Scientific Meat Alternatives

Bruce Friedrich gave a keynote about the necessities of an agricultural revolution on a global scale. Friedrich is a co-founder and executive director of The Good Food Institute, GFI, a non-profit organization encouraging sustainability in agriculture. GFI has branches spanning the globe, with locations in the United States, India, Europe and more.

During the Keynote, Friedrich first outlines the adverse effects the meat industry is having on both climate change as well as antibiotic resistance. As a result, many scientists are advocating for a global agricultural revolution, especially as meat consumption per capita has reached all-time highs.

In order to combat the damages an expanding meat industry is causing, Bruce Friedrich outlines two solutions. The first is to grow meat products form plants, which is now being slowly adopted by the market. The second solution is to grow meat using cells instead of living animals. Growing meat from cells is faster and does not require the use of antibiotics. Friedrich concludes his keynote by stating that companies, as well as governments, need to put resources toward creating an agricultural revolution, in order to avoid disastrous effects form superbugs and climate change.


Image Credit: TED Fellow Bruce Friedrich