Neil_Dullaghan🔹

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Mar 14, 2022, 10:54 PM

  16 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Why the ex­pected num­bers of farmed an­i­mals in the far fu­ture might be huge

  Another example for “V. Factory farming might spread to space—Some proponents of space colonization include factory farming in their plans”
  
  ″North Carolina State University is now taking applicants for its Nuggets on Mars program [ . . .] The multi–step, year–long program will involve teachers learning STEM principles behind poultry production and the unique challenges of raising chickens on Mars [. . .] At the end of the program, the participants will be tasked with putting together a unit for their class focused on developing ideas on ways to raise chickens on mars.” (Cottrell 2022)

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Feb 2, 2022, 5:40 AM

  15 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: AMA: Fu­ture of Life In­sti­tute’s EU Team

  1. DG Connect proposed the AI Act. Rauh’s (2019) study of 2,200 proposals for regulations and directives that the Commission tabled between 1994 and 2016 suggests DG Connect proposals have a 40-55% chance that the adopted law equals what the Commission has originally proposed.
     Does your team have any internal estimates of how likely the final law will equal the original proposal? Or perhaps more importantly, how likely the sections of the original proposal that you like will remain intact?

  2. Given the importance of the Council and qualified majority voting do you have a sense of how many countries * their percent of the EU population support/​oppose the amendments to the AI Act that you prefer (you mention France & Finland above)?

  3. Do you only focus on the EU level (Commission, Parliament, Councils) or do you also work directly at the EU member state level (if so which ones and why)?

  4. How did you decide which channels of influence to pursue? You mention above submitting feedback to the European Commission, why do you think your submission will be taken seriously? How do you rate the various channels for engaging with the Commission: stakeholder conferences, DG meetings, online consultations (restricted/​open)?

  5. Which of the three major institutions (Commission, Parliament, Councils) have you found most receptive to your preferred policies?
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Jan 20, 2022, 3:56 PM

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Neil_Dullaghan🔹 ’s comment on: Please com­plete a sur­vey to in­fluence EU an­i­mal pro­tec­tion policies

  Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Stella Kyriakides said “this has reached today a record of over 40,000 contributions. I think you will all agree with me, dear members, that this clearly shows how much animal welfare matters to our citizens.”
  H/​T Jan Sorgenfrei again

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Jan 15, 2022, 9:53 PM

  7 points

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  on: Where is a good place to start learn­ing about Fore­cast­ing?

  Just listing here the things I’ve found helpful and seconding some of them that have already been mentioned in other comments

  • Peter’s Twitter account

  • Good Judgement Project’s free resources and course

  • NunoSempere’s forecasting newsletter

  • alexrjl’s Youtube series

  • AI Impacts summary of Superforecasting if you don’t want to read the whole book

  • Ten Commandments for Aspiring Superforecasters

  • Thunk has a video on Youtube.

  • I also wrote a “how-to” guide just for the issue of picking a reference class here.

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Jan 14, 2022, 9:05 PM

  13 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Please com­plete a sur­vey to in­fluence EU an­i­mal pro­tec­tion policies

  More than 10,000 EU citizens have completed the EU animal welfare survey in the last week alone. Good work!
  H/​T Jan Sorgenfrei for informing me about the response number update.

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Jan 8, 2022, 4:03 AM

  10 points

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  in reply to: PeterSlattery’s comment on: Please com­plete a sur­vey to in­fluence EU an­i­mal pro­tec­tion policies

  Thanks for adding that Anima link Peter. Following the video guide on that page is what I would suggest anyone filling in this survey do for the most impact, unless they have strong reasons to answer the questions differently.
  
  I’d also add that in the last section “14. Is there any other comment you would like to add?”, which the video doesn’t cover, one may want to use that space to address other issues such as requesting bans on octopus farming and fur farming (though I personally am a little sceptical the EU can/​will outright ban an entire sector)

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Jan 7, 2022, 7:00 PM

  11 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Please com­plete a sur­vey to in­fluence EU an­i­mal pro­tec­tion policies

  Just want to flag that animal advocacy organizations in the Open Wing Alliance (OWA) and Eurogroup for Animals (EfA) networks have been trying to coordinate the responses to this survey to ensure a consistent ask is made.
  
