Permanently Deleted
Gonna be real with you I didn't finish the article but isn't it kinda sus that the argument is being made by a guy that was an executive at company that makes bank off selling livestock medication
for real though
oh, cool, an opinion from a guy who is the top exec for pfizer's animal testing division, who clearly would like mass animal food production to continue as is. for the vegans who think animals are of the same importance as humans, isnt this like listening to mengele for ideological advice?
“Good evening," it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, "I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body? It harrumphed and gurgled a bit, wriggled its hind quarters into a more comfortable position and gazed peacefully at them.
Its gaze was met by looks of startled bewilderment from Arthur and Trillian, a resigned shrug from Ford Prefect and naked hunger from Zaphod Beeblebrox.
"Something off the shoulder perhaps?" suggested the animal. "Braised in a white wine sauce?"
"Er, your shoulder?" said Arthur in a horrified whisper.
"But naturally my shoulder, sir," mooed the animal contentedly, "nobody else's is mine to offer."
Zaphod leapt to his feet and started prodding and feeling the animal's shoulder appreciatively.
"Or the rump is very good," murmured the animal. "I've been exercising it and eating plenty of grain, so there's a lot of good meat there." It gave a mellow grunt, gurgled again and started to chew the cud. It swallowed the cud again.
"Or a casserole of me perhaps?" it added.
"You mean this animal actually wants us to eat it?" whispered Trillian to Ford.
"Me?" said Ford, with a glazed look in his eyes. "I don't mean anything."
"That's absolutely horrible," exclaimed Arthur, "the most revolting thing I've ever heard."
"What's the problem, Earthman?" said Zaphod, now transferring his attention to the animal's enormous rump.
"I just don't want to eat an animal that's standing there inviting me to," said Arthur. "It's heartless."
"Better than eating an animal that doesn't want to be eaten," said Zaphod.
"That's not the point," Arthur protested. Then he thought about it for a moment. "All right," he said, "maybe it is the point. I don't care, I'm not going to think about it now. I'll just ... er ..."
The Universe raged about him in its death throes.
"I think I'll just have a green salad," he muttered.
"May I urge you to consider my liver?" asked the animal, "it must be very rich and tender by now, I've been force-feeding myself for months."
"A green salad," said Arthur emphatically.
"A green salad?" said the animal, rolling his eyes disapprovingly at Arthur.
"Are you going to tell me," said Arthur, "that I shouldn't have green salad?"
"Well," said the animal, "I know many vegetables that are very clear on that point. Which is why it was eventually decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am."
It managed a very slight bow.
"Glass of water please," said Arthur.
"Look," said Zaphod, "we want to eat, we don't want to make a meal of the issues. Four rare steaks please, and hurry. We haven't eaten in five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years."
The animal staggered to its feet. It gave a mellow gurgle.
"A very wise choice, sir, if I may say so. Very good," it said. "I'll just nip off and shoot myself."
He turned and gave a friendly wink to Arthur.
"Don't worry, sir," he said, "I'll be very humane."
It waddled unhurriedly off to the kitchen.
A matter of minutes later the waiter arrived with four huge steaming steaks.
When cattle are processed at a slaughterhouse, workers will sometimes cut open a cow’s body and discover a fetus. Dairy cows are kept perpetually pregnant so that they can produce milk, and farms often overlook the animals’ status when they’re finally shipped out for slaughter. Once a living fetal calf is discovered inside a carcass, it’s too late for it to be born. Instead, a technician will be called in who can perform euthanasia and, from there, extract the fetus’s blood.
This paragraph might make me vegan. :shrek-pixel-despair:
Here's some more fun facts about dairy: Content warnings: animal violence, SV, gore and all that amazing stuff DAIRY IS SCARY! The industry explained in 5 minutes
spoilers: there's a percantage of pus that is allowed to be in milk
:im-vegan: btw
for the record, 10k per pound is absurd. you can buy it in chinese restaurants for like 20 bucks for a meal. thats because china's version of the FDA approved it before the USA. so the main point of the pfizer exec's complaint: reducing meat cost from 10k to something manageable, is already being done
edit:
and for the record, im not a vegan. my bf is a bodybuilder at ~280 pounds of mostly muscle. he'd need to eat 15 cups of edamame each day. with black beans, same thing, itd be 20 cups. however, the amount of potassium (~700mg) would quickly become too much for daily value consumption and can cause blood pressure issues with hyperkalemia over a long period. you need to have at least two protein sources from plants, as they are not complete proteins (with the exception quinoa, which is 35 cups of eating the same thing). you also need some vegetable oil or some other fat to mix it in so you dont get protein poisoning. my bf is a bit of an extreme example, but if you wanna bash the fash sometimes you gotta crack some eggs. and i simply think that with the amount of manual labor jobs, its absurd to ask them to eat all these cups of vegetables. but it is very sensible to maybe have 3-4 cups of protein heavy veggies in addition to other food types.
