Billionaire Investor Peter Thiel Backs New Venture Aimed at Producing 3-D Printed Meat

I'm a little skeptical myself, particularly if they're hoping to get the same nutritional value into it. Animal meat is the product of a whole lot of solar energy (solar to plant material to animal material) and water. I don't know that they can ever out-do nature's process, streamlined by man, in terms of meat production.

If it works, great, but I won't be holding my breath.

Peter Thiel has made statements recently about how technological progress has stagnated, about how many kinds of engineering face so many restrictions these days that they have become effectively illegal, and about how we need some breakthroughs quickly to restart science fiction-like growth again or else our civilization will fail.

I generally agree with this assessment, but I find Thiel's choices of projects to fund with his own money underwhelming: Seasteading, the Singularity (delusion) Institute, the quickly defunct Halcyon Molecular startup company - and now printed meat?

WTF?

I don't see how any of these ventures solves the urgent problems our society faces. How about finding ways to make people smarter? We have ways to measure that, you know, despite what the IQ denialists out there claim. The human mind provides the basis for all other progress.

Human immortality is within reach.

Of course, the people at Symbiotica demonstrated this already more than ten years ago, with regular tissue culturing techniques. They also discovered they needed about one cow's worth of blood to grow a tiny sliver of very unpalatable meat.

Advancing the technology to be able to grow tissues in bulk would be very valuable for biomedical purposes. But a designer food delicacy doesn't seem like a great business plan. And it definitely doesn't seem very environment or even animal friendly, given the state of the art in tissue culturing.

Growing in vitro *leather* is actually much more promising: no need to worry about any FDA approval nightmares, and I bet you can sell designer leather for the fashion industry at a much higher price/pound than designer meat...

"Last time we visited the butcher meat was selling in bulk and by the ounce."

See, the issue here is that we aren't recognizing "the environmental (and ethical) impacts" as "cost".

I'd rather pay more for a clear conscience, but apparently that's just me.

"How about finding ways to make people smarter? "

Reconstituting public schools as non-unionized and locally controlled and accountable, as well as chucking the entire current media would be a great start.

TEA.
EARL GREY.
HOT.
and a sirloin.

GregN913,
Immortality has always been reach, if you focus on the inner being and less physical being, to learn to transcend your soul.

Correct ne if I'm wrong, but isnt the other, other white meat.... baby?

Anyway, I have no doubt it will work, reproducing skin, fat, and muscle tissue are some of the simplest mediums to reproduce synthetically. One the Bio-Pharma side they have been doing it for years.

The question this venture hopes to answer is can they streamline the process so less origin material is needed. As well as can the process produce it fast enough and in sufficient quantities to ever hope to offset any meaningful quantities of the worlds meat supply. If these prerequisites cannot be met it will never hit the cost point to gain market distribution alongside traditional meat products. Then there is the most important question to its acceptance.. Hows it taste?

I hope that this venture is successful. Not only as a means of bolstering the world's ailing meat supply, but also helping to develop an efficient means of mass producing generated tissue for medical applications.

I must concede however i share everyone's skepticism. I hope that in time we are all proven wrong and this technology changes the world!

@Robot @Gregn913

Even in a purely scientific sense, we are all immortal. Our bodies and our brains run on electric charge. conservation of energy dictates that energy is never created nor destroyed.

So in a manner of speaking..... I am, I was, and I will ever be.

More Food-Like Substances in our future. This does not bode well.

"Cultured cell media to media to create a meat substitute".
Where would they get the cultured cell media from and what would be the feed stock for it? If I read an article like this it would only be an advantage if you put grass in and got meat out. Or better even some minerals water and solar energy input and meat output.

nighthawkich,
Ah yes as your matter will endure and return to the chaos of everything else, what will become of your inner being, consious or soul. Perhaps it will disapear into vapor? Perhaps there is a higher power, being, GOD or GODS that posses the ability to caputure it and allow you to continue on a different plain of existance?

I believe science is real and makes a wonderful painting of the cosmos of what God or Gods have made. And in our own science we even acknowledge the possibility of different dimensions, possibly of time travel, string theories and other bizarra scientific realities.

With that said, thank God for this day! It is often recorded in history as we were visted by heavenly beings, they came from above. I pray and hope my soul is saved and I am allowed to rise and be said in that heavenly cosmic place!

I always thought manufactored meat was called SPAM!

Spam is more like recycled meat. People eat spam, and blow out their entrails. collectors come along, scrape them up and grind them down. Wham Bam there's more SPAM!

nighthawkich,
I want no more spam politicians. I want real leaders with enough inner strength and integrity to stand up and speak of a belief and solution for out country and not fear political suicide. I want real leader that genuinely cares!

I am so tired of manufactured 3D printed politicians, sigh....

Where oh, where is the beef?!

Food should never be messed with like this...food should stay in its most natural state or be combined with other foods and natural oils to be dishes, deserts, or sandwiches...Can all please just leave food be aside from those instances...