So lab-grown meat is supposed to stave off climate change because we won’t need as many flatulent animals wandering around the planet.
In a development that is as surprising as Joe Biden falling down, it turns out that fake meat is far, far, far, “orders of magnitude” worse for the environment than the regular hooved variety.
According to a UC-Davis study (which can be trusted because the school is one of world’s best agricultural schools and THE world’s best veterinarian schools,) the creation of lab meat “is similar to the biotechnology used to make pharmaceuticals” and therefore – due to the manufacturing and technology involved – will cause lab-based meat to create “four to 25 times greater” the amount of naughty carbon dioxide than normal meat. Here’s the study: https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/lab-grown-meat-carbon-footprint-worse-beef .
The study does note that “(O)ne of the goals of the industry is to eventually create lab-grown meat using primarily food-grade ingredients or cultures without the use of expensive and energy-intensive pharmaceutical grade ingredients and processes.” If this wish in the wind does to come to pass, it is possible that lab meat could squeeze out an advantage, but that is far from guaranteed.
“Our findings suggest that cultured meat is not inherently better for the environment than conventional beef. It’s not a panacea,” said corresponding author Edward Spang, an associate professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology. “It’s possible we could reduce its environmental impact in the future, but it will require significant technical advancement to simultaneously increase the performance and decrease the cost of the cell culture media.”
Finally, “(E)ven the most efficient beef production systems reviewed in the study outperform cultured meat across all scenarios (both food and pharma), suggesting that investments to advance more climate-friendly beef production may yield greater reductions in emissions more quickly than investments in cultured meat.”
Now, what if we put the cows just upwind of giant wind turbines on calm days? More electricity for free and not as many environmentally ickies create – seems win-win to me.
Speaking of fake meat, the issue of dressing in drag has yet again come to the fore.
Okay, maybe it’s not the fakeness but the presence of meat that is the issue in drag’s case.
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