Artificial Meat

On the italian website "Il Fatto Alimentare" an interesting interview (in italian) has been recently published: it has been interviewed Dr. M. Post one of those researchers involved in the project for the creation of the artificial meat.

In my opinion the discussions about the potentials for a reduction (thanks to this kind of meat) of the impacts of livestock and meat production (pollution, emissions, energy consumption) are missing the point. I think that the real problem is the global reduction of meat consumption rather than the optimization of its production (involving any kind of meat).

I think that we are, even if only potentially at present, dealing with a typical techological trap.  Instead of completely changing the current technological trajectory (based on high meat consumption) these studies are finding solutions and definitively improving production continuously moving onward the present problem without solving it definitively. We have the same problem in car industry. Instead of designing and implementing new engines based on renewable energies (thus changing the technological trajectory), car industry tends to devolop engines which surely consumes less fuel, but, for this reason, these reduction may push people to use car more (because car are consuming less): in conclusion we are finally consuming more fuel than in the past.

I think that we are facing the usual problem: we give a scarce value to the food we normally eat and these researches confirm it once again...