a matter of policy that people can reasonably disagree on. "I'm going to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it" takes that policy and makes it populist vote-grabbing.
Likewise, there's plenty to be said about standards for food safety and quality, but legislating against lab-grown meat serves no practical purpose right now (it may in the future), other than pure political grandstanding.
it's a real phenomenon. like, methadone clinics for instance. a lot of people support offering methadone treatment to recovering heroin addicts. it keeps them clean. a lot fewer people are okay with a methadone clinic opening up shop in their neighborhood.
Democracy is termed "populist" when it enacts something counter to a deeply unpopular progressive agenda, such as replacing Italian food with bugs and lab-grown abominations.
To me it seems to be when it's irrational reactionary overreach. If it's deeply unpopular why is it so threatening and why does it need to be banned before it even becomes a real thing? Won't the market quickly show that "bugs and lab-grown abominations" can't stand?
> If it's deeply unpopular why is it so threatening
Because of who is behind the unpopular thing, and who has power to make (thing) happen.
Nuclear weapons are also deeply unpopular.
> Won't the market quickly show that "bugs and lab-grown abominations" can't stand?
The market won't have a say when bureaucrats pass a law mandating every burger or sausage should contain a % of lab-grown meat, with the % increasing every year. If there's anything the recent years have showed is that slippery slope isn't a fallacy.
> The market won't have a say when bureaucrats pass a law mandating every burger or sausage should contain a % of lab-grown meat, with the % increasing every year. If there's anything the recent years have showed is that slippery slope isn't a fallacy.
Sure, but they're currently demonstrating this in the exact opposite way: the market won't have a say when bureaucrats mandate everything has a maximum percentage of lab-grown meat, and that proposed percentage is "zero".
> Because of who is behind the unpopular thing, and who has power to make (thing) happen.
Who? The government that's currently banning it?
> Nuclear weapons are also deeply unpopular.
Consumers can't just not buy nuclear weapons and cause them to stop existing. This has nothing to do at all with a food product.
> The market won't have a say when bureaucrats pass a law mandating every burger or sausage should contain a % of lab-grown meat, with the % increasing every year.
Why would they do this? And wouldn't the people who had to do this be the same Italian government that's clearly anti-lab grown meat? If they switch to that stance won't this ban be easily rescinded anyways? If there's a lab meat boogie man with the power to make new laws what does this ban really do?
Nearly all (if not literally all) of the dystopic sounding stuff being pitched as the way of the future is coming from the World Economic Forum [1]. 'Eat the bugs', "Lockdowns are quietly improving cities around the world", "You will own nothing, and be happy", are some of the more visible positions/slogans put out by the WEF. It's primarily made up of a global 'alliance' of the ultra-rich, politicians, large multinational corporations, and banks. An upstanding, ethical, and socially minded collection if I've ever seen one.
Reversing a law, especially one that would be exceptionally popular is unlikely to succeed. By contrast, so long as e.g. lab meat remains legal - there are lots of ways to work behind the scenes to achieve your ends. One of the easiest is labeling. By allowing lab meat to simply be labeled as meat, consumer choice can be largely eliminated. Pair this with artificial subsidies to the lab meat industry, and you completely undermine the market in a rather quiet fashion. It all has the same effect, without the same degree of outrage, as trying to overturn a popular law would.
Oh good, we have our WEF boogie men, who I guess the Italian government is currently taunting. I expect they'll experience some comeuppance from the WEF? Or is this one of those "the enemy is both powerful and weak" situations where the WEF has incredible promised power, but still seems utterly ineffective? The same shadowy forces can easily change the definition of what constitutes lab grown meat, circumventing the law and introducing it into the system. You're not guaranteeing anything with this law.
> By allowing lab meat to simply be labeled as meat, consumer choice can be largely eliminated.
By making lab meat illegal, consume choice HAS been eliminated. This is literally the exact same problem that's being suggested as a slippery slope in plain view.
The WEF messaging is not a secret, neither is their membership list (at least for corporations). They're pushing for lab meat hard. [1] And that sample is just a fragment of what's out there. Just do a quick search for something like "site:weforum.org lab grown meat". And so this really changes this issue. For instance, in America Kroger is not only the largest grocery chain but also affiliated with the WEF [2].
So if you're an American farmer, you should expect Kroger (among other WEF affiliated businesses) to treat lab meat in an unfairly preferential way. Even if you would feel comfortable competing against lab meat on a "level" playing field, this changes the game, and creates a much bigger motivation for things exactly like what's happening in Italy right now.
Are you saying the American farmer doesn't have massive lobbying power and government support? And again, this is taking away consumer choice by explicitly siding with the Italian farmer. It's explicitly anti-consumer.
I also think you have the push/pull the wrong way - Kroger wants a say in WEF's decisions, it's not controlled by the WEF. It's always going to do what's best for Kroger.
I didn't forget that. Isn't that another strike against populism? Or is the idea here that the change in diet will still succeed due to nefarious brainwashing, implying that the majority of the people will succumb, but that this is contrary to the REAL will of the people? The will of the majority of the people should be listened to now because they are clearly not brainwashed when they have an idea I agree with, but will be at some indeterminate point in the future when it's something I don't like?
That seems ideologically inconsistent but terribly convenient.
"Lab grown abominations" are the only way I, as a vegetarian, get to enjoy hard cheese.
GM bacteria rennet.
Of course, part of why I'm vegetarian is that the idea of scraping off the stomach lining of a baby cow in order to turn milk into a convenient solid is, to me, also an abomination…
It's not an abomination to eat natural food. Any carnivore/omnivore would eat a cow if it could.
The fact that you perceive something natural as an abomination is a symptom of a society that's too successful and needs to invent problems where there are none.
> It's not an abomination to eat natural food. Any carnivore/omnivore would eat a cow if it could.
If the cow could speak, I believe their opinion would be otherwise.
Humans don't generally appreciate it when lions, tigers, and bears beat them to the top of the food chain.
Perfectly natural, that hypocrisy; as natural as your face being eaten by leopards.
> The fact that you perceive something natural as an abomination is a symptom of a society that's too successful and needs to invent problems where there are none.
Lots of natural stuff has been "an abomination" to one group or another since writing existed, regardless of how successful the societies have been.
Examples in Leviticus, amongst other ancient texts.
Most loving things don't want to die, whether it's to be a meal for something else or any other reason. I don't see how that refutes what looks like the natural drive, at least based on how many have been doing it for how long, of predators to eat meat.
> If the cow could speak, I believe their opinion would be otherwise.
Except cows... Don't speak? That's kind of the whole point. We can't apply human value judgements to other species that work in a fundamentally different way.
> Humans don't generally appreciate it when lions, tigers, and bears beat them to the top of the food chain.
It's safe to say no carnivore/omnivore denies that animals suffer. And I'd bet most of us are not happy that they do. It's just not a deal breaker, seeing as it's outweighed by many benefits.
> It's just not a deal breaker, seeing as it's outweighed by many benefits.
Obviously so.
You'll note I said "vegetarian" above rather than "vegan", despite the reasons (I could quote PETA but I won't bother) that milk itself can be well described as an abomination.
Thing is though, as we become better artisans, the comparative benefits of "natural" over artificial are ever reduced.
