New Study Reveals Lab-Grown Meat Up to 25 Times Worse for Environment than Beef
Additional, “lab-grown” meat industry faces challenges scaling up and hesitancy from those who consider it “slush”.
Legal Insurrection has long followed the war on cows and dairy products, which has targeted our bovine friends as major contributors to global warming thanks to the methane gas they generate.
However, a new study reveals that lab-grown meat, produced by cultivating animal cells, is up to 25 times worse for the climate than real beef.
The new research was led by scientists at the Department of Food Science and Technology, University of California, Davis.
Production of real meat has a huge carbon footprint because it requires water, feed and the clearing of trees to make way for cattle.
Despite this, experts say the carbon footprint of lab-grown meat could be ‘orders of magnitude higher’ once the industry grows.
…Currently, animal cell-based meat products are being produced at a small scale and at an economic loss, however companies are intending to industrialize and scale-up production,’ the scientists say in their paper.
‘Results indicate that the environmental impact of near-term animal cell-based meat production is likely to be orders of magnitude higher than median beef production if a highly refined growth medium is utilised.’
There are many struggles associated with making lab-grown meat. To begin with, it is difficult to make the quantities needed for a mass market.
Cultivated meat is typically produced by placing certain poultry and livestock cells into stainless-steel tanks known as bioreactors, where they are fed nutrients and oxygen before being harvested and formed into meat products.
According to former employees, Upside has struggled to produce large quantities of meat. They said the company often scrambled to make enough for lab analysis and tastings. Upside for years worked to grow whole cuts of meat, which proved difficult in its bioreactors. It battled contamination in its labs. Traces of rodent DNA once tainted a chicken cell line, according to former employees, and confirmed by company executives.
Today, the company is growing its marquee filet not in large bioreactors at its pilot plant but in two-liter plastic bottles akin to those used to grow cells for decades by pharmaceutical companies.
Hundreds of disposable bottles, often called “roller bottles,” are required to make a few filets.
“Roller bottles aren’t scalable. Too small, too labor-intensive,” said David Humbird, an independent chemical engineer who wrote a report skeptical of the industry.
Bioreactors also require energy to operate. If the lab is in New York, California, or anywhere else embracing the green energy mania, energy availability could be a significant issue.
Here is an interesting video for anyone interested in the laboratory process.
Finally, certain countries are rushing to embrace this particular food option. Italy, for example, banned insect powder in the flour used for its traditional cuisine.
It doesn’t appear it wants lab-grown meatballs, either.
Lab-grown food is potentially dangerous for one’s health, Italy’s agriculture minister told Reuters, calling it “slush” that could never taste like natural meat or fish.
In March, Italy’s right-wing government proposed a bill to ban the production and import of cultured food and feed, which are not yet available in the European Union.
Singapore was the first country to approve lab-grown meat for retail sale in 2020, but progress in the field is being made also in the United States and Israel.
“We reject the idea of standardising products … making them all the same in laboratories, erasing our culture tied to the land,” said Francesco Lollobrigida, a senior figure in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s nationalist Brothers of Italy party.
Happily, Italy is one of the countries on my vacation docket for next year. I plan to eat a lot of fresh and natural products…free of insects and laboratories.
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Comments
So disgusting
If I ever find out that someone’s trying to feed me fake meat, that person is dead.
“Lab grown beef is 25 times worse for the environment than real beef.”
It’s also probably 25 times worse for the stupid person eating it.
But it’s okay to eat fake meat because you feel like you are helping the planet.
It’s kind of like driving an EV. Feelings are all that matter.
Some drive EVs because… they drive EVs.
Near beer.. no thanks..
Near steer… diamond hard pass.
Thanks Leslie.. I am glad I read this well after supper.
No comment on how much worse it is for the people who eat it. Interesting.
Of course, they don’t care what it tastes like — these are the same people coming after gas stoves; swearing they aren’t. (They don’t care about your health either or they wouldn’t have pitched that lie of the year: “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” One wonders what other grand scheme they’re lying about.)
Just another example of rushing a premature technology to market before it is logical to do so. This will not be viable for decades still.
That’s the thing about modern liberalism. Here is this interesting idea that in the long term might work out and be very good. ( Imagine beef that is the same instead of potluck on what stear it came from. )
They have tio push it out to marketwell before it is ready, to cure some tiny tiny flaw in the present system. In the process totally wrteck any possibility for the idea to evelve to something really good.
A meal in Italy deserves to be on your bucket list.
The best meal I ever had in my life was at the Castello de Pavone hotel in Ivrea. Business trip, had worked all day until late evenings (Italians never do that) and needed something before sacking, so decided “just to hit the hotel restaurant.” I ordered a naked entree off the menu (the server was incredulous: “No salad? No pasta course?”) It was the most incredible veal I had ever tasted (and I grew up in a neighborhood of Italian relatives). So I then ordered the pasta course, eating the meal in reverse. Again, sublime. I had to try one of their desserts after that, and this single meal made my whole trip worthwhile. Good timing, too, because my next stop was Heathrow. 🍗
I’m still remembering the meals in the various places near our hotel in Catania.
I ate in quite a few restaurants in both, Sicily, and in Spain. I also looked around me. I saw virtually no obese people. These folks know how to eat!
Thank you for the video. It’s good stuff. I almost stopped watching because it starts with the usual “green” drivel.
“Cows are not the most efficient way to make beef.”
It sounds like something from “Dumb and Dumber”.
They are, however, the most efficient way to make MORE beef.
Can we now tell them go eat crow?
How about we compromise and just eat lab rats?
It is probably more efficient to raise livestock. Besides, animal manure nourishes soil and plants. As for emissions from cattle, do the eco-freaks seriously believe that the pre-Paleoindian mammoths, giant bison, and other megafauna never cut one? And they say we were in an ice age back then!
What? No Soylent Green references?
Artificial pink slime.