By: Annie Dunn ’25
Lab grown meat, which is created from animal cells, is thought of by many to be more environmentally friendly than beef, but unfortunately this is not the case. The “meat” is produced from live stem cells that are taken from the muscle and skin of live animals. One of the many challenges of growing meat stems from the highly refined growth media, the ingredients needed to help animal cells multiply. This method is similar to the biotechnology used to make pharmaceuticals. This sparks the question: Is lab-made meat a pharmaceutical product or a food product?
“If companies are having to purify growth media to pharmaceutical levels, it uses more resources, which then increases global warming potential,” said lead author and doctoral graduate Derrick Risner, UC Davis Department of Food Science and Technology. “If this product continues to be produced using the “pharma” approach, it’s going to be worse for the environment and more expensive than conventional beef production.”
Through a study that defined the global warming potential as the carbon dioxide equivalents emitted for each kilogram produced, global warming potential from lab-grown meat is four to 25 times greater than the average for retail beef. “I’d rather eat my shoe than lab-grown meat,” said well-known nutritionist and food author Diana Rodgers in an interview with The Post.
Rodgers argues the best type of meat comes from farms where animals are grass-fed and allowed to graze, not animals raised in the industrial food system where they are brought up poor conditions and injected with hormones. She is a high critic of lab-grown meat.
Beyond Meat, arguably the most popular lab-grown meat substitute brand, serves plant-based burgers, fake-meat chicken tenders, and vegetarian sausages. This meat is cultivated in a different way but still sparks large amounts of controversies. The proteins are heated, cooled, and pressured to create the texture of meat. They have recently been facing critiques and controversies. In 2019, the company was valued over $10 billion, but now it currently stands at $0.37 billion and is expected to continue to decrease.
There are many contributors to this crashing number, one of them being Beyond Meat’s failed collaboration with McDonalds. This collaboration only lasted six months, and dramatically failed. Beyond Meat collaborated with McDonalds to create a fake meat burger called McPlant. These burgers were available in about 600 McDonald’s locations, and the partnership was supposed to help publicize Beyond Meat to a wider audience, but this was not the case as diners at McDonalds were not ordering the fake meat.
Additionally, the company, founded by Ethan Brown, has recently faced two major lawsuits. One lawsuit claims that its products do not contain as much protein and nutrients as the company advertises. Simultaneously, another suit alleges that the meat substitute is not “natural” since it contains the unnatural ingredient methylcellouse, which is synthetically produced.
The first lawsuit was filed by three customers who say that they were mislead about the protein content in Beyond Meat. These customers claim that they paid a premium for protein content when buying their “meat” but this protein was not there. The court filings state that
Beyond Meat made “numerous false and misleading claims and/or omissions on its website, in its promotional and marketing materials, and on the Products’ nutritional labels.”
Between an increase in global warming, a series of lawsuits, and a deceptive national label, the sale trajectory of lab-grown and plant-based meats is quickly declining. Because of the lack of health benefits from consuming these “meats”, many people have turned back to their old ways of consuming their protein. Bean burgers or tofu for those that are vegetarian, and regular meat for those that are not.
THE BEAR FACTS 