  I’d encourage anyone interested in filling out this survey to make contact with the OWA or EfA groups (or other effective animal advocacy organizations not in these associations) in your country for advice (the links above show who the member organizations in your country are).

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Dec 24, 2021, 1:04 PM

  7 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Lizka’s comment on: World’s First Oc­to­pus Farm—Linkpost

  Eurogroup for Animals (a European Union lobby group representing other animal advocacy organizations) has encouraged EU citizens to submit feedback in the EU’s animal welfare legislative review - though it is better to make a submission on behalf of an organization rather than as an individual citizen.
  
  In addition to answering the multiple choice/​tick-box format questionnaire prepared by the European Commission (which addresses cage-free hens and fish welfare among other issues), one can add in a request to ban/​restrict such cephalopod farming under the section “Is there any other comment you would like to add?”
  
  Deadline: 21st January 2022 (Midnight Brussels time)
  
  Eurogroup also has a report on “Decapod Crustaceans and Cephalopod Molluscs in EU Animal Welfare Legislation” and include the legal basis for banning such practices on pages 13& 14 of their white paper. I have not independently researched how strong this legal argument is.
  
  I also think much of what Kieran wrote above sounds right.

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Dec 24, 2021, 11:39 AM

  15 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: A Day in the Life of a Parent

  Thanks for this breakdown. I’d be curious if other parents here have radically different experiences, especially for kids of different ages.
  Also, just to flag that stay at home dads do extremely important work too!

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Dec 13, 2021, 7:21 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Misha_Yagudin’s comment on: Cul­tured meat: A com­par­i­son of techno-eco­nomic analyses

  Thanks Misha. Can you share who the author of that document is? Looks like it might be Paul Christiano but I want to be sure.

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Dec 1, 2021, 1:45 PM

  32 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: What’s the The­ory of Change/​The­ory of Vic­tory for Farmed An­i­mal Welfare?

  My assumption is that where effective animal advocacy has theories, they aren’t explicitly modelling it around Transformative AI (TAI).
  
  The theories of victory/​change I have seen articulated online, IMO, fall into these buckets (I don’t have a sense of how popular or far along each of these are):
  

  Farm & Food level

  Turn factory farms into humane farms (no requirements about total meat consumption, but implicitly less occurs since we can’t humanely farm at scale) so that total suffering in factory farms is below X. Tactics could include:

  • Undercover investigations, corporate campaigns, legislative bans on worst practices

  • Expand and improve animal welfare certifications

  • Make CAFO meat more expensive than more humane alternatives (via bans on cheap inhumane practices, regulating externalities, removing subsidies, corporate campaigns with most expensive reforms, meat taxes)

  • Shift dietary preference to animals easier to farm humanely

  • Genetically modify animals so they can be farmed intensively without suffering

  Some ways it might turn out not to work:

  • If welfare reforms don’t actually reduce suffering, just shift production to some new form of equal or worse suffering

  • If people increase meat consumption because they think it is more acceptable

  • If it’s too hard to source enough “humane” meat but meat demand continues, and model collapses

  End meat eating (everyone gets protein from plants and pulses, becomes vegan). Tactics could include:

  • Make meat less cool—increase moral outrage via undercover investigations

  • Make plant-proteins more cool—Vegan movement building

  • Give animals legal personhood, protection from all exploitation, expand moral circle

  • Make meat more expensive than alternatives (via bans on practices, regulating externalities, removing subsidies, corporate campaigns, meat taxes)

  • Bankrupt animal farming. Pursue reforms raising the price of meat, divestment campaign, and the most expensive welfare reforms such that the animal ag industry goes bankrupt

  Some ways it might turn out not to work:

  • If the number of people not eating meat does not increase in response to these tactics

  • If we’re wrong about how moral circle expansion works

  • If there aren’t tractable ways to bankrupt animal ag

  End farmed meat (meat comes from plants, cell-cultures, funghi, algae, perhaps hunted animals). Tactics could include:

  • Invest in alternative proteins (mock-meats)

  • Pass legislation making it easier for consumers to identify these products as substitutes for meat

