Read on Twitter
Cultured meat (aka lab-grown, cell-based, or cultivated meat) could have an unintended effect: increased GHG emissions. THREAD 1/ https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food/cultivated-meat
First, cultured meat isn't commercially available yet. It is NOT the same as plant-based meats like the Impossible or Beyond burgers. Common misconception. Instead it is produced by growing ("culturing") livestock muscle cells in a facility resembling a brewery. 2/
Because cultured meat isn't available, no one can be sure what its specific environmental footprint will be. BUT researchers like @htuomisto and @cmattick have estimated a range of plausible impacts. 3/
Cultured meat production will quite certainly use a lot less land than grazing livestock & raising crops for them, but it won't necessarily have a low carbon footprint. 4/
Cultured meat, by most estimates, will have a similar or slightly larger GHG footprint than chicken & pork, and a smaller one than beef. 5/
This means that cultured meat's climate impact will depend on what foods people replace with it. Shifting from beef to cultured meat likely will, on average, cut emissions. But shifting from pork and especially chicken could substantially increase diet-related emissions. 6/
While much of the focus on cultured meat is beef, it's important to recognize that cultured chicken could have a large market and, without improvements, a large carbon footprint. 7/
Fortunately, there are some ways to minimize cultured meat's GHG impact. Since production relies on industrial energy for heating and electricity, broad advances in clean energy & industrial decarbonization could cut emissions. 8/
For those interested in the details of making cultured meat low-carbon, @LizSpecht, @doctordendrite, @htuomisto, @KateKruegerPhD, and @SaloniShah101 are great resources as are those working at startups. 9/
Wonky details: We use Mattick et al. (2015) estimates for cultured meat, Rotz et al. (2019) for beef, the average US estimate from Poore & Nemecek (2018) for pork & tofu, Pelletier (2008) for chicken, and company LCAs from @Quantis_intl for Impossible & Beyond burgers.
Note: Developing and commercializing cultured meat is one of many promising ways to cut meat-related GHG emissions. Productivity growth has cut US emissions per lb. of beef ~33% and chicken ~50% since the 1960s. https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food/big-not-broken
Adoption of manure digesters, other manure best practices, and methane-cutting feed supplements all also promise to cut emissions.
