#lab meat

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

More than almost anything else we put into our mouths, meat matters. What flesh we eat — or forsake — tells the world who we are, what class and caste we belong to, what gods we believe in. Halal or kosher. Pure-veg or paleo. Hormel or farmers’ market.

Worldwide, 80 billion animals are slaughtered every year for meat. Raising all those animals has already claimed most of the world’s farmland. It has led to zoonotic diseases and vast deforestation. It has polluted air and water and spewed planet-heating gasses into the atmosphere.

It has also enabled many more people to eat meat more often than ever before, which has in turn put pressure on governments to both keep meat prices affordable and reduce its climate hoofprint.

What will all of this mean for the $1 trillion global meat industry?

A new kind of factory farming is on the horizon, one that grows meat in giant steel vats, either from real-live cells taken from real-live animals or from tiny microorganisms.

This new industry has many names — lab meat, cellular meat, cultivated meat, precision fermentation. I think of it as chicken without wings.

Its fans praise its extreme efficiency: feet, tails, feathers, snouts are eliminated. Its detractors say it’s a threat to culture and livelihoods. To some people, it’s just uncanny, or maybe it’s just the natural next step in how uncannily the modern food system has denatured meat.

Countries most worried about the future of their food supply are racing to conquer the new meat market. The world’s billionaires are making a bet on it too, including global meat giants. The United States is among the first countries to permit its sale. And even though it’s only occasionally available at fancy restaurants in the United States and at one specialized deli in Singapore, it’s already so divisive that it’s pre-emptively banned in places as dissimilar as Florida and Italy.

The commercial future of cellular meats is still unclear. And even if it takes off, it’s unclear whether it’s any better for our health or the health of the planet than the industrially produced meat most of us eat today.

The one certainty is this: Our taste for flesh has already exhausted the Earth. Our relationship to meat is, once again, changing.

August 5th panel for the r/Polandball Calendar Project 2024

Leonardo DiCaprio invests in cruelty-free meatballs

Leonardo DiCaprio, known in his movie roles for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Titanic –– and for dating Bar Refaeli – has invested in not one but two alternative meat companies, Aleph Farms, based in Israel, and Mosa Meat from the Netherlands. Unlike the Impossible Burger and the OSI Group which creates alternative protein from peas, which is tasty, but hard to digest, Aleph and Mosa create…