In Vitro in the Long Run

Giles, Jim. 2009. “Eating Less Meat Could Cut Climate Costs.” New Scientist. Available from: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16573-eating-less-meat-could-cut-climate-costs.html

Wait. Did I read that wrong? $20 trillion? A $20 trillion burden could be eased off the battle against climate change? Yep.

This article really broadened the scope of in vitro meat production, taking the idea of culturing meat from animal tissue cells to a whole new level. While other articles we’ve explored do connect the dots between “meat cheats” and human and environmental health, $20 trillion sure made me sit up in my seat.

Basically, this article outlined the fact that meat production today costs about that much money; and while I highly doubt that’s an annual estimate, it’s still a large chunk of change. For some reason, I was stuck in thinking solely about the actual production of meat and the process of packaging the products and getting them ready for sale. However, the article talked a lot about the actual land being used to raise the livestock, land that, if given the chance to grow and thrive, could become a plentiful carbon sink instead of mucky grazing grounds. Farms could also reduce their methane emissions in general by reducing the size of their plot and the number of animals they house; methane, a noxious greenhouse gas, is released from the farm animals and their manure in large quantities every day. The article even digs deep enough to point out that the fertilizer used to grow the grain that feeds the cows that produce the meat is “energy intensive” to make. Whew.

Apparently, if our eating habits stay the way they are, and we don’t want droughts or sea level rising, we’d have to pay a cost of $40 trillion by 2050 to work against all the carbon we’re producing from eating meat. By reducing meat intake, greenhouse gas emission would be also be reduced, vegetation could be grown on the unused land to offset the carbon, and bioenergy crops could be grown as an alternative to fossil fuels. Another suggestion was the idea that the prices of meat could be raised to put more money towards the reduction of carbon emission and create a monetary incentive to turn away from eating meat entirely.

This is all well and good, but what does it have to do with in vitro meat? Why does any of this matter, if animals are just going to be used for their tissue anyway and will probably have to be farm-raised? It matters because a few animal tissue cells, as highlighted from our blog posts last week, can produce the world’s meat supply by using in vitro methods. While some may argue then that animals would in fact be more plentiful if not killed for their meat, it definitely means that farms do not have to be as big as they are currently and that stretches of farmland used for raising animals could grow wild with vegetation and work instead towards protecting the environment. Though the article was at times a stretch in connecting with in vitro meat, it showed the larger implications of a world in which our meat eating habits continue, and the immense costs of these habits. Trillions of dollars could be saved by turning to this fake meat, and carbon emissions could be cut way down, and not just from the use of expensive carbon-saving technologies. A change in behavior could ultimately lead to a change in our climate.

So, meat cheat anyone? Think about it.