if you wanna bash the fash sometimes you gotta crack some eggs
Actually you don't. A well-planned, fully vegan diet is appropriate for all stages of life. And seitan has three times more protein than beef - the only amino acid it lacks is lysine, and tofu or beans have that. There's no need to "eat all these cups of vegetables" if you're vegan, even if you want to build muscle.
bf is busy rn so ill ask him his opinion of that. cursory glance, it looks super expensive. he usually has a shake filled with a workout powder to cover his needs so he doesnt need to blow a ton of money on his bodybuilding. vegan workout powder is super expensive, usually 3x more. if there is a vegan workout powder cheaper than the non-vegan mainline stuff on amazon hmu we want that shit
Costco's plant-based protein is a good price, I think it's called Orgain
3x the cost of other protein powders. currently pay 40 bucks for 5 pounds (75 servingsish). also its disproportionately full of carbs.
we decided to try seitan a bit, though it is expensive. its a nice alternative to tofu, which is very high in fat. doubt itll be a common thing we do because of the cost (4x more per gram of protein than chicken) but we try to find new things for him to eat post workout all the time
I assume you bought seitan as-is ? if so, buy the powdered gluten instead and make your own - a lot cheaper. And if you really want to go even cheaper, all you actually need is white flour to make your own - though the process is a bit more involved.
And so you did, thanks a lot. The "rubbery texture" bit you can easily adjust by adding more or less actual flour with the wheat gluten - from "slightly rubbery" to "feels like a steak that has cooked too much", with all the declinations in between (also, mix your flour/gluten with spices and vegetable broth from the get-go, it helps). Again, an even cheaper way (takes more time though; cheaper in terms of initial resources) is to start with your basic white wheat flour.
The way lab grown meat is done now is by taking meat, breaking it into all the basic components, and then reassembling them, mostly to show proof of concept. Most of these components can't be simply created by injecting genes into e-coli and scaling it up in bioreactors. So lab grown meat startups aren't trying to create pure meat, they are making an appetizing alternative using meat or meat like components that can be scaled up in bioreactors. Also, most startups in this space aren't aiming to deliver to the steak-eating consumer market, they're targeting the massive processed foods market where people don't really give a shit about whats in it as long as it doesn't taste bad.
Chicken nuggets are pretty much already made of heavily processed garbage that would otherwise just be used for compost. The real innovation here is in making that process very expensive and highly financialized.
Depends, here in Aus they're generally breast meat (eating them overseas was a bad time for me, in fact I was almost vegan in Europe the meat/fish was so bad) which would mean that lab meat would be a significant downgrade.
Only thing I can say.
Edit - Also, just eat tofu and beans. You don’t need that fake meat shit anyways.
Unfortunately tofu is probably going to be prohibitively expensive once clinate change hits. Current production is already unsustainable.
If all I'm eating is beans and eggplant you better believe I'm making it look like everything from momo to foie gras
Tofu is just curdled and compressed soy milk so if you can get beans you can probably get tofu.
"Current production is already unsustainable."
Wait wait what? I just starting cooking with it regularly!
No no, you don't understand, technology is going to solve all of our societal problems with no change to my day to day life.
Still reading, and I’m vibing with a lot of the critiques that I have often thought we’re overlooked, but I’m also finding the article a bit sus/one-sided. GFI isn’t full of morons, so I tried to look for responses to the article.
Here’s a long Twitter thread from a GFI scientist: https://twitter.com/elliotswartz/status/1442833513800110085?s=21
As he says - it’s good scrutiny, but it’s got some blinders on and I’m sorry but don’t just take the word of a pharmAg ghoul and a non-profit that won’t even stand by its own report.
