[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Micro Meat (YC S21) - Technology for scal...
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Launch HN: Micro Meat (YC S21) - Technology for scaling cultivated
meat
Hi HN community, Anne-Sophie and Vincent here, the founders of
Micro Meat. We've developed new techniques for producing cultivated
meat. Cultivated meat is just real meat based on animal cells, but
instead of getting meat by growing animals, it is grown in
bioreactors. This will soon be much better for our planet: less
land, water and feed required for the animals, less environmental
impact from cutting down forests for farmland and feed production,
less antibiotics, and of course, far less harm to animals. The
basic process for cultivating meat is known, but there remain
difficult problems in bringing it to mass production. I'll describe
the process, the problems, and our solution. Cultivating meat is
similar to brewing beer, but instead of growing yeast, we grow
muscle cells (plus fat cells for deliciousness!). The process
begins with a handful of stem cells that are isolated from an
animal. Initially, the volume is tiny and the cells are handled
very carefully. They are mixed with medium, which is a mixture of
growth factors like insulin, along with amino acids, and other
nutrients that they need to grow. Then they are proliferated
(multiplied) to upwards of 10M cells per mL. After proliferating,
the overall volume gets above 250 mL and shear stresses start to
become an issue, meaning the cells get damaged and break apart.
Traditional bioreactors use large impellers for mixing the cells
and medium, along with a sparger which adds gasses like CO2 and O2.
The impeller, gas bubbles, baffles, and internal surfaces are all
locations where cells encounter damaging shear stresses. That's not
a problem if you're cultivating bacteria, yeast, or other
microorganisms that have a high tolerance for this. But mammal,
bird and fish cells are very _in_ tolerant of such stresses, making
it hard to cultivate meat. This is the first problem we address.
After the cells have proliferated from a very small volume to tens
or hundreds of liters, they are still a mass of single, unorganized
cells. In order to get delicious meat we need to make those
individual cells merge and differentiate together to form actual
muscle tissue that has the right texture. When cells differentiate,
they change from being stem cells, into specialized cells and
structures, for example, inside the cells myosin heavy chains
develop along the actin cell-skeleton. These myosin-actin complexes
are basically the motors of the muscle. For this, the cells get
seeded onto constructs called scaffolds. A scaffold is like housing
for the cells, a structure where cells can easily move into and
grow. We usually try to make scaffolds that mimic the cells'
natural environment in the animal's body so they feel as at home as
possible. Traditional methods pour the proliferated cells on top
of the scaffold and hope that they "stick". This is easy, but
results in tissues that aren't uniform--in some places the cells
attach well, in other places not at all. Additionally, the
scaffolds are not always edible--a major problem if you're
producing meat! Consistent cell distribution throughout the
scaffold is the second problem we address, and edibility is the
third. The scaffolds are then reintroduced to reactors for another
proliferation or differentiation, depending on the process. The
cells are given time to mature, where they finalize their
structure, orientation and internal make-up. At this point, you
have muscle tissue, and the only thing left to add is components
such as fat, which add to the taste and texture of the meat. This
process is immensely complex and the cost to produce it at scale is
tremendous. To bring cultivated meat to the masses, the complexity
and cost problems have to be solved. Many companies have spent
years on R&D, but are still not able to produce at larger scales.
We want to change that. We asked ourselves, how could we protect
these cells while they are in the harsh environment of the reactor,
while also creating homogenous, high quality 3D scaffolds that are
consistent throughout? Our method addresses shear stress by
shielding the cells within the scaffold. Because the cells are
embedded _inside_ the scaffold they don't feel the damaging wall
shear stresses inside a bioreactor, only the surface of the
scaffold itself is exposed to them. Our scaffold composition is
designed to maintain typical diffusion properties, so even though
the cells are shielded and don't touch the medium (which contains
the nutrients) the nutrients still make it to the cells. As time
goes on and the cells differentiate and mature, they now have a 3D
construct where they can begin to develop into the texture of meat.
This process enables cells to be seeded at nearly any rate, from
only a few grams per minute to over thousands of kilograms per
minute. This means our technology can be used from the research
stage all the way through full production. We don't intend to sell
meat ourselves. Our business aims at helping other companies to go
to market faster, by eliminating the complexity associated with
scaffold seeding. Our scaffolding technology easily integrates into
any bioreactor train on the market. Users can purchase or lease the
machine for around $250-$500, depending on their needs. Our
scaffold bio-inks are universal for mammals, birds and fish, and
can be purchased either as single orders or as a subscription,
ranging from volumes of one liter up to thousands. Each liter of
scaffold costs less than $2 and produces 2 to 5 kilograms of meat.
A word on our backgrounds: I (Anne-Sophie) am a biomedical and
tissue engineer with a PhD from ETH Zurich and Masters from
Imperial College London. I've been working on creating functional
biological tissues in the lab most of my professional career. I
love animals and have been a vegetarian since I was 8 years old. I
also love our planet and decided to use my tissue engineering
skills to help change our food system. And I love good food! so the
idea of amazing new food products is highly appealing to me. I
(Vincent) am a space systems engineer. I've been building, testing,
launching and analyzing the Delta IV, Atlas V, New Glenn and SLS
rockets for the last 7 years. I've probably had my hands in almost
every stage of launch system development, from napkin sketches to
saying go for launch. Space has always been awe-inspiring to me,
but the climate crisis needs direct attention in order to stop,
reverse and survive the impacts of climate change. After
researching the impact the livestock industry has on our planet, I
knew I wanted to get involved to stop it. If you're interested in
learning more or collaborating, you're warmly welcome to reach out
to us at founders@micromeat.com. We'd love to hear your thoughts on
any of the above, from cultivated meat in general to the details of
the production process, and whatever else you'd like to ask or
share!
Author : asmertgen
Score : 264 points
Date : 2022-03-10 14:40 UTC (8 hours ago)
| pdc56 wrote:
| Has anyone done a study where bioreactor meat is offered on
| actual restaurant menus to see how many people actually order it?
| Not actually offering it, but apologising to the customer if they
| order it and explaining the study.
|
| I can't seem to find anything. I find it hard to get excited by
| technology development in this area without having confidence
| people will be interested in it.
|
| Good luck anyway!
| desireco42 wrote:
| Hey, excuse my ignorance. How difficult is to procure food you
| use to grow cells? You mentioned insulin and such.
|
| Can you comment on how "green" are those materials?
| vpribble wrote:
| Great question! So the basic medium composition itself is
| fairly simple, but the growth factors can be difficult to make.
| There are many places along the supply chain that are strained
| due to recent events. Because of this, procuring the food is
| somewhat difficult, but should become easier in the future.
| Many companies within cultivated meat (such as Heuros, Multus,
| Future Fields) are also working on animal-free growth factors
| by using precision fermentation. Precision fermentation is
| essentially beer brewing, but the yeast is genetically modified
| to produce a certain growth factor. As for being green, the
| industry is trending towards trying to find ways to utilize
| plants as much as possible across production phases.