The ban proposed in the link reminds me of the early years of motorcars, when they were limited to a few miles per hour lest they scare the horses.
The term "abomination" is not useful at all in this conversation. It's 100% up to individual interpretation. To be fair, so is "natural". Many of the traditional things we do to food is hard to frame as natural.
If you force them to define their argument, it doesn't have a foundation. I have yet to find a lab-grown meat that doesn't make me feel a little ill, but it is religiously charged to call it "an abomination." If the core argument is that this individual's interpretation of their specific Magic Book says it's bad, well, I just don't find that a useful discussion.
We could have equally banned internal combustion engines to protect the steam engine and buggy whip industries or phase change refrigeration to protect the jobs of the ice delivery companies.
These laws didn't last long, fortunately, and ostensibly they were to protect cattle, horses and carriage riders but clearly the idea was to slow the car down to the speed of a pedestrian effectively hobbling it to the point that driving a car didn't make sense.
Early cars were immediately killing innocent people in the streets and there was totally justified outrage. We've just become numb to the idea that it's okay to be cut down in the street because cars are just too gosh darn convenient.
Today in the US, cars are the number one cause of death for children and lag only firearms for accidental death overall. Excusing the daily human slaughter by saying, "Well, they're not _designed_ to kill people like guns are" is not a cunning retort.
For what it's worth: this would still make sense today. It's insane how modern cities restrict the freedom and safety of people just so that a few people can drive SUVs more resembling a tank than a car in a city. Shit like Rezvani Vengeance should not exist, period.
It's insane that the top leader in accidental death of children and adolescents involves automobiles [1].
Only vehicle I experienced freedom with was bicycle. Car is further from freedom. Driving in line of cars or finding parking place is not freedom. You are not completely free with bicycle either but everything is more instant with bike. Motorbike is close but since it is so heavy it can be bit of burden.
Walking in the freezing cold for a couple blocks is not a problem if you dress for it. Waiting for transit in the freezing cold is misery.
Riding buses that are quickly get you where you want to go is not a problem. Riding buses that take a convoluted route and thus make slow progress to where you want to go is misery.
You are correct for the bad state of transit most people have, but good transit is possible and then the things you are worried about are not misery.
Quite a few places you would never even be able to even reach in a reasonable amount of time via bus/bike/walk. Would be like the part of the world accessible to you just radically shrank overnight.
Counterpoint: decent public transport could eliminate this - and make even more places actually reachable, as you don't have to take care of making breaks to not fall asleep on the wheel, refueling stops, or having to search (and pay for) parking spots.
But it depends on volume to make sense. If I want to be deep in a national forest somewhere with the intention of getting away from people and bring my horses, public transport just won't do it. With my own vehicle, that's not a problem. I love public transportation in places where it works and have used it a lot in the past, but I could never limit myself to it or totally depend on it - too many places it could never go. Freedom of having your own vehicle really is unparalleled.
But we made it possible to get to a lot more things in our cities than you can by walking, and enjoy a lot more space. A walk only city is not a pleasant place to live.
Your counter to the above should be building more transit. However in the English speaking world we are incompetent in that these decades, and we refuse to learn from anyone else.
Transit, and bicycle infra. But sadly you're not wrong regarding incompetence in the English speaking world, which is why I'm visiting Freiburg in a week to help decide whether to move there or Utrecht.
In contrast, I'll be visiting Amsterdam in a week to help understand how I might bring that culture of human-friendly infrastructure back to America. There are plenty of people in the English-speaking world working to fix the problems that our forebears created.
Good luck! That's great news. I wanted to do the same but I have a 3 and a 5 year old and I need to be somewhere good now, before their childhoods are over. But I still hope the US (and Canada - notjustbikes is keen to point out they're horrible too) can improve.
> A walk only city is not a pleasant place to live
There's plenty of towns and small cities in Europe (specially the "center") that could be considered walk-only and people are pretty happy there, for example Toledo (Spain) or Venice (Italy).
We need to fully understand its safety, nutritional content, and long-term health effects.
Our understanding of the full biochemical spectrum of our diets is still limited. Therefore, it's important to ensure that lab-grown meat adequately replicates the complex array of nutrients and other beneficial compounds found in conventionally produced meat.
Long-term effects: Since lab-grown meat is a relatively new technology, the long-term health effects of consuming it are not yet known. Rigorous safety testing and research are needed to establish its safety over time.
---------------
Modern nutrition is largely unexplored territory
"The unmapped chemical complexity of our diet" December 2019 Nature Food
DOI:10.1038/s43016-019-0005-1
"Our understanding of how diet affects health is limited to 150 key nutritional components that are tracked and catalogued by the United States Department of Agriculture and other national databases. Although this knowledge has been transformative for health sciences, helping unveil the role of calories, sugar, fat, vitamins and other nutritional factors in the emergence of common diseases, these nutritional components represent only a small fraction of the more than 26,000 distinct, definable biochemicals present in our food—many of which have documented effects on health but remain unquantified in any systematic fashion across different individual foods. Using new advances such as machine learning, a high-resolution library of these biochemicals could enable the systematic study of the full biochemical spectrum of our diets, opening new avenues for understanding the composition of what we eat, and how it affects health and disease."
> Long-term tasty tomatos are a good thing but what about impossibility to breed my own tomato seeds if GMO will win 100% of the market?
That is a great question and a very valid concern.
Because there are two things at odds with each other:
- We don't really want GMO plants (or even animals and fish) to interbreed with non-GMP plants/animals because wide-spread effects on the ecosystem could be disastrous. We've lived through a few of those with natural plants and animals as invasive species, and boy do we not want a pest-and-herbicide-resistant strain of tomatoes to take over the planet [1]
- And yet we do want to let people (both hobbyists and farmers) to raise their own plants and animals. At the very least to preserve local varieties.
I don't have a good solution for that. I think what may work if implemented correctly is for governments to maintain a stock of non-GMO seeds or even mandate that X% of the market must be given over to non-GMO products.
You are talking some decent ideas but I do not agree on the Heracleum mantegazzianum point (we use to call it borschevik).
1. Any invasive specie known today is about transporting an organism, evolutionally willing to live from one place to another. GMO organism aren't evolutionally willing to live, they just genetically willing to give us better tomatoes.
2. Absence of non-GMO is not a problem at all if I still have an access to bleeding-edge reproductionable seeds as it happens today. The problem is in patent system, what if the cost of bleeding-edge seeds will be costing so much that small farmers with expensive and not yummy non-GMO will be out of market? Have you seen any vegetable before selection? Nobody needs the corn with few grains while we use to have a corn with few hundrends of grains. Even the most green-headed crackpot on the planet will not grow that in 21th century.
3. I do not believe that all plants harvested from GMO are _really_ sterile. Since they use to have a reproductive system so all kinds of mutations are possible if something with CRISPR/Cas9 goes wrong. And there are some experiments with attempt to spread some modified genes to something like all the malary mosquitoes [1] . There are some GMO even among humans, and that humans are not sterile [2]
> Any invasive specie known today is about transporting an organism, evolutionally willing to live from one place to another. GMO organism aren't evolutionally willing to live
Evolution doesn't have a concept of will. It does have the concept of survival. Survival of the fittest (yes, I know it's a simplification).
