Cultivated-meat plant of Good Meat in Alameda, California (Just Eat)
When I wrote about the three mistakes people make about cultivated meat — comparing its current price to that of traditional (and subsidized) meat, comparing cultivated meat to a perfect world, and betting against progress — I also pointed out the industry does have real challenges:
Growing more than muscle fibers in order to make complex meats, like steaks.
Cultivating meat at scale.
Getting regulatory and political approval.
I investigated those challenges for Nieuwe Oogst, a Dutch agrarian magazine. Here is a summary for English readers. (more…)
The European Parliament votes in Strasbourg, October 24, 2018 (European Parliament)
The European Parliament narrowly approved a new nature-restoration law on Wednesday. 336 lawmakers, mostly from the center-left, supported a European Commission proposal to restore 20 percent of Europe’s degraded ecosystems by 2030 and all areas deemed in need of restoration by 2050. 300 lawmakers from the conservative European People’s Party (EPP) and Euroskeptic right voted against it.
But to make the proposal palatable to the centrist Renew group, the obligations for member states were watered down and farm land was excluded from the restoration goals.
Liberals from Finland, Germany and the Netherlands still voted against the bill, fearing a repetition of the situation in the Netherlands, where a strict interpretation of existing EU conservation law has slowed construction and thrown thousands of livestock farmers into uncertainty.
In a lesser-noticed vote, the center-right also excluded most livestock farmers from stricter EU targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. (more…)
Cultivated meat in a petri dish (iStock/Svetlana Cherruty)
Two Californian companies, Good Meat and Upside Foods, have received approval to sell cultivated meat in the United States. They plan to offer it in upscale restaurants first and in grocery stores by 2028.
It makes America the second country in the world to legalize cultivated meat. Singapore was first in 2020. Israel could become the third: its regulators have received applications by food companies.
Europe is falling behind. It may take years before the EU allows meat grown from animal cells on its single market. However, the Netherlands — where cultivated meat was invented — is making it possible to taste cultivated meat at its two companies, Meatable and Mosa Meat. RTL News reports that the Dutch Food Safety Authority is expected to issue guideline for tastings in the coming weeks.
It is exciting news for those of us who like to eat meat, but don’t like to slaughter animals for it. Two in three Americans would try cultivated meat, according to a survey. The Good Food Institute, a think tank that promotes alternative proteins, has found similar interest in Europe.
A loud minority is vehemently opposed, and they are fed arguments by a livestock industry that considers cultivated meat a threat.
Let’s tackle the three biggest mistakes they make. (more…)
Grey deer in the Veluwe National Park of the Netherlands, November 30, 2020 (Unsplash/Dylan Leagh)
EU proposals to protect wildlife and reduce the use of pesticides in agriculture have run into opposition from businesses, farmers and their allies in the European Parliament.
Embarrassingly for European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, those allies are in her own conservative European People’s Party (EPP). They fear a repetition of the Dutch farm crisis, where strict enforcement of environmental regulations has brought a halt to many construction projects and could drive one in three livestock farmers out of business.
The far right are also against the Commission’s plans. The liberals, led by French president Emmanuel Macron’s party, are divided. Even the Greens are unhappy. Their commissioner, Virginijus Sinkevičius, is responsible for wildlife protection, but they don’t believe his proposals go far enough. (more…)
Farmers prune vines in Renmark, Australia, July 8, 2021 (Unsplash/Zac Edmonds)
Animal farming causes around 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than all airplanes, cars, trains and trucks combined. It is responsible for a third of biodiversity losses around the world.
Yet consumption of dairy, eggs and meat is rising. Americans and Europeans already eat more than 1,000 animals in their lifetime. There may be two billion more mouths to feed by the middle of this century. If populations in Africa and Asia adopt a “Western” diet — high on animal proteins — we would need to double the crops we grow by 2050.
How? Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, argues the debate has become polarized:
Those who favor conventional agriculture talk about how modern mechanization, irrigation, fertilizers and improved genetics can increase yields to help meet demand. And they’re right. Meanwhile proponents of local and organic farms counter that the world’s small farmers could increase yields plenty — and help themselves out of poverty — by adopting techniques that improve fertility without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. They’re right too.
High tech is the answer in some places and sectors. Organic and regenerative farming is better in others.
The one thing we should stop everywhere is factory farming. In addition to the harm it causes to the climate and our natural world, it is cruel to the animals who are reared in it.
Male baby chicks are ground up alive, because they won’t produce eggs. Cows are forcibly inseminated and kept perpetually pregnant to produce milk. Calves are separated from their mothers after birth. Most bulls are slaughtered after fifteen to eighteen months when their natural life expectancy is 18 to 22 years. Chickens and pigs live their entire lives in cages that are barely largely enough for them to turn around in. Many don’t see daylight until they are transported to slaughter.
There has to be a better way to feed the world. (more…)
Dutch fishing boat trawling for mussels in the North Sea, April 20, 2020 (Unsplash/Paul Einerhand)
The European Commission is advising member states to tap into EU innovation and rural development funds to compensate fishers who will lose out if bottom trawling is banned.
Virginijus Sinkevičius, the Lithuanian commissioner for oceans and fisheries, has proposed to phase out bottom trawling, also known as dragging, in 30 percent of EU waters.
