Plant Based vs Cell Based - which meat will rule?
Teresa Romanovsky • September 20, 2021
The boxing gloves are off in the plant-based versus cell-based agriculture ring. Leaders in the plant-based and cell-ag worlds are battling out the viability of cell-based meat. On the one hand, you have the passionate and outspoken CEO of Impossible Foods, Patrick Brown stating that cell-based meats are “Complete vapourware”.
In his interview with the Washington Post last month, he talks about the overwhelming destruction we have caused in the last 50 years. He gives terrifying examples of the devastation that meat-eating humans are causing. “The overwhelming driver of the collapse of terrestrial species is habitat destruction and degradation. More than 80 per cent of the land footprint of humanity is land used for animal agriculture. Every city on Earth sits on less than 1 per cent of the planet’s land. The land footprint of animal agriculture, when you count feed crops, permanent pastures and temporary grazing on pasture, is 45 per cent of Earth’s land area”.
He goes on to say, “We are in the very late stages of an absolute catastrophic collapse of global biodiversity. The total number of living wild mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish on Earth today is less than a third of what it was 50 years ago. And it's almost entirely due to our use of animals as a food technology. And you can see that the demand for meat and dairy foods is not going down; it's going up faster than population growth”.
Brown quite rightly argues that only plants could viably compete and displace animal agriculture with these figures to hand. On the other hand, British billionaire entrepreneur and investor Jim Mellon thinks that future cultured meat will be more affordable than factory-farmed and plant-based alternatives.
“The price of plant-based foods has been coming down – Impossible has just lowered its price by 20% in the US – but there is a limit to that,” said Mellon, who Michael Wolf recently interviewed for The Food Tech Show podcast. “I think you’ll get parity [with traditionally produced meat], possibly in 18 months, with some of the plant-based foods. But I don’t think it’s going to go a lot below that.”
He continues, “In the US, 60 per cent of your meat is bought in the form of ground meat, sausages, patties, etc. I think we’ll be at price parity within five years,” said Mellon. “Five years is not a long time in the history of mankind. Within five years, the whole of the intensive farming industry will face a very dramatic threat to its existence.” In a nutshell, Mellon believes that by moving meat production to cellular agriculture, the industry will see a tenfold increase in its efficiency.
Despite their difference of opinion, they both have one mutual goal – to reduce the impact that traditional animal farming has on the planet. When we use the land to raise animals, the effects on the planet are devastating. The Union of Concerned Scientists lists meat-eating as one of the most significant environmental hazards facing the Earth. Vast swathes of land are lost when farmers cut down trees to make space for farming sheds and grazing lands. Untold amounts of animal waste pollute rivers and streams. Animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gases than the entire global transportation system.
The Worldwatch Institute state, “Roughly two of every five tons of grain produced in the world is fed to livestock, poultry, or fish; decreasing consumption of these products, especially of beef, could free up massive quantities of grain and reduce pressure on land". More than 80 per cent of corn and 95 per cent of oats grown are fed to cattle.
Staggeringly, the world's cattle consume the calorific needs of almost 9 billion people, more than our current population. Pair this with the information provided by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) that “Cows must consume 16 pounds of vegetation in order to convert them into 1 pound of flesh. Raising animals for food consumes more than half of all water used in the US. It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat but only 25 gallons to produce a pound of wheat”.
Ultimately, Patrick Brown and Jim Mellon want the same outcome, but the journey is a little different. What are your thoughts?
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