Lab-grown meat may never be cost-competitive enough to displace traditional meat

Re:Lab-grown meat may never be cost-competitive enough to di... by beerandt on Thursday September 23, 2021 @12:54AM (#28625318)

Is it easier to keep a city of 10k or 100k disease free? If both get "contaminated", which is the bigger cost?

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Re:Lab-grown meat may never be cost-competitive enough to di... by fighterpilot on Thursday September 23, 2021 @01:32AM (#28625492)

That's a false analogy. 10 separate factories in their example would be 10 separate cities each with 10k people, not 1 large city with 100k people.

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Re:Lab-grown meat may never be cost-competitive enough to di... by beerandt on Thursday September 23, 2021 @08:59AM (#28628469)

That's not how you reach economies of scale.

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Re:Lab-grown meat may never be cost-competitive enough to di... by fighterpilot on Thursday September 23, 2021 @10:05AM (#28629324)

We all know that. Their point was that you get linear scaling using that approach, which disproves the notion that you can't get linear scaling.

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Re:Lab-grown meat may never be cost-competitive enough to di... by beerandt on Tuesday September 28, 2021 @01:41PM (#28685382)

Linear scaling of any project large enough to disrupt an industry (as is being suggested here) is a pipe dream.

When you are trying to scale up something that big, you eventually get beyond economies of scale for the required infrastructure and feedstock, and as a result, increase overall demand, which raises prices.

You only get near-linear scaling for a very short, initial "ramp-up" period.

Beyond that, you start cornering markets, which makes prices spike, not decrease or even hold steady.

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