  • Make animal meat more expensive (via bans on practices, regulating externalities, removing subsidies, corporate campaigns, meat taxes)

  Some ways it might turn out not to work:

  • If investment in alternative proteins doesn’t improve the axes consumers care about

  • If alt proteins can’t scale

  • If people don’t switch from meat to alternative proteins

  Hybrid approaches

  • Costly welfare + alt proteins: Use welfare reforms to increase prices on conventional meat so alternative proteins are competitive, people buy these instead of meat and causes a reduction in the number of animals farmed. Some ways it might turn out not to work:

    • If welfare reforms don’t increase prices, or don’t increase them enough to cause switching to nonmeats. (Jayson Lusk probably has best work on this so far)

    • If alt proteins don’t scale

    • If people don’t switch from meat to alternative proteins, especially at any price

  • High welfare + alt proteins: Use welfare reforms to reduce worst suffering of farmed animals until alternative proteins are competitive,people buy these instead of meat and causes a reduction in the number of animals farmed. Some ways it might turn out not to work:

    • If welfare reforms don’t actually reduce suffering

    • If alt proteins don’t scale

    • If people don’t switch from meat to alternative proteins

  • Make veganism cool + end farming: Ignore welfare reforms unless they increase costs to the point of bankruptcy or increase opposition to animal farming, abolish farming, make animals legally persons, make veganism cool via movement building and/​or alt proteins. Some ways it might turn out not to work:

    • If the number of people not eating meat does not increase in response to these tactics

    • If we’re wrong about how moral circle expansion works

    • If there aren’t tractable ways to bankrupt animal ag

  Meta level

  Inject evidence and reason into the animal advocacy movement

  • Tracking progress, estimating impact, prioritising asks, changing behaviour & beliefs based on evidence is relatively new to the farmed animal movement.

  • Create new organizations with this approach at their core

  • Provide research that influence existing orgs to adopt this approach

  • Go work for existing orgs and change their approach

  Inject animal advocacy into the evidence and reason movement

  • Create scholarships, departments, labs, prizes for scholars & scientists to research FAW issues

  • Raise the profile of animal issues in the EA & Rationalist communities

  Inject animal advocacy into policy sphere

  • Create FAW ombudsmen, ambassadors, envoys in national and regional governments and supranational organizations likes EU and UN

  • Get FAW people to try staff these positions

  
  Inject animal advocacy into philanthropy sphere (maybe less needed given EA funding overhang)

  • Shift Open Phil’s/​Farmed Animal Funders’s/​FAIRR’s funding allocation towards the interventions in line with the theory of change

  • Create more things like Open Phil’s FAW department/​Farmed Animal Funders/​FAIRR

  
  Inject animal advocacy beyond Anglosphere

  • Movement building abroad, especially where animal farming is concentrated

  
  It’s unclear what percent of the problem we think each of these could actually solve alone. Not all farms can be made humane, not everyone will eat alternative meats, not everyone will give up meat eating.

  What level of suffering are we willing to accept? 0 animal lives at risk of suffering? Total animal suffering to be below X amount? A y% reduction in total animal suffering relative to a 2010 baseline?

  In all paths it’s not obvious whether to focus on one sector or many. Should we focus on the animals where most of the suffering is occurring- plausibly shrimps or insect farmed for animal feed? Or move all egg-laying hens out of cages and into free-range or egg-replacers and go gung-ho on that until we stop making progress? Should we focus on any suffering so long as it is easy? (do cage-free hens, then do whatever is easier for fish, then whatever is easiest for insects, etc even if it is not tackling the largest sources of suffering which are harder to solve?).

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Nov 19, 2021, 3:19 PM

  18 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Madhav Malhotra’s comment on: We’re Re­think Pri­ori­ties. Ask us any­thing!

  I would break this down into a) the methods for getting research in front of government orgs and b) the types of research that gets put in front of them.

  In general I think we (me for sure) haven’t been optimising for this enough to even know the barriers (unknown unknowns). I think historically we’ve been mostly focused on foundations and direct work groups, and less on government and academia. This is changing so I expect us to learn a lot more going forward.

