I could be reading it wrong. The government invested 100m+ yuan into the company CellX last year so I wouldnt be surprised if it were subsidized. I can't find any up to date information of other types of cultured meat, seems pork is the cash cow right now. Comments on similar articles says the meat is only available in restaurants right now.
:some-controversy:
I've been looking into it more and the most common form for lab grown is pork belly. Pig skin is also common and probably even more likely to be a hit than pork belly, afaik they use it for noodles
Here's some info on it from June last year. The tech is advancing fast. Includes some pics of food made from it. They had enough food on hand to feed a pretty big conference. Lab grown salmon is also looking promising and I am very much looking forward to that because I love salmon
In general I am very interested in this industry from a scientific point of view. If they can hit mass scale operations with this tech, it will directly feed into tech for generating human organs for transplant at scale
Also if China can industrialize lab-grown proteins it could more easily prevent itself from being choked off by Western sanctions/blockade.
So it turns out lab-grown meat is in fact possible and it was just idiotic western techbros who couldn't do it
The lack of big dipshit ranchers seeking trade protectionism probably also helps
I don’t think anyone is saying the western techbro idiots couldn’t do it - and a lot of them weren’t trying. Alt protein in the US is pretty different. But the FDA/USDA rules are really restrictive/slow for approval, the rancher lobbies you mentioned are strong, and there’s just not a command economy like in China so it’s much more difficult to gain momentum on a market basis.
That said yeah, I feel like the pork produced for $3 is either super subsidized or would never be able to get approval in the US food safety-wise, and I’m not confident that would be a bad thing knowing what would need to go into it. For instance, if the growth media has antibiotics in it, you’d basically be microdosing penecilin in every bite.
Afaik they avoid needing antibiotics by making the cells in a high pressure warm tank. But I haven't been keeping up on advancements
Edit: Yeah found articles confirming no medications used at all in Chinese meat labs, which is honestly just a great selling point on top of the carbon effeciency
The US already bans Chinese beef import
Probably protectionism for the US industry/lobbies.
In fact, the only 3 meat products that can be imported into the US from China is raw catfish, processed chicken and processed duck as per https://www.fsis.usda.gov/inspection/import-export/import-export-library/china
I remember an article about a startup who spent a decade trying, and then abandoned the concept because they couldn't solve the "taste and texture of a tumor" problem
That’s no longer an issue, by a long shot. The advances made by companies across the world have really solved that, with the major hurdle the the US and Europe being regulatory approval. This isn’t a technical issue anymore so much as scaling and policy.