Lab-grown meat is one of the many things that Donald Trump dislikes. Whether he’s tasted it is, of course, a different matter. Not seeking to get one up on the US President, but your author did try cultivated (as lab-grown products are sometimes referred to euphemistically) salmon when in the States last year. Even if certain products have been approved by regulators, this does not always equate to them being in stores or restaurants. However, the lab-grown debate is not going to go away any time soon.
We all need to eat and there is not enough food to go around. This is arguably the most profound challenge faced globally. Lab-grown products may logically provide part of the solution, as we have discussed for some time. To get the latest perspectives on the debate, we listened to a recent podcast with one of the experts: Darren Player, an Associate Professor in Musculoskeletal Bioengineering at University College London.
Listeners were reminded that any meat that we eat “is just skeletal muscle.” Understand this, and it is easier first to develop, and then to eat lab-grown meat. Rest assured, all products developed in a laboratory will come from their own base source – cultivated chicken is grown from chicken cells, and so on. With stem cell technology, the scope for replication is “potentially indefinite.” This should be good news in the face of food crises.
Two major problems remain: “both scientists and consumers need to be willing.” Begin with the former. The debate is not whether lab-grown projects work – they do – but over the extent to which they can be scaled, which would inevitably bring production costs down. For consumers, the issue relates to “challenging the paradigm” or getting their heads around eating products grown in a laboratory. Your author has no qualms, but the debate can arguably be won using arguments relating to better human, animal and environmental welfare. We would eat superior quality meat (since only the best cells would be selected for lab use), fewer animals would be killed, and less land would be occupied with farming. Lab-grown “won’t provide all the answers”, but “we can all make better food choices.”
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Originally Posted on April 10, 2025 – Muscling in on lab-grown meat
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1. The World Produces More Than Enough Food Let’s first crush the myth of global food scarcity: The planet already produces over 2.8 trillion kilograms of food annually, easily enough to feed more than 10 billion people. The average global calorie production is nearly 2,800 calories per person per day. Over 30% of food is wasted, not because it’s not grown, but because of poor infrastructure, bad policy, or artificial regulation. Famine today is not caused by nature. It’s caused by man-made systems that interfere with free production and trade. 2. The True Obstacles: Tyranny, Not Scarcity What stops food from reaching people isn’t the soil—it’s government tyranny: Africa: Nations with fertile land—like Sudan or the Democratic Republic of Congo—still suffer hunger because warlords, socialist regimes, or terrorists prevent farmers from planting and selling. Venezuela: Once prosperous, now starves. Farms were nationalized, prices fixed, and now food is scarce. North Korea: Rich farmland, yet people eat tree bark. The regime controls all production and punishes private markets. In contrast, when farmers are secure and free, they produce more than enough. 3. When Governments Pay Farmers Not to Grow Food In the West, especially the U.S. and Europe, we see the opposite extreme: The U.S. government has long paid farmers to leave fields fallow to keep prices artificially high. The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy actually penalizes overproduction and rewards inefficiency, leading to empty harvests. Land conservation subsidies and climate mandates now force fertile farmland into “natural preserves,” robbing food supply to chase carbon quotas. This is a deliberate throttling of abundance—not for the people, but for political control. 4. Globalists Buying Farmland and Restricting Self-Sufficiency Today, powerful global actors are buying up farmland, restricting independent food production, and laying the groundwork for centralized food control: Bill Gates is now the largest private farmland owner in America, owning nearly 270,000 acres. China owns over 380,000 acres of U.S. farmland, including areas near military bases. In many U.S. cities and across Europe, local laws prohibit urban dwellers from growing food or keeping chickens or goats, even on private property. The message is clear: “Don’t feed yourself. Wait for us to feed you.” It’s not about safety. It’s about control. 5. The Dangerous Push for Lab-Grown Meat Lab-grown meat is not the solution—it’s the problem: Lab-grown meat requires enormous industrial inputs: synthetic chemicals, massive electricity use, and expensive equipment. Unlike a cow, which eats grass and uses free sunlight, these labs consume grid electricity, temperature-controlled vats, and chemically-engineered growth serums. The energy used to grow 1 lb. of artificial meat in a lab far exceeds that needed to raise a natural cow or chicken. Worse yet, food production is now transferred into patented, corporate-controlled labs, robbing farmers and ranchers of their livelihood. The poor and middle class can no longer participate. 6. Propaganda: Just Like the Baby Formula Scandal This isn’t the first time this has happened: In the 20th century, baby formula companies pushed their product into poor nations by claiming it was better than breast milk. The result? Malnutrition and death. Today, the same tactics are used. Global food manufacturers will claim: “Cows are bad for the environment.” “Chickens are a disease risk.” “You must eat synthetic protein for the climate.” This is nonsense. Real meat has been part of human history and ecology for millennia. Ruminants fertilize the soil, regenerate land, and nourish people without needing a factory. This campaign is not about health or science. It’s about controlling who produces food—and who eats. 7. The Real Solution: Free Markets, Free Farmers, Free People The answer is not more global treaties, fake meat, or government rationing. The answer is: Secure property rights for farmers. Removal of market-killing subsidies and mandates. Freedom for urban and rural families to grow and trade. Ending land grabs by global elites. Restoring local, diversified food systems through free exchange. Every time people are free to plant, grow, trade, and build—they feed the world. Conclusion: There is enough food. There are enough farmers. There is enough land. But the problem is this: too much tyranny, too much control, and not enough freedom. Hunger isn’t the result of scarcity. It’s the result of centralized control, whether from corrupt governments, misguided climate policies, or global elites who want to own the food and sell it back to us in a lab-grown, plastic-wrapped box. The solution is clear: unleash the farmer, liberate the market, and restore the right to feed yourself.