Posted on 03/06/2013 12:48:35 PM PST by Red Badger
The next time you’re about to bite into a hamburger, take a moment to consider the resources that went into making it. In a recent Solve for X talk, Andras Forgacs laid out all the statistics, and explained how tantalizingly close we are to a more sustainable method of meat production. Basically, humanity may soon be 3D printing meat instead of growing it in an animal.
Forgacs starts by explaining just how costly a single quarter-pound beef patty is to produce. For that one serving, 6.7lbs of grains, 600 gallons of water, and 75 square feet of grazing land were used. Now multiply that by 1000 to find your (approximate) impact — the average American eats over 220lbs of meat each year. Additionally, at least 18% of greenhouse gas emissions are due to meat production. All this for one burger?
As economic opportunities continue to lift populations around the world into the middle class, demand for meat is rising. With 7 billion people on the planet, we are sustained by 60 billion land animals. When the population hits 9 billion somewhere around 2050 we would need 100 billion land animals. That would be ecologically devastating, so something has to change.
Advances in bioengineering have been able to produce meat analogs, but the process has always been stupendously expensive, and the results were only passable. It turns out that it’s actually very difficult to match the taste and texture of animal muscle tissue by growing cells in the lab. The marbling of fats and connective tissue is integral to the experience of eating a burger.
Applying 3D printing to artificial meats could be the answer, according to Forgacs. If you take tissue engineering and add in some 3D printing, you get the burgeoning field of bioprinting. Researchers are working with cell aggregates as the medium in bioprinting (as opposed to plastics in regular 3D printing). Layer after layer of cells can be laid down to more closely resemble the genuine article. Researchers can basically build a block of muscle that never lived.
So maybe it’s going to be possible to make artificial meat that feels and tastes like the real deal, but what about cost? Well, Forgacs concedes that it does still cost a few thousand dollars to make a pound of meat in the lab. Unless you’re seeking the most expensive burger in the world, that’s no good. Still, the cost of real meat is inevitably going up and the printed stuff will become cheaper as economies of scale kick in. The process right now is taking place in a research lab, not a large production facility.
Printed meats will eventually become cost-competitive with the dead animal kind. Until then, we may all have to take a closer look at what we’re eating.
I just did, for a while. I really wanted some...............
Too bad it’s not real. I bet it would really sell like crazy! Especially to Paula Dean viewers.........
Aye, but do they go quietly into that good night? And do we want to eat what eats anything?
Larry, Darryl, Darryl, pick up the phone...
*sigh* Easy come, easy go...
I call bull on these numbers.
Figure that a side of beef weighs what? 500 lbs? Times 2 for 1000 lbs total. That's 4000 quarter pounders, if you were to grind it all up. (which I wouldn't. I like filet. :-) )
Means that the cow eats over 12 tons of grain. And took up over 6 acres of grazing land, on top of that.
Even halving the numbers would be ridiculous.
Well, yes, but it doesn’t have to be “marbled in”; you can toss a lump of fat in with the meat as it’s being ground, as is done with ground venison.
30 lbs a day of forage seems to be the number
not sure how many days to slaughter
http://www.thebeefsite.com/articles/3154/how-much-forage-does-a-beef-cow-consume-each-day
I wonder how the cells meant to be used to make this synthetic meat are going to be grown?
Will they be fed using serum from fetal calves killed at the time their mothers are slaughtered, the way cells in labs all over the year are fed?
Somehow, I don’t see this technique as ever becoming cheap, or resulting in fewer animals being killed.
Yeah, see my post #46. I’m no cattle farmer, but the numbers made no sense to me, either.
I had a friend that raised beef critters, when I was a kid. As I recall, it was about a year from him getting the calf to him selling it. (I'm sure it's different from critter to critter....)
Anyhoo, so figure - 30 lbs * 365 days = about 5-1/2 tons of forage. Total. Grazing, grains, the works. Which still sounds a little high, but I could buy it, I suppose.
Man, I've shovelled a lot of cow flops. Copious though they are...a cow just can't PROCESS as much food as the article claims.
Bacon paste?? I want crispy bacon, not Play-Doh!
Don’t worry. It’s not real.........
I’m sure someone is working on it to make it a reality!........
How soon can we have a 3D printed president?
we already have one. He’s as artificial as you can get...........
Sure as hell beats bean sprouts and dandelion greens.
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