| Eventually, besides the initial cells, most cultivated meat
| production could rely on common plants for the nutrients and
| growth factors for the cells. This could drastically decrease
| overall emissions, and even make the products carbon-negative.
| ada1981 wrote:
| I love this project as a vegan for the last 23 years!
|
| Our group EarthPilot would love to provide support to this
| civilization scale project.
|
| We work with some of the most brilliant and successful founders
| and teams on earth on leadership, mindset, high performance,
| culture and emotional mastery.
| asmertgen wrote:
| Great, do you want to shoot us an email?
| d15s wrote:
| Excited for what's to come, best of success in your endeavor.
|
| Looking at the comments they're a good insight into the
| challenges of what you're aiming to do. Don't get distracted by
| the criticism, you're solving for it.
|
| "Just become vegan/vegetarian, don't waste your time creating new
| meat". If our civilization has the resources and talent to make
| what you're doing happen, then why not? It'll definitely help
| someone somewhere. Also, this could potentially have future
| applications in the biomedical industry. We should embrace tech
| R&D.
|
| "The processes are currently expensive or use non-scalable
| elements (food/FBS)". Of course, this has to be solved. One step
| at a time, besides they're not the only startup working on an
| area of the cultivated meat value-chain.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Great concept!
|
| Can you make it into production? The info I've found shows only 1
| venture funding round for $125k USD.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| To those wondering why lab-grown meat instead of going vegan:
|
| People are driven by incentives. People like meat, so instead of
| asking them to stop eating meat, which most won't do, make it a
| better option that fits with whatever the _asker 's_ goals are.
| In this case, you'd want people to care about animals or decrease
| environmental effects, so the way to do that _while also
| considering people 's incentives of loving meat_ is to have lab
| grown meat, or something close enough like plant-based meat
| substitutes that taste like meat.
|
| You will never get anything done by appealing to individuals to
| change their habits wholesale, that's just not going to happen,
| people are too entrenched in their defaults. You have to appeal
| to people's wants and desires and bend them towards your own
| goals. Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat (and now Micro Meat, etc)
| have got it spot on: economically target the incentives of
| wanting to eat meat but make them out of non-sentient substances
| like plants or bacteria growing muscle cells.
|
| That people still consider that everyone will go vegan or stop
| eating meat altogether is a fantastical view of the world, it has
| no basis in true reality. There will be more people contributing
| towards the lessening of the suffering of animals in the next few
| years via eating these non-sentient substitutes than has ever
| been achieved in the last century of the modern vegan movement,
| simply because it seems now finally that larger human incentives
| are being targeted directly, which is much likelier to effect
| change than individualistic pandering.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| It's even simpler than that.
|
| There are some people who simply don't function as well when
| they don't eat meat. "But I'm vegan and I do just fine, in fact
| it I feel better then when I was eating meat". I don't doubt
| you, but I also don't doubt the ex-vegans who tried and tried,
| but just felt awful and tired until they reintroduced meat.
| Different people have different metabolisms, and some people
| just can't properly digest certain foods for some reason.
|
| Meat has a much higher concentration of protein and iron than
| vegan food. Even foods like tofu and seitan (sold refrigerated
| at grocery stores) are only 50% protein while chicken breast is
| around 90% and lean fish is almost 100%. The only vegan
| alternatives which do have a comparable ratio (protein powder,
| TVP) are basically pure protein extracted from vegetables, the
| quality and bioavailability doesn't compare (apparently the
| human body is bad at absorbing pure nutrients vs. "natural"
| food that contains them). Many ex-vegans have been consistently
| anemic, even while taking iron supplements, until they re-
| introduced meat.
| jallen_dot_dev wrote:
| Why does a food need to contain 90% or 100% protein? I think
| many people vastly overestimate how much protein they need.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| I'm one of those people who genuinely function better with a
| high-meat diet.
|
| The irony being that I absolutely love veggies of all kinds,
| and would have no trouble eating vegetarian, if it weren't
| for the side effects on my health. I'd be thrilled to try lab
| meat!
| exdsq wrote:
| I wonder if there will be a category between vegetarian and
| vegan where it consists of vegan & lab-grown, so no animal is
| that impacted (it's my understanding lab grown is far better
| than current practices in the dairy industry, for example).
| asmertgen wrote:
| Thank you for this! Totally agree!
| dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
| Will be down voted for this. But here are my unsubstantiated
| comment: If lab meat becomes equivalent in quality to animal meat
| the sum total energy will exceed the energy required to obtain
| animal meat. It's difficult to beat nature when energy efficiency
| is concerned.( same for for carbon capture). Also nature does it
| in the lest pollution manner that artificial processes will not
| be able to match. My argument is not nature-knows-best rather
| nature-is-excellent at something due to the trial/error nature of
| evolution over eons.
| wk_end wrote:
| Two things.
|
| First, there's no evolutionary pressure to minimize pollution,
| so I don't know why you'd assume that "nature does it in the
| lest pollution manner [sic] that artificial processes will not
| be able to match".
|
| Secondly, even if nature is somehow more efficient than science
| can ever match for running an entire living creature, that's
| not what lab meat is doing. Almost everything an animal needs
| to do - think, feel, breathe, digest, move, maintain organs,
| and on and on and on - lab meat doesn't need to do. So
| potentially losses in efficiency for growing meat cells can be
| made up for by the fact that you're not doing any of the other
| things animals need to do besides growing meat cells.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Evolution doesn't prioritise efficiency, in fact. Evolution
| prioritises the basics for survival and is highly resistant
| to change. Change happens only when the environment changes
| and survival is at stake. That's when the traits that helps
| in survival become dominant - because anything without it
| gets killed.
| idealmedtech wrote:
| Hi Anne-Sophie and Vincent, excellent post and congratulations on
| the launch! My main question is about the growth factors; I've
| heard that there's a few compounds used in these processes that
| really don't scale, fetal bovine serum being the biggest one
| right now. Do you have novel approaches to creating this? How
| will this scale in the future?
|
| Thanks, best of luck!
| vpribble wrote:
| Thank you! For the growth factors, we do not have any plans
| currently for producing them in-house, however there are
| several companies within the industry (Future Fields for
| example) that are making great progress in developing animal-
| free growth factors. Right now, using precision fermentation
| seems to be the preferred method of production. This is
| essentially beer brewing but the yeast is modified to produce a
| certain protein/ growth factor. Since this process is yeast
| based, it should scale fairly well, as yeast is resistant to
| the stresses found inside the fermenters.
| greggeter wrote:
| mromanuk wrote:
| If this get to market, it would make a lot of us, vegan by
| default.
| buzzy_hacker wrote:
| Congratulations on the launch, I genuinely think this ranks among
| the most positive high-impact work one could be doing right now.
| The scale of animal cruelty is tremendous. Disrupting the meat
| industry is so important. Do let us know if you need any software
| engineers!