Nearly every species is invasive given lack of external controls. For example, Sweden needs to kill 100 000 (yes, one hundred thousand) of moose every year because their natural predator, the wolf, has been exterminated, and moose have become invasive.
If your pest-resistant, herbicide-resistant tomato that is also more adaptable to varying soil conditions is able to reproduce and hybridize, it will "willingly" take over any local plants not because it has the "will", but because it has the capacity.
It will just as "willingly" take over, say, wheat, if the field is contaminated with its seeds.
We use herbicides in our fields not because our plants have "no will to live", but because other plants will just take over given half the chance.
> I do not believe that all plants harvested from GMO are _really_ sterile. Since they use to have a reproductive system so all kinds of mutations are possible if something with CRISPR/Cas9 goes wrong
All GMO products (both plants and animals) are required to be sterile because impact on ecosystem is very hard to estimate if they aren't. And yes, it's not 100% fool-proof, and quite a concern
How does pest-resistant and herb-resistant tomato might survive in the environments with neither herbicides nor pesticides? Especially if the primary goal for modifying the gene was to make the tomato just yummier. You are talking reasonable things but I'm talking from the position of farmer who knows how easy is to break a useful plant and how hard is to destroy any useless one with decentralized root system and easy-peasy flower which can produce thousands of seeds per one stick in few weeks and nothing more.
You are writing correct things but the experience which is in my hands tells me that you are not right about properties of invasive specie vs properties of typical crop.
Or we could just use the damn anti-trust regulations on the books to actually keep markets open and competitive. There doesn't have to be a worry that Monsanto will lock down seeds if they get split into different companies and some of those companies continue to sell seeds that aren't locked down.
I think any market segment without at least 10 comparably sized companies AND the option to just not transact with ANY of them is not competitive and will not benefit from any "free market" supposed benefits.
"Natural" basically means local optimisation, whereas "artificial" means global optimisation. Note also that most companies aren't optimising for nutrition or satiety, but instead for low cost and high addictiveness.
It's the same reason we worry about (artificial) nuclear weapons - despite "natural" reactors also existing.
> For some reason we demand significantly stricter controls over anything "lab-grown" than on anything "natural".
Because we overall know the natural products, how they are to handle and how they interact with each other. And yet we still have many problems from poor handling and still unknown interactions and also new "optimizations" coming from the business-side. And GMO&lab-grown is this, just worst, it's unknown territory, coming from a mindset which quite often has not the benefit of consumers and mankind on its focus. Basically, we have learned to not trust big business, and these are cases where they can shine with all their evil ignorance, so many trust them even less than normally.
> For some reason we demand significantly stricter controls over anything "lab-grown" than on anything "natural".
The reason is simple. We haven't co-evolved with lab-grown food for several billion years, or had transmitted cultural experience with it for tens of thousands of years. The recent discovery that artificial sweeteners have unforeseen health effects (hyper-clotting / glucose intolerance) should point out the necessity of caution.
The human organism has been in a very complex dance with its environment for millennia. We have no idea what subtle chemical traces it is grown to depend upon. We pay for our arrogance and never seem to learn.
This is a pretty sensible policy. Things that are ‘natural’ typically have a much longer period of human and animal use. The amount of data that is latent in their extensive history offers much more certainty about their long term safety than a few short term studies.
The real concern with GMOs is not about something like a genetic collapse but the fact that the technology is only really capable of enabling the use of more exotic pesticides and herbicides in food stocks. While I’m all for running science experiments and killing aphids, an unrestrained embrace of the chemical industry nearly cost us the bald eagle.
Given that there is currently a massive food surplus and I pay taxes to prop up the at industry, I really don’t see the need to engage in a widespread experiment on pesticide use when targeted smaller scale studies would suffice.
> The real concern with GMOs is not about something like a genetic collapse but the fact that the technology is only really capable of enabling the use of more exotic pesticides and herbicides in food stocks.
That is not nearly the main concern. If anything, GMOs would allow us to forego most exotic pesticides and herbicides.
> I really don’t see the need to engage in a widespread experiment on pesticide use when targeted smaller scale studies would suffice.
What I "love" about discussions like this is that they immediately veer off territory that is only tenuously adjacent, at best.
This is a total false equivalence. Crossing two apples falls within the same neighborhood. Crisper blasts it to another continent. There is a reason you don’t need to harden classic seeds produced from fruit for 6+ generations. This is like comparing a jetliner to a bicycle. Sure they both travel - great. same thing, same speed limits, same regulations.
As for GMO’s letting us forgo pesticides? When is that going to happen? Currently that is their main application in ag (synth bio for chemical precursors is more interesting but totally different). The more fanciful dreams of geneticists have not yielded a panacea of new options.
And this is a purely political issue over agricultural policy. Farm subsidies are directly related to this discussion. If it were just a science project it would not concern me in the slightest. The fact that there are a large number of unwitting subjects has clear ethical implications and pretending that this is not a political issue is just obtuse.
> This is a total false equivalence. Crossing two apples falls within the same neighborhood. Crisper blasts it to another continent.
Of course it doesn't. There's a reason I picked corn specifically. Because it's such a mutant, scientists still struggle to unravel all the mixed stff that eneded up there.
And, of course, none of the stuff you eat would ever evolve naturally in nature.
> As for GMO’s letting us forgo pesticides? When is that going to happen?
Basically all foods are cells so they contain all the normal cellular machinery like DNA. As long as lab grown meat is just normal animal cells nothing new is going on.
Where you need to care about each individual molecule is if we where creating food one molecule at a time via a replicator or something so we could have wildly unusual ratios of these individual components. In that context sugar is actually less “natural” than lab grown meat because it’s so concentrated.
Modern nutritional ingredients no longer contain only natural substances, and most additives are untested.
"The European Commission is banning titanium dioxide (E171) as a food additive in the EU, starting with a six-month phasing out period as of February 7, 2022, until August 7, 2022, after which a full ban applies. Following the publication of Commission Regulation (EU) 2022/63 in the EU’s Official Journal (OJ) on January 18, 2022, Annex II and III to Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008 on food additives will be amended accordingly. The Regulation also includes a commitment to review the necessity to maintain or delete titanium dioxide (E171) from the EU list of food additives for exclusive use as a color in medicinal products. On November 30, 2021, the Commission had already published Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/2090 in the OJ, denying the authorization of titanium dioxide (E171) as a feed additive for all animal species."
I don’t see how that’s relevant to the question of nutrition.
Just because a little dirt ends up on an apple doesn’t make that dirt food, it’s a contaminant. Similarly people have been adding preservatives, poison, dyes, pesticides, etc to food for ages that doesn’t make that stuff food.
I would be very concerned about the artificial meats growth medium ending up in the end product.
"Although the evidence for general toxic effects was not conclusive, on the basis of the new data and strengthened methods we could not rule out a concern for genotoxicity and consequently we could not establish a safe level for daily intake of the food additive."
So EU took the "better safe than sorry" approach which actually is sensible.
> Basically all foods are cells so they contain all the normal cellular machinery like DNA. As long as lab grown meat is just normal animal cells nothing new is going on.
That's a very simplified and misleading stance. We already have problem with normal grown foods for various reasons, including unexpected and harmful outcomes of breeding. Food is complex, and handling of food is even more complex. And research is limited in what it can find, and if there are financial interests, it will limit itself even more in what it communicates.
