The opinion article in the New York Times, “The End of Meat Is Here,” gets some things right but misses the boat in two crucial ways. It’s the end of animal agriculture, not meat. And it’s not here, but near, if you consider 20 years or so “near.”
First, it is the production of meat through animal agriculture and the harm that it inflicts on the environment and the animals that must end, not its consumption. Meat comes from over two hundred species, many with several different regularly consumed cuts. It’s not going away anytime soon.
Second, the end of fish farming could start happening in about ten years, if and when a successful approach to cell-based fish is advanced. Cell-based meat (or cultivated meat) is a promising new technology that hopes to leverage stem cell biology to grow real meat more efficiently, directly from cells, without the need to raise and slaughter animals.
Image Credit: Jun Cen for the New York Times