| asmertgen wrote:
| Thank you so much! We are extremely passionate about this and
| its great to see so much support here! Even though software
| engineering is not something we need right away we are very
| happy to connect with passionate people for future
| opportunities! You can drop us an email if you want to stay in
| touch!
| Nathanael_M wrote:
| Wow, I have so many questions. First, I really respect people
| acting on conviction. Anyway, I have lots of questions (all
| completely uninformed) so feel free to ignore any of them, haha.
|
| 1) Where are you in the development process? Have your scaffolds
| been used to successfully grow a piece of edible meat?
|
| 2) When do you think the value of cultivated meat will grow to a
| point to make the industry self-sustaining? Or even just for it
| to become a viable option for restaurants/consumers?
|
| 3) How is flavour added in the process? Since diet has so much
| impact on flavour, how can you experiment with flavour while
| growing it in lab? I understand this is specific to another step
| in the process, so if you can't answer, no worries.
|
| 4) When you say scaffolding, my mind immediately goes to a very
| visual/physically defined place. I'm picturing like a Ribeye
| Exoskeleton. What level of control over the sculpting of the end
| product do you have, or does the scaffolding function on a very
| general growth support level that results in the development of
| an end product that is then sculpted by the meat-maker?
|
| 5) Anne-Sophie, have you tried any lab grown meat?
|
| 6) How far away are we from seeing "at-home" kits for meat
| growing? I'm picturing a world where a restaurant has their meat-
| printer going all the time, experimenting with different flavours
| and textures for the next menu!
|
| 7) Does this have any non-edible use cases? Can this process be
| applied to growing functional muscle/tissue, not just edible
| muscle/tissue?
|
| Thanks! Again, feel free to pick and choose.
| vpribble wrote:
| 1) We have already created our first piece of edible pork using
| our method!
|
| 2) ATKearney in their article "How will cultured meat and meat
| alternatives disrupt the agricultural and food industry?"
| estimates that about 10% of global meat consumption could be
| switched over to cultivated meat around 2030. While 10% is low,
| I think you'll start seeing restaurant experiences start
| cropping up more and more over the next 3-7 years.
|
| 3) For cultivated meat, one method of adding flavor is by
| cultivating fat cells and merging it with the muscle cells
| after maturing.
|
| 4) With our method, the final shape of the meat can actually
| get very unique. There really are no limitations on the shape/
| layout of the meat, and the final shaping is done after
| maturing the cells. If you want to have chicken meat in the
| shape of a ribeye, you will definitely be able to with our
| technology.
|
| 5) We have not tasted it yet, but we will very soon!
|
| 6) We are probably closer than you might imagine. Our
| technology enables production at any scale, from a full
| industrial plant to a small "home brewing" set-up. Really, it
| just comes down to getting the medium and growth factors to be
| cheaper for the average consumer.
|
| 7) Generally yes, with some minor and not so minor adaptations.
| asmertgen wrote:
| I haven't had the chance to taste the meat of other companies
| sadly, but we plan on be ready for tasting of our product in
| the next months!
| Nathanael_M wrote:
| Let me know if you need any beta testers ;)
| 2457013579 wrote:
| Beta tasters*
| rs999gti wrote:
| > 5) We have not tasted it yet, but we will very soon!
|
| You need double blind taste tests. It doesn't matter if
| cultured meat is good for the planet, if Joe Sixpack won't
| eat cultured meat because it tastes bad or has weird non-meat
| properties and textures, then your product will get no
| traction
| liuliu wrote:
| Beyond and Impossible is doing well. Like solar,
| replacement would be harder sale. Focus on uniqueness,
| specific use cases probably better.
| yurishimo wrote:
| This has been my experience. I'm pretty happy with more
| processed lab meat. Burgers, chicken nuggets, etc.
|
| If the texture/experience of chicken breast or a filet
| mignon can be perfected though, then we're talking about
| mass adoption on a global scale.
|
| I do wonder if this means a potential end to cooking
| methods like BBQ. The skeleton of the animal plays a huge
| role in that cooking environment, I wonder if we can
| replicate it as well?
|
| Looking forward to the future!
| Nathanael_M wrote:
| This is all very exciting. I am looking forward to a well
| marbled chicken steak in the future.
|
| Thanks for taking the time to answer.
| iamcurious wrote:
| > Good Food Institute is estimating that about 10% of global
| meat consumption could be switched over to cultivated meat
| around 2030. While 10% is low
|
| 10% in the next 8 years seems very impressive to me. Do you
| have a link to the report? I searched but their State of the
| Industry report has a question mark instead of a date
|
| https://gfi.org/resource/cultivated-meat-eggs-and-dairy-
| stat...
| zardo wrote:
| 10% of the global meat market is around 30 million metric
| tons per year. What are we currently at?
| vpribble wrote:
| Good catch! This should have said ATKearney, and has been
| updated. You can find the report here:
| https://gastronomiaycia.republica.com/wp-
| content/uploads/201...
| iamcurious wrote:
| Thank you.
| thecolorblue wrote:
| I have also worked with bioreactors. Sounds like you have made
| some great progress. Just a couple thoughts:
|
| 1) there are plenty of other niches for microbe production that
| could possibly use the same technology. I am not suggesting you
| switch now, but something to keep in mind for the future. In my
| opinion, the current standard processes for working with
| bioreactors are slow and manual. I think there is a lot of room
| for efficiency improvements but it is rarely worth it for
| individual companies to make those investments.
|
| 2) Is all of the growth happening in a single bioreactor or do
| you have multiple sized bioreactors for different stages? I don't
| have a scientific background and I'm trying to understand the
| standard practices better.
|
| edit: fixed typos.
| vpribble wrote:
| We definitely agree with you that the reactors currently used
| in biopharma were not really meant for the level of production
| required to scale cultivated meat. As for the growth, typically
| you'll find what's called a "seed train" for growing cultivated
| meat. This is basically a series of reactors starting from a
| small flask around 10 mL and ending in a reactor greater than
| 20000L! The train might have reactors along the way, 10mL,
| 200mL, 4L, 80L, etc. until the final reactor volume is reached.
| Some of these reactors, especially the larger reactors near the
| end of the process, are meant to handle the cells at a specific
| stage in the lifecycle, such as maturing, where the cells grow
| in volume.
| thecolorblue wrote:
| Ah, got it. It is an interesting detail of the process that I
| would have never thought of coming into the industry.
|
| Thanks for the explanation.
| ada1981 wrote:
| Can you share more about your ideas?
| [deleted]
| thecolorblue wrote:
| Which ideas do you mean? 1 or 2?
|
| I realize now that I probably should have made two comments.
| MrMan wrote:
| Is cultivated meat sufficiently efficient compared to the
| translation of inputs to output compared to vegetables? My
| primary reason for cutting my meat consumption by 95% is
| sustainability. Ethical treatment of animals is a distant second.
