[ExI] Alternative Meat Production [WAS Re: Fame meat]

[Kevin Freels]

>
> Imagine a stack of thin sheets a cm apart with 0.5 cm dimeter thru-holes on
> about 4 cm centers.  The stack could be a couple meters deep, giving you a
> couple hundred sheets of meat.  Nutrient fluids flow thru the holes to reach
> all the stacks.  The stacks are taken apart and harvested by machine after a
> week.  You have 200 sheets, say 3 mm thick, two meters on a side, that's
> .003*2*2*200 is about 2400 liters of meat, which is about 3000 kg.  How much
> is that worth?  How many proles could that feed?  What is 3 tons in beasts?
> About 6?  Any beast experts here?  What if it took a month to grow 3 cm?
> Six beast-equivalents per month?
>
> spike
>
>   
This really depends on what cut we're actually making. An 1100 lb cow 
produces roughly 500 lbs of usable meat. But that meat includes tongue 
among other things which I'm not too fond of . This is a 14-18 month 
process of feeding when you are dealing with corn-fed cows vs foraging 
cows which take longer to get to market due to the lower energy provided 
by grass. Only about 15% of that appears to be "chuck" for ground chuck 
(ground beef is made from all sorts of leftovers). Assuming this is the 
meat we would first be attempting to replace, a single cow only 
represents 75 lbs of  ground chuck  at about $2.50 per pound on the 
market. At 3000 kg (6600 lbs roughly) your single run is worth about 
$16,500 and replaces 88 cows feeding for 14-18 months at roughly 22 lbs 
per day (based on a loose average gleaned from multiple lousy internet 
sources and no real experts). That's about 2000 lbs of feed per day - 
960,000 lbs over a 16 month period. Also with such a system there is no 
need to administer antibiotics.

The thin sheets would of course have to be on some kind of support. One 
person mentioned a substrate that dissolves, but I have another idea. 
How about making the sheets out of the very nutrients needed to grow in 
the first place. The cells could then be sprayed onto the "feed paper" 
and then they would actually consume the paper while replacing it with 
proper meat cells. Then we may even be able to rid ourselves of the 
entire structure of holes and nutrient delivery and only have to concern 
ourselves with occasional passes of a sprayer head that feeds the top 
and provides water.

On another note, I changed the heading for this thread. My typo was 
supposed to be "fake meat" and not "fame meat" but alas, my spell 
checker doesn't check subject lines. It's been bugging me but I didn't 
expect the thread to last this long. But seeing that this has gone a 
whole day I just HAD to change it!