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EPIB Trail
Volume 12, Issue 1
An Impossible Future By Felicia Paradiso
B
urger King and White Castle are not traditionally thought of as food destinations for consumers who avoid meat, but they are now on a list of restaurants offering artificial “meat” products that also includes Carl’s Jr., Dunkin’ Donuts, and Del Taco. The main competitors, Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, sell plant-based burgers that imitate beef burgers in order to attract meat-eaters, something that typical veggie burgers have failed to do. While all plantbased burgers are made with the intent of reducing animal agriculture and its environmental impact, the creator of Impossible Foods, Pat Brown, goes several steps further. Brown believes beyond a doubt that his company’s meat products can and will completely eliminate the need to raise animals as livestock on a global level. Brown is ambitious, stating that once Impossible Foods takes over the beef market, which he estimates can start in only five years, they “can just point to the pork industry and the chicken industry and say ‘You’re next!’ and they’ll go bankrupt even faster.” Pat Brown has complete faith in his scientific solution to a global meat obsession, but perhaps the most important question is not if animal meat can be entirely replaced, but if it should be.
Speaking as a vegetarian, I firmly believe that most people in the United States and other more-developed countries could do with less meat, if any, in their diet. The environmental reasons for reducing animal agriculture are the most compelling; every year, livestock causes 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and the environmental impact gets significantly larger when other issues like deforestation and water and pesticide usage are included. National governments and large corporations hold much of the power in fighting climate change when it comes to decisions about energy production and transportation infrastructure, but the most important action that any individual in the US can take is to cut out meat and dairy. To this end, Pat Brown is correct to call for an absolute end to animal agriculture, but his goal may leave out important factors when applied to countries with different cultures and different agricultural systems than the United States.
