For people who want to do their part to limit climate change but find going meatless unpalatable, there are plant-based and lab-grown meat options.
Plant-based meat
According to a University of Michigan study, if half of U.S. animal-based food was replaced with plant-based substitutes by 2030, the reduction in emissions for that year would be the equivalent of taking 47.5 million vehicles off the road.
"An explosion of new types of plant-based 'meat' — the burgers, nuggets, sausages and other cuts that closely resemble meat but are made from soybeans and other plants — is attracting customers all over the world," says The Associated Press. "Even in Germany, where cities like Hamburg and Frankfurt have given their names to iconic meat dishes, plant-based meat is becoming more popular."
But sales aren’t growing fast enough in enough places to reverse the global boom in meat consumption, AP says. To many people, it's still a novelty.
Lab-grown meat
More than 150 startups are working on meat that doesn’t require raising and killing animals, that's affordable and tastes and feels like the meat people are used to.
Companies using cell biology to make so-called “cultivated,” or “cultured” meat, which also is popularly known as “lab-grown” meat, are trying to scale up quickly — partnering with traditional meat companies, drawing more and more investors and breaking ground on new production facilities in the United States and elsewhere, AP says.
But widespread adoption of meat from cells is nowhere near assured: The meat is expensive to make. There are scientific challenges, like learning how to mimic the complex structure of steak. Government regulation is another obstacle; only the United States and Singapore allow sales of cultivated meat.
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