While the world anxiously awaits the arrival of a vaccine for Covid-19 to mitigate the devastating effects of the current pandemic (such a vaccine is estimated to be 12 to 18 months away), this is only a band aid –- damage control at best -- to stop millions from dying. And we’re not even talking about preventing the next pandemic which is considered inevitable unless we stop -- in the words of ecologist Carl Safina -- “farming and killing animals”.
We know the cause, the circumstances that enable zoonotic diseases to jump the species barrier from animals to humans. They almost always come from livestock or wild animals -- the wildlife trade, the bushmeat trade, factory farming, and we’ve already experienced a long litany of examples: HIV, SARS, H1N1 Swine flu, Mad Cow disease, MERS, Bird flu, Ebola and, now, Covid-19.
“The current system is broken. It is inefficient, insecure, unsustainable, and extremely unsafe,” says Dr. Liz Specht, Associate Director of Science and Technology at The Good Food Institute in the US, in a recent op-ed for Wired magazine. Covid-19 is yet another reason to change how we produce our meat and tackle the underlying cause of the latest pandemic. As Dr. Specht explains, the entire meat category is being redefined as a sensory experience derived from a combination of amino acids, fats and minerals rather than by its production methods. No animal has to be farmed or hunted and no disease has to be risked to enjoy a juicy burger or a crispy nugget. Plant-based and cultivated meat options are sustainable, remove the threat of zoonotic diseases and give us a “painless swap at the dinner table”.
While cultivated meat (produced from actual animal cells), is still a few years away from being on the market, plant-based meat exists today in a category that is growing fast and at prices that will decline as the big food companies enter the space. Covid-19 is believed to be the latest example of the disastrous consequences of humans consuming virus-carrying wild animals. If a wholesale switch to alternative forms of protein is not on the horizon it certainly needs to be.