We are losing many basic nutrients in our food content simply because of farmers selecting their produce for taste and appearance. Even if all foods were cells (not true), even then not all cells are equal.
75% of people in the US are overweight or obese, do you really believe that we are doing a good job with what we are putting in our bodies?
I mentioned sugar in my post, but you can get fat eating excessive quantities of otherwise healthy foods.
Now, I am not saying nutrition is ignorable you need to do more than say it was alive and now it’s in my tummy so everything is fine. On the other hand eating normal foods doesn’t require min maxing 26,000 different chemicals.
Moreover, you can pick a safe organism, stick it in a growth medium, let it sit for a while, and then eat it. That’s how we get cheese, beer, bread, soy sauce etc. Calling it lab grown meat evokes an image that’s different from what’s being proposed. They aren’t synthesizing every individual molecule they are simply feeding cells. If those cells can be healthy then most of what your cells need is probably included.
I wouldn’t try to live on an all lab grown meat diet, but that’s also true of an all beef/beer/cheese/etc diet
>Basically all foods are cells so they contain all the normal cellular machinery like DNA. As long as lab grown meat is just normal animal cells nothing new is going on.
We managed to fuck this up without going that far for vegetables and there's no considering additives or lab grown differences there. It's definitely all cells and dna.
Yes, but that’s not a new issue. My point is lab grown meat is basically a new kind of yogurt/fermented food.
Yeast requires a huge range of chemicals to grow, but we mostly ignore all the details when we mix flower, water, and starter because flower is already a really complicated thing.
Many individuals remain skeptical about the concept of evolutionary nutritional adaptation, arguing that our bodies have not adequately adapted to a variety of modern foods and additives. Indeed, there is mounting evidence suggesting that ultra-processed foods can have negative impacts on our health.
In the ongoing debate surrounding breast milk and baby formula, the majority continues to favor breast milk as the optimal choice for infant nutrition.
Ultra processed foods are clearly garbage. There is no nuance to this. There is no need for a deep study needed on unclear aspects of nutrition. They are plainly bad nutrition wise.
Breast milk is not an active debate. It’s not determined by “the majority” either. It is pretty clear that breast milk is better for a baby developmentally.
None of this actually supports your earlier assertion that lab grown food would have fundamentally different nutrition rules than other foods.
Coevolving with meat didn't stop saturated fat from raising our rate of cardiovascular disease.
Due to antagonistic pleiotropy and short term reproductive selection you could even argue that novel foods have an advantage over the foods we've "adapted to" since our bodies never learned to make short term trade-offs with those foods.
Those skeptics should also be skeptical of the naturalistic fallacy.
Omega fatty acids profiles of leafs and grains are entirely different. That ratio directly translates into the composition of cellular membranes of cows and eventually humans who eat them. Plus there are very different vitamin composition and even amino acids ratios are different.
It definitely makes a difference, cows gain a lot of fat on a grain diet. The original reason people did this was the meat tasted better, but we’re extending that time period because subsidized grains are so cheap.
> it's important to ensure that lab-grown meat adequately replicates the complex array of nutrients and other beneficial compounds found in conventionally produced meat
"important to ensure", "complex array", I've been working with GPT a lot and this GPT-speak is so blatantly weasel worded. Maybe GPT doesn't know any better because the world is so weasel worded into being, with trendspeak and buzzfeeding, poor thing.
I am scared of living in a society that doesn't find it obvious that things perfected by nature over millions of years are scientifically speaking, safer than things made by some "scientists" in a lab.
Statistically, the "large n" of nature makes it > scientific.
> I am scared of living in a society that doesn't find it obvious that things perfected by nature over millions of years are scientifically speaking, safer than things made by some "scientists" in a lab.
"Our analysis makes clear that the PP is essential for a limited set of contexts and can be used to justify only a limited set of actions. We discuss the implications for nuclear energy and GMOs. GMOs represent a public risk of global harm, while harm from nuclear energy is comparatively limited and better characterized. PP should be used to prescribe severe limits on GMOs."
What was it with those studies about many vegetables containing less of various nutrients than they used to and how often that related to their size, look, amount of inputs needed, resistance to various ailments and removal of various inconveniences, etc
Can we assume incentives are aligned properly to avoid more such effects? I'd assume the opposite.
> This seems no different than the ridiculous laws proposed in some US states recently
Proposing ridiculous laws that won’t go anywhere is an age-old tactic for local politicians to grab headlines and fire up their voter base. There are numerous proposed laws like that every week that will never go anywhere and were never intended to.
Ridiculous, yes, but don’t let it fool you into thinking that there was a chance of it happening in the US.
As for Italy: I have no idea. Their politics are weirder than I can wrap my head around and I’m not familiar enough to know if this is a political bluff or a serious effort.
This is very different. Oil is a modern innovation with a lot of fundamental problems. Animal meat is as old as time and the problems are more about modern scale and consumption and production patterns (mild regulatory changes would suffice).
It is a bit of an open question as to whether or not chemical engineers can beat a chicken in a chicken making contest, but should the results come back unequivocally in favor of the chemists, then Italy can simply repeal the law.
people should be able to lose their jobs but not their ability to live. that is the actual problem. if losing your job simply meant having less to do during your day until you find a new job, then it wouldn't be much of a problem to obsolete industries that are destructive (e.g., oil and gas).
There are many factors. First is trust, I trust an organism even if pumped full of hormones more than a lab cell culture. Then there is the issue of dependency, raising livestock nad hunting is low tech with no supply chains breaking down. Quality is also a factor, i will believe it when I see it that lab grown meat is nothing more than glorified ground meat. There is a lot to the unique properties of meat (fibers, fat, etc) which will likely take a long while to master, this vs thousands of years of tradition meat preparation and husbandry.
I am not for any top down laws banning things, but the idea that lab grown is anywhere an equal swap for real meat is silly. Italy has a genuine concern, they value food, and that comes down to the quality of ingredients.
I can hardly trust my own body, let alone the body of a different animal. I doubt that we'll see much of mad cow disease in lab meat on shelves.
wrt supply chains:
> Specifically, the livestock sector and its related industries are among the most impacted sectors. This is mainly ascribed to the limitations of animal movement and the decrease of production inputs' availability.
> The availability of animals', feed ingredients, either through foraging or concentrate ingredients, was an additional challenge confronting the sustainability of the livestock supply chain. Data presented in our overview illustrated that one of the livestock supply chain's major disruptors was the inability of farmers to access animal feed.
> "Food or feed consisting of, isolated or produced from cell cultures or from tissues deriving from vertebrate animals is therefore completely prohibited for the use in the preparation of food, drink and feed."
Hence, you can make lab-grown meat from various insects (or crab or lobster) if you like with no concerns. Not sure if the public has an appetite for it, but these are apparently delicious when deep-fried:
I think lobster is the way to go. I guess octopus cells would also be an acceptable starting material (octopi are intelligent and shouldn't be hunted IMO).
a bigger context: Lab-grown human meat is also a controversial idea.
Con:
Producing and consuming lab-grown human meat raises ethical questions about human dignity and the potential normalization of cannibalism, even if it does not involve harming an actual person.
Many religious and cultural beliefs would likely oppose the production and consumption of lab-grown human meat.
The long-term health effects of consuming lab-grown human meat are unknown, and the production process would need to be carefully regulated to ensure safety.
