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The idea of lab-grown meat is enough to makes most peoples’
skin crawl. But a lot of the fear and negativity surrounding in vitro meat is
due to a lack of understanding on the public’s behalf. If the public were made
more aware of the benefits of cultured meat, then perhaps there wouldn’t be
such a stigma around it.
Now, that’s not to say that there aren’t any downfalls to
lab-grown meat, because there certainly are. However, for now I want to focus
on the pros. I’ll touch on the cons later.
Perhaps the biggest case for producing lab-grown meat is how
it could reduce both greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation of grazing
land. According to a study published in the National Center
for Biotechnology Information, “The farm
animal sector is the single largest anthropogenic user of land, contributing to
many environmental problems, including global warming and climate change.”
What’s worse is that the global
production of meat has more than double since 1970. The good news is that
cultured meat could provide the perfect solution to this problem.
According to foodandnutrition.org, “Researchers comparing
the production of cultured and conventional meat found that producing 1,000
kilograms of cultured meat involves approximately 7 percent to 45 percent lower
energy use, 78 percent to 96 percent lower greenhouse gas emissions, 99 percent
lower land use and 82 percent to 96 percent lower water use.”
So what’s the catch, then? Cultured meat is expensive—really
expensive.
In 2013, a researcher by the name of Mark
Post actually produced the world’s first burger made from bovine stem
cells. It cost over $300,000 to make. So yeah, there’s that.
However, scientists do believe that the cost of producing in
vitro meat will decrease as researchers refine the process. In other words, it’s
going to take time.
Tell me: would you try lab-grown meat? Do you believe that
the government should invest more money into sponsoring this type of agricultural
development?
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