Pushing Aside Beef Will Take Money and Political Will

Right now, we've got neither.

Wouldn’t you rather have me as a pet, than as dinner?

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash

In recent years, a number of groups have tried to shed more light on the role the financial world plays in financing the fossil fuel companies that contribute to climate change.

According to the recent report, Banking on Climate Chaos 2023, over the past 7 years, the world’s biggest banks poured over $5.5 trillion into the fossil fuel industry. On a positive note, bank lending and underwriting to the fossil fuel sector dropped from $800.9 billion in 2021 to “just” $668.6 billion in 2022. Progress.

The Banking on Climate Chaos report has been coming out for years and is just one part of the increased scrutiny on banks for funding fossil fuel industries that are one of the main drivers of climate change.

Let’s do the same thing – with beef and dairy.

The same kind of thing is happening in the livestock industry. The recent, and not-so-subtly titled, Still Butchering the Planet, report looks at the banks and financial institutions financing livestock companies. The report shows that:

-             Since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, over half a trillion dollars in credit has been provided to the world’s largest 55 industrial livestock companies.

-            This averages about $76.9 billion per year.

-            From 2019 – 2022 there was an increase of 15% in financing to the biggest livestock companies.

-            Livestock companies are increasingly involved in creative accounting and greenwashing to hide their impact.

For example, the New York Attorney General filed a lawsuit against JBS USA Food Company and JBS USA Food Company Holdings (JBS USA), the American subsidiary of the world’s largest producer of beef products, for misleading the public about its environmental impact. JBS USA has claimed that it will achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, despite documented plans to increase production, and therefore increase its carbon footprint.

The financing of the destruction of the climate, the land, the water, and the biosphere through our food system is smaller than the financing of fossil fuels, but just as important to address.

On April 19th, 2024, during the final day of the World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington DC, the Stop Financing Factory Farming (S3F) campaign met with representatives of the World Bank Group outside of their global headquarters to deliver a citizen petition and open letter on behalf of 160,000 citizens from 131+ countries and 280 civil society organizations from 60+ countries across the globe. This growing global movement is calling on the World Bank to stop investing billions of our taxpayer dollars into the expansion of industrial livestock production.

What would a world with less beef look like?

A recent report by the European Parliament Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA), assessed the potential state of protein production in the EU in 2050. The report focused on conventional and alternative protein sources and the current impediments to moving to a system of alternative proteins.

What are we going to eat? Bugs?

Bugs. Yes, you might be eating more bugs in the future. It won’t be like the scene from Snowpiercer where our heroes learn that the protein blocks they have been fed are just bug slurry.

About 25 percent of the world already eats bugs as part of their diet. Bugs are a great source of protein, have a small carbon footprint compared to beef, and are low in cost. They are generally not eaten much in the developed world, but that will likely change.

I remember a few years ago I met a friend in a restaurant in NY and he ordered for us. He asked me if I was okay with him ordering and asked if would I eat whatever he got. I am generally pretty adventurous when it comes to food, so I said, “Sure”. Well, he ordered us grasshopper tacos. He didn’t tell me until after we had finished. I couldn’t tell what they were by looking at them, but they tasted fine. Not my favorite food in the world, but I would eat it again.

Insects are also likely to increase in the amount they are used in animal feed. The EU is seeing growth in insect farming, supported by R&D and regulatory advancements, but faces hurdles in market development and competitive pricing.

Algae and seaweed.

You likely already know this, but algae and seaweed are not the same thing. Algae is the broader term for aquatic, photosynthetic organisms. Seaweed is large multicellular marine algae that are visible to the naked eye.

Both will likely be used more for animal feed than human feed. I have tried to slip seaweed and seaweed chips into my kid's diets on occasion, and my kids give me dirty looks. I give up, try again in a year and the process repeats itself.

Some seaweed does have the nice side-effect of limiting methane in cattle that eat it, so expect to see more seaweed go into your steak or burger – just indirectly.

Much of the seaweed and algae infrastructure is at the beginning stages in the EU, as it is in much of the developed world. New seaweed and algae millionaires will likely be minted in the coming decades. But much depends on whether policy and laws make such investment lucrative.

What the hell are microproteins?

There are several microproteins you can find in grocery stores. The one I’m most familiar with is called Quorn. I’m not here to sell you Quorn, but it is a pretty good meat substitute. It comes in many different forms and can generally be substituted for beef or chicken in several recipes. (They still haven’t gotten fish or pork right, in my opinion).

Don’t believe people who say they taste the same, they don’t. But they are pretty good. If you substitute them in a dish where ground beef or chicken is one of many ingredients (chili, tacos, casseroles, pasta dishes, curries, Chinese dishes, and others) you might be pleasantly surprised.

I would recommend substituting Quorn or other microproteins for one meal that usually features beef or chicken and see what you think. If you like it, use it now and again instead of beef or chicken.

If microproteins are to take a bigger share of our future protein market, investment will have to ramp up. The microprotein section of your local grocery store is likely one case in the freezer aisle, compared to the much larger footprint for chicken and beef.

Meet grown in the lab! Yum.

I talked about this a little before, but you can already get a burger that was “grown” in a lab from the muscle cells of cattle. The process is energy-intensive, but if that energy can be “green” it would have a much better GHG footprint than our current system of raising cattle. The taste is likely to be like your normal burger (I don’t know, I haven’t tried one), but I’m sure some people will never eat it.

But if the price of cultured meat can get competitive, or even below that of Bessie raised in the field, Bessie might just be retired, or allowed to roam in the field at her leisure and not in a pen.

If that is the case, we would need a lot fewer Bessies and could return a lot of land to the wild.

Just imagine the menu of your future might have cricket sushi, with some microproteins sides and a main course of a 12-ounce lab crown steak.

That world is coming, but the speed at which it gets here depends on whether banks fund it, which depends on whether policymakers make it profitable to do so.

Tell them you want that future.

Seriously, cricket tacos aren’t that bad.