Almost as important as the technology is the marketing. They need to get on message for this even at this early stage. Calling it "Artificial Meat" is already conceding the battle. It's not artificial, it's real meat.
"Cultured"? Conjures up images of lab coats. "Man-made"? Not much better.
I'd say some better ideas:
- Humane meat
- Painless meat
- Slaughterless meat
- Guiltless meat
- Pure meat
To me, pure meat probably wins. It's meat, but without all the ugly impurities introduced by having an animal grow it in the wild. See how much of a difference successful framing can make to how you "feel" about a product?
The problem with these names is that, subconsciously, they conjure up the very things you're trying to avoid. The term "slaughterless" calls to mind visions of slaughter. The word "painless," especially in an unfamiliar context -- like that of food -- gives a queezy feeling in the pit of the stomach. (One thinks: "Is this food going to hurt me?") And the word "humane" is close enough to "human" to cause discomfort, even in people who are well aware of the difference between those words.
Far better, IMO, to go with phrasing that draws no attention to negatives. "Sustainably raised," "sustainably grown," or even just "sustainable" would be interesting choices. (Though even the word "grown" might evoke the wrong idea for a lot of consumers). This phrasing says "green" without implying "Soylent Green." Alternatively, you borrow a page from the tuna industry, who wisely chose "dolphin-safe" over the more psychologically onerous "dolphin-free," and go with "animal-safe" or some variant thereof.
Of your suggestions, "guiltless" also seems pretty effective. I'm on the fence about "pure," inasmuch as it forces the mind to wander to the meat's origins. Furthermore, it could backfire in a big way -- especially with the Christian crowd, who would see cultured meat as "unnatural" in comparison to traditional meat.
You can look at the gemstone industry for insight into how to market this. There are definitely positive angles you could push (just like conflict-free stuff). As for names, cultured pearls, created emeralds, cultivated diamonds, ...
Marketing for this particular product is irrelevant. Only cost matters. If it becomes cheap to mass produce, governments around the World will slowly start legislating [1] to either make meat from animals illegal to produce, or prohibitively expensive (through taxes) for the majority of people to buy. Meat from animals would become a luxury item.
If it's cheap and it tastes nice, most people wont care where it came from.
[1] Given the state of politics in the US, it would probably be incredibly difficult for such legislation to come into existence there. I suspect Europe would lead.
Long term, I agree, but the short and medium term can be heavily affected by marketing, and that can still add up to a lot of money/animals/pollution/etc. before the cost advantage wins out.
You don't need to raise taxes to kill the cattle industry just remove the gigantic subsidies and force it to compete with something that costs 1/3 as much.
Make it cheap enough and the branding matters a lot less.
Just cycle through brands until once sticks. The meat products industry is already full of potentially disturbing stuff that people think is delicious (hotdogs and chicken nugget goo (really, mechanically separated chicken) come to mind).
See how much of a difference successful framing can make to how you "feel" about a product?
I like knowing what I'm eating, not how you want me to feel about it. I am just fine eating artificial meat, cultured in a lab by people in white coats.
Pure meat seems a little ambiguous, i would call it post-meat (yeah, with the hyphen included); because it sounds like and advanced version of meat and also to honour Dr. Post, one of the leaders of this invention.
I'm waiting for the technology to reach the point where we can create whole new meats. Like, imagine a world where pigs had never evolved, and then a scientist, working in a lab, invented bacon. They'd make millions and millions of dollars, and dramatically improve the lives of a billion fat people.
And even in our world, just think: There are meats out there, waiting to be invented, that are a thousand times more delicious than bacon.
I’m kind of hoping cultured human is delicious. I’m going to send a cheek swab to a PO box, and six weeks later a slab of my own pseudo-shoulder will show up packed in dry ice. My first experiment will be:
1 kg own cultured flesh
3 cups orange juice
lime, kiwifruit, or pineapple juice to taste
1 clove of garlic, mashed
pepper and salt to taste
Combine and put in a saucepan on low heat without a lid. Let simmer until the liquids steam off and it begins to fry in the rendered fat (about 2 hours). At this point it should be very tender and break apart into threads. Serve over rice or in tacos.
