Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.
Growing, harvesting, and making food creates greenhouse gas emissions. But some foods are responsible for more emissions than others. Red Meat is at the top of the list.
Lots of people want to reduce their emissions by eating more plants, but changing your eating habits can be hard.
So today, we’re taking a closer look at one idea of how we can drastically reduce the environmental impact of the meat we eat without actually changing our diets.
We had Ashley Junger and Fatima Husain from our Possibly Team look into this.
Ashley Junger: Hi, Megan!
Fatima Husain: Hello!
Megan Hall: So, what’s this magical way to keep eating meat AND reduce my greenhouse gas emissions?
Ashley Junger: It’s called cultivated meat or lab-grown meat.
Megan Hall: That sounds like something from science fiction. How does it work?
Ashley Junger: Good question. To learn more about cultivated meat and how it’s made, we talked with:
Elliot Swartz: “Elliot Swartz. I’m the Principal Scientist specializing in cultivated meat at the Good Food Institute.”
Fatima Husain: Elliot says the process of creating cultivated meat starts by taking a small piece from an animal….
Elliot Swartz: “Where those cells can be taken back to the lab, grown in a medium that contains all the nutrients that cells need to survive And they can multiply and create the tissues or cells that we need to form into future cultivated meat products.”
Ashley Junger: The end result is genuine animal meats that have been produced without killing an actual animal.
Megan Hall: Wow. But it sounds like a lot of trouble and expense to get the same thing we could get from a cow. Why bother?
Ashley Junger: According to the USDA, four percent of all US greenhouse gas emissions come from beef production. Cultivated meat could be a way to cut that number while still enjoying our burgers.
Fatima Husain: Depending on how it’s grown, on average, cultivated meat could use about one percent of the land that we need to create the same amount of conventional beef.
Ashley Junger: And scientists predict that cultivated meat could emit just 10% of the greenhouse gasses associated with producing traditional beef. And if labs use renewable energy, that could be as low as 2%.
Megan Hall: Wow, sounds like cultivated meat could solve a lot of problems.
Fatima Husain: Yeah, right now the emphasis is on could. Scientists are only making a small amount of cultivated meat, and these estimates are based on models of industrial-scale production. So we’ll have to wait and see how those numbers hold up.
Megan Hall: Ok, but wouldn’t it be easier to just not eat meat all together?
Ashley Junger: We asked Elliot the same question. He said:
Elliot Swartz: “People have been trying to, you know, tell people not to eat as much meat for many, many years. And so you really struggle to get people to shift their behavior by just telling them what to do, from a moral perspective.”
Megan Hall: Got it. But, how does it taste? Are meat eaters really going to want to try this stuff? It honestly sounds kind of unappealing.
Fatima Husain: Some people say it’s a little more uniform than conventional meat and doesn’t have those chewy, fatty bits. But most of the people who’ve reviewed it said it was extremely close to or indistinguishable from the real thing.
Megan Hall: Ok, I’ll give it a try. How can I get some?
Ashley Junger: Well, It’s still difficult and expensive to make, so right now the supply is only enough for some high-end restaurants.
Fatima Husain: But the industry is growing quickly. Investors have put more than 2 billion dollars into getting cultivated meat products on the market.
Ashley Junger: So only time will tell if cultivated meat companies will be able to compete with conventional meat.
Megan Hall: Got it! Thanks, Ashley and Fatima!
That’s it for today. For more information, or to ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, go to the thepublicsradio.org/possibly. Or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts.
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Possibly is a co-production of The Public’s Radio, Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, and Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative.
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