[ExI] coming this fall, lab grown meat

[spike]

...
>... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl
Subject: Re: [ExI] coming this fall, lab grown meat

On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 01:34:51PM -0800, spike wrote:

>>... This is the first I have seen them state an actual near term
time-frame.  I hope they make it.  {8-]

>...There are already quite acceptable meat substitutes from plant sources
for people who need them. Animal cell culture will never work (=be
cost-effective) for food production. It's expensive enough for medical and
biotech purposes already...

The medical/lab uses of this tech is expensive because of all the
restrictions and controls we put on it.  If it is created in high quantities
the cost will come down.  We can take the meat substitutes currently made
and mix it with cell cultures perhaps, to keep the cost below beast-based
meats and still have the taste of fat which is mostly missing from
substitutes.

>...Much more intersting problem: make something like quorn, but with a meat
taste and texture.

This is what I anticipate.  We could culture the stronger flavored meats,
then use those to flavor rice, potatoes and such.

>...Bonus: make above from single-cell algae grown in a photobioreactor on
your roof, which uses your exhaled CO2 and flue gases for carbon input...

I wouldn't be too surprised if it turns out a rooftop food production
facility is a better use of scarce solar resources than is converting it to
electricity.  In most cases, the family food bill is far higher than the
electricity bill.  More to the point, a calorie in food is more valuable
than a calorie of electricity.

BOTECs:  a sack of potatoes, low cost end of the food spectrum, about 50
cents a pound, and about 25 calories per ounce so that's 400 calories in 50
cents or 800C/$.   A kilowatt hour is about 860 nutritional calories, so
potatoes are about a buck a kwh.  (Nutritional calories are actually a
kilocalorie.)  My highest tier power rate is about 44 cents a kwh, so food
at its lowest is about twice the cost of electricity at its highest.  On the
farm, electricity is 7.9 cents a kwh flat rate regardless of how much I use,
so on the farm, food at its cheapest is about 12 times the cost of the
energy equivalent in electricity.  So good thinking Gene, if we figure out
how to grow food on the rooftop, it is way more valuable than converting
that sun energy to electricity.

Rice is also about 50 cents US per pound, and its energy content is a little
higher than potatoes, more like 35 to 40 calories per ounce instead of 25
for potatoes, so the low end food price is about 8 times the energy price of
electricity, but beef is a different story.  That stuff is now typically
around 50 cents an ounce, and 50 calories per ounce, so energy cost of lean
beef is about 10 times the energy cost of the highest tier, or about 50
times the cost of electricity if we assume farm rates.

To solve the world's energy problems, we need to focus on food production.
We can solve the ape-hauler problem, the home lighting problems, and the
rest of it.  

spike