which do you think is a better idea when trying to combat factory farming (i say just factory farming and not animal farming althogether because id say a similar amout of suffering occours in nature as on a free range farm, but i dunno about this yet)

promoting invitro meat or promoting free range farming?

how soon will invitro meat be ready?

are there any other alternatives to these too? (apart from veganism?)

Probably funding in-vitro meat is the way to go. Promoting free-range farming might be a waste. In western, developed countries, there is something of a trend moving toward these sorts of meat consumption (warning: anecdotal evidence). Whilst this trend could in theory be accelerated, I don't know by how much, and how quickly effects would become apparent.

Also, in countries which are experiencing high rates of economic growth, meat consumption is massively increasing (china has seen kilos of chicken consumed per year go from 7.9 - 9.4 from 2007 - 2010, source). With that much demand, getting people to embrace free-range meats in those areas is pretty unlikely, as the price would probably sky-rocket. So, what I'm trying to get at is that you might manage to get the West to embrace free-range meat (to an extent), but the East is rapidly embracing factory farming, and therefore total amount of factory farmed meat will probably increase. Indeed, worldwide meat consumption is expected to double between 2002 and 2050. Free-range meat promotion would barely put a dent in this but if in-vitro meat became cheaper/healthier/tastier than the real thing, we would expect "real" meat-consumption to be reduced massively.

As for when we'll get in-vitro meat.... Estimates vary a lot. New Harvest gives fuzzy figures, saying that processed meat (sausages, hamburgers) could be available in "several years" but things like steak etc "would involve technologies that do not yet exist and that may take a decade or longer to develop". A Scientific American article emphasizes lack of funding for in-vitro meat and claims that this is the main barrier. The wikipedia article is decent, not giving any specific dates, but seems to have a good grasp of the challenges. Personally, I put even odds on having cultured processed meat (hamburgers) before 2020. Then, 70% probability of steaks by 2030 and 90% probability of all currently eaten meats being available in cultured form before 2040. Though I haven't studied the issue in depth, so I need more information. Thinking about it, I might fire off a few emails to researchers in the field, it can't do any harm to find out their opinion of ETA of the meat, and how much funding they need.

A disappointingly low amount of research is being conducted on this problem, and, oddly, most of it is being conducted by Dutch scientists 'cause the only real initiative proving immediate funding is in the Netherlands. So, arguably, this could be some low-hanging-fruit for utilitarian investors, especially as we might get multiplier effects due to publicity etc.

Alternatives... You might try to make it so that farm animals feel no pain (but presumably still mental distress). A (fairly) simple genetic alteration in mice was enough to do it. You might try vegan outreach or any veg*n group which tries to convince people to be veggies. Ermmm. There must be more alternatives out there, but for the life of me I can't think of them

Cultured meat could be a substitute for factory-farmed meat, but what about dairy products, eggs etc.? Is there any similar innovation in sight? (I don't consider soy products to be a full substitute for mass consumption of these products, both because of health and acceptance reasons)

I know of no research into dairy products. In principle, I guess you could make udders without cows attached and supply them with nutrition for them to spit out milk... That that's probably a long way off yet though. Also, just out of interest, can you give me any objective information on the health risks of soy, everything I've encountered has been politicized and confusing.

But farming for meat results in more suffering and cultured meat would reduce this suffering. So, we should still pursue it, though you raise an important point.

I wonder if it would just be easier to use brain-dead animals for milk and such.

Gedusa wrote:Also, just out of interest, can you give me any objective information on the health risks of soy, everything I've encountered has been politicized and confusing.

Yeah, me too. Depending on what source you read, soy is either improving health or causing cancer and hormonal problems up to male infertility. I don't know what the right answer is, but it's clearly an acceptance problem. Soy products also tend to be more expansive in my experience, and afaik there's no milk substitute that would actually taste and look like cow milk. These are reasons why mass consumption doesn't easily switch. There's also a sustainablity question in those cases where ruminants are actually gras-fed. Agriculture to produce soy uses pesticides and destroys top soil as well. (If you want to decrease the number of wild animals and consider sustainability a bad thing because existential risks could prevent future bad life from expanding into space etc., then these are not discouraging factors; of course most people don't think like that)

DanielLC wrote:I wonder if it would just be easier to use brain-dead animals for milk and such.

I would suspect that this would probably face even worse acceptance problems than genetically engineered distress-free animals... I'm assuming this would imply leaving the animals technically alive through technology, but without brain function?

@ DanielLC That's an interesting alternative. I don't know whether it would be very cost effective though, I'm picturing life support machines and stuff and that seems unlikely to catch on. Whether we could engineer animals to be non-conscious and still support basic functions is a question which goes beyond my understanding of neurology. If we could, as Treader say, there might be acceptance issues, but obviously I'd support the change and, given how little thought average people give to where their meat comes from, there is a potential for it to come in.

