What do we want?
Meat is choking our planet
When do we want it?
Now
If you care about climate change
and you have red meat on your plate...
...you are not taking this seriously
Nearly 15% of greenhouse-gas emissions...
...come from crop and livestock production
Meat is incredibly environmentally intensive...
...all the land, all of the water...
...all the carbon intensity
What people put on their plates today...
...impacts the future of the planet
Sustainability will come into my head
But I can’t really get my taste buds around, like...
...the mushiness of Quorn
I just fall back on to meat
Even as meat consumption around the world increases...
...people are being offered more and more choices...
...to make their diets more sustainable
But can meat alternatives really lead to a more sustainable world?
28-year-old Jay Taylor has been kickboxing for nine years
I had my first proper fight in 2014
I’m just trying to push on from there...
...and progress as much as I can now
Eight weeks before a fight...
...Jay enters a strict training regime
A vital part of that is his diet
Protein for my diet is fundamental
I need to make sure I’m hitting the right amount
Keeping my muscle mass...
...as high as I can and healing
Protein helps you heal
Can you get me an egg out please?
Yes
Jay’s girlfriend, Lydia, has been vegetarian for two years
There we go
Thank you
I found at Uni that I ate less meat...
...because of affordability
...and it being better for the environment
Lydia would like Jay to follow suit
I like to talk to Jay about the food he eats, just to make him aware that...
I mean, everyone knows that meat isn’t the best for the environment
It’s the tastiest
It’s not though
If you actually had an open mind when it came to your palate
We can have dinner, I’ll look at your stuff...
...and I see mine and I’m like...
No, I’ll stick with that
Jay is not the only one
In a British survey, 76% of people...
...said they cared about the environment...
...but just 26% would stop eating meat...
...and other animal products to reduce their environmental impact
Two-thirds of people said they would rather die...
...five to ten years younger than give up meat
And that’s a problem
Because we humans eat a lot of meat
On Sharon’s 19th birthday, she got engaged to Ray
From the British Meat Marketing Board...
...to American fast-food chains...
...the public’s been fed juicy cuts for decades...
...327m tonnes of it globally, each year
How about a bit of British beef?
British beef makes everyone feel at home
The idea behind the project is that...
...we’re investigating the impact of eating...
...meat and dairy on the environment
LEAP is a four-year research project analysing global food systems
I’ve learned that eating beef...
...has a much bigger environmental impact...
...than eating chicken
The man behind it is Oxford University professor, Sir Charles Godfray
One way of thinking about this is to do a thought experiment...
...let’s suppose we cure the greenhouse-gas emissions...
...from all of the economy apart from food
So we’ve solved heating, we’ve solved transport...
...but we haven’t solved food
If we continue business as usual with the food system into the future...
...emissions from the food system alone are sufficient
...to push us almost certainly over 1.5...
...and probably over two degrees warming
And two degrees of warming, that’s about the maximum...
...that we could possibly have without really disruptive climate change
So if we care about climate change...
...we really do have to think about the food system
The food system as a whole is responsible for about a third...
...of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions
Almost half of that comes from crop and livestock production
If everyone was to switch to a plant-based diet...
...then our greenhouse-gas emissions...
...would go down quite substantially
The Earth is dying
We are not saying this
14,000 scientists across the world are
Unequivocal evidence of climate change
As climate change gets pushed...
...higher and higher up the political agenda...
...more and more companies are coming up...
...with alternative products that attempt to fill the desire for meat
And here in California...
...is one that puts tackling climate change at the heart of its mission
Market leader, Impossible Foods, is helping to transform...
...a sector which was valued at $29.4bn in 2020...
...but is forecast to reach $162bn by the end of the decade
The company was founded...
...to really effectively address two big global crises
The first big global crisis we’re all talking about right now...
...it’s climate change
The second issue that is not necessarily getting quite as much airtime...
...but is very much related, is the extinction crisis
So that’s just loss of biodiversity, it’s loss of wildlife
And that is something that is very much linked to climate change...
...but is potentially even more of an urgent issue
To help it deliver on its mission, the company...
