Bezos Earth Fund Invests $6o Million In Centers To Improve Alternative Meats

(Geoffrey) #1



Bezos Earth Fund Invests $6o Million In Centers To
Improve Alternative Meats

Another “philanthropist” billionaire investing millions of dollars to “fight climate change” :roll_eyes:
Apparently, in March, Jeff Bezos pumped $60 MILLION into fake meat research.
More specifically, “sustainable protein” or lab-grown meats.
Bezos Earth Fund Vice Chairman Lauren Sánchez said, “We need to invent our way out of climate change”

Here’s what I think…

THIS IS A TRAVESTY WAITING TO HAPPEN.
We cannot invent our way out of climate change.
This modern-day hubris thinking we can play God and create “Frankenmeats” is only going to make things worse and come with repercussions for our health and the health of the planet.
Simply put, the further away we move from nature, the more problems we get.
Hippocrates once said, “Illnesses do not come upon us out of the blue. They are developed from small daily sins against Nature.”

Smart guy because if we look at recent history, this notion holds true.
Post-war agricultural innovations like synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and GMOs felt like a utopian breakthrough at the time that would solve the world’s problems by creating agricultural abundance.
But as we now know, this only led to devastating consequences for our health and the environment. Soil degradation, declining ecosystems, long-term health effects like cancer and biodiversity loss…
Today, I fear we are about to repeat history…
You have highly influential individuals like Bezos and Gates backing fake meat as a sustainable revolution, but…
“those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santaya
Meat grown in a petri dish is NOT real meat.
It’s made in cell culture in a lab.
All sorts of problems can arise from meat grown in a petri dish…
It’s almost certainly going to cause health issues for humans like autoimmune issues, damage to the gut and who knows what else…
It’s going to have an inferior nutrient profile to meat from a cow that’s eaten grass in nature.
And it’s going to be WORSE for the environment.
There are multiple studies proving that lab grown meat is way harsher and more damaging to the environment in terms of total carbon footprint and energy costs.
So why in the world would you eat lab-grown meat when you could just eat real, nutrient-rich meat like your ancestors have been doing for hundreds of thousands of years???
I don’t know why they are pushing this so damn hard, especially when we should be allocating this money into scaling regenerative agriculture which actually has a NET POSITIVE effect on the planet (and aligns with nature!).
But fake lab meat is coming…
Production has already begun.
The FDA has started approving companies to begin selling this science experiment to you and your family.
And you better believe guys like Bezos are gonna try and convince you that it’s better for you and the planet.
Which, ladies and gentlemen, is…BOVINE EXCRIMENT!
So keep eating the most sought-after foods by humans.
Meat, organs, fruit, honey, raw dairy.
Paul Salidino

(KM) #2

The elephant in the room is probably population. Can we actually “sustain” (and therefore basically by definition also increase) a human population of 8 billion people, estimated to top out around 11 billion, on sustainably farmed animals (and still make enough space for the rest of the planet’s essential non-human, non-human-food occupants.)

If we can, well let’s get on it already. “They” need to provide affordable, ethical, sustainably raised animal choices for many, many more people. And if we can’t … I’m sitting down, staying quiet and eating my sustainably farmed cows while the rest of the world goes crazy for Beyond Meat and “healthy” grains and “value added” food-like-substances. Maybe that’s very spoiled of me, but I’m not giving up a healthy diet for a lot of misguided marketing hoo-rah that focuses on profit and propaganda, and never even tries to get close to the truth.

#3

Rebellion is growing… and sharing food that we grow and being custodians of land that we nurture. It feels futile and heroic. A fantasy. But I understand that is a defiance toward the erosion of intelligence and natural instinct by what is ‘fed’ to us in main stream media and via social media (which it no longer is and is a propaganda platform).

We need to take care what we consume, with food and information, and make our way back to seemingly safe places such as the Ketogenic Forums to test our thoughts and fears on the clear thinkers here. And I am not saying we ignore the fake peddlers. The purveyors of artificial. We need to keep an eye on them, but not consume or be consumed by them.

Humans are inventive and the mutated capitalist system that has broken free of it’s egalitarian and social fairness constraints for the moment. This has allowed some experimentation on our species by those meanies with ‘means’ in the current sociopolitical structure. They don’t mean to be mean? They think they are right from their point of view. We humans are our own worst enemy, is my hypothesis.

I read or listened elsewhere that there is a trend back to an analog world away from the digital and the fantastical multiverse where fake meats and fake foods abound and spill into our reality. People understand that mobile smart phones are no longer a tool but a bear trap. In that analog culture shift people are gasping to regain food autonomy (as one part), and the knowledge on growing, caring and sharing nutrition. It is bigger in my mind due to my biases, but it holds hope as well as health.

(Geoffrey) #4

Well I’m still way behind all of the technology. I don’t even own a computer. I don’t use self checkout and if you want me to pay a bill you will have to send me a statement and I’ll write you a check. :grin:
I’ll just keep raising my own meat and let the rest of the world eat themselves sick.

#5

I can’t tell what is truth and what is not but when I watched a video about lab meat, they had some good argument about why it’s just not effective in huge quantities. Making some expensive lab meat in small quantities? Yep, humans did it. It’s way worse for the planet, of course, not affordable for the vast majority of people and they are working on making it better. But some aspects are hard to invent our ways out of it. Doing it for billions of people, cheap and healthy enough and effective and good for the planet? Many people with way more knowledge than mine regarding the topic thinks it’s just impossible. I don’t have high hopes myself.
And still think human population should be drastically lowered for the planet to be okay. Yeah, I don’t see a good and quick enough way for that either let alone chances. But it would be nice if the overpopulation would slow down and maybe if the people would be a tad more smart and responsible… Just a bit, I know huge miracles don’t exist.

