Yes I think that top down as you call it is a much more effective method than lab-grown meat. In fact my original understanding of lab grown meat, back when it was much moreso theory than actuality, was that top down modification of animals would be the goto method.
I think it will be a lot easier if you set the bar higher. Maybe just try to create animal breeds that will satisfy pescatarians. Creating chickens that have the same level of consciousness as fish is probably a lot easier than getting chickens that have absolutely no nervous system. This might cause many vegans to jump ship too.
And I don’t think we need gene editing technology to create the types of animals we’re looking for. As you showed with the evolution of chickens, we can already do a lot with selective breeding. I’m no geneticist but I wonder what you could do by selecting for lower electrical activity in the brain or even smaller heads. Or maybe just electing for general undirected behavior. Create a breed of really stupid passive chickens maybe. Actually this seems more unethical than continuing with the system we have today.
I think the top-down approach is futile, because I bet that only a small fraction of vegetarians and vegans will be willing to eat (say) anencephalous chicken meat, which means there’s unlikely to be a viable market for it.
Two reasons for this:
1. When you make it a habit not to eat some variety of food, especially if you’re doing it for some sort of moral reasons, you will almost certainly come to associate that variety of food with moral disapproval, disgust, etc. The bits of your brain that learn these things are not subtle enough to make you feel those things in the presence of a plate of ordinary chicken meat but not in the face of an identical-looking plate of anencephalous chicken meat.
2. Just how much do you trust meat producers, anyway? Especially if you are vegetarian or vegan? If someone puts a plate of chicken meat in front of you and says “we guarantee that this was made from chickens genetically engineered not to feel suffering”, are you going to be sure they’re neither lying nor mistaken? That no one else down the line was lying or mistaken, even though in many cases there’s strong motivation for them to think (or say they think) that no suffering was involved even if they don’t really have good evidence for that, even though anencephalous chicken meat looks exactly the same as ordinary chicken meat? I don’t think it would take much doubt to make a typical vegetarian or vegan unwilling to eat it.
If we’re talking about whether top down meat is viable or not we don’t need to appeal to all vegetarians and vegans. The question isn’t, “if you gave a brainless chicken meat to a random vegetarian right now would they eat it?” The question is, “if you developed brainless chicken meat could you, with a few years of marketing, and some startup money, get a customer base to eat it and consistently buy it?”
I think the actual question is somewhere intermediate between those two. (Developers of brainless chickens might not be willing to wait a few years before seeing sales; supermarkets might not be willing to adopt brainless chicken meat widely before seeing evidence that plenty of people would buy it; etc.)
But I think the answer even to your second question is no, for the same reasons I already gave; I don’t think those things will change easily.
Yes I think that top down as you call it is a much more effective method than lab-grown meat. In fact my original understanding of lab grown meat, back when it was much moreso theory than actuality, was that top down modification of animals would be the goto method.
I think it will be a lot easier if you set the bar higher. Maybe just try to create animal breeds that will satisfy pescatarians. Creating chickens that have the same level of consciousness as fish is probably a lot easier than getting chickens that have absolutely no nervous system. This might cause many vegans to jump ship too.
And I don’t think we need gene editing technology to create the types of animals we’re looking for. As you showed with the evolution of chickens, we can already do a lot with selective breeding. I’m no geneticist but I wonder what you could do by selecting for lower electrical activity in the brain or even smaller heads. Or maybe just electing for general undirected behavior. Create a breed of really stupid passive chickens maybe. Actually this seems more unethical than continuing with the system we have today.
I think the top-down approach is futile, because I bet that only a small fraction of vegetarians and vegans will be willing to eat (say) anencephalous chicken meat, which means there’s unlikely to be a viable market for it.
Two reasons for this:
1. When you make it a habit not to eat some variety of food, especially if you’re doing it for some sort of moral reasons, you will almost certainly come to associate that variety of food with moral disapproval, disgust, etc. The bits of your brain that learn these things are not subtle enough to make you feel those things in the presence of a plate of ordinary chicken meat but not in the face of an identical-looking plate of anencephalous chicken meat.
2. Just how much do you trust meat producers, anyway? Especially if you are vegetarian or vegan? If someone puts a plate of chicken meat in front of you and says “we guarantee that this was made from chickens genetically engineered not to feel suffering”, are you going to be sure they’re neither lying nor mistaken? That no one else down the line was lying or mistaken, even though in many cases there’s strong motivation for them to think (or say they think) that no suffering was involved even if they don’t really have good evidence for that, even though anencephalous chicken meat looks exactly the same as ordinary chicken meat? I don’t think it would take much doubt to make a typical vegetarian or vegan unwilling to eat it.
If we’re talking about whether top down meat is viable or not we don’t need to appeal to all vegetarians and vegans. The question isn’t, “if you gave a brainless chicken meat to a random vegetarian right now would they eat it?” The question is, “if you developed brainless chicken meat could you, with a few years of marketing, and some startup money, get a customer base to eat it and consistently buy it?”
I think the actual question is somewhere intermediate between those two. (Developers of brainless chickens might not be willing to wait a few years before seeing sales; supermarkets might not be willing to adopt brainless chicken meat widely before seeing evidence that plenty of people would buy it; etc.)
But I think the answer even to your second question is no, for the same reasons I already gave; I don’t think those things will change easily.