this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
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Honestly as sad as this sounds... I think long term when lab produced meat becomes more affordable than mass-produced meat that will be the start of the time of people moving away from killing animals for nutrition in horrendous conditions bit by bit. If this perseveres some countries might even start banning the worse forms of how animals are kept
the alternative is harvesting bugs as protein/fat source instead, which is more efficient and doesnt require too much space or resources.
What about this sounds sad?
That people aren't willing to even question how animal suffering has been normalized to the extent it has. I'm not fully vegetarian or vegan even if I'm trying to reduce meat consumption. But I've had this conversation with people and some don't even want to discuss this while eating arguing it ruins their appetite. I think its a great thing that Lab-grown meat could end the suffering of animals in many ways in the future. And people will look back and ask how we could ever do something so awful to animals.
What I think is sad is that for the short foreseeable future animal suffering will still be treated as normality and nothing will change until there is no reason or way it will inconvenience humans in any way to shift away. I find that morally appalling to some regard
I think A LOT of people are completely unaware.
There’s an entire subset of people who essentially create their own reality and anything that contradicts it is immediately rejected, completely at a subconscious level, so the idea of questioning doesn’t even cross their minds.
These people are all over lemmy!
It's not because they want to change, but because droughts, diseases, cost of fertilizer and the like will force them to look for other cheaper ways to produce meat or they'll have to go vegan.
The cyberpunk name is scop: single celled organing protein. Real meat is there only for the rich.
For now, lab grown meat is super expensive, and I honestly can't see a way it will ever catch up to faciry farmed animals. Factory farmed animal meat is very close to optimal in terms of cost efficiency.
And massive subsidies, don't forget those
Honestly aside from the nutrients the infrastructure around them is crazy. For now lab-grown meat still is very expensive but I think if optimized and produced at mass scale the cost could definitely go below what meat from animal facotries costs