USDA approves "lab meat" chicken; be skeptical of "cultured meat" claims

Details at this AP story.

Why skeptical?

First, inside the story.

Manufacturers wouldn't name a price. They only said that "eventually" they hoped to be near organic chicken, currently reported at $20/lb in the story. I'm betting that this in a posh Bay Area restaurant, for first adopters, if sold to the general public, would run $75/lb right now.

Second, the Good News plant can produce just 50,000 pounds a year, the story notes. Merikkkans eat 50 BILLION pounds. So we're not talking 1/10 of 1 percent. We're talking 1,000 times less than that. Even if it scales up to 400,000 pounds, that's still less than 1/100 of 1 percent.

Reasons to be skeptical outside the story?

First, it's not environmental. MASSIVE amounts of electricity are needed.

Second, to scale up? You'll need computer clean room level clean or near for 400,000, let alone 4,000,000 pounds. And, on a much bigger scale than a computer chip factory.

With that and other things, as I blogged a couple of years ago, this won't be close to economically viable until 2030 at the earliest. And, per that and the "clean room" angle? One screwup will be far worse than something like Jack in the Box's e coli problem of decades ago.

Because of all of the above, there is one thing I do NOT call this: "clean meat."

And again, don't call it environmental, primarily because of the electric cost. I called Mother Jones out on that earlier this year and will do the same to other Gang Green enviros. A number of years ago, as in nearly a decade ago, I was more hopeful. But I then read more on the number-crunching on the electric juice, did a bit of my own, and beyond the couple of years ago link, thought on my own about things like the purity issue.

I'm all in favor  of addressing animal cruelty issues (even as I still eat some meat) and the factory farms issue. The answer is getting Americans in general to eat less meat, and letting the California law on hog anti-cruelty upheld by the Supreme Court be able to "percolate," hopefully followed by similar such measures. The second part of the answer is? Carbon taxes, which would squash both factory meat farming AND lab meat like a bug.