I'm going to rip off the Bandaid.
If you heard that China just invested multi-millions into clean meat, you've been a victim of some overzealous headline writers.
[Editor's Note: clean meat is meat produced directly from cells, instead of from animals in factory farms.]
China may not have invested mad money directly into this innovation, but what the country did do could have huge implications for clean meat and the future of climate-friendly food innovation.
Here's the real story:
Here’s why this is of particular interest to us: Israel is home to three clean meat companies – SuperMeat, Meat the Future, and Future Meat Technologies – all of whom could get a significant leg-up from this deal.
As Good Food Institute executive director Bruce Friedrich told Quartz:
“It is a colossal market opportunity. This could put clean meat onto the radar of Chinese officials who have the capacity to steer billions of dollars into this technology.”
This agreement follows the rollout of China’s national initiative to cut the country’s meat consumption in half as a way to address the colossal climate impact of animal agriculture and stymy the rapid uptick in China’s meat consumption that has occurred in recent years.
As Quartz noted, the day after the deal was inked, the state-run China Science and Technology Daily published an article “embracing [clean] meat for reasons that included food safety, food security, and environmental reasons.”
The article in Chinese Science and Technology Daily sums it up nicely:
“Imagine the future. You have two identical products, one is that you have to slaughter the cattle to get. ‘The other’ is exactly the same, and cheaper, no greenhouse gas emissions, no animal slaughter, which one would you choose?"
No-brainer.
To learn more about GFI's work to tackle climate change by changing food production, check out what we do.
