Comment by hedora
15 hours ago
Modern beef is unhealthy for humans due to grazing conditions. Maybe the lab grown stuff will be closer to conventional farming output.
15 hours ago
Modern beef is unhealthy for humans due to grazing conditions. Maybe the lab grown stuff will be closer to conventional farming output.
> Modern beef is
By which you mean US style grain finished short cycle beef I guess?
The world's bigger than that.
I was using modern in a semi-disparaging sense, where ideas from intellectual movements such as brutalism (a branch of modernism) have been incorrectly applied to agriculture.
Look how big the industrial cow (bovoid according to international labeling standards) has become. Bow before it until your heart explodes!
By that definition, places like Europe and New Zealand don't produce modern beef.
I really miss the days of $2/lb grass-fed New Zealand ground beef.
Hopefully most people here getting ribeyes aren’t getting them from the same factory farms that supply McDonald’s and sell other cheap kinds of beef. A ribeye is an occasional luxury and best bought from the farmer.
The industry has mostly consolidated packing and distribution. McDonald's is mostly selling trimmings from cows that also produce high-end steaks.
Surprisingly enough, they hold most beef processing plants to higher standards than the rest of the industry (they're still buying cheap trimmings, don't get me wrong), because they do so much volume, basic probability tells us that most food poisoning outbreaks would hit them otherwise.
Sure, you could find a farmer that raises cows and butchers them on site, but that's rare, and the easiest way to actually achieve that is to buy a whole or half cow at a time.
Most small farms don't bother with that: they raise it from calf to adult on grazing land, then send it to a feed lot where the miracles of modern science significantly increase the cow's weight before slaughter. Cows that are still producing calves get retained to grow the herd next year.
If you want to pay extra for this, look for "grass-fed, grain-finished" beef. Most unlabeled stuff in the US goes through that funnel though.
Most people buy their ribeyes at the supermarket like they do all their other food.
>... best bought from the farmer.
Perhaps you're anticipating this:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/sep/4/trump-allows...
Is that an executive order overriding a law? Is that possible? I thought executive orders only affected the federal government.
I'm all for breaking the stranglehold of those big 4 meatpacking companies, but make it an actual law, not something that won't hold up in court.
This just opens up the door for meat that isn't inspected before sale. That's not ideal, really.
There are farmers everywhere who will sell you a cow. There are small butcher shops that will process it.
This is a solution in search of a problem, in my opinion. It will only benefit already massive corporation farms.