...asked a sustainability consultancy, to measure...
...the overall enviromental impact of every one of their products...
...and compare it to the animal equivalent
For the Impossible Burger...
...it’s about 89% less greenhouse gases
It’s about 87% less water...
...and we need about 96% less land
And you know, we’ve found them to actually be...
...pretty effective, in terms of a consumer-engagement tactic
So there’s a lot of interest at the moment...
...in the environmental effects of alternative protein
Now we can say with confidence that...
...those type of alternative proteins which are now operating at scale...
...for example, producing plant-based proteins...
...then they tend to have a lower environmental impact than...
...producing meat in the traditional way
Greenhouse gases could be reduced by as much...
...as 70% if everyone was to switch to a vegan diet
But that really does seem impossible
Just 5% of Americans identify as vegetarian...
...and only 2% as vegan, numbers that have held steady for years
So to really make an impact on the environment...
...it’s going to need an alternative, that’s palatable to the millions...
...who are determined not to swap their meat for plants
Can you do the honours and lift the lid...
...on your creation
I can
There’s quite some intense taste, it’s close to meat
In 2013, the first lab-grown or cultured-meat burger was created
It cost a whopping $330,000 to produce
Fast forward to December 2020 and Californian firm Eat Just...
...becomes the first to get regulatory approval, in Singapore...
...for its cultured meat
So we start with a cell...
...and we can get a cell from a biopsy, a cell bank...
...a fresh piece of meat
Then we identify nutrients to feed the cell
So think about the soy and corn that goes into a chicken’s body...
...and then the muscle and the fat in the body ends up growing
And then instead of having that animal’s body in a warehouse...
...growing, we grow our meat in a large stainless-steel vessel...
...kind of like brewing beer called a bioreactor
And the end product is what you’re used to
It’s real meat, it tastes like chicken because it is chicken
Producing meat in steel vessels...
...in warehouses dotted around towns and cities...
...could free up vast amounts of land
It would allow countries that currently import...
...most of their meat to simply grow it themselves
And of course there could be more direct environmental benefits too
With this approach, you don’t need to tear down trees
It’s less carbon intensive
Uses less water and significantly less land
So both from a carbon, a land, a water perspective...
...orders of magnitude better
You can build facilities really anywhere
These are not facilities that require tens of millions of acres
You can make it pretty close to home
Recent studies looking at the potential environmental benefits...
...of cultured-meat production, found the global-warming impact...
...could be reduced by as much as 92%
But in reality it’s too soon to tell...
...this is an industry that’s still in its infancy
Because that has yet to be taken to scale, it’s very hard to...
...estimate what the environmental effects are going to be
At the moment they tend to be quite high...
...but that’s because they’re done...
...in laboratories using a lot of electricity
In principle and certainly people in the field argue...
...there is the potential for it to be considerably less
With cultured meat yet to hit the mass market...
...and plant-based alternatives seemingly still...
...an acquired taste, it’s clear that for now...
...it’ll take more than consumer choice...
...to help deliver a more sustainable world
You’ve got to do what’s right for the planet...
...and to get that change...
...you’re going to need a persuasive alternative
Currently the alternatives out there...
...aren’t that persuasive for me
And whatever the potential benefits, the food industry as a whole...
...is unlikely to turn green...
...unless it is led there
I think that, sort of more relevant for policy is that...
...were there to be a shift towards more plant-based diets...
...that would have very positive effects for the environment
But I would say that arguments like that...
...very much worry livestock producers...
...completely understandably
Their livelihoods depend on producing meat
So I think it’s very important to think...
...how we can transition from...
...our current diets to diets with less meat in it
But that also is a just transition...
...for the people that are involved in the system
The plant-based meat industry...
...the food-systems sector as a whole hasn’t really had at any level...
...the level of policy engagement...
...that the transportation sector has, the energy sector has...
...even the built-environment sector has
If you look at the improvements that have been made in...
...how we source energy...
...I think we can attribute a lot of that to policy interventions
For the time being though, innovative businesses...
...pushing meat alternatives may have to settle...
...for saving the planet one burger at a time