Sep 6, 2018 · 2 min read
Thank you for your article. I am fascinated by the belief that animal agriculture can be replaced by lab-grown food. As a rangeland animal scientist I have a few questions about what happens if this belief becomes a reality.
- How will we manage landscapes that need livestock grazing? Numerous habitat conservation plans, like the plan in the Silicon Valley where clean meat startups are located rely on cattle grazing to support habitat for endangered species. These plans assume grazing contributes to food production thus covering most or all of its cost.
- What will happen to organic waste that is currently consumed by livestock? Livestock, especially cattle consume lots of agriculture by-products and food and industrial production waste. For example, ethanol production uses something like 1/2 of the US corn crop and distiller’s grain, a by-product of ethanol production is fed to cattle. Cattle also consumer cottonseeds, almond hulls, culled tomatoes and other culled vegetables as well as bakery waste and processing waste from potato chip and french fry production.
- How will we manage fire fuel loads? Lack of grazing on some sites has already contributed to catastrophic wildfires in California.
- How will we conserve open space land? The California Rangeland Trust has the largest amount of open space land under conservation in California. Land owners participate because they want to conserve their land’s resources, it’s value for habitat and livestock production, and the heritage of ranching. It’s not practical for the government to buy it all and whoever owns it needs to manage it to provide the myriad of ecosystem services our society expects from it.
- Can all the products we get from a cow be produced in a lab or is there another alternative? About 40% of the cow is edible, but the other 60% doesn’t go to waste. It is found in numerous industrial products, household products, pharmaceuticals, construction materials and more. What’s the environmental cost of replacing all the products we get from a cow with some synthetic product?
- Will pet food and pet treats also be lab grown?
