In Trump Era, States Should Fund Cultivated-Meat Research
Photo by Kyle Mackie
With Republicans in control of all three branches of the federal government, liberal states should increasingly fund cultivated-meat research. For those who don’t know, cultivated meat is grown from animal cells, without slaughter. The new protein offers a number of environmental, public health and animal welfare benefits.
While there are individual Republican leaders who support cultivated-meat development, by and large the party is hostile to the emerging technology. For the foreseeable future, it strikes me as unlikely the federal government will provide money for the effort. Thankfully, at least two Democratic-controlled states have contributed to such funding.
Back in 2022, California directed $5 million toward alternative-protein research across three schools in its land-grant university system. The investment was championed by Assemblymember Ash Kalra, who cited the technology’s potential to mitigate global warming and secure additional economic opportunities as motivating factors.
“By providing California universities resources to advance public knowledge of alternative proteins, we can fuel innovation and enable Californian companies to play a greater role in combating climate change through the production of sustainable proteins,” Kalra said. “Investing in alternative protein science will secure our lead in this burgeoning field.”
Similarly, last year, Governor Maura Healey’s administration in Massachusetts, alongside a public development agency in the state, provided $2.1 million to the Tufts Center for Cellular Agriculture to launch the Foodtech Engineering for Alternative Sustainable Technologies center, which will accelerate the development of cultivated meat.
“We’re proud of the advances Massachusetts is making in cellular agriculture, leveraging our biomanufacturing infrastructure and research expertise to address the challenges of climate change and shifting supply chains,” said Massachusetts Economic Development Secretary Yvonne Hao. “We’re fostering innovation.”
Most people aren’t aware that animal agriculture is one of the leading causes of global warming. While the technology is still in its infancy, scientists believe cultivated-meat will require a fraction of the greenhouse-gas emissions to produce that slaughtered meat does. Environmentalists need to place a greater emphasis on our food system.
“Industrial livestock agriculture — raising cows, pigs and chickens — generates as much greenhouse gas emissions as all cars, trucks and automobiles combined,” Greenpeace states on its website. “Cattle ranchers have clear cut millions of acres of forests for grazing pastures, inhibiting the landscape’s ability to absorb carbon.”
Meanwhile, widespread adoption of cultivated meat would dramatically reduce the risk of zoonotic diseases making the jump to humans. Deadly pandemics can frequently be traced back to animal agriculture, where humans come into close contact with sick livestock. This is the sort of global catastrophe scientists fear will occur with bird flu.
“Both farmed and caged wild animals create the perfect breeding ground for zoonotic diseases,” Liz Specht wrote for Wired. “Extraordinarily high population densities, prolonged heightened stress levels, poor sanitation, and unnatural diets create a veritable speed-dating event for viruses to rendezvous with a weakened human host.”
Finally, if cultivated meat can achieve price and taste parity with slaughtered options, it has the potential to significantly limit the suffering and premature death we inflict on our fellow creatures. The scale of this violence is almost impossible to comprehend. Every year, humans kill more than a trillion aquatic and land animals for food.
To put that number in a little perspective, the Population Reference Bureau estimates only 117 billion humans have ever existed. Given these facts, it’s really no exaggeration to say our wars, disasters, and injustices don’t come close to the horrors of animal agriculture. Of course, we exploit nonhumans for a variety of other purposes as well.
When fully developed, the field of cellular agriculture will have the capacity to do tremendous good. While Republicans control all three branches of the federal government and are largely hostile to the technology, this needn’t mean the end of public funding for cultivated-meat research. Democratic states should close the gap.
