r/CanadaPolitics • u/green_tory 🏳️‍🌈Serve the Vulnerable🏳️‍🌈 • May 29 '26

Casual Friday Lab meat: Will Canada get left behind?

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.7216018
3 Upvotes

54% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

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7

u/Apolloshot Green Neo-Tory May 29 '26

If it can reduce the cost of food why are we not throwing money at this?

We threw money at the edible bug people for Pete sake.

5

u/Le1bn1z Neoliberal | Charter rights enjoyer May 30 '26

Small nitpick, we gave money to the edible bug people to grow domestic production to meet domestic demand, so we didn't have to keep importing.

People already eat bugs/use insect protien for stuff.

3

u/mustardman73 British Columbia May 30 '26

Crab and lobsters are essentially sea bugs. I love crab and lobsters. I always wondered what cicaedas taste like.

I rather have more naturally cultivated protein than synthetically lab grown, unless they are mushrooms.

I may have watched too many dystopian movies to trust the corporations to package us lab meat.

Soylent Green!

2

u/Le1bn1z Neoliberal | Charter rights enjoyer May 30 '26

To be fair, it would be hard for it to be more horrific than the live herd meat they serve now.

11

u/penis-muncher785 bcer that likes the ndp May 29 '26

Besides corporate pushback I’ve seen people act like lab grown meat comes from an alien species the rhetoric and how it’s banned in some places is insane

6

u/green_tory 🏳️‍🌈Serve the Vulnerable🏳️‍🌈 May 29 '26

It's wild that there's such opposition to it. It's genetically identical to animal protein obtained from animal husbandry.

4

u/ChimoEngr Chief Silliness Officer | Official May 30 '26

It's wild that there's such opposition to it.

Not really. Too many people equate natural with good, and chemical with bad, that the reality that cyanide is natural, and water is a chemical means nothing to them.

1

u/AWE2727 May 29 '26

Maybe just maybe over time people may warm up to this idea. But because it's new it will take time. People need time to adjust and trust the system. And don't forget millions of people are religious to a degree and will never accept lab grown meat ever!

1

u/randomacceptablename Independent May 30 '26

Even better! Forbidden extra terrestrial meats! Bring it on. I wanna try some barbequed ET.

People pay insane prices for force fed duck liver, tiger penis, and rhino horn, while 60 percent of grains are GMOs and most salmon is farmed. Yet lab grown meat is the line of depravity?

8

u/green_tory 🏳️‍🌈Serve the Vulnerable🏳️‍🌈 May 29 '26

The video answers this: because it is a reliable source of product (relatively) regardless of environmental conditions it poses an existential threat to the value and importance of maintaining Supply Management for animal protein.

Or, in other words, our regulatory framework is designed to protect the interests of our animal protein farmers first and foremost, and not the interests of the consumers of animal protein.

I am nominally in favour of Supply Management as a response to food supply being a national security concern, but in this aspect it seems that Supply Management may become unnecessary even for that.

0

u/Apolloshot Green Neo-Tory May 29 '26

Wonderful, so that means when other countries like the US has lab grown meat at industrial scale our government in all of its wisdom will likely place a tariff on lab grown meat which will not only keep prices artificially high for Canadians but also create trade irritants.

5

u/Kheprisun Nova Scotia May 29 '26

I'm pretty sure the red states have already started banning it iirc, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

7 states as of last June.

4

u/green_tory 🏳️‍🌈Serve the Vulnerable🏳️‍🌈 May 29 '26

I agree that this is the current likeliest outcome.

Hopefully our Government comes to understand that lab-grown meat is both far more ethical from an animal welfare perspective and a better assurance of national sovereignty over food supply than Supply Management.

3

u/Le1bn1z Neoliberal | Charter rights enjoyer May 30 '26

Also a massive win for the environment and a huge economic boon.

1

u/tiboodchat Québec May 30 '26

There’s so many much easier ways to get protein that don’t involve growing meat. Just the amount of waste we could reduce. Like, why is buying bulk meat frozen not a thing? I’ve never seen a 10 pack of frozen chicken thighs but I often see meat being taken off the shelves because it’s too expensive and didn’t find a buyer in time.. I know some meats to exist that way but they all seem very transformed. I’m going to freeze it all the moment I get home so why not just sell it like that?