Resolves YES if one can purchase a cultured meat product (a.k.a. "cultivated meat", "lab grown meat", etc.) in a major grocery chain store in the US. Non-cell based mock meats, like the Impossible Burger, do not count.
Sep 23, 6:59pm: Clarifying resolution criteria: I'd resolve YES if any of the following occur:
A major grocery store (Whole Foods, Walmart, Kroger, etc.) started carrying cultured meat in >10 stores
There are at least 5 major cities in which it's possible to purchase cultured meat (e.g. through specialty grocery stores)
I can order cultured meat online and have it delivered. -- In this case, I'd also add the condition that the price be within an order-of-magnitude of "normal" meat products, to guard against technically matching this by offering a $1k burger orderable online.
1,000
3.00@NicoDelon I fixed it. If the author did that intentionally, feel free to change it back.
It's far too intensive and expensive as it is and would take probably decades at the minimum to be made affordable over-time if it indeed can be made made affordable at all. This YouTuber goes into it in far more detail then I ever could:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0zCf4Yup34&ab_channel=WhatI%27veLearned
This process is a lot more expensive and complicated than we think. I just don't see it becoming suddenly cheap and easy to surmount by the end of this year.
@NicoDelon “But don’t look for this novel meat in U.S. grocery stores anytime soon. Cultivated chicken is much more expensive than meat from whole, farmed birds and cannot yet be produced on the scale of traditional meat, said Ricardo San Martin, director of the Alt:Meat Lab at University of California Berkeley.
The companies plan to serve the new food first in exclusive restaurants: Upside has partnered with a San Francisco restaurant called Bar Crenn, while Good Meat dishes will be served at a Washington, D.C., restaurant run by chef and owner Jose Andrés.”
https://apnews.com/article/cultivated-meat-lab-grown-cell-based-a88ab8e0241712b501aa191cdbf6b39a
@NicoDelon By the end of this year you'll be able to order it online and have it delivered at a reasonable price for cultured meat product.
@NicoDelon Don’t get me wrong. I’d be very happy to be wrong, but this seems practically impossible to me.
@NicoDelon Good Meat and Upside Foods will want to keep the momentum going on this. They still have a lot of hype to build in the US market.
@Predictor Make it make sense economically. Every piece you’ll find will tell you the obstacles to scaling are huge.
@NicoDelon
> Ok cool.
I don’t think so.
My bet is that if we spent the same amount on improving the quality and reducing the cost of plant based meat, we would reduce meat consumption way more.
I think this is a bad strategy.
But if I am wrong, this is very nice.
@dionisos To be clear, I don’t think so either. It makes no sense economically (for now) and like you say, plant based meats are plausibly a much much more cost effective way to reduce meat consumption and solve other problems.
@NicoDelon I think you make two excellent points:
The articles suggest that this will take time to reach supermarkets, and be available elsewhere first
There are big hurdles to scaling these products and making them economically viable
I still sold my NO shares and bought some YES after reading the articles. A big part of this is likely wishful thinking :/ ... On the other hand, the constraints in the present market are quite liberal: can be ordered online, and the price may be up to 9x that of traditional meat. There's a chance that this might happen in five months... 😉
@dionisos I was just thinking in the sense that they now have little to no competition in this space, so they need to get to market fast in the US and capitalize on their advantage. They might have to operate for a while like Uber, DoorDash, etc. and worry less about profits and more about market share and raising money. My prediction hinges less on it all making sense or the economic viability of it all, and more on them just marketing.
