The Department of Defense has quietly backed down from its call for private-sector companies to apply for funding grants to develop “cultivated meat” for military rations, much to the relief of service members everywhere.
The controversy started in May when the Pentagon put out a request for proposals to develop “sustainable food and materials” to ostensibly reduce the “carbon footprint” of the military. The most recent government funding bill contained up to $500 million for that goal, which could have gone toward the production of lab-grown meat along with other “green” initiatives.
As The Daily Signal reported at the time, BioMADE, a “public-private bio-manufacturing consortium sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense,” specifically outlined an opportunity for “alternative-protein producers and labs” to qualify for a series of grants ranging from $250,000 to $2 million in a federally funded study on vastly expanding production of lab-grown meat.
Livestock advocacy groups, including the National Cattleman’s Beef Association (NCBA), were quick to respond to that development, urging military officials to stick to natural meat. “We absolutely went ballistic on that,” NCBA President and Wyoming rancher Mark Eisele told Cowboy State Daily. “We just thought it was terrible to use veterans as lab rats in this meat experiment.”
“I can’t imagine troops being a big fan,” rancher and veteran Tyler Lindholm added. “Being a veteran myself, and having served for five years, I can’t imagine anybody I served with standing up and saying, ‘Yeah, this is great. What a great idea. I’m so glad that the brass has decided to shove lab-grown meat down our throats. The food wasn’t bad enough before. Might as well try to make it worse.’”
“We don’t know anything about the long-term, or even the short-term, effects of (lab-grown meat),” Eisele also pointed out. “They won’t release the chemicals used to make it because they’re calling it proprietary information. We want to make sure that if this goes out, consumers know exactly what they’re getting.”
Each company that produces lab-grown meat maintains its own manufacturing technique and “recipe,” essentially amounting to a “secret sauce.” The production process itself loosely revolves around taking existing animal cells and mutating them into chain-like constructions, which are then fortified and “fed” by a variety of hormones and chemicals. The “immortalized cells” are then left to replicate with the proper attention and cultivation.
The process for producing lab-grown meat has raised concerns among some researchers that the stuff could cause cancer or other health issues. The process by which lab-grown meat cells replicate is similar to that of cancer cells. The Center for the Environment and Welfare, an environmental policy research and advocacy firm, has for this reason decried lab-grown meat as a serious health risk, pointing out that lab meat “technicians” intentionally mimic the extremely rapid and unchecked mitosis characteristic of cancerous tumors.
Moreover, there is good reason to believe that lab-grown meat won’t be any better for the environment than natural meat, and in fact may be worse.
According to a recently released study from UC Davis, lab-grown meat emissions have the potential to be 25 times higher than natural meat due to the complexity of the production process, contradicting the very premise behind the DOD’s push.
Even assuming production itself is the goal, perhaps to balance out potential wartime food shortages, bioreactors required to produce lab-grown meat are hindered by an issue of scalability while maintaining the delicate levels of sterility necessary to sustain production.
Lab-grown meat is also significantly more expensive than natural meat. A 2021 analysis found that “lab-grown ground beef will cost $17 to $23 per pound to produce, and that does not include grocery store markups. In comparison, conventionally grown ground beef typically costs a little under $5 per pound.”
In short, lab-grown meat in its current form remains inefficient, expensive, and environmentally taxing.
Despite all these concerns, lab-grown meat has continued to be propped up by liberal politicians, even with this minor setback. The Biden administration approved the commercial sale of lab-grown meat for the first time in 2023. Upside Foods and Good Meat, subsequently became the first two companies to receive approval from the Department of Agriculture to sell cultivated chicken meat – although sales have so far been limited to high-end restaurants in cities like San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
Some conservative states, including Florida and Alabama, have preemptively banned the sale of cultivated meat, citing health concerns. At the federal level, Republicans Jon Tester of Montana and Mike Round of South Dakota have introduced a bill to prohibit the use of lab-grown meat in school lunch programs, while other lawmakers have proposed strict regulations on the nascent industry.
Thankfully, U.S. servicemembers likely won’t see lab-grown meat in their mess halls any time in the near future. But it seems a safe bet that Americans will hear plenty about this next “solution” for climate change in the months and years ahead.
Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.
There was an episode of Better Off Ted where they were trying to create lab grown meat. Ironically the project was also cost prohibited. What an eerie parallel between Hollywood and government.