|
| So if this is still not sustainable, please address why do it,
| instead of writing a long preamble on the implementation details.
| tonmoy wrote:
| Can you comment on the total carbon emission compared to
| traditional method of producing beef? Assuming you can use
| completely renewable sources for all the electricity needs, how
| much more carbon is emitted per kg meat produced?
| vpribble wrote:
| Good Food Institute has a great write-up on the reduction of
| emissions and land use which can be found here
| (https://gfi.org/blog/cultivated-meat-lca-tea/). To summarize
| it, with renewables along the production chain, estimates for
| the reduction of greenhouse emissions/land use for chicken,
| pork and beef are 17%/63%, 52%/72%, and up to 92%/95%
| respectively.
| ttcbj wrote:
| I am very excited about the prospect of cultivated meat. It just
| makes so much more ethical, environmental and eventually economic
| sense. This innovation seems inevitable, but someone still has to
| figure out all the details. Sounds like you have some great
| insights.
|
| I am rooting for you!
| dyeje wrote:
| One thing that really interests me about cultivated meat is the
| potential for designer cuts that would be otherwise impossible
| (e.g. wagyu level marbled chicken, a beef ribeye with swirls of
| pork intermixed, etc). Specifically, I'm thinking of fine dining
| applications. Do you forsee these kinds of applications coming to
| life eventually, or am I misunderstanding the capability of the
| technology?
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| If the goal is to replicate conventional meat in taste and
| texture, it is a really high bar. But I wonder what fraction of
| slaughtered animals are used for non-human consumption. Eg, cats
| won't care nearly as much as humans if it has the proper texture.
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| Awesome technology and congrats on the launch :)
| ultrasounder wrote:
| As a born vegetarian(Religious reasons), I wholeheartedly support
| this project. I am going to be secretly following your progress
| and cheering for you. Godspeed.
| asmertgen wrote:
| Thank you!
| dehrmann wrote:
| Are you looking at how you make the scaffolds and making sure
| they're potentially vegan? A lot of vegetarians and vegans will
| be curious about lab-grown meat, but would be turned off if
| something like collagen was used as part of the scaffold.
| [deleted]
| vpribble wrote:
| Yes, we are in the process of finalizing our animal-free
| scaffold composition.
| biztos wrote:
| > After researching the impact the livestock industry has on our
| planet, I knew I wanted to get involved to stop it.
|
| I applaud the desire to help humanity eat healthier and saner
| amounts of meat, but...
|
| I remain unconvinced that creating relatively resource-intensive
| fake meats is better than using highly efficient non-animal
| meat[0]. Most people won't eat either one unless they have no
| choice, but if it comes to that one thing is much better for the
| planet than the other. And if it doesn't come to that, we're
| gonna burn the planet to ashes for our McRibs.
|
| Isn't the real solution to eat less meat, as opposed to eating
| more fake meat?
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermetia_illucens#As_human_foo...
| UglyToad wrote:
| The problem, as a vegetarian of something like 4 years, is that
| meat is really bloody tasty. Simply put, it's extremely nice to
| eat.
|
| So rather than a future where we all eat flies or tofu or
| lentils or seitan or something if we can make a dent in the
| impact of animal agriculture while catering for the increase in
| meat eating in Asia then it's a good thing.
| coldpie wrote:
| > Isn't the real solution to eat less meat, as opposed to
| eating more fake meat?
|
| Sure. What's your plan to get there from here?
| rattray wrote:
| I think many people would rather burn the planet down than eat
| fly larvae.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Interesting stuff!
|
| I've read that contamination is a huge issue, essentially,
| bacteria grows much better and faster at the substrate than
| mammalian cells. So, how do you avoid inadvertently cultivating
| smelly plaques instead of delicious meat?
|
| Or is that not really an issue and I'm misinformed?
|
| Best of luck. We really need it.
| vpribble wrote:
| Contamination is definitely a problem for cultivated meat. It
| is one of the leading risks when scaling because if the reactor
| is contaminated at all, you could lose entire batches of meat,
| and as you can imagine, this is a huge cost hit. To avoid this,
| cultivated meat is grown in sterile, clean environments. The
| same kind of equipment you'd find in a hospital (autoclaves) is
| used to sterilize the equipment common in cultivated meat.
| There are two basic ideas for preventing contamination. One is
| to use single use bioreactors, which are sterile after
| manufacturing. This is extremely common in the biopharma
| industry, and is preferred because it doesn't require complex
| cleaning systems. Of course, anything that is single use ends
| up in a landfill, so thats part of the trade off as well. The
| other option is to use reusable bioreactors. These require a
| steam clean after each batch, which adds to the overall
| operational and build costs of the reactor. This can also
| generate waste products which have to be handled. Maintaining
| cleanliness is a challenge, but with proper laboratory
| practices, and the right kind of bioreactor, contamination
| should be less of a problem.
| iamdvlpr wrote:
| I'm also assuming that with your system engineering
| background, you're also limiting personnel access to the
| reactors or better, to the rooms where they will be located
| as well as all security measures to avoid social engineering
| hacking into the facilities, right Vincent?
|
| Congrats on the initiative, just absolutely fantastic!
| vpribble wrote:
| Of course! As the factories get larger and larger, security
| becomes even more important, and traditional methods such
| as limiting access, badge-in/ badge-out, and access codes
| would be utilized.
| robbles wrote:
| Do these sterility requirements have an impact on the food
| safety concerns for the final product? e.g. does the meat end
| up either completely ruined vs. totally safe to eat raw? Just
| curious, I have no plans to eat raw cultivated meat :)
| aendruk wrote:
| > I have no plans to eat raw cultivated meat :)
|
| This could actually be one of the new doors it opens.
| Perfectly sterile sashimi can travel farther.
| greggeter wrote:
| Honest question. Why make meat? Why not use your resources to
| create nutrition bars? You have to source everything the meat
| needs to grow anyway (and what are those sources/impacts?), why
| not just press it in a bar and be done? If you're afraid folks
| will really miss their meat, so you want to ply them with meat,
| let me just say - folks who love meat will find the meat they
| love. They won't likely shift to reactor meat for environmental
| reasons.
|
| Conscientious meat lovers will invest in regenerative
| agriculture, lobby for ending corn feeding, reclaim all that
| land, return it to natural grassland, and let ruminant animals do
| what they do best -- feed the soil and make meat.
| Nathanael_M wrote:
| Just throwing one option in here, if lab-grown meat can be
| grown cheaper than regular meat is produced, there's definitely
| a market. I like beef. Beef is getting VERY expensive where I
| live. If I could get lab-grown beef that's, say, 80% the
| experience at 50% the cost, I'd happily do that.
|
| I think achieving a future where eating real meat is treated
| like a special occasion, but lab-grown meat is the norm is
| possible.