  As for known unknowns in the methods, I still don’t know who to actually send my research to in various government agencies, what contact method they respond best to (email, personal contact, public consultations, cold calling, constituency office hours?), or what format they respond best to (a 1 page PDF with graphs, a video, bullet points, an in person meeting? - though this public guide Emily Grundy made on UK submissions while at RP has helped me). Anecdotally it seems remarkably easy to get in front of some: I know of one small animal advocacy organization that managed to get a meeting with the Prime Minister of their country, and I myself have had 1-1 meetings with more than two dozen members of the UK and Irish parliaments and United Nations & European Union bureaucrats (non RP work) with relative ease (e.g. an email with a prestigious sounding letterhead).

  My assumption is government orgs are swamped with requests and petitions from NGOs, industry, peers, constituents. So we need some way to stand out from the crowd like representing a core constituency of theirs, being recommended to them by someone they deem credible such as an already established NGO, being affiliated with some already credible institution like a prestigious university, and proving to them we can provide them with policy expertise and legislative intelligence better than most others can.

  On b) I think have a better sense of what content would be more likely to get in front of them. Niel Bowerman had some good insights on this in 2014, and the “legislative subsidy” approach Matthew Yglesias favours in the US context seems useful.There was an interesting study from Nakajima (2021) (twitter thread) which looked at what kinds of research evidence do policymakers prefer (bigger samples, external validity extends to the population in their jurisdictions, no preference on observational-v-experimental) so I think we can explore whether the topics on our research agenda fit within those designs.

  Update: wanted to add in this post from Zach Groff:

  1. Happily, evidence does seem to affect policy, but in a diffuse and indirect way. The aforementioned researcher Carol Weiss finds that large majorities (65%-89%) of policymakers report being influenced by research in their work, and roughly half of them strongly (Weiss 1980; Weiss 1977). It’s rare that policymakers pick up a study and implement an intervention directly. Instead, officials gradually work evidence into their worldviews as part of a gradual process of what Weiss calls “enlightenment” (Weiss 1995). Evidence also influences policy in more political but potentially still benign ways by justifying existing policies, warning of problems, suggesting new policies or making policymakers appear self-critical (Weiss 1995; Weiss 1979; Weiss 1977).

  1. There are a few methods that seem to successfully promote evidence-based policy in health care, education, and government settings where they have been tested. The top interventions are:

  2a) Education—Workshops, courses, mentorship, and review processes change decision makers’ behavior with regard to science in a few studies (Coburn et al. 2009; Matias 2017; Forman-Hoffman et al. 2017; Chinman et al. 2017; Hodder et al. 2017).

  2b) Organizational structural changes—If an organization has evidence built into its structure, such as having a research division and hotline, encouraging and reviewing employees based on their engagement with research, and providing funding based on explicit evidence, this seems to improve the use of evidence in the organization (Coburn and Turner 2011; Coburn 2003; Coburn et al. 2009; Weiss 1980; Weiss 1995; Wilson et al. 2017; Salbach et al. 2017; Forman-Hoffman et al. 2017; Chinman et al. 2017; Hodder et al. 2017). A few other methods for promoting research-backed policies seem promising based on a bit less evidence:

  2c) Increasing awareness of evidence-based policy—Sending employees reminders or newsletters seems to increase research-based medicine based on two high-quality review papers (Murthy et al. 2012; Grimshaw et al. 2012). . Similarly, all-around advocacy campaigns to promote evidence-based practices among practitioners achieves substantial changes in one randomized controlled trial (Schneider et al. 2017).

  2d) Access—Merely giving people evidence on effectiveness does not generally affect behavior, but when combined with efforts to motivate use of the evidence, providing access to research does improve evidence-based practice (Chinman et al. 2017; Wilson et al. 2017).

  2e) External motivation and professional identities— Two recent RCTs and a number of reviews and qualitative research find that rewarding people for using evidence and building professional standards around using research are helpful (Chinman et al. 2017; Schneider et al. 2017;Hodder et al. 2017; Forman-Hoffman et al. 2017; Weiss et al. 2005; Weiss 1995; Wilson et al. 2017; Weiss 1980; Weiss 1977; Matias 2017; Coburn 2005; Coburn 2003).

