Beyond the Impossible: The Futures of Plant-based and Cellular Meat and Dairy Published

A new paper has been released called Beyond the Impossible: The Futures of Plant-based and Cellular Meat and Dairy as part of the Vegan America Project. This project is an ongoing research undertaking and act of imagination: to think what the United States might look like as a vegan country in 2050.

For the last two years, Martin Rowe, who heads the Vegan America Project, has attended several conferences on, and read widely in, plant-based meat and cellular agriculture (the term used to describe efforts to grow animal protein outside the animal—whether in a medium or enzymatically). He has listened to scientists (both natural and social), food marketers, entrepreneurs, investors, and policy mavens. He has watched in amazement the extraordinary growth in interest in plant-based meat and dairy products in the media, and have heard from champions and detractors of these industries who are food security activists, environmental researchers, agro-ecologists, animal advocates, and those attempting to reduce food waste and loss.

He has gathered the results of his research and attendance in Beyond the Impossible: The Futures of Plant-based and Cellular Meat and Dairy (July 2019). It is both a state-of-the-industries overview and a work of speculation; a critique of the criticisms and an effort to reconcile competing concerns and values. It is oriented toward a vegan future, even as it recognizes that cellular agriculture has the means to transform just what the word vegan might mean in that future.

Feel free to download the paper and share it with whom you wish. There is also a brief of the paper available here.