I don’t understand, on what basis should one kind of job be protected at the expense of another?
On the basis that one of the jobs’s capital holder has enough money to buy politicians.
Because fuck the environment, we gotta keep the farmers happy.
let’s be completely real here though, lab grown meat does not scale at all - it’s low scale, insanely expensive and probably not all that environmentally friendly when you count all the steps too. All this is just for political points, it does not really make a tiny bit of a difference.
That’s true as of now, but if we stopped subsidising farmers and spent that funding on lab grow technology then, much like solar, it would go from expensive niche to cheap mainstream a whole lot quicker. All decisions like this do is slow that process down.
or, you know, we could incentivize people to stop eating beef and eat meat with lower carbon footprint and put the money that would go into lab grown meat research into something that will actually have some impact.
Peronally, every time I hear about lab grown meat just the pure stupidity of it makes me want to have a nice, juicy, old-school grass-fed ribeye.
source: I’m a biochem phd that works with bioreactors
I mean, I don’t disagree but ultimately it’s going to be which ever option goes down the easiest with the general population: ‘eat less beef’ or ‘continue eating beef’. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for reducing the amount of meat we eat in general, and I’ve been doing that myself, but from my uneducated view-point lab grown meat appears to offer greater benefits, and fewer disbenefits compared to trying to persuade people to adopt the current alternatives. Not just from a environmental point of view but ethical as well.
And don’t forget: we can do both. We can research improvements to lab grown meat and other alternatives at the same time. These shouldn’t be binary choices.
If AI is anything to go by, most people think white-collar jobs should be protected while blue-collar jobs should be automated.
Money
How did you feel about the SAG-AFTRA strikes over AI?
Edit: I feel like this reads as snarky but it’s a genuine question. I feel like these are complex situations. AI cannot be allowed to be curtailed for protectionist reasons, but there are serious likeness ownership concerns in entertainment media.
I imagine similar problems with the US beef industry so want your take.
I feel like it’s a shining example of hypocrisy among city-folk and white-collar workers.
They legitimately think they’re better than everyone else and rules should be made for them.
The AI industry is going to obliterate significant chunks of the white collar workforce the same way the robotics industry has, and will continue to, obliterate the manufacturing workforce.
In the long term this will be a good thing but I think we’re in for a very bumpy and interesting next 20-25 years.
the term is “vested interests”
Unfortunately the environment of cash isn’t as entangling in the artificial meat space as it is in the old fashioned meat space
Farmers get their dicks sucked by every government on Earth. Be it pesticides, usage of fertilizers, groundwater pollution, animal rights or erosion . NoOoO!! We CaNnOt PrOtEcT tHe EnViRoNmEnt!!11 iT wOuLd mAkE fArMiNg hArDeR aNd MoRe ExPeNsIvE !!!
Aren’t most farms corporate operations now?
I honestly think that is an intentional part of these stories. They always say “farmers,” knowing it’ll conjure mental images of American Gothic–hard-scrabble people just trying to earn their way. When the reality is it’s just more shitty, corrupt carve outs for various evil companies. It’s another version of “protecting the children.” It’s never about that, but who can oppose it?
In Germany many farms are still family-owned.
Yes, and the farming industry is getting its dick sucked all year long. Each year they get money for their shitty returns because it was unforseen and animal rights get ignored.
A typical pig farm is controlled ever 30 years or so. Germany has like the most fucked up animal rights in the EU and exports their cheap meat (produces by exploited workers from other countries btw.) into the rest of the EU.
It’s a disgusting system really. Fuck those “poor” farmers. Yes. Their life is shitty, but they should just stop exploiting the planet and do something good instead. Maybe or politicians and the industry would then learn something.
Well yeah. Nobody cares about the family farmer.
Farm owners maybe. Not exactly farmers
In my country, the Philippines, farmers are some of the most hard-working yet most exploited people.
It’s usually the land owners, middlemen, and corporations who hoard all government benefits and financial gain.
Farmers are the most consistent recipients of welfare in the US with the Farm Bill
It’s worse, it’s not the farmers that get the support. It is the corporates that own the farms that get the support. They are the ones driving unsustainable practices.
Some people even support the industries fight for animal cruelty, climate change and new zoonosis
As long as people give money to the animal industry no government on earth will do shit
We can’t have lab meat because then it would make farming redundent. But then where would we get our foo…oh wait, never mind.
