Would I eat bugs? Sure, if they tasted good (I have yet to be convinced that locusts are indeed “sky prawn”), and their appearance might have to be disguised. I did once eat a waffle sprinkled with cricket meat, small dark specks, no antennae. But those specks didn’t really taste of anything much. I would, however, find it extremely difficult to snack on tarantula as it is served in Cambodia. A friend (a madman among gourmets) did, but not before putting a photo of his plate on Instagram. No attempt had been made to disguise what he was about to consume. The image was not . . . appetizing.
But bugs should be an addition to the carnivore’s menu, not (as those fighting the war against beef and other carnivorous delights would prefer) a replacement for the meat that is already on it. The same goes for cultivated meat, a product that might, I now know, cause difficulties for vegetarians.
Technically, cultivated meat is not vegan or even vegetarian: It’s made from growing cells taken from real animals. But people become vegetarians for different reasons, ranging from concerns over animal rights to fears about the use of antibiotics and hormones in livestock. Many vegetarians avoid meat in an effort to keep from exhausting environmental resources. On some of these fronts, cell-based meat might be a viable alternative.
But:
“If you believe that taking anything from an animal, including a cell, is exploitative, then you won’t be [eating cultivated meat],” says Sonalie Figueiras, founder of sustainability website Green Queen. “But if your focus is more on reducing the overall impact of [animal] suffering, then you would probably eat it.”
And the “ethical” concerns don’t end there. After being told about the environmental ruin caused by “traditional agriculture” (translation: livestock farming), concerned Bloomberg Green readers are confronted with a second hideous dilemma.
The good news:
Growing meat from cells in bioreactors does use far less land than traditional farming, and avoids a lot of the emissions associated with, for example, cow burps. It could also allow companies to produce meat closer to their consumers, reducing the amount of fuel needed to deliver foodstuffs.
The bad news:
But growing meat in bioreactors demands significant amounts of electricity, particularly at scale. That makes cultivated pork and chicken a viable option to reduce emissions only if its production is powered by wind, solar and other renewable energy sources, according to one 2021 study by Dutch environmental consultancy CE Delft.
So, pork and chicken, even if cultivated in a bioreactor, are still “problematic.”
Bioreactor-raised beef, however, seems to pass the test.
The same study finds cell-based beef, on the other hand, can achieve more climate gains than its farmed counterpart no matter what kind of power is used to make it, because conventional cattle ranching is so resource-intensive.
Then again:
Transparency has also been a point of contention. Jaydee Hanson, a policy director at the Washington DC-based nonprofit Center for Food Safety, says makers of cultivated protein rarely disclose how they keep the cells growing. That can sometimes expose problematic processes and raise new questions about ethicality, like for example the use of the blood of unborn calves as a medium for cell culture. (Some cultivated protein companies, however, are making efforts to ditch all production materials of animal origin.)
At last!