  1. Interestingly, a few methods to promote evidence-based practices that policymakers and researchers often promote do not have much support in the literature. The first is building collaboration between policymakers and researchers, and the second is creating more research in line with policymakers’ needs One of the highest-quality write-ups on evidence-based policy, Langer et al. 2016 finds that collaboration only works if it is deliberately structured to build policymakers’ and researchers’ skills. When it comes to making research more practical for policymakers, it seems that when policymakers and researchers work together to come up with research that is more relevant to policy, it has little impact. This may be because, as noted in point (1), research seems to influence policy in important but indirect ways, so making it more direct may not help much.

  1. There is surprisingly and disappointingly little research on policymakers’ cognition and judgment in general. The best research is familiar to the effective altruism community from Philip Tetlock (1985; 1994; 2005; 2010; 2014; 2016) and Barbara Mellers (2015), and it gives little information on how decision-makers respond to scientific evidence, but suggests that they are not very accurate at making predictions in general. Other research indicates that extremists are particularly prone to overconfidence and oversimplification, and conservatives somewhat more prone to these errors than liberals (Ortoleva and Snowberg 2015; Blomberg and Harrington 2000; Kahan 2017; Tetlock 1984; Tetlock 2000). Otherwise, a little research suggests that policymakers in general are susceptible to the same cognitive biases that affect everyone, particularly loss aversion, which may make policymakers irrationally unwilling to end ineffective programs or start proven but novel ones (Levy 2003; McDermott 2004). On the whole, little psychological research studies how policymakers react to new information.

  If anyone reading this works at a governmental organization, we’d love to chat!

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Nov 19, 2021, 11:26 AM

  11 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: JamesÖz 🔸’s comment on: We’re Re­think Pri­ori­ties. Ask us any­thing!

  It has been said before elsewhere by Peter, but worth stating again:read and practice Reasoning Transparency . Michael Aird compiled some great resources recently here.

  I’d also refer people to Michael and Saulius’ replies to arushigupta’s similar subquestion in last year’s RP AMA.

  What links here?

  • Linch's comment on We’re Re­think Pri­ori­ties. Ask us any­thing! by Peter Wildeford (Nov 19, 2021, 1:27 PM; 10 points)
  • Peter Wildeford's comment on We’re Re­think Pri­ori­ties. Ask us any­thing! by Peter Wildeford (Nov 19, 2021, 7:33 PM; 2 points)

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Nov 5, 2021, 11:37 AM

  13 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: MichaelStJules’s comment on: How can we make Our World in Data more use­ful to the EA com­mu­nity?

  +1 to reporting numbers of animals instead of tonnage or biomass. The OWID meat and dairy production page does have a “numbers of animals slaughtered” section, so it would be great for that to be expanded both to other large numbers of animals (like various fish species, crustaceans, invertebrates) and beyond slaughter (such as alive at any one time).

  Here are some articles with sources of such data. I haven’t really looked into how hard they would be to maintain and update. It is biased towards data collected by Rethink Priorities staff because it was the easiest I had to hand, but hopefully others can add anything major I missed:

  • Recent estimates put the total number of animals on earth at around a sextillion (Schukraft 2019a) - includes annelids and nematodes iirc

  • Sentience Institute’s (2019) farmed animal estimate : 69B to 254B land animals & fish

  • Lewis Bollard’s (2017) farmed animal numbers based on FAO land animal stats and Fishcount farmed fish projections, compiled here.

  • Estimates of global captive vertebrate numbers (Šimčikas 2020a)

  • Rodents farmed for pet snake food (Šimčikas 2020b) *between 51 and 167 billion farmed fishes were slaughtered for food globally in 2017

  • Fish Groups Utilized by Humans (Fish Welfare Initiative 2020)

  • 35-150 billion fish are raised in captivity to be released into the wild every year (Šimčikas 2019a) *[1.1 trillion fish are already killed for fishmeal (Mood & Brooke 2019),]

  • Fish used as live bait by recreational fishermen (Šimčikas 2018)

  • Lewis Bollard’s (2021) insect farming newsletter

  • Silk production: global scale and animal welfare issues (Rowe 2021)