Well cannibalism is a pretty strong taboo and probably we have evolved disgust reactions to it, but rationally if it hasn't killed anybody and doesn't cause any health issues (like BSE analogues) what's wrong with it?
After a minor operation in the Army the doctor offered to my father to eat the little bit of himself that was cut out raw. He figured why not and said afterward it was like something between pork and beef, but not really that odd.
PS: Now the real question would you pass up the same option?
There already are artificial flavors, even artificial meat flavors. McDonalds french fries are sprayed with it. The reason he wants to make this a burger isn't because they've made artificial cow, it's because the artificial meat has the consistency of ground beef at best.
I think bacon comes pretty darn near the perfect fat-salt-sugar trifecta. It may not be possible to be more than 10% more delicious than bacon, if that.
So, what’s it with all the bacon love? I don’t get it. I love grilled chicken breast and beef tenderloin, the only thing bacon has going for it is that it‘s cheap, fast and easy to make.
I dunno, the reason bacon is delicious is because it's not meat, it's fat with some meat in it. I expect adjusting the constitution of the meat won't change people's enjoyment of bacon much.
I don't know what USians or Canadians call bacon. I'm in England. You can get low-fat trimmed bacon, but even that has some fats. It's also salty. And it's often served with some sugars. (ketchup).
This fat / salt / sugar combination is supposedly a great combination to make foods palatable. Here's a review of a book by a former FDA administrator:
It most certainly is. Vegetarian bacon, while good, does not taste like bacon. And bacon with all the fat removed does not taste like bacon. It may be good, but it's not bacon.
The true cost of beef is staggering. It is, by far, one of our most selfish indulgences the rich have. It's sad that our economic model doesn't adequately capture this.
A lot of numbers get thrown around, but the amount of grain and water you need for 1 pound of beef is enough to feed something like 25 people. Then there's the environmental impact (land, pollution, ....). The more I travel the world, the harder it is for me to eat beef.
Those claims are only valid for feedlot raised cattle which you shouldn't eat anyway if you care about your health. Cows aren't meant to eat grain. Plus, you get to support your local community by buying from local, responsible farmers.
And if you want to be completely honest with yourself, take a good look at industrial agriculture and tell me how self-righteous you feel.
The majority of beef comes from feedlots. 90% of the beef we eat is grain-fed. Also, I can't find any evidence, one way or another, that grass-fed cows take less land or pollute less (in terms of methane).
There's no doubt that it's healthier for us, and better for the cows, but there seems to be plenty of back and forth with respect to which of the two is more sustainable. And I don't see anyone arguing that grass-fed cows are more efficient (or even close to as-efficient) than chicken, pork or plants.
Thanks for the links on agriculture...going through them now!
Free trade would mean less or no grain-fed livestock, hopefully (here in Uruguay we have almost 7 million cows, all of them grass-fed, neighbour Argentina has 40 million cows, also grass-fed, Australia and New Zealand also have similar numbers of grass-fed cows).
In any case, as you argue, cows are not the most efficient means of producing meat, that's why chicken is much cheaper for instance :) .
Grass-fed cows probably take more land, but I suspect they pollute a lot less (for example there's a lot of indirect pollution from the grain produced to feed the grain-fed cattle)
Edit: about free trade - both the U.S. and Europe have trade quotas and subsidies in place to maintain the local agriculture. I understand not wanting to destroy it entirely due to strategic concerns (and excessive dependency on a provider), but I believe it's gotten out of hand.
Edit2: the number of cows in Uruguay was inflated, changed for more reasonable source.
1.3 billion is the total number of cows. Almost 300 million of those are in India, where I doubt very much that they are used for beef. I'm finding it hard to get numbers since it's largely given in metric tons...
Although, I'll agree that looking more into it, grain-fed appears to be a largely North American thing.
The majority of beef comes from feedlots. 90% of the beef we eat is grain-fed.
