Lab-grown meat and insects 'good for planet and health'
BBC NewsApr 25, 2022
Italy is reportedly preparing to approve legislation that would ban the use of laboratory-grown meat in food and animal feed, as the government seeks to protect the country's "agri-food heritage."
If passed, the Italian agriculture industry would be restricted from producing food or feed "from cell cultures or tissues derived from vertebrate animals," with violators facing fines of up to 60K euros ($65K).
There are economic, humanitarian, and health reasons for people to switch to lab-grown and insect-based diets. Eating alternative proteins could lessen our environmental impact on the planet by 80% compared to the current European diet, as it avoids the need to farm livestock or poultry and uses significantly less water to produce. Furthermore, unlike some purely vegetarian or vegan diets, lab-grown and insect-based diets can still be nutrient- and protein-rich.
While switching to lab-grown and insect-based protein alternatives has huge potential, these routes shouldn't be uncritically cited as environmental silver bullets. Due to the amount of energy required to produce lab-grown meat, production in its current form could produce more CO2 than the methane currently produced by cows, so it actually risks obstructing decarbonization targets. A systemic switch to these diets would help mitigate climate change only if we also make progress in other areas, especially renewable energy usage. Dietary change needs to be part of a wider environmental plan and infrastructure change to be effective.
There is a 50% chance that at least five cultivated meat products will be approved for sale in the US by May 10, 2025, according to the Metaculus prediction community.