What an ass-backward decision.
It’s par for the course. Italy is very restrictive when it comes to food regulations. Some times too much.
Yeah, lab-grown meat is a horrendous waste of resources but it shouldn’t be banned.
in what ways is it a waste of resources?
Bioreactors don’t scale at all. Lab grown meat (really, we should call it cell slurry, because that’s what it is) will be an expensive niche.
In what way isn’t it? All the money spent on it could be spent on things people need.
Like…food?
Of course.
If you’re trying to say they need fake meat though, then you’d be sorely mistaken.
The “non-fake” meat is extremely wasteful. Lab-grown meat still has many problems, but at least 99% of the calories are not spent on keeping a cow alive in cruel conditions.
If only there was an alternative to eating meat.
Literally sinking country bans alternatives to stuff that contributes to sinking.
The burgers just wouldn’t be the same without all the suffering.
I live in the US, and I’m not familiar with Italian politics, but this seems a little … republican.
Italy quite literally has a “neo-fascist” government, similarities to the GOP of course are purely coincidental.
They kind of invented republicanism. Only to ditch it for emperors later on.
That’s a pretty staunch oversimplification. The republic was doing what almost all democratic republics are doing right now. The wage gap between the political elite and the common people was widening and the senate wanted status quo, but Julius Caesar was gaining popularity and large amounts of wealth by giving his soldiers better pay than most Roman commanders at the time and using their superior training to conquer Gaul and Spain.
Because of their pay, his soldiers were better trained, more loyal, and morale was kept high due in large part to his own fighting ability and tactical prowess. With each and every success on the battlefield he gained more followers. The Roman Senate grew jealous and thought he was a threat to the Roman way of life and exciled Caesar from the heart of the Roman empire. Caesar and his army could not cross the Rubicon River else he wage war with the empire itself. Caesar said, “F you guys, I’m taking over.” And installed himself as emperor of Rome after leading his army across the Rubicon and to the Roman Forum. He did alright for awhile, redistributing wealth and taking care of the Roman commonors but then the Roman elite started to do not so alright according to some conspirators and in turn decided Caesar should also not do alright, so they done killed him. Then his grand nephew Augustus took over as the “first emperor” 17 years later. And he did so alright that we collectively decided to name the month of August after him and July after his great uncle.
It’s an oversimplification for sure, however they had the very first actual republic in history (loosely based on Plato’s politeia, which translated to res publica in Latin).
The ‘ditching it for an empire’ was a gross oversimplification, I agree. Put it in there as there’s some sawing going on at the legs of the American republic, by those of nominally republican persuasion.
Thnx for the detailed write up, though.
You’re a pleasant person. I hope you have a rock solid day
Cheers Giuseppe,I may day the same of you. Cuddle your yeti in my behalf!
“We want to assure our customers an animal has been abused and suffered to get this meat, unlike the lab made alternatives. Customers are willing to pay extra for the suffering.”
thank you farmcorp
Genetic engineering is the newest tool humanity has learned on the skill tree of evolution. Its on par with the discovery of fire and the power of splitting an atom.
It is playing god and whats wrong with that. God is dead we killed him the day we invented the scientific method.
If anything killed god, it’s the people that build up positions of power in his name and do fucked up shit like rape children and other crimes or worsening of society
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“Italy is the world’s first country safe from the social and economic risks of synthetic food,” said Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida.
The head of the big Coldiretti farmers’ organisation, Ettore Prandini, at one point confronted two MPs from the opposition More Europe party, calling them “criminals” for opposing the ban on lab-grown meat with placards that condemned it as “anti-scientific and anti-Italian”.
Centrist colleagues called on the farmers’ lobby to apologise and the president of the lower house of parliament, Lorenzo Fontana, said that “differences of opinion should never descend into forms of violence”.
He praised MPs for backing the new law, which came in response to a petition organised by the Coldiretti lobby group.
Critics point out there is nothing synthetic about lab-grown meat, as it is created by growing natural cells without genetic modification.
The law is also a blow for animal welfare groups, who have highlighted lab-made meat as a solution towards protecting the environment from carbon emissions.
The original article contains 543 words, the summary contains 161 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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