The idea of consuming human meat, even if lab-grown, is likely to be met with strong social disapproval and stigma, which could hinder its acceptance.
The production and consumption of lab-grown human meat could face legal challenges in many jurisdictions, as it might be considered a form of cannibalism or be subject to other regulations.
Pro:
Some individuals may be interested in trying lab-grown human meat due to curiosity or as a novel experience, without causing harm to another person.
Cultivating human tissue in a lab could have applications in medical research, such as testing drug efficacy, studying human tissue regeneration, or using it for transplantation purposes.
> This seems no different than the ridiculous laws proposed in some US states recently that would ban EV sales to protect the oil and gas industries.
Is it not equally ridiculous to ban combustion engine sales?
It appears many want the government to “protect them from carbon”. Why is it bad for people to want to protect the robustness of their food supply?
If you view government as a way to protect the population (as it seems most here do), then it shouldn’t be surprising people use it to protect themselves.
Personally, I think a fair market where regulation is as minimal as possible is best. That said, I wouldn’t want a few corporations controlling my countries food supply. So, please keep the farms active and plentiful.
Similarly, I wouldn’t want car manufacturers of EV to receive any government benefit. Let’s see it produced and become dominate. As oil prices rise because it becomes a scarce resource, EVs would become popular. Of course, we haven’t actually seen a decline in oil production where that occurs, so we do it artificially.
One factor I am suprised no one seems to be mentioning is taste. In the absence of quality tests for how well lab-grown meat serves as a nutritional substitute, I would think taste would be a good metric. Perhaps even better than tests, since nutritional science still contains a lot of unknowns.
Taste is also serves as a good metric, because it supports human happiness and enjoyment. A big factor.
>if lab-grown meat is proven to be a safe and cost/energy/carbon efficient alternative to raising and killing animals, then it would be insane to not pursue that
Sadly, it's not. It requires growing tumors based on animal cells, which need to be pumped full of antibiotics to prevent infection, because a clump of cells has no immune system.
Not necessarily. The EV ban bills proposed in those US states are purely there just to irritate liberals.
The EU is extremely skeptic of any genetically-modified food, for a whole load of various reasons, and banning lab-grown meat is entirely in line with that. If you can't tolerate one extra disease-resistance gene in your food, you're not going to be happy with lab-grown meat either.
Furthermore, the EU has a very long list of foods that are only allowed to be grown in specific areas or in certain ways. While this is nominally because a lot of those foods are named after specific towns, in practice many of them do not have "generic" names, so these are ultimately de-facto trade bans on other people making those foods. Labs being able to grow "perfect" versions of those foods (as opposed to the generic competition being demonstrably worse) would upend this system.
Which is fine. The canonical example: Parma ham has to be from Parma, and that makes good sense to me.
It gets more muddy with cheese, lots of cheese named 'Gouda' isn't Gouda, traditionally Gouda (and Alkmaar) were the big cheese trading markets and the stamp 'Gouda' originally meant traded in Gouda, not produced in Gouda (which doesn't really make Cheese). But Edammer cheese really is made in Edam (or Volendam!). And 'Old Amsterdam' is just a tradename for factory produced Gouda like cheese which has nothing whatsoever to do with Amsterdam and isn't really all that old (artificial high speed ripening). Tourists love it though and pay ridiculous amounts of money for it and now you can get it in regular stores as well.
So food named after towns isn't always historically - or even at all - connected to the town. But in cases where that is so it makes good sense to respect that history.
Those name protections also tend to protect established players and regions even if they ultimately may produce utter garbage.
I come from a small wine-producing country of Moldova. It produces or produced anything from wine to classical champagne to port to cognacs to...
Now it's only wine that can be called wine (thankfully it's been around for longer than most civilizations). And for the rest they had to come up with their own rather awkward names. And now it doesn't matter if a Moldovan "divin" is superior to a French Cognac. Because branding.
Cognac is literally the name of a region. As is Champagne. It misleads the public when Moldovan Cognac is being sold as Cognac. Cognac is a subset of brandy anyway. Champagne is a subset of sparkling wine. And Port is named for the town in Portugal Oporto and is a subset of fortified wine. If the Moldovan spirits industry has a superior product, why can’t they call it a relevant name that protects the integrity of their creation?
I a definitely interested in trying Moldovan beverages now though!
Ok, so... are you buying the wine or are you buying the place it came from?
Like, there's nothing magical about the towns of Champagne or Cognac that makes the wine they produce different. It's all in the process and expertise used to produce the wine. If you brought the brewers and growers to another part of the world with the same soil and climate, and told them to make the same thing they make in Champagne and Cognac, they would produce identical[0] wine.
And the current regime of "terroir makes the trademark" leads to suitably absurd results. Like, if a Champagne producer wants to expand their operations, they can't, because there's only 75,000 acres of land you can legally make Champagne on. France has been trying to add new villages to Champagne's terroir since 2008 and the process still isn't done, even though the villages being added are literally just in between other Champagne villages. People still clutched their pearls about France diluting the brand purely by just allowing more of it to be made.
Ok, so maybe it's silly, but it shouldn't matter, because Champagne is a luxury product and I'm a [1]smelly American neoliberal that thinks you shouldn't be able to trademark a whole town. Fine. What about a staple food like rice? You see, India saw the EU PDO system and realized they could use it as a weapon to beat Pakistan with. So they're going to the EU and crying bloody murder about how poor Indian rice farmers are being crushed by evil Pakistani rice counterfeits[2]. Defining any sort of terroir here is a political statement not backed up by reality: both countries are either perfectly capable of making basmati rice, or we need to look at micro-climates and other things that would probably exclude a large portion of both countries' rice farms.
>If the Moldovan spirits industry has a superior product, why can’t they call it a relevant name that protects the integrity of their creation?
So, the thing is, often times there isn't really a generic equivalent name. We have "sparkling wine" for Champagne, but that seems to be rare. For example, I've no idea what you'd call non-terroir - but still otherwise well-made - Parmesan or Mozzarella cheese.
[0] As determined by a double-blind taste test with a suitably experienced sommelier.
[1] Two of the following words are true while the other one is trash. Can you spot the fake?
Lab food presents itself as non threatening because it's not generally accepted. But if it gains a significant majority the vegans will be calling for natural meat to be banned. It's best to stop it before it gains a foothold.
Italians recognize that food is just as much about taste, enjoyment and life satisfaction than it is about nutrition. Suppose we could have all our meals with just a pill and still fulfill all our nutritional needs, would it be better? Not if the taste is inferior. Or it interferes with our daily rituals.
Some of my friends would 100% use food pills, and have enthusiastically expressed that opinion for several years. Soylent and Huel exist and are somewhat profitable businesses. Lots of people don't really care about food and just want to get back to things they care about.
Your food opinions are not everyone's food opinions and forcing your opinions on others is not freedom.
Given that this is also current news, I think that might cast this in a slightly different light. Much of the heritage is modern myth-making, rather than centuries-old recipes known only to a handful of families. The feeling of heritage is real, but the history invented.
It seems to be national identity and the politics of nationalism in a food-based disguise, rather than sincere concerns for the authenticity of authentic and historic cuisine.
