As the founder of the Reducetarian Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on reducing societal consumption of meat, I’m of the belief that we’re never going to convince everyone to give up animal products altogether, so we need to come up with ways to fill that demand without destroying the planet. Cell-cultivated meat—meat grown from animal cells rather than slaughtered animals—could be one of those history-changing innovations, allowing us to feed the world without the dirty business of torturing animals.
So you can imagine my disappointment when Wired reported last month that all was not as it seemed at Upside Foods, a leading cultivated meat company in the U.S. Since the company launched in 2015, journalists have gushed about their promise to make cell-cultivated meat a reality. The prospect seemed practically inevitable, and even the world’s biggest meat-producing companies were vying for a stake.
Dispatches From The Front 