A major new report by IPES-Food, The Politics of Protein: Examining claims about livestock, fish, ‘alternative proteins’ and sustainability, sheds light on misleading generalisations that dominate public discussion about meat and protein, and warns of the risks of falling for meat techno-fixes.
With the climate crisis and threats to food security mounting, meat and protein are firmly in the spotlight.
Big meat, dairy and seafood companies are fast rolling out a range of technologies - such as plant-based alternatives, lab-grown meat, and precision livestock and fish-farming - with the backing of governments worldwide.
But IPES-Food warns that a number of misleading claims dominate public discussion about meat and protein, leading to a disproportionate focus on ‘protein’, a systematic failure to account for differences between production systems and world regions — and ultimately to the wrong solutions.
So we need to take those arguments in consideration when talking about meat alternative. It appears that they are not sustainable if the business is limited to big corporations: this can be a wake up call that we have to be careful about the products we consume, even if they are plant based.
I'm not saying that live stock is by any mean a solution, but don't let the discussion simply switch to how bad fake meat are. Let's take in consideration that it may be not a so good solution.
But we never needed those products to being with. Most of the fake meat products are not designed for vegan. We are not a big enough market share. Maybe we just need to be more conscious about how bad they are, but this doesn't change the fact that we need to stop consuming animal products.
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