It's true that it is always about politics, and lately, populism, all over the world (not that I feel too bad about some leftist populism being able to outvote fascists, as in my country of late, the weapons race of voting almost require a degree of over-appealing to win, since even middle classes are so brain-poor today).
Still, the population can have true feelings, if not the politicians, and they have to find the cold hearted suits who will defend their interest, for whatever distorted motives the suits might accrue, so it's a question of ends, not means, sadly. We're on a post-morality world who gives a shitty shit about some classical philosophu unless a youtuber can explain it in under three minutes. After all, maybe AI citizens will be more civic minded, ahem.
Lab stuff is bad when you make it a habit of daily or weekly consumption just because alternatives were never considered. I never take any medication for sleeping, for instance, but use a powerful herb as tea. Sleep drugs, allergy drugs, are factors of early senility. If there is a medical condition that requires a drug, of course it should be taken. Otherwise I treat "medication" somewhat like a drug, you know, cocaine or some such. But banning drugs that save lives or enhance conditions is not a smart thing. Lab meat will ever save zero lives and enhance no health.
> Yes, just as ridiculous as anyone who would have been against the 80s push to take fat out of dairy and pour in the lab sugar!
> Why not stuff our stomachs with even more lab stuff? Why not, in any case reducing actual meat consumptions is an atrocious regulatory suggestion, the robofairrmingoverlords can do whatever with the urban sheep in america.
Your argument is nothing more than the Naturalistic Fallacy. In a single broad stroke, you've implied that everything lab-made or somehow engineered is bad because it is unnatural. We are able to feed large population due in large part to fertilizers we have developed and GMO (i.e. selective breeding, but faster) crops and we have developed vaccines that have all but eradicated Smallpox and Polio off the face the earth. Yet you cite as evidence the obvious issues with the fat/sugar balance of foods in the 80s, which has been largely attributed to the sugar cane lobby, as "human-made = bad" going as far to claim a wild conspiracy.
I realize my tone was a bit offensive, but yes I am a naturalist by any meaning of that word. In fact if you knew me you'd call me a complete utter quack, so misaligned are my views with mainstream tech worldviews. What I know about GMOs is that the GMO variety of bananas here (the natural base called Prata, the GMO I don't remember) is tasteless and has awful texture compared to its base species, which is delicious and creamy.
Avocados the same, I don't know if GMO but the selection breeds in supermarkets, local or imported, cannot compare to the weird little avocados which only grow on my father's ranch during autumn (now). They are superior to every type I bought except those from an organic shop I got once, but they don't show when they ripen, they do not go soft. the skin just blackens and cracks finally when it is all but rotten. How could supermarkets educate a public to know how to buy these anyway, but it stands that they are much more creamy and tasty.
I love vaccines and I am not a flatearther or right wing conspiracist, I love all good worthy science anyhow.
I'm calling Bs on the whole cow industry being bad for the planet because of their bodily functions. Any cows, any animals, any living creatures are never going to be bad for the planet.
There is more resource consumption and harm in transferring the livestock as meat and farming livestock than there is in the methane gas. And lab grown meat is not going to change that.
It's not just their bodily functions (which are very significant despite your feelings), it's the enormous amount of land we clearcut and leave basically empty so they can graze.
Also, it's not about the planet, it's about us. The planet obviously will be fine, but a lot of humans won't be.
The land consumption is enormous, hence why I mentioned it (farming of livestock). There are different opportunities for optimizations here. But I don't think it falls in line with cultures of industrialization.
Ok, why do you think this? Transport needs to be decarbonized, but it's a very tiny portion of our food system's climate impact. Land use is a major portion, but it's still not as significant as cows themselves. Maybe you're underestimating the scale? There are a billion cows on earth that simply wouldn't exist if we stopped eating them and drinking their milk. It's not like a normal natural resource that we're just tapping into. They do not exist in the wild, and basically any other food (even other animals) could give us the calories and nutrients we need with far fewer emissions.
The problem is not cows take up a lot of resources. The problem is their upkeep is too intensive that the economies of scale contribute to large scale destruction of resource.
I don't buy the future decarbonization transport argument. It is a mirage. But put that aside.
Cows are incredibly powerful creatures. Their uses were in not just taking up a lot of land but also moving lots of farm equipment and cultivating land. With machinery, they are displaced and no parallel uses are found.
The huge consumption of meat has incentivized capitalist industries to destruct land for profit. Blaming this on cows is like blaming a worker instead of the boss. Blame the overly large consumers who cannot forgo meat, and blame the capitalists for feeding that frenzy. How despicable have we become if our arguments are now based on “lab grown meat" being a solution. Like we refuse to see our own feces as a stinker.
Ok I see, I guess it's just a semantic argument? I do not think cows are personally responsible for climate change, I just understand that factually they emit a lot of methane and that's very bad for us. I personally don't have a problem just not eating beef or drinking cow milk anymore, but if lab grown meat get some people to stop eating beef who wouldn't otherwise, that seems like it will likely be a net positive development.
I do agree that there are many problems with our food system beyond climate change, and replacing Big Ag with Big Lab-grown Ag would leave almost all of those problems in place. It's not my preferred solution.
>It's not just their bodily functions (which are very significant despite your feelings)
So were the bodily functions of the wild bison, and a boatload of other species that have disappeared or shrunk togheter with their methane output in rough equivalence to the growth in livestock and it's methane output (at least in the US tho I assume such calculations would be similar elsewhere.)
Additionally anything they put out is a temporary problem part of a carbon cycle. The shit they fart out was once gras and will go back to it a few decades down the line. Wish to reduce that ouput to buy ourselves some time (to excuse pumping up more oil and the like for a little longer) and you basically end up with chicken and similar animals as the acceptable solution.
So yeah cow farts are not the factor to look at when looking at the relentless increase in CO2 ppm.
Similarly most sequestration investments and drives are often little more than a scam, copium, equivalent to the push malicious push for single use plastics recycling by plastic manufacturers or at worst a push down the price of co2 for EHR.
There is one source we keep making excuses for ad nauseum that is a new introduction into this all and it's the hydrocarbons sequestered for untold years that we pump up(and methane from tundra now defrosting oh and the reduction in boglands.)
No replacing those fields with forest won't be your cure. Sadly they barely sequester anything at all compared to what we're putting out even if we'd severely reduce it. They largely take it up, die, rot and release it again in the process. We can rely on it if we accept our solution to take thousands of years.
>it's the enormous amount of land we clearcut and leave basically empty so they can graze.
I agree it's an issue. However remove it and you'll have a different one.
The fertilizer their manure makes up a significant portion of will probably be drawn even more from hydrocarbons (and rather finite resources like cheap phosphorus from morocco).
The same hydrocarbons that produce an actual very long term issue.
I have little trust in incentives leading us elsewhere.
Perhaps you wish to avoid this by forcing techniques that will generally ... require more land for the same output or for land to be left "basically empty".
I'd see some good things coming from such harsh increase in food prices and availability at least.
Some negative pressure on our relentless population growth, perhaps we'll learn to more often ditch some silly concepts such as unused lawns.
4. We can easily replace cows with other animals and plants that warm the planet a lot less
It doesn't matter that wild bison used to do the same thing, this is the situation we're in. Unlike with wild bison, we are in full control now and we can simply stop making more cattle without any negative environmental effects. It is a factor to look at. We are not in a position to be ignoring big factors because they taste good.
