Tl;dr Chinese lab grown meat and plant based meat is potentially going to undermine the American factory farms in production and price.

The article even brings up how it’s better for the planet than clearing forests to grow crops to feed animals for meat. But at what cost?!?!?

Also the title was even more red scare-y when first published.

  • AernaLingus [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    35·
    28 days ago

    Some quotes:

    It’s the type of reaction we see often in Washington these days, where everything China does is viewed through the narrow and often skewed prism of national security, regardless of whether it’s positive for the world. Not satisfied with trying to render our gas guzzlers obsolete with its electric vehicles, the thinking goes, the Chinese Communist Party is apparently coming for our burgers and Thanksgiving turkeys, too.

    …

    The age-old way of producing meat — clearing forests to feed vast herds of greenhouse-gas-emitting livestock whose flesh is shipped through global supply chains — is hurting the planet. If scientists can figure out how to affordably cultivate meat in a lab at scale, it could become the standard mealtime fare of tomorrow. It might have to. And if China is willing to invest in technologies with potentially global benefits, Americans should view it not as a national security threat but as inspiration for how our protein markets could evolve, too.

    …

    As Patrick Brown, the founder of the U.S. plant-based meat producer Impossible Foods, put it in 2020, “Every time someone in China eats a piece of meat, a little puff of smoke goes up in the Amazon.” Such sentiments have stirred resentment in China. Its people are as entitled to a high-protein diet as anyone, and Chinese eat less meat per person than Americans do.

    …

    But if America stands in the way of progress that may be good for the world, it will only make us look like part of the problem. China will eat our lunch — or, rather, stop eating ours and start eating its own.