Would you Like Your Cockroach Burger Rare, Medium Rare, or Well-done?
Posted under: Cattle-raising for meat production and leather (think beef and boots) is one of the top two largest drivers of deforestation on earth annually. In the Brazilian Amazon, it drives over three-quarters of forest clearing. So it’s pretty clear, the way cattle are being raised right now in the Amazon is not sustainable.
If you think we eat a lot of beef now, wait till you hear the estimates for 2020 : scientists predict beef consumption will DOUBLE. But where will this extra land to raise them come from? The obvious answer is the Amazon, but deforesting to raise more cattle is NOT acceptable.
So what are our alternatives to eating beef then? One option: ”in-vitro meat” which is basically tissue grown in a lab, so you don’t actually need a real animal to create the meat. Yup, the technology exists to do it: in 2000, scientists used goldfish cells to grow edible protein which looked and tasted like a fish fillet.
Don’t like your food grown in a lab?
There is another option: Scientists in the Netherlands have done a study which shows that insects produce a lot fewer greenhouse gases per kilogram of meat than cattle. On top of this, no new land will need to be deforested to raise insects – so it looks as if insect farming could result in a more affordable and sustainable form of meat production !
Grasshopper burger anyone?
So does this mean your next Big Mac will be made with grasshopper meat? Probably (hopefully) not. But it’s important to understand the choices we make as consumers now, will determine how many acres of forests remain standing in the future.
So next time you take a bite into a burger:
1. Be thankful it’s not made out of grasshoppers.
2. Think about the source of your meat. How many trees were cut down so you could eat your burger?