|
| Finally, very few people would eat nutrition bars as regular
| meal replacements. Maybe there's a (vaguely dystopian) future
| where people replace most their meals with joyless
| supplementation, but I think a lot more success will be found
| in replacing real-meat with lab-meat.
|
| Maybe this is all just too optimistic.
| xusbwxucur wrote:
| This is a straw man argument not being asked in good faith. I
| see your from Texas as well so a little too on the nose.
|
| There are clearly tons of 'nutrition bars' on the market
| already and that is unrelated to lab grown meat.
| dang wrote:
| Whoa - please don't cross into personal or regional attack.
| That just makes everything worse.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| mintone wrote:
| I have no comment (or knowledge) on the product, but appreciate
| the way you described this. It was similar, albeit a little more
| technical, to Matt Levine's brilliant simplified explanations of
| technical financial subjects.
| rolleiflex wrote:
| Just wanted to say this is probably the best launch HN
| description I've ever seen, and I've been here for the better
| part of the decade. Thank you for going into the real meat (ahem)
| of it and not being scared of writing at length.
|
| Your cause, if successful, will hopefully indirectly result in
| orders of magnitude reduction in total animal suffering, so best
| of luck and godspeed.
| asmertgen wrote:
| Thank you so much! Highly appreciated!
| notahacker wrote:
| Agreed, it was a particularly well-written description and if
| the end products manufactured with it reached the right
| taste/price, they're something I'd eat regularly
| Bancakes wrote:
| Fantastic! Your product will help millions of people quit eating
| meat and save the planet.
|
| Imagine diluting the affordable-meat market. "Is this salami real
| or fake? Ugh I don't know, I'd rather eat soy than glued together
| chimeras."
| dibujante wrote:
| No real comment beyond cool! Go you!
| tke248 wrote:
| Does the meat every get exercised with electric current or
| anything? Can you make it bigger that way like real muscle..
| asmertgen wrote:
| There are different approaches of helping the engineered muscle
| tissue to mature, one being electrical stimulation. It's an
| interesting idea to use it to increase the volume, but the
| effect of very high stimulation on texture has to be considered
| as well!
| bleuchase wrote:
| > but the climate crisis needs direct attention in order to stop,
| reverse and survive the impacts of climate change.
|
| Since you brought it up, are you aware of how global average
| surface temperature is measured? Or the adjustments that have
| been made to historic records?
| coldpie wrote:
| As a meat fan, and also an Earth fan, this is something I've
| always wanted to see happen. I've mostly fallen on the Earth side
| of the fence, which means I've been vegetarian-ish for years. I
| would love to be able to eat what I want without the climate
| guilt. Glad to see this tech is getting closer towards market,
| and I hope your business is successful.
| asmertgen wrote:
| Great to hear you are excited about this!
| badrabbit wrote:
| Hmm. The name. It has a connotation lol.
| triyambakam wrote:
| As usual VC money finds an astoundingly naive way to pretend to
| help the planet.
|
| We could just grow and eat beans.
| kieckerjan wrote:
| Impressive initiative. I understand too little of this matter to
| judge the merits of your approach. However, it is clear to me
| that if cultivated meat achieves feature parity with "regular"
| meat and becomes cheaper to produce, it will be the biggest
| revolution in food since the invention of agriculture, and a
| possible world saver. Thank you for trying! :-)
| asmertgen wrote:
| Exactly that's what is driving us! Thank you for your comment!
| second--shift wrote:
| This is very interesting from a society/technology perspective. I
| support your efforts! I do have one or two fundamental questions
| about this industry/space, not necessarily related to this
| company, but this might be a good place to ask.
|
| I am a vegan of about 10 years now, and as (potentially) a
| constituent of the addressable market, here's why I'm not going
| to buy lab-grown "meat": my primary motivations for dietary
| veganism are to do with non-renewable resource consumption:
| potable water, land use, oil/energy, emissions, etc. Traditional
| industrial meat consumption uses around 10x land/energy/ghg
| emissions as plant crops per calorie, and about 100x the water
| (or more). It's not clear to me how the lab-grown meat addresses
| these resource consumption considerations.
|
| ---
|
| > Cultivating meat is similar to brewing beer
|
| As a dietary vegan I don't know the first thing about meat, but I
| do know a little about home-brewing. In the case of home-brewing
| wine or beer, at least for me, it's about ~5x volume in water
| consumption (~5L of water makes 1L wine), including cleaning,
| mixing, etc. This is on a tiny scale; I'm sure if water
| consumption was optimized for you could do even less. Is
| cultivating lab meat closer in water use to brewing beer, or
| traditional meat farming? I'm also curious about the energy
| input; how many calories of energy in -> calories out?
|
| If there are order-of-magnitude gains to be made in non-renewable
| resource consumption, I can get behind this even if I personally
| find it a little gross (sorry). At a small scale, I don't doubt
| the resource consumption is non-optimal, but how much can be
| gained by scale/optimization?
| triyambakam wrote:
| > dietary vegan
|
| Plant based is probably the most common term for what you're
| trying to describe. Veganism is the ethical position.
| jfengel wrote:
| I think of lab-grown meat as harm reduction. It will almost
| certainly be more resource-intensive than a vegan diet, but
| less so than raising an entire animal for the fraction that
| becomes edible.
|
| It will also produce less waste, or at least better-controlled
| waste, than raising an entire animal. But again, more than a
| purely plant-based diet.
|
| I can't give you numbers, but really, I can't see any reason
| for you to switch away from a vegan diet if you're satisfied
| with it. However, a lot of other people will switch from an
| animal-based diet to one that is somewhat more responsible and
| causes considerably less pain and suffering.
|
| All meat eaters live with a certain cognitive dissonance on
| that, which most simply ignore because they consider plant-
| based diets insufficient. And as a vegan you know that a
| healthy plant-based diet isn't always easy -- though made a
| little easier recently by some highly processed products that
| aren't really all that much better for health or the
| environment.
| pdog wrote:
| Can I see a picture of the bioreactors?
| allisdust wrote:
| May be not specific to your technology but a general question i
| have is how are the tissues and cells protected from bacteria?
| Does the growth medium contain antibiotics? If so, how is the
| final product separated from it.
| strainer wrote:
| I think this is liable to be an extremely confounding aspect of
| the venture - that meat naturally grows in the context of a
| living animals immune system which interfaces with the wider
| microbial reality. Diverse diseases arise and wane through
| extremely ancient dynamics which we are not close to having
| full knowledge or command over. I could not trust commercially
| driven scientific assurances from the present age, that food of
| all things can be mass produced safely in such a biologically
| novel scheme. It is not so long ago since all where shocked by
| the novel generation and danger of Prions in the food chain,
| some years later that "Junk DNA" is not in fact Junk, etc...
|
| While some risk of strange new disease would still be chanced -
| it would be orders of magnitude less extreme if this cell
| cloning technology concentrated in early days, on mass
| producing leathers and furs, rather than the very matter we put
| into our living bodies.
