I can’t remember where I saw it, but I feel like today is a good time to revisit the concept of “Vegan + bacon”.

People often avoid making small positive changes because they get caught up in trying to go all the way. For example, “I could never go vegan. I love bacon too much”.

So then go vegan plus bacon. Or vegetarian plus bacon. Or just switch to oat milk and eat more vegetables. Whatever small change you can make is good

@danirabbit

It's a terrible shame that synthetic meat seems to have fizzled out. It would've solved a lot of problems.

@argv_minus_one @danirabbit well the problem is that synthetic meat isn't 100% completely perfect with zero ethical or environmental or taste or texture issues, so it's basically a complete waste of time.

/sarcasm for Poes Law.

@bencurthoys

Wait, what ethical issues does synthetic meat have?

@danirabbit

@argv_minus_one @danirabbit I don't know! I'm just making a joke!

But if you really want to find out, just post "#syntheticmeat has absolutely zero #ethical issues and is completely fine" here on Mastodon, and some joyless bastard will be around in 5 minutes to tell you you're wrong...

@bencurthoys @argv_minus_one @danirabbit

May I be the joyless bastard and weigh in about synthetic meat? I hope not to crash the party (also, I am several hours late, lol)...  

The problem I see with synthetic meat is about the food system we want.

Synthetic meat is an industrial product, requiring global supply chains, large-scale (sterile) facilities and a stratified and complex (and stratified) social and economic structure.
A part from making the life cycle assessment quite complex (because e.g. the quantification of the environmental impact of a production system depends mainly from where you draw the system boundaries, so it is very easy to leave out processes and obtain a nicer picture than in reality), hyper-technological systems are not resilient (remember when during covid there was a global shortage of lab gloves because *all* of them are produced in Malaysia? there are many components in a lab that are not easy to source in a crisis).

On another note, it is also a question of organization. A food system based on small-scale, local and sustainable farms is in my eyes much preferable than megacorporations owning the food production chain. I am not sure that lab meat will be easy to grow in our basements like fungi or so...

Also, be aware that a lot of the lab meat bubble was because it seemed so attractive to investors. Technological, scalable solutions that seem even more sustainable than what we have actually. A very welcome investment opportunity and a good narrative for corporations that want to show that they will save the world (remember biofuels from algae?).

Don't get me wrong, I am not fundamentally against industry or technology, it's just that I think that it is a good idea to keep the influence of the corporate-industrial players out of the food system as much as possible.

It is correct that lab meat is probably way more ethical than the current system of industrial agriculture with factory farms. But we also easily tend to overestimate the contribution of industrial farming to feed the world, and overlook the millions of smallscale farmers that provide a way greater part of the foodstuff actually consumed by humanity. @viacampesina_en has more information about this.

#Agroecology #LabMeat #SyntheticMeat #AgroecologicalTransition #Diet #SustainableDiet #FoodSystem #WeFeedTheWorld

@earthworm I can only double down on this. In my opionion it is not eating meat per se that is problematic. Problematic is how much meat we eat and how we produce it. You can feed some of the heirloom breeds on pieces of land that produces no calories for us humans at all and sustain a high level of biodiversity at the same time. Depending on the climate zone you can even use it as an orchard. This is small scale and invisible to the tech bros. It is a lot of work but low energy input.
@earthworm main problems of centralized food production like artificial meat:: mind you - only plants can create calories - you need to grow calories in a place. This requires fertilizer and maybe irrigation. Then you process it at another place. And then it is eaten at yet another place. And the metabolic byproduct aka poop and pee that contains all of the plant nutrients left, is waste. There is no circle. With grass fed animals you can have that. Not with industry scale meat farms, though.