Lab-grown meat is no Frankenstein’s monster. Derived from animal cells and grown in a controlled lab without the slaughter of a living animal, this very real, safe meat is a fascinating opportunity.
If consumers embraced lab-grown meat, also called cultured meat, the method could address the tremendous environmental and ethical consequences of the commercial meat industry.
Globally, large-scale deforestation occurs each year to keep up with the containment of animals raised for meat and the necessary crops to keep them fed. The beef industry alone is responsible for around 3% of the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions each year, according to a 2019 study.
But if renewable energy is utilized during production, lab-grown meat offers a sustainable alternative. Lab-grown meat could have a carbon footprint as much as 92% smaller than the contemporary meat industry, where beef alone produces 201 metric tonnes of greenhouse gases each year, according to a 2018 study.
Given the environmentally-conscious audience lab-grown meat attracts, it’s in the favor of animal cell-based meat producing companies to pursue renewable energy sources.
Lab-grown meat also offers a meaningful alternative to slaughterhouse meat, which comes at an inhumane cost. The cramped living, physical torture and emotional torment of animals at slaughterhouses is no secret, and often what influences vegans and vegetarians to give up meat.
Junior theater arts design and technology major Sasha Norman has been vegetarian for around 10 years. Though she prefers to do her own research before trying new developed foods, she encourages the public to keep an open mind on different substitutes for meat.
“I just don’t like seeing things in pain and to be treated like that before they are killed, it just seems a little unnecessary and harsh,” Norman said. “Just the conditions in the meat industry themselves, they’re (animals raised for meat) treated like a product.”
In the United States, select companies’ lab-grown meat is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for sale, but it is not yet available in restaurants or grocery stores.
Some conservative states have already enacted bans against lab-grown meat, including Alabama, Florida, Indiana and Texas. Among primary voiced concerns is the fear that cultured meat will affect farm culture.
“Texans have a God-given right to know what’s on their plate, and for millions of Texans, it better come from a pasture, not a lab. It’s plain cowboy logic that we must safeguard our real, authentic meat industry from synthetic alternatives,” said Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller about the Texas ban of cultured meat in June.
But the traditional meat industry will not collapse overnight with the sale of lab-grown meat, and the scientists developing lab-grown meat are not mad.
Meat-eating is not decreasing significantly enough to greatly affect farming culture, even with a rise in veganism and vegetarianism. In the case of beef, environmental impacts – such as droughts – are currently responsible for declining cattle herds. Farming culture suffers when Earth is ignored.
Finding a new way to provide meat for an increasingly overpopulated world, a way that reduces greenhouse gas emissions and animal cruelty, is certainly a win.
Lab-grown meat is new, different and maybe a little freaky at first glance, but science indicates it could work, and it could have incredible benefits. It’s a way to solve a problem, not deny one.
The Trump Administration’s current attacks on science funding are drastically hindering innovative progress, but consumers could have some power in supporting lab-grown meat should it hit the market, and they need to use it.
Relying on the current meat industry alone is simply not sustainable or justifiable. Searching for new ways to produce meat for a changing future doesn’t just make sense, it has to happen.
If we can’t evolve how we eat, we’re hopeless.
