All of wen's Comments + Replies
Fab post George!
Some assorted, unrefined thoughts (it's 12am and I don't have a coherent view of the world atm)
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Agree on restaurants being the best place to start promotion because you can generate both supply and demand while maintaining control. Have you done case studies of how people have approached restaurants, developed dishes, managed launch and press? E.g. with the restaurants serving cultivated meat in Singapore. There is almost certainly a handbook on how to get your product into restaurants. I know a bit about getting products into supermarket
We don't really know. Cell ag companies haven't been releasing cost estimates lately. A lot of progress has been made, though. Most of the cost comes from the growth factors in the culture media, and Mosa Meat has been working on their own media formulation, plus a bunch of growth factors/media manufacturers have sprung up to supply the industry.
I'd like to note that much of the movement between '$1e6/kg in 2013 to to $100/kg in 2019' can be explained by labour costs and moving from bench-scale to larger-scale production (i.e. buying lab supplies in bulk).
...Ah, I was thinking primarily about low and middle-income countries for both of these.
I am a big fan of 'internalising the externalities' of meat production by making prices higher in developed countries, but I think this becomes a more ethically and strategically complex tactic when we're looking at places where people are already spending large proportions of their incomes on food, are in calorie deficits, etc.
You're probably right that improving biosecurity on factory farms might not make a big difference to antibiotic resistance and animal welfare. I'm
...Thank you for this post! I gave a strong upvote because this claim has been growing in strength in animal advocacy communities, and I have often thought that we need to examine it and make sure it actually makes sense, or it damages our credibility.
I realise now that I've actually been sceptical about the claim 'More than half of the antibiotics today are used for meat production'. This seems to be correct; this article says 73% of antimicrobials[1] sold are used in animals (which I think cites an article by Van Boeckel et al 2017, in Science, but I can't
...Thank you for writing this post! These are really good points. I think EA Singapore is looking to do more research on poverty and development in Southeast Asia, which can unlock more funding from funders who want to donate to a particular country or region. But I'm not the best person to speak about this.
I also thought of another point: if you're outside of the US and Western Europe,[1] it's just harder to stay involved in EA as a human being. This feels obvious to me and I almost didn't post this comment because it seemed like 'duh', but I remembered that
...This seems obvious to me but I haven't seen ALLFED mention it; forgive me if you already considered this ages ago.
Is cellular/acellular agriculture research relevant to this? If so, are you in touch with the organisations working to advance this -- New Harvest and the Good Food Institute?
e.g. Solar Foods in Finland is using bacteria to produce protein from hydrogen: https://www.labiotech.eu/biotech-of-the-week/solar-foods-space-mission-finland/
These are not yet cost-effective, and they might not be feasible in a catastrophe, but the equipment, knowledge, a
...Cool! I found this post from your comment in this thread: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wwW4u4sXbP8YbfBts/eagxvirtual-unconference-saturday-june-20th-2020. With interest rates dropping, high-yield savings accounts are becoming less attractive, at least in the US and UK. Does this affect your other recommendations too?
I think this is what Blake is talking about when he writes 'a lot of the true technical challenges are on the bioprocess design side'. These are exactly as you say -- the 'creation of thick cuts of any tissue' includes getting the right cell lines and having them differentiate into the right things at the right time, having the right scaffolds, and putting things into the right bioreactors.
Yes, and in fact there is probably more work on this from the EA community than on a/cellular agriculture. Many charities recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators focus on plant-based alternatives and meat reduction in general, such as the Good Food Institute, Albert Schweitzer Foundation, and Anima International.
The ‘approximate share’ columns are the current split for traditional animal products, as of 2018! I’ll update the text below to make it clearer.
What do you mean? I’ve not heard of critical social science before and just googled it. Are you saying that EA should ignore ‘social conditions that contribute to relations of domination and oppression’?