Is Lab-Grown Meat Cooked Under Trump?
The MAHA all-natural bros and MAGA Big Ag water-carriers all hate innovation
I wrote a piece for Heatmap about the fate of cultivated meat in the Trump administration. It looks bad! I asked one TrumpWorld source if RFK Jr. plans to make the startups jump through a million FDA hoops and he replied: “Maybe half a million.”
Full disclosure: I think cultivated meat is an exciting technology that could help offset the bad impacts of animal agriculture, which uses one third of the land on Earth, gemerates one-sixth of all greenhouse gas emissions, overuses antibiotics, increases the risks of avian flus and other zoonotic pandemics, mistreats animals and workers, and pollutes the air and water. My own governor banned lab-grown meat - kudos to the editors who put this awesome headline on my story about it - and I’m still pissed that Florida Republicans care more about sucking up to their cattlemen donors and inventing new anti-woke culture wars than innovation or competition.
I’ve tried cultivated chicken filets from Upside Foods and cultivated fried chicken from Good Meat; they tasted like chicken. (When I asked the Good Meat chef whether I was eating a breast or a thigh, he laughed and said meat, which felt like a zen koan from the future.) I’ve tried cultivated salmon nigiri from WildType and a plant-based meatball blended with cultivated pork fat from Mission Barns, and they were great too. Sci-Fi Foods made me a plant-based burger blended with some CRISPR-edited cultivated beef, and it was the best burger I’ve had since I gave up conventional beef. It tasted like 2 million years of evolution saying hi.
But Sci-Fi went out of business last year, because it couldn’t raise money to build a factory. This industry has cut the cost of its products by about 99.9%, and it has a chance to reach cost parity with premium meats if it can get to scale, but I’m really worried that it might not get a chance to get to scale. RFK Jr. hates food tech, and he’s in line to oversee FDA. Cattlemen hate competition, and the rest of TrumpWorld is tight with Republican cattlemen. And the struggles of Beyond Meat, Oatly, and other alternative protein startups have scared away investors. Wish I had better news!
Oh, did I mention that I tell the stories of a bunch of these cultivated meat companies in my book, WE ARE EATING THE EARTH, which is now available for pre-order?
In other news, I’ve promised to start blogging a bit on this Substack, beyond sharing my journalism. Coming soon: My thoughts about a typically hilarious and dark Carl Hiaasen novel, and my frustrations with journalism as we enter the second Trump era.
Please share this with others who might subscribe! Thanks so much for reading,
Mike