| asmertgen wrote:
| In research often antibiotics are added to avoid contamination
| from handling etc. However, large scale and automated
| production processes can be run antibiotic free because of
| their very controlled sterile environment. Then the product
| would also be antibiotic free.
| MrMan wrote:
| its easy just add antibiotics to the slurry
| nopnop77 wrote:
| Well, those PhD guys don't even know that eating same cells all
| time would kill our species ? We need to assimilate different DNA
| from each plant, each animal, to keep evolving our own one and
| avoid diseases. It's basic and this is why this kind of stuff
| don't cross some borders. Focus on reducing meat consumption
| instead.
| d15s wrote:
| they can proliferate different cells, changing the starting
| sample every now and then, animals would still evolve and they
| could just do a new biopsy
| wk_end wrote:
| Do you have any sources for the claim that we "assimilate" DNA
| from our food and use it to "evolve our own"?
| atweiden wrote:
| Pharmaceutical industry insider Paul Wood claims lab grown meat
| will never be cost-effective [1]:
|
| > For four years, Wood, who has a PhD in immunology, served as
| the executive director of global discovery for Pfizer Animal
| Health. (His division was later spun off into Zoetis, today the
| largest animal health company in the world.) One of his
| responsibilities was to oversee production of vaccines, which can
| involve infecting living cells with weakened virus strains and
| inducing those cells to multiply inside large bioreactors. In
| addition to yielding large quantities of vaccine-grade viruses,
| this approach also creates significant amounts of animal cell
| slurry, similar to the product next-generation protein startups
| want to process further into meat. Wood knew the process to be
| extremely technical, resource-intensive, and expensive. He didn't
| understand how costly biomanufacturing techniques could ever be
| used to produce cheap, abundant human food.
|
| > ...
|
| > Wood couldn't believe what he was hearing. In his view, GFI's
| TEA report did little to justify increased public investment. He
| found it to be an outlandish document, one that trafficked more
| in wishful thinking than in science. He was so incensed that he
| hired a former Pfizer colleague, Huw Hughes, to analyze GFI's
| analysis. Today, Hughes is a private consultant who helps
| biomanufacturers design and project costs for their production
| facilities; he's worked on six sites devoted to cell culture at
| scale. Hughes concluded that GFI's report projected unrealistic
| cost decreases, and left key aspects of the production process
| undefined, while significantly underestimating the expense and
| complexity of constructing a suitable facility.
|
| > ...
|
| > "After a while, you just think: Am I going crazy? Or do these
| people have some secret sauce that I've never heard of?" Wood
| said. "And the reality is, no--they're just doing fermentation.
| But what they're saying is, 'Oh, we'll do it better than anyone
| else has ever, ever done."
|
| How will your approach to lab-grown meat achieve cost
| competitiveness?
|
| [1]: https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-
| sca...
| blondie9x wrote:
| @asmertgen thoughts on this research https://thecounter.org/lab-
| grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-sca... ?
| shafyy wrote:
| This is a very good article. I place lab-grown in the same mind
| bucket as carbon capturing. Both are futuristic technologies
| that don't exist today (not really) but get a lot of media
| hype. For both, there's a much easier solution that exists
| today (e.g, switching to renewable energies, switching to
| plant-based meats) that are great and are also gaining a lot of
| traction. With both tech, it's unclear if they will ever work
| at scale. For both cases, it's now more important than ever
| that we reduce emissions _today_ , and not hope for a maybe
| technofix in the future.
|
| I don't mean to dunk on your research and proprietary tech. I'm
| just often pissed to see that these kind of tech is completely
| overblown and overhyped in the mainstream and media. The worst
| part is, it gives people an excuse to not change their behavior
| today: "I'll switch to lab-grown meat when they sell", "I won't
| cut back on flying, doesn't matter since they will recapture
| that carbon anyways very soon".
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| For carbon capture, I don't think its the case that
| equivalent technology exists today. On our current trajectory
| the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is going to keep
| going up for the next 10-20 years, regardless of how fast
| renewable energy is deployed. And to be in the best position
| to stop and reverse CO2 levels we need to start developing
| carbon capture today, for it to be ready to deploy at scale
| in a decade or two.
|
| I get the risk of giving people permission not to change
| behavior, but I don't think we actually see that happening
| today. Tesla sells every car it produces, and more and more
| governments and companies are making meaningful climate
| commitments and starting to follow through on them.
|
| To address climate change we need all hands on deck, and that
| means exploring every possible approach to the problem. We
| can walk and chew gum at the same time, and don't need to
| write off technologies when they are in their infancy.
| coldpie wrote:
| Asking/forcing people to change their behavior doesn't have a
| great track record. Given that constraint, putting effort
| into tech like this makes sense, especially if it's in
| addition to making behavior changes less difficult, like you
| propose. It's not an either-or.
| shafyy wrote:
| I didn't say we need to ask people to change their
| behavior. I know that that's futile. My point is that great
| alternatives already exist, that don't demand a behavior
| change. For example, renewable energies and plant-based
| meats (Impossible and others).
| Nathanael_M wrote:
| These both demand behaviour changes. Using renewable
| energy is a behaviour change (although no one's running
| their own oil refinery in their backyard) even if it's at
| a different tier and eating plant based meats is
| CERTAINLY a behaviour change. I think asking everyone to
| start eating mediocre faux-ground-beef is a pretty big
| behaviour change.
| shafyy wrote:
| Following that logic, eating lab-grown meat will is also
| a behavior change. So, my point still stands.
| Nathanael_M wrote:
| I didn't say it wasn't a behaviour change. This was a
| response to your statement that your solutions didn't
| demand behaviour changes, when they both demand
| significant behaviour changes.
|
| My argument, which I have yet to state in this dialogue,
| is that lab grown meat offers the opportunity to provide
| an experience very similar to eating "real" meat at a
| lower cost to the consumer, thus making it a viable
| alternative in ways that today's current plant based meat
| substitutes aren't.
|
| I am definitely open to plant based meat substitutes
| taking that role, but in their current form that would
| still require a large behaviour change by a large
| percentage of the population.
|
| Now renewable energy is different discussion and that
| requires a much smaller number of people to make (albeit
| much larger) behaviour changes.
| shafyy wrote:
| Fair enough. But the reality is that lab grown meat
| doesn't exist, so we are not certain how it will taste.
| Plant-based meats have come a long way in the past 5
| years. Let's see where they are in another 5 years, at
| which point lab grown meat still won't exist at a scale
| and price point that's available to the mainstream
| consumer.
|
| I don't have anything against people pursuing lab grown
| meat research. I'm just a bit pissed that "futuristic"
| solutions get so much more mainstream media attention
| than practical solutions that already have an impact
| today.
| coldpie wrote:
| You did, though, it's right in your comment: "excuse to
| not change their behavior today."
|
| And no, plant-based meat isn't there yet. It's something
| I often choose myself for environmental reasons, but it's
| still strictly worse than real beef. And non-ground meat
| substitutes aren't even in the ballpark.