> most sequestration investments and drives are often little more than a scam, copium, equivalent to the push malicious push for single use plastics recycling by plastic manufacturers
I agree but it's totally irrelevant to this conversation.
> There is one source we keep making excuses for
Counterpoint: no we don't. Who is we? I challenge you to find a single person who both advocates for less cow consumption because of the climate impact and promotes more fossil fuel consumption. I don't think such a person exists.
> Wish to reduce that ouput to buy ourselves some time [strawman removed] and you basically end up with chicken and similar animals as the acceptable solution.
Yes, exactly, I'm glad we're on the same page. Quickly phasing out cattle would buy us a LOT of time, like decades.
> I agree it's an issue. However remove it and you'll have a different one.
I mean, ok, if you want to give up I guess I can't stop you, but can you at least keep it to yourself and not try to bring everyone else down with you? "We should just stop burning oil, nothing else matters" is a) not true, and b) equivalent to giving up, unless you have some secret plan to accomplish that extremely quickly. "Go back in time and keep all the hydrocarbons in the ground" is not an option, they've already been burned and they're already warming the planet and we're in a crisis now.
>2. Methane warms the planet
>3. Warming the planet is bad for humans
So does CO2 (to a much lesser extent per quantity yes) Yet the issue we have today is not due to countless forest fires for hundreds of thousands of years. Because that CO2 too is part of a carbon cycle. And if those trees rotted instead they'd still largely release that co2.
It is still accurate to say the CO2 of those fires warms the planet. It is inaccurate to say it is part of the cause of global warming.
It is thus inaccurate to claim that stopping those fires would have been a viable part of a solution to stopping global warming even if we could.
After all the co2 ppm has shot up insanely since the start of the industrial revolution. Those first engines on coal and oil contributed to our issue today and anything similar has done the same since. The large amount of cows and their farts back then did not.
So....If we stopped introducing new hydrocarbons, didn't set off feedback loops and kept the livestock and their farts and manure would temperatures go up due to the lifestock? We could reasonably assume no.
>Counterpoint: no we don't. Who is we? I challenge you to find a single person who both advocates for less cow consumption because of the climate impact and promotes more fossil fuel consumption. I don't think such a person exists.
I don't think they're advocating for more fossil fuel use. That's not what I said.
The person you should challenge me to find is easily found in the majority of people.
I've saw plenty of people at my previous workplace (recent job change) saying they tried to eat less meat. Few even stopped it.
We were/are well off so no qualms about the price in that calculation i'd say.
If you'd ask em a plain question like should we strive to stop using hydrocarbons altogether few might even answer yes without delving too deep into the implications
They still drove to work every day and would continue to do so indefinitely. They still worked for a massively polluting corporation. Still traveled by plane and had a carbon footprint that's ridiculous in contrast to the situation or that of many people in less developed countries and they all patted themselves on the back for contributing their part in stopping climate change whilst contributing massively to it barreling onwards. The bit they did do not actually affecting long term results.
Now take the situation where we stop pumping up oil, gas and such and you get an even better sample because it's a lot more tactile of a matter when almost every damn industry heavily depends on fossil fuels in various ways leading to massive layoffs and degrowth, foodprices skyrocket, etc
I dare say finding support for an actual solution among them given that case becomes difficult.
Is that me arguing for continued use of fossil fuels? No. Is that me giving up? No.
But it does remind me of scenes in 'Don't look up' where they suggest trying alternative solutions first until it's too late ...and it's extremely frustrating.
>I mean, ok, if you want to give up I guess I can't stop you, but can you at least keep it to yourself and not try to bring everyone else down with you?
I don't want to give up in finding a solution but when a big part of the stuff put forward is not a solution at all it becomes discouraging.
In my country for example our greens championing climate change want to phase out nuclear powerplants which provide the majority of power and phase em out all together.
Their proposed solution has been to build gas plants to provide variable output to encourage renewable investment however the plan requires it to be main output for a very very long time and even then cause a shortage. The massive subsidy contract to get companies to build these gas plants span decades with no scaledown.
Pointing out the likely fossil fuel use and/or land use implications that'll stem from what you champion is not me giving up. It's more like you don't want to address it.
>Yes, exactly, I'm glad we're on the same page. Quickly phasing out cattle would buy us a LOT of time, like decades.
The atmospheric halflife of methane is 9 years for one.
>Go back in time and keep all the hydrocarbons in the ground" is not an option, they've already been burned and they're already warming the planet and we're in a crisis now.
We are still doing it. We are still doing it on a massive. insane. scale. We are not stopping. Hell there's no clear indication we're slowing down nearly enough
When we will it will probably be because we reached peak oil. In the meantime we do a lot of bs revolving around it.[1]
And this is why i brought up things like the sequestration projects and plastics recycling scam that you considered totally irrelevant.
Because it feels to me like another non solution being popular because it is les opposed (because we don't want to touch actual ones too much and harm our standard of living drastically in the process, etc) making us all feel like we're doing something about the problem whilst long term it does little to nothing.
> it's the enormous amount of land we clearcut and leave basically empty so they can graze.
This is typical vegan misinformation to appeal to people who are concerned about global warming (as we should).
Land that's used for grazing is typically land which can't be used for other purposes. People don't grow grass on flat fields of black soil because it doesn't make economic sense.
Additionally, animals are also fed the leftovers that people don't eat. That is, when you grow corn, we eat the grain, and the rest of the plant (leaves and all) is given to animals. Without livestock that food would just be wasted.
These are just some of the many ways vegans mislead.
I am not vegan and I don't understand why you brought them up. I am not even arguing for vegetarianism, if we all just replaced beef with pork that would be a huge improvement.
Most deforestation of the Amazon is done to create more land for cattle, to give you one example. It is by far the largest driver of tropical deforestation, and almost all global deforestation is tropical. Grazing land that can't support anything else is by definition not included in statistics on deforestation or loss of biomass and biodiversity.
It's true that a lot of cow feed is stuff humans won't eat, but it's not true that it would all be wasted if we stop raising cows. We can grow less of it, we can throw the scraps in anaerobic digesters to generate power, we can simply feed it to other animals, as a last resort we can use it for compost.
I'm pretty sure vegans are less than 1% of the world, and I don't think they have some special influence over the IPCC and most climate scientists on the planet.
There is an entire economy around growing feed for cows. They do NOT get waste products from other industries and are primarily fed with stuff grown ONLY for feeding cows. Welcome to industrialized farming.
Why would EVs threaten oil & gas industry - they contain lots of plastic that is currently made out of oil. Also electricity is still being generated from fossil fuels in many places. And I don't see stuff like diesel generators going away any time soon. Renewables won't help if a hospital loses power.
Power plants are more efficient than engines crammed within the trunk of a car. They have no limitations in space and weight and so you can do fancy things like heat recovery (you use the exhaust to pre-heat your fuel mix or reuse said heat for nearby industries), always have the combustion chamber at the best temperature for efficiency, ... . Plus, you can install much better filtration systems for combustion byproducts.
All in all, if everyone would transition to an EV you would see a noticeable drop in oil consumption thanks to the mentioned benefits.
EDIT: From a quick Google search I saw that:
- The lower end efficiency for oil and coal power plants is 37%. Gas power plants achieve 56% on the lower end according to [1].
