Introduction
Meat is one of the crucial products for our diet; however, its production has many ethical and ecological controversies. It is inevitably connected with growing and slaughtering millions of animals each year. Each animal leaves a significant carbon footprint during its life, especially cows, which produce a lot of methane. In addition, their life in butcheries is miserable, while they are living beings and can feel suffering similar to humans. Alternative meat sources can be used to protect the ecosystem and abolish animal suffering while not getting rid of the meat, such as artificial meat grown in laboratory conditions.
Alternative Meat and Problems
Meat production inevitably involves killing animals and making them suffer in butcheries. Each year, more than 300 million cows are killed to prepare beef. If people want to eat more chicken meat, many more chickens must be slaughtered: 134 are equivalent to 1 cow (Ritchie, 2021).
In addition to these sufferings, animals growing in such large quantities left a considerable carbon footprint and destroyed ecosystems, turning them into farmlands. Thus, meat production is costly for the biosphere and ethically controversial. Other ways of its production can be considered: for example, scientists can find a way to grow animal muscle cells artificially and obtain edible meat.
However, there are problems connected with the growth of artificial meat. Typical meat consists of muscle cells, and if one wants to use, for example, pig microsatellite cells to grow additional meat in the lab, they can divide only dozens of times (Jones, 2010). Embryonic stem cells have no limitations, but obtaining them from farm animals is problematic. In that way, artificial meat will be pretty expensive, costing twice as much as ordinary meat, according to 2010 estimates (Jones, 2010). Still, the situation may change as progress continues with new studies.
Another way is creating meat from pea plant cells containing all nine essential amino acids, similar to animal meat and unlike most plant-based food (Lamas, 2021). Swedish Burger King successfully implemented this option in 2019, and artificial meat production is popular among startups and enthusiasts, so production problems will probably be solved.
A Future Diet
As Earth’s population and people’s living standards grow, more and more food will be necessary to feed them all. At the same time, animal suffering and the ecological load of its production must be reduced. To satisfy their needs, pea cells can be grown artificially and then modified with flavors and fats to make the product look like meat (Lamas, 2021).
Artificial meat production directly from animal cells is also developing, despite the problems with growing it on a large scale, and, thus, it is expensive and complicated to purchase (Jones, 2010). However, progress is quick, and there are initiatives for artificial meat usage, both animal and plant origin, such as the 2019 Burger King Sweden pea-based whopper, or artificial meat startups. Thus, there are meat alternatives, both from plant and animal cells, and while these are only the first steps in this field, they will likely play a considerable role in people’s future diets.
Conclusion
Alternative meat sources are necessary if people want to save animals’ lives, abolish their suffering, and reduce the carbon footprint connected with them. Artificial meat can be grown from animal or modified plant cells containing all essential amino acids, especially peas. The end product can then be modified by adding fats, vitamins, minerals, flavors, and all other components to make it taste good and be nutritious. There are already various implementations of artificial meat, and it is available to buy, despite the majority still preferring natural meat. Taking the quick progress of this field and the necessity to abolish animal suffering and reduce environmental load, people’s future diets will probably contain much more artificial meat than today.
Reference List
Jones, N. (2010). ‘Food: A taste of things to come? Nature, 468(7325),’ pp.752–753. Web.
Lamas, M. (2021). How scientists make plant-based foods taste and look more like meat. The Conversation. Web.
Ritchie, H. (2021). Should we kill trillions of animals to save the planet? Wired UK. Web.