Depends on what country you're in, I guess. Here in Ireland cattle are predominately grassfed (though usually are fed at least some grain in the winter too).
It isn't one pound of beef = feeding 25 people, it is that 25 units of grain produce one unit of beef. Feeding someone does not just mean giving them two slices of bread.
Food aid is often delivered as grains (corn/rice) and water. I'm not really sure what you are getting at.
I agree that it's a complicated issues involving subsidies, nutrition, shipping, processing. Maybe it was wrong to assign a specific #...maybe I just say "you can feed a lot people from the energy that goes into growing a steak" ?
He/she was pointing out that how many people you can feed is not a sensible statistic. You can feed a lot of people with a single sugar cube. The question is how long can this lot of people survive on the energy that goes into growing a steak.
Hmm.. pretend this takes off and the quality of the meat is good. Would a vegan be inclined to eat this lab meat? Seems like most vegans that I talk to are mostly motivated by animal cruelty issues.
My sister is a vegetarian, and from what she's told me she started because of animal cruelty issues, but she kept going because (a) it's kind of a point of pride to maintain a lifestyle deliberately different from other people's, no matter how minor, and (b) after not eating meat for a while, the taste becomes strange and unpleasant. Like any 'new' food, she could reacclimatise to it if necessary, but it would require effort.
So I'm guessing that many existing vegans and vegetarians wouldn't eat lab-grown meat. It might well cut down on the number of people who become vegetarian in the first place, though.
I didn't eat meat for about 5 years. One day I just bought a quarter pounder with cheese from McDonalds for no particular reason other than I felt crappy after being sick for two weeks.
That was the tastiest thing I'd ever eaten!
At the same time, I don't know why I do eat meat now but I seem to crave/need it and just can't shift that. I don't usually actually like it either ironically (apart from that one quarter pounder above).
I don't know why I do eat meat now but I seem to crave/need it
A friend of mine was vegetarian for many years and one day, about two years ago, she collapsed and the doctor told her she needed to eat meat again because her body had stopped processing protein properly and she wasn't getting enough from non-meat alternatives anymore (or something like that, don't remember the exact details now).
I'm pretty sure strict vegans (is there any other kind?) would continue to have a problem with it. The original definition is:
Veganism is a way of living which excludes all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, the animal kingdom, and includes a reverence for life. It applies to the practice of living on the products of the plant kingdom to the exclusion of flesh, fish, fowl, eggs, honey, animal milk and its derivatives, and encourages the use of alternatives for all commodities derived wholly or in part from animals
Note that they consider honey to be an exploitation of animals...so I assume extracting muscle tissues from a cow would also be considered exploitation of animals. Furthermore, it pretty explicitly states "living on the products of the plant kingdom".
There is a wide range of people that call themselves vegan. Diets vary greatly, and the reasons for choosing those diets varies even more. Some eat honey. Some don't. Some eat tons of junk food and don't care about health. Some eat incredibly healthy and don't care about animals. Some are guided by beliefs about the economy or about sutstainability. Some eat animal products when they would otherwise be thrown away. Some eat meat or other animal products on very rare occasions. You may not want to call some of these people "vegan", or maybe they are the ones you aren't calling "strict vegan", but they probably get value out of calling themselves vegan because it's a convenient way to give someone an idea of what kinds of foods they wish to avoid.
There isn't a vegan authority, and people aren't reading some definition as a set of instructions, because being a vegan isn't the goal, at least for anyone I've met, it is a means to some goal. The goals vary, and the dedication to those goals vary, which is there is a wide variety of diets. If you limit who you want to call a "strict vegan" to people who read some definition and then follow it, where following the definition is the goal itself, then I think you're left with almost nobody.
I don't like to call myself "a vegan" largely because it facilitates the misconception I'm following rules rather than making choices. It's not a religion or a personal trait, it's a dietary choice (for me, a lifestyle choice for others, who may minimize animal product use outside of their diet.)
