We Can Both Save the Planet and Still Enjoy Our Filet Mignon

Note: This opinion piece was drafted as part of a larger writing assignment (with parameters including a limited word count and specific angle).

NOBODY LOVES A good steak more than my dad and Tomahawk Tuesdays were part of my life growing up. Now in his early 70s, those choice cuts of prime rib, dripping with fat and seasoned to perfection, finally caught up with him. Four stents later, the tomahawk has given way to trout.?

So it was that when we recently went to a famous burger joint in our Detroit-area neighborhood, my Pop had no choice (so says his cardiologist) but to opt for an Impossible Burger instead of “The Original Red Coat Special” he would have preferred.

Our server arrived with three plates of beautifully presented burgers, decked out with grilled onions, lettuce, tomato, and other burgerific fixings. I watched as he took his first bite into a foreign world — a plant-based meat alternative. While “plant-based meat alternative” is less sexy than, say, “a slider with everything,” you wouldn’t have known it by his reaction.?

“I think they goofed,” he said, disappointed. “This is a real burger. It’s delicious, but when you see the waiter flag him down.” In between that bite and finding the server, he decided he’d at least enjoy one more chomp. “Sir, I promise, it’s an Impossible Burger. I went back and verified with the chef,” he said, adding for good measure, “they’re just that good.”?

And, so it goes, another skeptic bites the dust. The rest of the Impossible Burger on his plate was not long for this world. That’s how far we’ve come in just a few short years of innovation; creating alternatives to culling cattle for our burger pleasure.

California-based Impossible Foods, arguably the market leader in plant-based alternative meat products, has made what many doubted could ever happen real: foods resembling meat in taste, texture, and palatable pleasure without culling a single cow. What does that mean? At a minimum, it demonstrates there is a market for alternative meat products that beef connoisseurs will consume and with tremendous benefits for the environment.

According to a 2021 report by the Klein Group, a consulting firm for agribusinesses, livestock accounts for approximately 14.5% of total greenhouse gas emissions globally, with roughly two-thirds of those emissions coming from cattle livestock. As we drift further away from the goals outlined in the 2016 Paris Agreement, seeking to cap man-made global temperature rise at no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, a full-court press to help ameliorate the worst effects of climate change need to come from every sector, not just energy production, and that includes agriculture.

Some are fundamentally against the proposition that cattle farming in any way affects climate, and leading that charge are groups like the American Meat Institute, the National Meat Association, and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.

The meat industry in the United States is a powerful political force and these lobbyists represent a multi-billion-dollar industry. Their friends in Congress love their steaks. Our representatives can still have their steaks, and they need not even be plant-based. Over the past several years, through innovations in science, another beef option has been developed that is, in fact, real meat, but created using nature’s magic morph, the stem cell.?

Known as cultivated meat, pioneers in this nascent sector have developed ways of cajoling the wondrous stem cells of animals to replicate meat and poultry that is both better for the environment while still giving consumers the real beef and chicken they want.

The Kline Group estimates that, over the long term, making the switch to cultured meats over cattle “...could reduce cattle emissions by up to 96%.” The report also notes that “Cultured meat could also have a vastly positive impact on worldwide food security, including freeing up farmland. Reportedly, land would be used 60%-300% and an astronomical 2,000%-4,000% more efficiently if poultry and beef, respectively, were to be cultivated.”

The alternative meat sector is still in its infancy, yet manufacturers have already proven that, when brought to market, it can be successful. We are still years away from the scale required to make cultivated meat a viable alternative to cattle culling. The federal government, in its effort to mitigate climate change, should consider every alternative, and that includes cultivated meat production.?

Yet, time is a luxury we no longer have, which is why supporting the development of scale is critical now. Otherwise, the beef lobby may win the battle, but Mother Nature will win the war — and humanity will be the loser.