this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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United States | News & Politics
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Subsidies for meat alternatives are a very liberal non-solution. The tech is not there for meat outside of ground beef and the state shouldn't be subsidizing to create a different problem, the issue with the USA's ridiculous meat overproduction and consumption isn't that there's a slaughter in the process, it's that the amount of manpower/water/energy required is ridiculous. The subsidies should be substantially reduced for meat and dairy, and price controls (or outright government handouts) should be in place for staple foodstuffs.
If grains and legumes become cheaper, people will find a way to make them tastier and eat them way more often.
If you can only consider solutions that require everyone to give up eating meat, you will never get enough people on board.
They said nothing about everyone giving up on meat.
We don't have infinite resources on our finite planet. People need to eat less meat. They stated some ways to encourage that transition.
Eating meat doesn’t sustain some kind of curse. It’s an environmental problem because of current factory farming methods. They’ve invented a better method, and you’re sticking to your guns as if it’s the act of eating causing the pollution, and not the production methods. Moronic.
It is an environmental problem because the resources required to obtain the same caloric/nutritional content from meat is far higher than the alternatives. If the "better method" is better than our current method of meat production but still too intensive to maintain at scale then it doesn't solve the problem without reducing the scale of meat consumption.
That doesn't mean nobody can eat meat, it just means that on average people need to eat LESS meat.
Why are you so against people eating less meat? Your arguments here are akin to the "nuclear energy" bros who rag on renewables all day. Just like we can use renewables and rely on nuclear to fill any gaps, we can lessen meat consumption and rely on less intensive forms of meat production to fill the gaps.
That’s simply not true. The energy cost for beef is astronomical.
How do you plan to enforce less meat consumption?
Rationing. No store is allowed to sell more than X amount of meat to any individual.
It'd create black markets and such, but the overall consumption would still go down.
You can want that all day. Still an absolutely unworkable plan. If you actually care about the environment, work towards realistic goals instead of letting perfect be the enemy of good.
What did I say that isn't true? I never said the energy cost of beef wasn't huge. Quite the opposite in fact...
Maybe I misread. So what’s your plan to enforce it?
Within our current political-economic system? End subsidies for farmed meat, subsidize alternatives, and raise awareness on the issue as well as about health effects of excess meat consumption.
This will have the "push" effect of driving up farmed meat prices while having the "pull" effects of cheaper, healthier alternatives. There is nothing in particular to enforce.
Edit: and as the market on farmed meat becomes less profitable producers will leave the industry as well which leads to a sort of "spiral" as scarcity goes up, raising prices, pushing more away.
Exactly. And subsidizing vat grown meat is a great way to supercharge those efforts.
But it’s also has a lot of people outing their true intentions. A lot of folks who claimed they advocated for meatless diets for environmental reasons still oppose vat grown meat. Because really they just want to force their preference on others.
If nobody lessened their consumption habits and just switched to "vat grown meat", that would not solve the core of the problem. While less resource intensive than farm grown meat, it's still resource intensive.
As I said before, it can exist to fill the voids left by other solutions, but it is not a solution in and of itself. For this reason it should not be the priority as the priority should be on growing/promoting other less intensive alternatives and lessening consumption itself.
The type of resources matters. Not using the same amount of land and grain needed for living animals is a significant impact.
I have a solution: don't give up meat and you collapse the fucking ecosystem and then you'll give up meat because you'll be starving to death
The fact that a better alternative is becoming available, and y’all are still insisting the only possible option is giving up meat entirely, really proves that it’s not about the environment and y’all just want to force your choices on everyone else.
It's not available. It's an expensive, comparatively hands-on process that can only produce good ground beef and shitty everything else.
You know something that tastes like meat, has the texture of meat, and has the nutritional qualities of meat? Fucking meat, which you could still have if you really wanted it, you'd just have to do it once every few weeks instead of twice a day.
Failing that, there's already a high protein meat substitute that has good texture, flavor and is super cheap in terms of labor and water, it's called a mushroom.
Lmao. Believe it or not, most people don't give a single shit about your dietary choices. I love meat myself, if lab grown meat were as good, could be as cheap, or as labor efficient, I'd be all for it like I am for, say, nuclear. But it just ain't so, this futurist fetishism that some libs have is so fucking ridiculous and it's really telling that when people tell you why it's just not feasible your first instinct is to go "you're literally 1984ing me rn"
Uh huh. So unfeasible, but Big Ag lobbyists are working to get it banned in multiple states (already successful in Florida)? Something doesn’t add up.
trying to ban the competition is just business as usual in the US, that's ridiculously far from lab grown meat being a viable alternative.
Again, you can make fine burger meat with that process, anything else is fucking shit at the moment. It probably will get better eventually, but who knows how long it'll be and there's other sources of protein readily available already that don't entail giving enormous subsidies to yet another fucking corporation.
If it’s not a viable alternative, it’s not competition. Pick a lane.
Jfc are you 9? They attempt to ban prospective competition, it doesn't need to actually have significant market cap. The point is to strangle stuff in the cradle.
“Prospective.” It’s already being stocked in some stores.
Oh my, they have burger patties in the store? Wagyu beef and USDA Choice ribeye sellers must be shaking in their boots. Run and tell Tyson, if they subsidize lab grown meat nobody will buy a single chicken breast again now that there's the option to buy a vegan burger for the same price a regular burger used to cost!
Tyson already knows, and has been spending millions to get it banned before they can’t compete with it.
You should let them know you’re a market genius, and save them those millions.
What a profoundly fucking stupid thing to say.
Selfish spoiled little baby 'I want to do whatever I want no matter what it costs the world outside of me' because I'm the only thing in the universe that matters me me me me
I’m a vegetarian, dumbass. But I understand it will be quicker to build vat grown meat facilities than convert everyone to vegetarianism. We do not have more than a generation or two before the planet becomes unlivable.
Grow up.
We don't have a generation or two left.
People can choose to give up meat now or they'll give up meat later when no one can afford it anymore. I won't need to force them to become vegetarian, the economic conditions will do it for me. I'll just be ready before everyone else.
So we’re going to rely on voluntary behavior from people and Big Ag producers. That’s a fucking abysmal plan.
There is no plan! That's my point.
Environmental collapse is going to make meat impossible for 99% of people. There won't be anything voluntary about it, people just won't be able to afford meat and so they'll stop eating it.
We could avoid this with central planning and regulations, but we won't.
So you’re alarmed, but not enough to support vat grown meat alternatives? That’s a bridge too far?
It's a waste of our limited time and resources. If it's ever viable it's just going to be a treat for rich people, it will not ever be viable as a mass meat alternative for most people.
It's right up there with cold fusion and general AI. It's not happening, not on the timescale needed to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Florida has banned it. Big Ag lobbyists are aggressively moving to get it banned in every other state.
Seems like a lot of wasted money, for something that’s not a threat. What do you know that they don’t? How about you write up your expertise, and make some money off it?
I know that we are on the brink of the end of the fucking world and every dipshit capitalist thinks they can be the last ones to squeeze the last drop of profit out of our planet before the mass dying begins. They're hedging their bets to make sure lab grown meat never happens.
Justice will come for them.
Just eat plants. Treatlerites need to grow up.
Sure. Let’s keep on with the ‘just eat plants’ messaging. Surely it’ll start working any day now.
I didn't say it would "work", I think my pessimism is pretty obvious. What I said is they're going to eat plants whether they like it or not.
Unless they're hunting the Most Dangerous Game, there won't be any meat for anyone sooner rather than later.