  • 1 trillion to 1.2 trillion insects are raised on farms annually for food and animal feed (Rowe 2020a)

  • The scale of direct human impact on invertebrates (Rowe 2020b)

  • Global cochineal production: scale, welfare concerns, and potential interventions (Rowe 2020c)

  • It can be estimated that between 2.9B to 7.7B snails were slaughtered for their meat worldwide in 2016 (Waldhorn 2020)

  • At any given time there are more than a trillion managed honey bees (Schukraft 2019b) *210-530 billion farmed shrimps/​prawns. *43-75 billion farmed crayfish, crabs and lobsters

  • An upcoming report on shrimp numbers from Daniela R. Waldhorn.

  • Also note these Accuracy issues in FAO animal numbers (Šimčikas 2019b)

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Nov 2, 2021, 6:23 PM

  13 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: An­nual dona­tion rit­u­als?

  I write letters to the future when I give. Sometimes I write what the expected value of the giving was, and future me can reflect on how that panned out. Sometimes I ask my future self how did the world turn out (no replies yet). Present me enjoys getting surprise emails from past me and hearing how excited they were by giving and I get some delight in seeing the through line in my values.

  I also get together every few months with a select group of friends and we each give a five minute presentation about an idea we want to share (ranging from serious to silly). Once a year we devote a session to our giving. It works well because it slots into a preexisting ritual we are bought into anyway. Often people offer up their giving record for group review, read out the GiveDirectly Live Newsfeed, do quick fire rounds of the best new opportunities we’ve given to, or run a mini donor lottery.

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Oct 29, 2021, 9:48 AM

  8 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Cul­tured meat pre­dic­tions were overly optimistic

  Fwiw, we tasked a couple of people in Singapore to try get the GOOD Meat cultured chicken nuggets from the 1880 member’s club restaurant and they were unable to do so. The restaurant does not serve them directly anymore. It’s only possible to order takeout, and they claim to only have 10 portions/​week on Thursday lunches. Our volunteer was unsuccessful on two attempts to order them for delivery. We also heard claims that a specific Marriott Hotel serves the nuggets in person but we were unable to find information online and our other volunteer was unable to get it in person.

  What links here?

  • Cul­tured meat pre­dic­tions were overly optimistic by Neil_Dullaghan🔹 (Sep 15, 2021, 12:32 PM; 194 points)

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Oct 8, 2021, 8:53 AM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Linch’s comment on: Linch’s Shortform

  For those interested, here are the paragraphs that added new information on the CE Delft TEA that I hadn’t considered or seen in other TEAs or reviews.

  Cell growth

  “For bacteria, one may generally subculture in the range of 1:10 to 1:100, depending on the bacterium. For stem cells, which are more fastidious, the highest subculture ratio (i.e. the amount of an old culture one uses to seed or start a new culture) is typically 1:5. This is significantly less than the 1:200 cell ratio that is proposed in the TEA. Experience dictates that if stem cells are sub-cultured at the ratio proposed, they will either differentiate and stop growing, or simply will die. ”

  Medium costs

  “In an analysis of culture medium costs, Specht (2019) used DMEM/​F12 medium as a base, with a cost of $62,400 for a 20,000 L batch (or $3.12/​L). However, this appears to be the cost for powdered bulk medium (from, e.g., MP Bio), and does not include the cost for labour, USP water, formulation, filtration and testing prior to culture. Given the fact that up to now stem cells require custom media, the price for base medium alone could rise to $822,000 for the same sized (20,000 L)batch. However, it should be noted that a properly developed medium may rely less on growth factor additives” This is also used by Risner, et al (2020) in their “this is where the miracle happens” Scenario 4.