| shafyy wrote:
| I'd bet you a lot of money that most people can't make
| out an Impossible burger vs. a beef burger in a blind
| taste. Tasting has to do a lot with psychology (see Pepsi
| vs. Coke blind tastes), and that's why people think
| plant-based meat sucks (there's a big variance in
| quality, agreed). Lab-grown meat won't change this fact.
| coldpie wrote:
| We're at the point of disagreeing over opinion, but I'm
| pretty confident you'd lose that bet :) I say this as
| someone who usually orders the Impossible option. It is
| the first plant-based meat I've had that actually crosses
| the threshold into "good enough," but it's still
| noticeably inferior to a good beef burger. Most plant-
| based meats genuinely do suck, I prefer just forgoing
| those and doing a mostly-vegetarian diet, personally.
|
| I think lab-grown meat has a much better chance than
| plant-based meats of satisfying the "want" of meat, while
| drastically lowering the environmental effects of eating
| meat. And again, I think pursuing _both_ options is the
| best choice. I eat less meat thanks to Impossible, and I
| hope they continue to succeed.
| asmertgen wrote:
| Great question. We had this discussion internally quite a lot.
| Since my co-founder comes from launching rockets let me use
| this analogy: 20 years ago Elon Musk was though to be crazy
| when he wanted to build reusable rockets. But now it works. It
| took a lot of smart minds, effort and money. But they did it.
| We believe it will be the same with cultivated meat. Completely
| changing a system, in our case food system, is always a risk
| and a bit crazy. We agree that the hype is not great. We don't
| want to make to bold promises. But we do want to change
| something and we will work hard to make our part to change a
| system.
| ewalk153 wrote:
| Do you have a clear ideas of what will enable your solution
| surpass the $50-chicken-nuggets unit economics mentioned? Is
| that a mid term goal of yours?
| prometheus76 wrote:
| If a batch gets infected and must be discarded, how is it
| disposed of, and what are the environmental risks of that
| waste material? How is it sterilized before getting dumped?
| And where is it dumped?
| samstave wrote:
| Some future Black Mirror comments on this concept:
|
| _You haven 't paid your protein bill this month, thus your
| micormeat subscription has been suspended and your Meat Machine
| (TM) will no longer grow any new meat for you._
|
| _We have given our executives and shareholders an exceptional
| return on their investments, and with your lack of being able to
| pay your Protein Bill, our record profits are hurting, Your
| account has been permanently suspended._
|
| _We have reviewed your appeal, and we found that our pricing
| model of 'meat by the gram' is sound and we have done nothing
| wrong in preventing you from getting your weekly allowance of
| allowed protein substance [Product] and hereby will be blocking
| all access to our services. This is an automated message, you
| have no recourse and may never contact an employee of Made Meat.
| Do not reply to this message._
| samstave wrote:
| Oh good! I got downvoted!
|
| Alright, MF'rs - I apploud everything about this busniss.. but
| lets talk long term:
|
| The stem cells are from which organism?
|
| Where did they come from?
|
| ---I have an aside from a hospital at UCSF Dog Patch was
| researching how to express stem cells to a particular tissue.
|
| I watched this machine in fucking person...
|
| Where did stem cells come from?
|
| There will be a black market in ~15 years for stem-call based
| organs that originate in non human sources.
|
| There will be a bio-ID using the foundation f CRISPR to _"
| digitally sign the origin of the DNA manufactured by this
| system"_ -- wait until you have digitally assigned, approved
| and allotted genes in a hemogonist platform of Micro-meats.
| [deleted]
| txsoftwaredev wrote:
| Beyond Meat is down close to 70% this year. I wouldn't be to
| optimistic that folks want to eat fake meat. It's clear they
| aren't selling in the grocery stores.
| hughrr wrote:
| That's because it's expensive, not because people don't want
| it. It's always cleaned out in stores in the UK.
| forgotmyoldacc wrote:
| Beyond Meat is not meat though. It's not even close in taste.
| delecti wrote:
| I would argue that the problem is Beyond Meat is only _kinda_
| close in taste. Impossible meat is getting good reception
| because it 's _so_ close in taste (and I actually prefer it),
| and lots of other veggie burgers are doing okay because they
| fill the same use but aren 't going for exactly the same
| flavor. Beyond Meat is almost in the uncanny valley of beef
| flavor.
| kuida0r3 wrote:
| Does the scaffold you use become dissolved during processing, or
| are edible and incorporated into a final product?
| vpribble wrote:
| Great question: part of the scaffold will dissolve, part of it
| (edible materials) will be in the final product. The amount of
| it in the final product (basically the degradation kinetics)
| can be tuned depending on needs and desires
| ReadEvalPost wrote:
| Harm is done to the ecosystem when we concentrate cows in one
| place and feed them chemically fortified slurry. When cows are
| allowed to graze pastures, they instead have a positive effect on
| the local ecosystem.
|
| As such, I am extremely skeptical that the right way forward is
| to reduce and concentrate the essence of a cow into bioreactors
| and feed them chemically fortified slurry.
| jallen_dot_dev wrote:
| I don't think bioreactors produce giant lakes of shit[1], so
| from an ecological standpoint this will be an absolute win.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayGJ1YSfDXs&t=36s
| voakbasda wrote:
| You ignored the part of the GP comment where they agreed with
| you. The point is that properly managed pasture increases
| fertility naturally. We need animals to fertilize, or every
| plant must be grown with synthetic products.
| ReadEvalPost wrote:
| What waste products do the bioreactors produce? How are they
| disposed?
|
| As I said, concentrated feed operations are bad. That shit
| should be dispersed in a pasture, fertilizing it.
| jallen_dot_dev wrote:
| I'm interested in those answers, too. I imagine it's much
| less waste because you can feed the cells just what they
| need to grow, instead of feeding the bacteria in the guts
| of an animal.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Awesome to see a pivot to climate tech by folks deeply skilled
| and driven in the space. Thank you for your efforts!
| Depurator wrote:
| Exciting stuff, congrats on the launch!
|
| Does this mean that you are able to create adherent culture while
| still facilitating metabolic activities in multi-layer tissue?
| vpribble wrote:
| Yes we are! While the cell metabolism is marginally diminished
| by our scaffolding method, the overall cell viability remains
| high.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| > Traditional methods pour the proliferated cells on top of the
| scaffold and hope that they "stick". This is easy, but results in
| tissues that aren't uniform--in some places the cells attach
| well,
|
| I watched a program where they were using this method to build a
| heart and appeared to be reasonably successful, but it is pot
| luck hoping some cells stick.
|
| I guess getting cells to stick is one of the problems not cracked
| yet, so I wonder how stem cells know when to stick to an organ. I
| cant help but wonder if the cell sensing and signalling still has
| some secrets to give up.
|
| > by shielding the cells within the scaffold. Novel.