Sadly I can’t do that (if I totally had to, I probably could find a way though… but I am not there yet) but my attitude is somewhat similar. Yes, I would like things to change but as things stand, I just try to make my own little bubble okay. And I am a bit glad not very many people eats like me as it would cause serious problems and I would lose my affordable, easily available meat. I would mostly swap to plant protein out of necessity… I probably would survive but I prefer what I have now.
If everyone would eat more plants, that would ruin my woe just the same. So I am glad people love eating lean and fatty meats and plants alike, they make them easily available and affordable. The overprocessed stuff could go down, it’s crazy how much is there, not that bad in a small supermarket as it needs to keep the normal items so it cuts the fluff but in a big one? And I saw photos from other countries and it seems even worse (but it’s possible I just don’t go there when shopping. it’s lots of time and hard work enough to get my varied animal food for almost a month!). Actually, all that unnecessary stuff packaged in lots of plastic, well taking that out would help the planet and people alike too. I know, people want it, clearly, just saying. No matter the item, less overeating and less food waste would mean a lot… It would be better for everyone…
But why am I writing about it?
Not useful and it just makes me feel worse. I have serious problems with this world and it can affect my happiest times too, it’s hard to forget about it.

(Alec) #6

$60m is not gonna fix their problem. Their problem is that their fake meat tastes like ■■■■ and is expensive to make. If they invested $6bn, that might make a difference…

(KM) #7

Thank you for this post, it helped me get out of bed. :slightly_smiling_face:

I had that back to basics, humanitarian stewardship experience nearly 30 years ago - on Kangaroo Island, of all places. I would love to feel a movement back to a simpler, kinder time is brewing because the meanies appear to winning, to the point there may be nothing to go back to if it takes too much longer.

(Edith) #8

This is such a bunch of BS. This is so he can capitalize on all the meat-is-bad rhetoric and create a product that he can make money from. If he truly cared about the environment, he wouldn’t be building a rocket for commercial space travel or fly in a private jet. He’s just a big-ass hypocrite.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #9

Well, if we can’t, we are in trouble, because plant crops can’t save us. There isn’t enough arable land to grow enough crops for us to avoid eating meat. Even if such foods were actually okay in the human diet, which they have proved not to be.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #10

That’s for sure. The philosophical proponents of capitalism, Hobbes, Locke, Smith, and even Weber, all assumed that there were ethical and moral restraints on greed. They all believed that capitalists were entitled to a reasonable profit, not an exorbitant one.

The current exponents of greed forget that a healthy adult mind is above all satiable. There is a natural limit to our desires. People who are insatiable are either immature or deranged.

People who think that insatiably greedy capitalism is the God-given way of managing the economy object to Engels’s famous dictum, “From each according to his ability; to each according to his need,” forgetting that Engels was inspired by a couple of verses in the Acts of the Apostles (chapter 2, verses 44 & 45). So even Scripture is against them, not just their philosophical forefathers.

(KM) #11

Have you ever watched The Century Of The Self? I think there’s a third option here. People need a sense of identity. Our current capitalism is almost entirely about providing the masses with a way to define themselves, or protect the identity they’ve crafted from consumeristic choices, which are by design not geared toward satiety. And it’s really, really, really, frighteningly good at it. So even if the masses aren’t trampling each other in unchecked greed, they’re still stampeding in the name of someone’s profit.

(Bean) #12

I’m a tree hugger. I leave work and head for the woods every chance I get. I serve on the board of a nature org. However, after watching three community friends who were life-long vegetarians die of aggressive neuro degenerative diseases, I realized that vegetarianism is dangerous.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #13

Well, what I see is more the insatiable greed of the top executives, at the expense of the workers who actually generate whatever of value the company has to sell. If your clerical staff needs food stamps to get by, while your executives receive sixty-million-dollar bonuses at the end of the year, there’s a serious problem with your company’s values.

I do agree, however, that downtrodden people make great fodder for advertising campaigns that promise them false value, thus contributing to the top executives’ bonuses. And of course, said bonuses are essential to the executives’ self-esteem, because how can you hold your head up among your fellow executives, when you can’t afford that ninth or tenth vacation house like everyone else?

(Alec) #14

This is my experience as well. I had a stark difference of opinion to the senior managers in my old business some 2 years ago when they decided to give a pay increase to salaried workers of half the level of inflation. I protested long and loud, one-on-one and in wider meetings. I said what they were doing was immoral, not least because these derisory pay increases were imposed with zero discussion or debate. I was told (in no uncertain terms) by the senior managers that if people didn’t like it they could leave. So I did (eventually).

Senior managers of large businesses have 2 priorities: to make as much money for themselves as possible and in order to do that they know they have to make as much money for the company shareholders as possible. Anyone that gets in the way of those 2 priorities are ignored or squashed or worse.

In my fairly broad experience of corporate life, 80% of senior corporate managers are either sociopaths or narcissists or both. They are to be avoided at all costs if you want to retain your sanity.

(KM) #15

I’m not arguing the greed of the world’s top dogs. Just saying we have a whole emotional system in place that’s a vehicle for the rich but also supported by most everyone else, from the top of the ladder to the bottom.

#16

Me too. And a tree planter. My aim is for an outsider to look at a forest and I’ll be standing right in front of them but remain unseen and inseparable. A dualist duelist.