  “insulin costs will likely remain as they are due to current and future manufacturing standards and volumes. ”

  Contamination

  “The building will require air locks with increasing air handling quality, for both materials and personnel. Typically this comprises a Class D corridor, with Class C rooms except where open phase is carried out, which must be Class A in a Class B environment with Class C minimal changing rooms. The TEA document does not take into account this quality standard, nor does it take into account the additional personnel time”

  Stability

  “Cell pastes or slurries are notoriously unstable and will deteriorate very quickly,losing their cellular structure. Real meat on the other hand is built on a scaffold of blood vessels, interdigitating cell structure and layers of connective tissues,tendons etc., that helps to maintain structure. Even ground meat will maintain some of this structure at the macro level, and is seldom if ever homogenized to a single cell slurry. Given the large yields of CCP [Cell Cultured Product], a process must be devised to ensure that the slurry maintains its structure.”

  Monoclonal antibodies

  “In summary, Monoclonal antibody yields have seen a 10- to 20-fold increase in the last 10 to 15 years, with 10s of billions of dollars of investment in R&D across multiple industries. In the TEA example, it is proposed that costs will be reduced, with a resulting >1000-fold decrease in costs. Given the experience with monoclonal antibodies, this may be overly ambitious and does not take into account the fact that every cell bank will be different – it is possible that each one will need to be developed independently.”

  Batch times

  “In this instance, the TEA authors had proposed a 10-day perfusion culture that would use 800 L of media for each 2,000 L of product. . . . For such a short perfusion time, normally the process would be better suited to a high-density fed-batch process (10-12 d). Perfusion generally is reserved for longer-term cultures (20-35 d or more, Bausch et al., 2019)”

  Bioreactors

  “Large scale bioreactors (>2,000 L) will remain custom built items for the foreseeable future, and thus will be expensive to build and install.Cost savings initiated through process and genetic engineering to increase yields, cell line development . . . is likely not an option for a multitude of regulatory and social reasons”

  Capital costs

  “The Capital costs appear to only take into account the myocyte cell manufacturing process. Further, a multiplier of tank capital costs is used to extrapolate to the total capital, rather than drawing a concept design and estimating surface area and cost to within a certain margin of error . . . Clearly the capital costs are greater than those estimated by the authors in theTEA, with apparently only a small fraction of the equipment and infrastructure accounted for. It is unclear how the ‘Social Investment Criteria’ would work in this situation, as a factory of this size and complexity will cost several hundreds of millions of dollars to build. Due to the complexity of the manufacturing processes, the requirement to remain as an aseptic process, commissioning and validating the plant, even to food grade requirements, could also cost in the millions of dollars, depending on the final product profile. Generally, these costs would be put against the products coming from the factory over a 10-year depreciation period.”

  Personnel costs

  “Personnel costs are estimated as $100,000/​annum/​per FTE in the TEA, fullyloaded. This is likely an under-estimate for the operators in the aseptic areas, as staff experienced in the operation, validation and trouble-shooting of complex bioreactor and down stream process processes would be required. This estimate could be increased to $150,000 and even that may be on the low end depending on where the factory is to be located. ”

  There are a bunch of other critiques are basically arguing “this is expensive and nobody will fund it”, but that’s just an intuition, not a hard technical stop.

  Here’s the layout provided. I’d love to see more of these, like the one WildType provides here

  

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Oct 1, 2021, 7:26 AM

  11 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Cul­tured meat: A com­par­i­son of techno-eco­nomic analyses

  Fwiw, the Good Food Institute have produced a “Statement addressing techno-economic analyses” and a “Preliminary review of technical assumptions within the Humbird analysis”

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Oct 1, 2021, 6:33 AM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Stijn Bruers 🔸’s comment on: Cul­tured meat: A com­par­i­son of techno-eco­nomic analyses

  Thanks for sharing your perspective.

  The prediction “it is only a matter of time” has an effect on how to allocate EA resources depending on how long that matter of time is, even with additional resources going towards it, so I’d be curious what time period you’d assign for this and how you came to think that.

  Even without having to construct brains, eyes, ears, tails, feathers, Humbird thinks it will still be very expensive at the moment since creating the immune system is so hard to create- so you need pharma grade standards with are expensive (one can disagree with this assumption or think eventually it won’t be true, as CE Delft do, but I’d be interested in clearer reasoning as to why one thinks it’s likely)

  I’m not sure why you assume the production unit for animal-based meat consumes 50% of resources for its construction (growth)?

Cul­tured meat: A com­par­i­son of techno-eco­nomic analyses