Faced with the climate emergency, what alternatives to farmed meat?
Lab-grown chicken meat © GOOD Meat
Text by: Marine Jeannin Follow
7 mins
Consumption of farmed meat has doubled in the past 50 years, posing increasingly pressing environmental and health issues.
Problems that alternative products based on plants, mycoproteins or synthetic meat intend to remedy.
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“
Conventionally produced meat will one day be for our grandchildren what the audio cassette is for us today: a relic of the past.
This is the forecast formulated last April by the Swiss center for studies on questions of economic and social policy Gottlieb Duttweiler, which synthesized the ideas of a dozen think tanks.
A hope shared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which estimates in its latest report that “
the greatest potential for transition would come from the transition to diets oriented towards vegetable proteins
”.
Because the addition of our meat diet is salty.
Animal production systems occupy 28% of the surface of the European Union, ie 65% of its agricultural surface.
Compared to the agricultural sector as a whole, livestock is responsible for 78% of the loss of terrestrial biodiversity, 80% of soil acidification and atmospheric pollution, 81% of global warming and 73% of air pollution. water (
IOP Publishing, 2015
).
Despite an increasingly pressing climate emergency, humanity has never consumed so much meat.
Production has thus increased from 70 million tonnes in 1961 to 330 million in 2018, in parallel with the rise in Western living standards.
With emerging countries following the same trend, global meat production is expected to reach 524 million tonnes in 2080, according to projections by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (
FAO
).
► To read also: Projects to reduce the carbon footprint of beef
Vegan merguez, pea steaks, soy aiguillettes
The
alternatives do exist, and there are many of them
.
To adopt the "
vegetable protein-oriented diets
" that the IPCC calls for, French consumers can first rediscover the traditional products (cereals, legumes, tubers) that formed the basis of household diets before the Thirty Glorious.
"
Becoming vegan involves learning to cook again,
" recognizes Tom Bry-Chevalier, doctoral student specializing in alternative meats at the University of Lorraine.
But for those who want to keep their habits in the kitchen or not exclude themselves during meals together, it is now possible to find many substitute vegetable products.
If you are organizing a barbecue, for example, there are now vegan merguez that will be the perfect illusion!
»
Long confined to the specialized departments of organic stores, plant-based “steaks” made from peas, tofu or soy protein are now parading at the top of the gondola in supermarkets.
Advertisements for La Vie, Beyond, Heura or Happyvore are displayed on the walls of the Paris metro, boasting "
vegetable bacon
" with "
pork without pork
" or "
vegetable aiguillettes
" mimicking chicken.
To the point of attracting the wrath of meat professionals, who have just obtained the legal ban on the terms
"vegetable
steaks
" and "
sausages ".
The new regulations, which will come into force on October 1, will restrict for products made in France “
terminology specific to butchery and charcuterie
” to products of animal origin only.
A victory for
the meat lobby
, which denounced a risk of
consumer deception
.
But also a sign that the tide is turning, and that alternatives to meat are attracting new consumers.
“
I discovered this at a gastronomic festival last May, the Taste of Paris,
says Quentin, 29, omnivore by taste, but green at heart.
I tested several brands that imitated meat, and the taste and texture pleasantly surprised me, a big meat lover.
A few weeks later, he gave in to the sirens of “
nuggets
”, “
aiguillettes
”, “
chopped steaks
” and vegetable “
bacon
”, thanks to a promotion in his supermarket.
"
I tested all four, out of curiosity, with mixed, but mostly positive results.
The bacon left me hungry, but I really liked the rest.
It was good and, above all, the texture mimicked that of meat very well.
The faux minced steak, for example, was totally stunning.
»
To go even further, it is possible to turn to products resulting from fermentation such as mycoproteins, made from unicellular organisms or fungi.
Last May,
a study in the journal
Nature
estimated that replacing 20% of the world's consumption of beef and lamb with these "
microbial
" proteins could halve CO2 emissions and deforestation linked to agriculture by to 2050. An ideal substitute for meat, greeted the researcher at the University of Helsinki Hanna Tuomisto, quoted in the study, because "
rich in protein and containing all the essential amino acids
".
► To read also:
United Kingdom-France: the foie gras of discord
The Cultured Meat Boom
And for die-hard carnivores, there is still an alternative: lab-grown meat.
In 1943, it was just a frenzy from the imagination of René Barjavel, who recounted in his science fiction novel
Ravages
the disappearance of animal husbandry and the cultivation of meat "
under the direction of specialist chemists
" capable of mass produce "
perfect meat, tender, without tendons, skin or fat, and of a wide variety of tastes
".
Seventy years later, in 2013, researchers at the University of Maastricht presented the first hamburger produced via cell culture to the general public.
“
Cultured meat is meat produced by directly culturing animal cells,
” explains Tom Bry-Chevalier.
The manufacturing process begins with the acquisition and banking of cells from an animal.
These cells are then cultured in bioreactors at high densities and volumes.
To feed them, they are placed in a culture medium rich in oxygen, composed of basic nutrients (amino acids, glucose, vitamins, inorganic salts) and supplemented with proteins and other growth factors.
“
Changes in the composition of the environment,
continues the researcher,
trigger the differentiation of immature cells into muscle, fat and connective tissue cells that make up meat.
The differentiated cells are then harvested,
prepared and packaged into finished products
.
»
Sausages made from lab-grown meat © New Age Meats
The cultured meat industry has grown exponentially over the past decade, and hundreds of cellular bioengineering start-ups have spun off around the world.
In France, the Parisian start-up Gourmey raised $10 million last year to open a production workshop for cultured “
foie gras
” in the capital.
In December 2020, the Singapore Food Safety Agency authorized the American company Eat Just to sell nuggets made from synthetic chicken.
And on July 17, Chinese researchers from Tsinghua University and Nanjing Agricultural University announced that their lab-grown pork dumplings would
soon be ready for mass production
.
In a column published this week in
Liberation
and entitled
“
“Vegetable meats” are the best investment for the future of the climate
”
, Tom Bry-Chevalier and his co-signatories therefore call on governments and investors to “
prioritize alternative proteins among the solutions of the future for the climate
".
They cite a recent report by the strategy consulting firm Boston Consulting Group according to which “
investments in plant-based alternatives to meat are much more effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions than other green investments
”.
“
Every euro invested in these products,
they write,
would have three times more impact than if it were placed in the energy improvement of buildings and eleven times more than in the manufacture of electric cars.
»
► To read also:
What cost for France's adaptation to climate change?
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