Mastodawn

From the perspective of animal welfare, lab meat makes sense.

Environmentally, the answer is not so clear in the case of free ranging beef when including soil carbon storage in grassland-rumiant ecosystems. Admittedly, the grasslands would need to be managed very biodiversity-friendly and there are simply not enough grasslands to feed 9 billion people with a western meat overconsupmtion habits.
And for pig & poultry, except in a backyard or really smallscale farms there is anyway no sustainable production.

So, for an electricity-based meat production (btw, where do they source their raw materials? Recycled organic wastes? Legumes?), we need to consider the direct and indirect emissions of the electricity system. In many countries, the share of renewables is on the rise, but currently, solar and wind are mainly adding production capacity to cover the increases in consumption, with only slight decreases in total emissions of the energy sector because coal, gas and oil are still burned. All the promoters of tech-solutions assume that their product will use only zero emission electricity, without having marginal effects on the whole system.

Then there is the health perspective: Although I cheer every meat alternative that helps to bring down factory farming, I am reluctant of ultraprocessed foods produced by intransparent companies (But that is not my field of expertise, more a gut-feeling).

And finally, what I think is the most important point and also interesting for anthropologists: the dependence on highly centralized and technizised systems for food production is not a good idea. Not for resilience as they have vulnerable supply chains (a lab needs many components from different parts pf the world, starting with latex gloves). And not from a cultural perspective, as food production is an inherent part of human subsistence. It is unwise, to be totally disconnected from the people that produce our food and their way of live.

#AgroEcology #PeasantFarming #LabMeat #ArtificialMeat #Meat #LessMeat #Vegetarian #Vegan