Meat consumption is still rising globally. Picture credit: tomwieden - CC0
Cutting down on animal products has become a trendy way to remove some guilt from our consumption-based, throwaway lifestyles. But on a global scale, ‘Mylk’, ‘Vurgers’ and ‘Chik’n’ accounts for next-to-nothing, as meat consumption increases. Now scientists are going to the labs to satisfy our canine teeth sustainably.
Veganism is the fastest-growing lifestyle movement in the UK. But consumption of animals is increasing worldwide, as rising economies like China and India adapt to the food habits of the west. This is troubling, with animal agriculture’s huge environmental footprint.
As environmentalist and author George Monbiot says:
“Eating plants and crops directly is far more energy-efficient than feeding plants and crops to animals, and then consume the animals.“
It takes, for example, 25 kg of grains to produce 1 kg of beef.
But veganism and sustainable eating are limited to those privileged enough to make the consideration. 99% of the world isn’t vegan, and probably won’t be anytime soon. Paul Shapiro, author of the new book Clean Meat, says humans prefer to act our way into a new way of thinking, rather than think our way into a new way of acting. “People want to eat meat,” he says. “So a sustainable alternative has to be developed before it’s too late.”
In Clean Meat, Shapiro visits the lab-grown meat industry, which he believes can solve our current food crisis. Lab-grown meat is made from extracting an animal cell through a biopsy, and then growing the cell inside a lab. The result is real meat, blood and all, minus the animal suffering and greenhouse emissions meat from animal slaughter carry.
Whether the future is lab-grown or not is too early to tell, but it present an exciting solution to a problem that needs to be addressed.
Jonas Henmo