The better policy would be to reverse a ban on electric pulse fishing, which allows fishers to catch sole and other flatfish without ploughing the seafloor. (more…)
Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni arrives to a meeting of European leaders in Brussels, December 15, 2022 (European Council)
Europe’s refusal to allow the sale of cultivated meat is bad enough, but Italy is taking it one step further. Its right-wing government on Tuesday decided to ban the production and sale of all “synthetic foods”.
No wonder food innovators are fleeing to America, Israel and Singapore. (more…)
Dairy cows in the Netherlands, September 28, 2016 (Sebastiaan ter Burg)
Dutch agriculture minister Piet Adema is spending €26 million in 2023 and 2024 to speed up the transition to organic farming.
The money falls short of the €35 million per year Dutch farm lobby LTO had asked for. It’s a drop in the bucket compared to the €1 billion in national and EU subsidies Dutch farmers receive each year, half of which goes to the production of dairy and meat.
Adema would funnel 6 percent of EU subsidies into organic farming. Its share is meant to rise from 4 to 15 percent by 2030, when the European Commission’s goal is to have 25 percent organic farming EU-wide. (more…)
Agrifirm animal feed factory in Veghel, the Netherlands (Brabants Dagblad/Domien van der Meijden)
The international alt-right has picked the wrong side in the Dutch farm crisis.
Former American president Donald Trump, French National Rally leader Marine Le Pen, Danish climate-change sceptic Bjørn Lomborg and media like Breitbart, The Federalist, Fox News and The Spectator may think they’re backing the little guy against out-of-touch political elites, but they’re doing the bidding of Big Ag.
In Areo Magazine, I point out that the farmers protesting in the Netherlands are funded by three of the largest animal feed companies in the world as well as dairy and meat processors. They stand to lose the most from a reduction in livestock farming. (more…)
Meat sold in a Whole Foods Market in Los Angeles, California, July 7, 2021 (Unsplash/Tommao Wang)
Increases in the sale of plant-based meat substitutes aren’t leading to one-on-one reductions in meat consumption.
Studies in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom found that meat consumption is falling slower than the rise of vegetarians and “flexitarians” would suggest. Which puts a heavier burden on farmers to cut emissions from animal agriculture. (more…)
Impossible burgers made from plants (Impossible Foods)
Reducing dairy and meat consumption is the easiest thing Westerners can do to slow down climate change and improve the lives of animals.
Livestock farming causes 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. We could quit fossil fuels tomorrow, and animal agriculture would still push us past 1.5˚C of global warming.
Environmentalists feel guilty about flying, but eating meat and yoghurt every day causes more pollution. And no animals are harmed in building airplanes.
We should eat more seafood and vegetables anyway. Europeans eat twice as much meat as the rest of the world. Spaniards top the list with 100 kilograms per year, which is about the same as Americans. Nutritionists recommend between a quarter and a third of that.
Meat is a source of iron, protein and nutrients, like vitamin B12 and zinc. But most can be found in fish and vegetables as well. Eating too much — especially red — meat can cause bowel cancer and raise cholesterol levels, which increases the risk of heart disease and stroke. Even carnivores who care little about animals or the environment should give that vegaburger a try for the sake of their own heart.
Meat for sale in the San Miguel Market of Madrid, Spain, August 22, 2017 (Unsplash/Victor)
Meat eaters can be thin-skinned.
In the Netherlands, Wakker Dier, an animal-rights charity, discovered that the previous minister of agriculture, Carola Schouten, vetoed the inclusion of eating less meat in a “what you can do to fight climate change” campaign for fear of upsetting carnivores.
That such fears are not unfounded is borne out by the experiences of politicians in France and Spain. (more…)
I debunked four misconceptions about the Dutch farm crisis here a month ago: that reducing Dutch farming will lead to food shortages; that the Dutch government prioritizes an elite green agenda over the livelihoods of its people; that farmers are being chased off their land to build homes; and that the media weren’t covering the story.
That’s certainly changed, but with all the media attention there have also been more mistakes and a few outright fabrications.
Before I debunk those, let me recommend better sources. AFP and Time have excellent stories. I wrote an explainer about the farm crisis in June and have an article in World Politics Review about what it portends for food producers elsewhere.
Cows are fed by a robot on a Dutch dairy farm (Lely)
When I wrote my explainer about the Dutch farm crisis a month ago, there had been little interest in the story abroad. Now when you type “Dutch farmers” in Google News, you’ll get hundreds of results.
I noticed a change when I suddenly got 10,000 readers in a day. (I usually have a few hundred.) Two things happened.
First a policeman shot at a tractor leaving a farmers’ protests. The driver turned out to be a sixteen year-old boy. Nobody was injured. National police are investigating exactly what happened, but it appears the officer thought the tractor was deliberately trying to crash into a colleague. (He didn’t realize the driver was a teenager.) In a country where cops seldom draw their weapons, much less shoot at people, the story was frontpage news, which led to Netherlands-based foreign correspondents filing their own stories.
Then Eva Vlaardingerbroek, a failed parliamentary candidate for the Netherlands’ far-right Forum for Democracy, was interviewed about the protests on Fox News. (Vlaardingerbroek was credited as a “legal philosopher” rather than a former politician for the only political party in the Netherlands that still defends Vladimir Putin.) She told one lie after another. Media Matters has the details.
Other right-wing commentators and media, some writing about the Netherlands for the first time, repeated Vlaardingerbroek’s fabrications. I’ll debunk the four most common misconceptions. (more…)