- Car engines vary between 20% (gasoline) and 40% (diesel) efficiency according to [2]
Got it, that all makes sense. I know its certainly got to be an improvement, I guess I just thought it was more qualified an improvement than it is! Even if still highly tied to geography I guess.
We should definitely take what improvements we can get!
(Also, sorry for injecting stupidity into the discourse in general. I didn't mean to anger people or say something wrong.)
It is also much easier to integrate any renewables or other power sources for that.
The big problem is mining the battery metals, involving worst kind of worker exploitation and danger, which is why we need ethically sourced nickel-sodium (also known as sodium-ion) tech to catch up with lithium-cobalt.
That's not going to happen under capitalism though.
That depends. If you live in Iowa, or Kansas there is a high chance your EV is charged entirely from wind power. Both states are exporting to other nearby states (which are also building more wind). Texas also has a lot of wind generation (more than the above two combined), but their population is larger so overall it comes out to less. CA has a lot of solar power (more deserts should), though I'm not sure how much.
However if you live in other states you may find that roadblocks have been put in place and so your power has to come from non-renewables. Make no mistake, the limit is more legal than practical these days, renewables can easily be most of your power mix, and are already the cheapest source of power.
Im confused, every one is telling me I am wrong and downvoting me, but saying different things.
Am I wrong because even if you charge the batteries with power that comes from nonrenewable energy, its still more efficient, and in that becomes different from nonrenewable power?
Am I wrong because, in the U.S., its about 50/50 renewable/nonrenewable so the claim that your likely to charge your battery with nonrenewable energy is laughable?
Am I wrong because it depends where you are in the country?
I'm really just trying to understand, I didn't think I was making such a huge claim. I just thought it wasn't controversial to say most of our energy comes from nonrenewables still, bracketing whatever economic or political or logistical forces have made it that way.
Regardless, I will definitely think twice before talking about any of this on here. Lesson learned.
> Am I wrong because even if you charge the batteries with power that comes from nonrenewable energy, its still more efficient, and in that becomes different from nonrenewable power?
this is an it depends.
The best combined cycle power plants are more efficient - even accounting for transmissions losses than an ICE. However there are a few power plants that are less efficient.
Coal is about equal efficiency to a ICE in the ideal cases for both. Running an ICE at ideal efficiency is unlikely though, while they manage coal to put close to ideal, though after transmission losses the difference isn't so great if you are doing highway driving (but city driving is vastly worse).
The worst case power plants are worse then city driving in an ICE. These power plants are typically mothballed, but they when there is an emergency. They are generally only used every 5 years, but they are a part of every power utilities emergency plans. As power demand goes up power gets less efficient in general, so Christmas season is going to be less efficient.
> Am I wrong because, in the U.S., its about 50/50 renewable/nonrenewable so the claim that your likely to charge your battery with nonrenewable energy is laughable?
This is wrong. US generation is about 20% renewable (as of last year) overall. Some areas have far more renewable than others (my utility claims >80% wind for me in marketing, but I cannot find and source that can be scientifically claimed). Some areas have far less. You may also count nuclear power as green even though it isn't renewable.
Most energy comes from non-renewables for sure. However that is overall and so your specific situation may be different.
So, just to be clear, if you are in some random place in the united states, the energy you will use to charge your car's battery is most likely to come from renewable energy like solar, wind, geothermal, and very unlikely to come from oil/gasoline, natural gas, or coal?
And I should, in fact, feel stupid because this is an extremely apparent/obvious fact to actually smart people?
> So, just to be clear, if you are in some random place in the united states, the energy you will use to charge your car's battery is most likely to come from renewable energy like solar, wind, geothermal, and very unlikely to come from oil/gasoline, natural gas, or coal?
Nobody in this chain of comments was concerned with most of this, so it hardly matters (to the discussion at hand) what I answer, or cite, or whatever. That's much of the problem with what you've been posting. All that was originally claimed was that broader EV deployment will tend to reduce petroleum use, so may be viewed as a threat by petroleum industry, which... I mean, yes, that's obvious. I would certainly find evidence to the contrary quite surprising.
> And I should, in fact, feel stupid because this is an extremely apparent/obvious fact to actually smart people?
No—because you keep trying to argue against the proposition you want to argue against, instead of the one that was actually advanced, which is why I've twice tried to redirect you back to the actual topic. The "but much electricity comes from burning fossil fuels!" observation isn't terribly interesting even when it isn't a non-sequitur, but given the topic at hand, which was narrowly about effects of EV deployment on the petroleum industry in particular, it's also being mis-applied.
We could get 100% of our electricity from coal, for instance, and the original claim might still be true. Technically, we could even get 100% of our electricity from petroleum, and it might still be true—though in that case I'd certainly allow that it wouldn't be obviously-true.
Ah! I see, I guess I read the original comment wrong. I read "oil and gas" too broadly, and as such I was off topic in my reply. I knew, that e.g., natural gas is used for energy extensively in the U.S., but I guess that wasn't the "gas" they were talking about. And either way, like you say, I would be wrong.
And further to your point (or maybe, reading between the lines of your point): its not like there is just one or two big nonrenewable energy companies that do petroleum, and coal, and natural gas, etc. We must understand how those are all competing for profits! And that while EVs might use coal, it doesn't mean their existence wont hurt the petroleum companies. Got it, and thank you :)
> but if lab-grown meat is proven to be a safe and cost/energy/carbon efficient alternative to raising and killing animals, then it would be insane to not pursue that.
You the city people are so cocky in teaching me the village guy about how to live the life.
What if I do not want my meat addiction to be controlled by some big corps? For example, they may decide to put in their meat products something I do not want to be put. At least I can grow my food as I like it to be grown and I can kill it in the way I find reasonable (for example, I might like some products from blood and I might use a lot of animal fat). And last but not least, different parts of animal body has totally different taste which might be hard to simulate - that's why I'm sure that nothing will force me to stop holding cattle before end of my life.
I don't know if banning lab grown meat can protect Italian food heritage or of their food heritage is at risk at all. But as someone living in the UK and loving Italian food, please do whatever to keep Italian food great.
The issue is that mean production has externalities (e.g. climate, labor conditions, environment, biodiversity, animal suffering), some of which we will soon no longer be able to ignore.
We can insist on ignoring the problems for as long as possible but that's still not forever. Eventually we will have to start paying the "real price", which would mean that meat gets a lot more expensive, as it used to be a few hundred years ago. But people will not like paying 3x for meat. They will have to eat less of it or look for alternatives, including insect-based foods. Such alternatives shouldn't be blanket-banned without good reason. (Not that I believe lab mean will be cheaper than animal meat any time soon)
Folks will cry "Protectioninsts!" and "Luddites!" with glee. This issue is a fish in a barrel for simple views.
Maybe it's more complicated. Maybe it's a good idea to put some kind of timeline on upsetting entire industries, overturning whole components of the economy and job market, maybe tap the brakes from time to time.
Just thinking the world economy is maybe complicated, and everybody shouting about ideals mightn't be the best way to adjust this enormous system.
Food and drink accounts for a quarter of Italy's GDP. It's about money. Italy has a far-right government, which is extremely open to lobbying from that sector, and "heritage" is aligned with their nationalistic stance.
Try to look a bit deeper.