Climate One

Medium Rare: What’s Next For Meat?

Climate One

Show Notes

Industrial agriculture accounts for a significant share of global emissions, but meat alternatives face real hurdles in becoming a mainstay of consumer diets. The hype around plant-based meat has cooled: hurt by price gaps, ultra-processed rhetoric, and culture-war politics around masculinity and food identity. Yet feeding a growing planet will require eating less beef, wasting less food, and producing more food with less land. Cultivated meat – made from animal cells and grown in a lab – could offer a different path forward, especially in hybrid form combining plant and cultivated proteins. What might the future of meat look like?

Guests:

Robbie Lockie, CEO, Founder, foodfacts.org

Michael Grunwald, Journalist and author, “We Are Eating the Earth”

Claire Bomkamp, Senior Lead Scientist, Cultivated Meat & Seafood, Good Food Institute

Highlights:

00:00 - Introduction

4:30 Robbie Lockie on changing his diet

11:54 Robbie Lockie on who is choosing plant based meat

17:55 Robbie Lockie on how plant based meat competes on taste

20:40 Robbie Lockie on the future of plant based meat

26:54 Michael Grunwald making more food with less land

30:16 Michael Grunwald on the efficiency of industrial agriculture

33:30 Michael Grunwald on rotational grazing

38:00 Ariana Brocious’ cultivated salmon tasting

45:05 Claire Bomkamp on the state of cultivated meat

47:16 Claire Bomkamp on energy use of cultivated meat

52:23 Claire Bomkamp on what cuts cultivated meat can create

56:22 Claire Bomkamp on the price of cultivated meat

For show notes and related links, visit ClimateOne.org.

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