Paul Shapiro: With soaring demand for meat, it’s time to fund animal-free protein research
Rather than spending tens of billions of dollars paying farmers to raise fewer animals, why not just spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fund R&D into creating meat-type experiences without animals?
PAUL SHAPIRO: It’s no longer a secret that raising billions of animals for food is at the heart of so many of humanity’s most pressing problems, from environmental degradation to pandemic risk and more. With groups like the United Nations and World Health Organization touting the benefits of shifting toward plant-based foods, it seems like there must be a role for public policy to help nudge us in the right direction.
Case in point: The Netherlands, increasingly worried about the impact of its livestock sector on the Dutch environment, has hatched a 25 billion euro plan ($28 billion USD) simply to pay farmers to raise fewer animals. But without addressing the root of the concern – increasing demand for animal protein – such a policy is likely just to shift the environmental harms of animal agriculture from Holland to somewhere else, like the Amazon rainforest…
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) recently wrote, “Nearly 10 [percent] of the world’s population today is experiencing hunger.” He called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) “to invest in alternative proteins research”… Khanna is hardly the only member of Congress interested in seeing more agriculture research and development (R&D) dollars flowing toward animal-free protein. House Appropriations Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) has also embraced the need for the U.S. to be a leader in the clean protein space…
Rather than spending tens of billions of dollars paying farmers to raise fewer animals, why not just spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fund R&D into creating meat-type experiences without animals? After all, we’re funding research into methods of producing energy without fossil fuels; it’s time to do the same with producing protein without factory farms… compared to what the USDA spends supporting animal agriculture (for example, half a billion dollars recently to increase U.S. slaughter capacity)…
Former USDA secretaries from both Republican and Democratic administrations seem enthusiastic about such promising new technology that could help satisfy humanity’s meat-tooth in a far more efficient and sustainable way… We can still be a leader when it comes to the clean protein that will be needed to sustainably feed humanity meat into the future. With the right kind of R&D incentives to those seeking to recreate the meat experience without such a heavy hoof-print on the planet, the federal government can help the U.S. maintain our leadership as a “meat basket” to the world. SOURCE…
RELATED VIDEOS: