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On Mercola.com, Dr. Joseph Mercola takes on the sham claims about lab grown “meat.” He writes:
While the fake meat industry is being touted as an environmentally friendly and sustainable way to feed the world, the true intent is to recreate the kind of global control that Monsanto and others achieved through patented GMO seed development. In the end, lab-created meats are worse for the environment than livestock and will undoubtedly deteriorate human health to boot, just like GMO grains have.
Lab-Grown Meat Is Worse for Environment Than Cattle
As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle,1 researchers at UC Davis warn there are major environmental downsides to lab-grown meat that aren’t part of the conversation or the decision-making process.
According to their “cradle-to-gate life cycle” analysis,2,3,4,5 the lab-grown meat industry produces up to 25 times more CO2 than traditional animal husbandry, which nullifies the core ideological foundation upon which the industry is built.
As noted by the authors, investors have poured billions of dollars into animal cell-based meat (ACBM) sector based on the theory that cultured meat is more environmentally friendly than beef. But that hype is primarily based on flawed analyses of carbon emissions.
The primary sources of CO2 emissions are the purification processes, which require fossil fuels. The bacteria used to produce the “meat” releases endotoxins, and these must be eliminated from the growth medium or else the cells won’t reproduce properly. As noted by the authors:6
“Animal cell culture is traditionally done with growth medium components which have been refined to remove/reduce endotoxin. The use of these refinement methods contributes significantly to the economic and environmental costs associated with pharmaceutical products since they are both energy and resource intensive.”
Based on this assessment, each kilo of cultured meat produces anywhere from 542 pounds (246 kilos) to 3,325 pounds (1,508 kg) of carbon dioxide emissions, making the climate impact of cultured meat four to 25 times greater than that of conventional beef.
Sham Claims Based on Nonexistent Technologies
The UC Davis life cycle analysis also points out that several estimates of ACBM climate impacts are dependent on novel technologies that either do not exist yet or are unlikely to work.
For example, some have proposed growing cyanobacteria hydrolysate in open concrete ponds to then be “harvested, sterilized, hydrolyzed and used as an animal cell growth medium.” The problem is that this technology is not currently used, “nor is it one that is currently near feasibility,” the authors note.
In short, the claims propping up the cultured meat industry are a sham, as the idea that cultured meat is a greener option is based on nonexistent technologies rather than the technologies that are in use.
Previous Research Also Pokes Holes in Environmental Claims
Other studies have also been critical of the ACBM industry’s claims. For example, a 2019 article7 in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems found that were the world to make the transition to cultured meat, its impact on global warming might initially appear to be beneficial. However, over time, cultured meat production would result in greater warming. As concluded by the authors:8
“Under continuous high global consumption, cultured meat results in less warming than cattle initially, but this gap narrows in the long term and in some cases cattle production causes far less warming, as CH4 emissions do not accumulate, unlike CO2 …
We conclude that cultured meat is not prima facie climatically superior to cattle; its relative impact instead depends on the availability of decarbonized energy generation and the specific production systems that are realized.”
Read more here.
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