Meat in a dish could be bad for the planet

LAB-GROWN meat may be worse for the environment than farming cattle for food in the long run.

John Lynch and Raymond Pierrehumbert at the University of Oxford compared the emissions from cattle-farming and lab-grown meat, and modelled their climate impact over 1000 years (Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, doi.org/c2vs).

Livestock farming produces about 18 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but lab-grown meat could have a bigger impact, thanks to its high energy requirements, which would mean high carbon dioxide emissions.

While methane has a greater warming effect than CO₂, it remains in the atmosphere for only 12 years, whereas CO₂ accumulates over millennia. If meat consumption declined, the warming effect of methane from cattle farming would decrease while the effect of CO₂ from lab-grown meat would persist.