|
| My only concern with lab grown meat is will it contain enough
| nutrition? We see supermarkets and farmers interested in growing
| meat as quickly as possible so it doesnt contain the same
| nutrition, arguably less nutrition, than organically grown food
| from the 70's. For example, bacon (pig meat) contains less
| pantothenic acid as it helps to marbleise the meat but the animal
| will end up with fatty liver, and fat around the organs instead
| of under the skin. This then feeds into us, so some of the health
| complaints humans see are a result of how the food is grown
| (vegetable or animal). Here in the UK I've seen a suggestion that
| if everyone went vegetarian, we could free up 80% of the
| farmland.
|
| I also know that supplements like Histidine will reduce red meat
| consumption, because dark meats are a source of histadine the
| precursor for histamine which helps white blood cells move
| through tissue. So I wonder if some of these supplements will end
| up in the lab grown meat?
| paulyasi wrote:
| Stop before you destroy the planet and people with unsustainable
| fake food. Cows are an important part of the carbon cycle.
| https://www.sacredcow.info/
| Nathanael_M wrote:
| This seems wildly alarmist. I'm not sure anyone's arguing for
| the complete removal of cows from the ecosystem. I'm also
| confident people won't stop eating real beef, even if factory
| farming is reduced and real beef becomes slightly more novel.
| paulyasi wrote:
| Yes it is alarmist for a reason. We have about 60 to 100
| years of topsoil left unless we get cows and ruminant animals
| to help rebuild it.
| noutella wrote:
| Thebroser wrote:
| Hey! Bioengineering background here, how do you all embed the
| cells within the scaffold? Is your approach similar to other
| bioprinting approaches (initial cells seeded via extrusion,
| inkjet, or laser assisted deposition)? At first I would think
| this could be done with some sort of printable collagen scaffold
| but I'm curious for what your approach would be. In addition, as
| someone that is involved in therapeutics, I'm not too well versed
| in this space but was curious hearing from your perspective: How
| close would you say we are to being able to use FBS free media to
| culture meat at scale?
| partisan wrote:
| "Fetal bovine serum (FBS) is a ubiquitously used essential
| supplement in cell culture media. However, there are serious
| scientific and ethical concerns about the use of FBS regarding
| its harvest and production."
|
| From an abstract of a research paper regarding FBS-free media.
| [deleted]
| asmertgen wrote:
| Yes, exactly, getting rid of FBS is crucial for making
| cultivated meat more ethical and sustainable than traditional
| meat!
| newaccount74 wrote:
| For those who have never heard of FBS, the "ethical concern"
| is that FBS is made by slaughtering pregnant cows, cutting
| the calf fetus from the cow, and then draining the blood from
| the fetus by sticking a needle in its heart. When I first
| read about that I was a bit shocked, even though I'm not a
| vegetarian and have even worked with FBS during a lab at
| university, blissfully unaware how they made that yellow
| fluid.
| allisdust wrote:
| Wow. And I thought a komodo dragon eating a pregnant deer
| with fetus was the worst I have seen or imagined. Ethics
| aside, how do the people doing the procedure stand it
| without going crazy.
| yurishimo wrote:
| I'll answer your question, but it's really pretty simple.
| It's the same way that people have done all sorts of
| terrible things since the dawn of man.
|
| Someone had to slaughter the livestock. Hunters ran down
| animals and killed them when they became exhausted, and
| to be a bit more blunt, we kill each other in wars and
| senseless violence every day. Look no further than our
| current conflict in Ukraine to see what that's like, even
| amidst our advanced society.
|
| Humans have an enormous capacity for empathy and
| kindness, but we're also capable of some truly horrific
| acts if the circumstances require or demand it.
| asmertgen wrote:
| Very good questions there! 1) Yes, our process is similar to
| bioprinting but it is much more scalable than typical
| bioprinting. Because this is our proprietary tech I can't say
| much more than that at this point:) 2) We are currently still
| using some gelatin in our scaffold which is animal derived but
| of course we are putting a lot of effort into making it
| completely animal free asap. 3) There are companies who are
| focusing on the replacement of FBS and they are moving into
| relatively scaled processes now. So I would say we are close!
| Let us know if you have any follow up questions :)
| Thebroser wrote:
| Thanks a ton for your reply! I wish you all the best, tons of
| cool innovation to be done here.
| asmertgen wrote:
| Thank you!
| bradgranath wrote:
| "other nutrients needed to grow" is what is currently pricing
| "labmeat" into the $1000s/oz
|
| Not inefficiencies in the bio-reaction chain.
|
| Pulling and refining Fetal Bovine Serum costs an ungodly amount
| of money and effort.
|
| Have you discovered a way to do without it?
|
| No?
|
| Fuck off.
| dang wrote:
| Ai yai yai, you can't post like this to HN. We ban accounts
| that do. I'm not going to ban you right now, but please don't
| do it again!
|
| If you'd please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to
| the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
| stefantalpalaru wrote:
| pseudolus wrote:
| Great idea whose time has come. Some have estimated that up to
| 41% of land in the US is used for grazing and growing feed [0].
| That's a horrible and damaging waste of resources.
|
| One small suggestion, although you've included your contact info
| with your launch information, you might also want to include a
| direct link to your website.
|
| [0] https://www.treehugger.com/land-contiguous-us-used-feed-
| live....
| adewinter wrote:
| Hello and congratulations on launching!
|
| 1) It sounds like the scaffold+medium+environment is meant to
| replace a vascular network. Have you considered growing a
| vascular system in/around the muscle tissue (if that's possible)?
|
| 2) Assuming you get to bulk samples, are there any plans to
| "exercise" the muscle tissue (e.g. with electric stimulation) to
| reach a desired tenderness/texture?
|
| 3) Where are you based?
| asmertgen wrote:
| Great questions! 1) Yes vascularization is one approach of many
| to get nutrients to cells in larger constructs. If you want
| that to be grown naturally by e.g. endothelial cells, this is a
| rather lengthy and tricky process, so not easy to scale. To
| start scaling faster the mixing in a bioreactor is easier. 2)
| Yes electric stimulation is a great tool to stimulate muscle
| which is important for texture etc. There are also other
| methods to get there where they basically stimulate themselves.
| 3) Monterrey, Mexico :)
| open-source-ux wrote:
| I applaud your attempts to tackle such a big issue. I'm a meat
| eater but the sheer number of animals killed to satisfy our
| appetite for meat is pretty shocking.
|
| My question is about nutrition and taste: does cultivated meat
| contain the same nutrition as animal meat?
|
| For example, farm animals may be pasture-fed and reared outside.
| The meat will probably be expensive but of excellent quality. Or
| the farm animals may be reared in a industrial-scale farming
| process that produces cheap supermarket meat (i.e. what many of
| us buy and eat in the Western World). Given the nutrition and
| taste profile of these animals is different, how do you cultivate
| the meat to taste excellent and contain good nutrition? Thank
| you.
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