@ Treader Okay, well at least I'm not missing anything really obvious. Though it is a little annoying that such an important potential meat substitute is clouded by such controversy.

I stumbled across a different type of animal exploitation the other day: agitating hagfish so that they excrete a slimy material that is used in cooking similar to how eggs would be used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagfish#Gastronomy

Gedusa wrote:Also, just out of interest, can you give me any objective information on the health risks of soy, everything I've encountered has been politicized and confusing.

Same problem here, but I wish people would stop treating soy as the alternative. In the UK at least, just on the shelf of your main supermarket (and certainly in health food shops) you'll find various alternatives - oat milk, rice milk, almond milk and hazelnut milk are all quite common and all, IMO, far nicer than soy. And they must all have different health/environmental implications - which to my knowledge are even less well explored than soy's.

on the shelf of your main supermarket (and certainly in health food shops) you'll find various alternatives - oat milk, rice milk, almond milk and hazelnut milk are all quite common and all, IMO, far nicer than soy

I've spent a while looking (and asking) in Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsburys and couldn't find any of these apart from rice milk (which like soy milk is a bit watery - do the nut and oak varieties solve this problem?) Any pointers?

Trying to cut down my consumption of animal products

tog wrote:I've spent a while looking (and asking) in Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsburys and couldn't find any of these apart from rice milk (which like soy milk is a bit watery - do the nut and oak varieties solve this problem?) Any pointers?

Oat drink is the most similar drink to milk that I know. AFAIK there is oat drink in Tesco: http://www.tesco.com/superstore/xpi/9/xpi60512449.htm

tog wrote:Trying to cut down my consumption of animal products

Great!

tog wrote:

on the shelf of your main supermarket (and certainly in health food shops) you'll find various alternatives - oat milk, rice milk, almond milk and hazelnut milk are all quite common and all, IMO, far nicer than soy

I've spent a while looking (and asking) in Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsburys and couldn't find any of these apart from rice milk (which like soy milk is a bit watery - do the nut and oak varieties solve this problem?) Any pointers?

Trying to cut down my consumption of animal products

Hm, which branches? The bigger the outlet, the more likely they are to have it - Metro and Local branches might well not. I don't know the area in which you live, but in Oxford I know the Tescoes midway down Cowley Road and at the intersection of it and the ring road both have it, as do the Holland & Barrett health food shop on Gold Lion Walk in the centre of town, Uhuru Wholefoods on Cowley Road and surely others on here. If you don't have any big supermarket outlets near you, that sort of place is probably the best to start looking.

Re texture, oat milk tends to settle slightly, but if you shake it thoroughly before use I'd say it's not too watery. I haven't had nut milk in a while so can't be sure, though I have a vague memory of it being slightly thicker and less hassle. It's also the nicest tasting by a long way (much nicer than milk!) IMO - and the most expensive. You can sometimes get nut-flavoured oat milk though, which is also pretty tasty.

does anyone know how many hens, or any kind of animal, you can keep per acre under the law of any area (please give the area you're talking about please)

and how many can be kept on how many acres in a battery farm?

what im thinking is if we only farmed in a free range way how much land would we need to use to create the same amount of meat we eat now?

the answer is probably massive so then how much meat would it be viable for people to keep eating? and how much land would this use?

wikipedia says of the EU regulations that

"the open-air runs must at least satisfy the conditions specified in Article 4(1)(3)(b)(ii) of Directive 1999/74/EC whereby the maximum stocking density is not greater than 2500 hens per hectare of ground available to the hens or one hen per 4m2 at all times"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_range

why is invitro meat currently so expensive?

Arepo wrote:Hm, which branches? The bigger the outlet, the more likely they are to have it - Metro and Local branches might well not. I don't know the area in which you live, but in Oxford I know the Tescoes midway down Cowley Road and at the intersection of it and the ring road both have it, as do the Holland & Barrett health food shop on Gold Lion Walk in the centre of town, Uhuru Wholefoods on Cowley Road and surely others on here. If you don't have any big supermarket outlets near you, that sort of place is probably the best to start looking.

Ah, it's Banbury actually - but it has a big Tesco and Sainsburys, so that's weird that the Tesco near the O2 Academy (which I guess is the one you mean) has it and they claim not to. Anyway, I can get it from that Tesco or Uhuru as they're very near work!

The Tesco near the O2 academy has oat milk, not nut or (IIRC) rice - but then that's the one I usually prefer anyway. It's normally hidden away near the cereals section, usually with UHT milk, that they might be more likely to know about.