People ask me if I can eat this or that, rather than do I eat it, will I eat it, or do I want to eat it, and they really seem to mean "am I able to" as if I might not be capable of eating meat, or as if there is some authority with power over me that will not allow it. That's not the case. I can eat meat and drink milk, of course. I just don't want to.
There may be foods you don't want to eat as well. But I probably can't predict how you would react to changes to those foods. And you probably can't predict how I will react to lab-grown meat. For that matter, I probably can't predict how I will react, either.
Yes, but one has to wonder whether linear output requiring nearly constant animal input, vs. linear output requiring linear animal input, will cause some people to rethink this (thus resulting in a split in veganism). Every burger may ultimately come from exploitation of a cow, but if the burger in front of you does not come from any additional exploitation of a cow, many people may not have a problem with it.
Unless there are already existing products that have this property, in which case I guess we have our answer. Or if it's not so non-linear as it sounds, in which case there's no question.
Well, there's still the issue of "living on the products of the plant kingdom." The only thing I can think of that's similar would maybe be recycled leather. I still think ethical vegans would have a problem with it, and I don't see this changing the opinion of anyone doing it for health reasons.
I think environmental vegans are the most likely to buy into this..if it even becomes an efficient way to produce nutrition/calories. I could certainly see some more pragmatic organizations throwing their weight behind it.."if you must eat beef, at least eat this kind of beef (but consider X, Y and Z as even better alternatives)."
I still think ethical vegans would have a problem
with it, and I don't see this changing the opinion
of anyone doing it for health reasons.
I think very few will have an ethical problem with it, most non-meat-eaters are vegetarians and not vegans, and I suspect even among vegans most are not as strict as you think.
Theere's already a split: vegetarianism vs (strict) veganism. In French we actually have two distinct words: "végétarisme" vs "végétalisme" (which are both cases of "véganisme").
The former is concerned with cruelty and eating living animals, and is assumed to have no problem consuming milk and eggs. The latter is assumed to reject all forms of animal proteins, living exclusively on vegetal products.
I just read him/her as saying that people who avoid meat for health reasons would likely avoid this meat as well. Whether they're mistaken to avoid meat for health reasons doesn't seem specifically tied to artificial meat.
Having been to a factory farm that used homogenized grain and had "attendants" in white coats and re-breathers this really isn't far from the present reality. Anything that can make livestock mass production more humane is a very good thing.
The real benefit of artificial non-descript meat sausage will be ending overfishing? I'm assuming you mean when they come out with artificial fish meat, but I can't find any mention of that in the article.
Actually... you may be right. We've already been at agriculture so long and so extensively that the damage has been done. The ocean is not yet completely ruined.
"... they are encouraged to exercise and build up their strength by being given their own gym equipment (pieces of Velcro to which they can anchor themselves in order to stretch and relax spontaneously)."
Creepy. Do they give these cells an electric jolt to make them exercise?
Given the issues with "whole" organisms which are genetically modified, and our continuing "tiny keyhole" understanding of nutrition, it seems very unlikely that lab grown meat will be nutritionally comparable as real meat.
Not comparable, but that doesn't mean worse. It will be easier and cheaper to provide good nutrition to artificial meat than it is to whole cows. It's easy to imagine that the cost-cutting inhumanity of ranches includes poor nutrition.
Besides that, few people eat beef for its nutrition (beyond the protein), and McDonald's meat is probably more tuned for 1) ease of production and 2) taste than nutritional value.
Vegetarians from birth will probably not be inclined to eat this. They've never acquired a taste for meat.
I think this is awesome. Livestock are a haven for pollution and pestilence, most recently implicated in producing antibiotic-resistant superbugs that will probably be the death of us all.
"Cultured"? Conjures up images of lab coats. "Man-made"? Not much better.
I'd say some better ideas:
- Humane meat
- Painless meat
- Slaughterless meat
- Guiltless meat
- Pure meat
To me, pure meat probably wins. It's meat, but without all the ugly impurities introduced by having an animal grow it in the wild. See how much of a difference successful framing can make to how you "feel" about a product?