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Producing more and more animal meat will negatively affect the environment. Today, much of the world s meat is produced on large factory farms. These farms raise many, many cows for meat. The cows need a lot of land. Often, there are thousands of cows in a small area of land. It is not a good life for the cows either. They do not get to go into the fields and do not have room to walk around very much. These cows also eat a lot of grain. And it takes a lot of land to grow the grain. Many people believe the earth cannot support such a demand on land. In vitro meat can help lower the demand on the earth s resources.
The process of raising animals for meat also produces a lot of gases that are damaging to the environment. In some parts of the world, animal meat travels a long way from the farm to the dinner table. In fact, the transportation process begins even before the animal farm.
First, a grain farmer has to harvest and transport grain from his fields. Then, an animal farmer transports the grain to his farm to feed the animals and keep them healthy. Next, a truck driver transports the animals to a slaughter house - where the animals are killed. And finally, another truck driver transports the cut meat to the market where people can buy it. Trucks release the harmful gas, carbon dioxide, during every step of this long process. And this creates a lot of problems for the environment.
However, animals produce a lot of harmful gas themselves. In fact, cows produce a lot of methane - a gas that is even more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide. Nick Collins is a science writer for the Telegraph newspaper. He says:
Moving the production of meat from farms to laboratories would also help reduce the huge amount of damaging gases released by farm animals. At the same time, laboratories would use 99% less land than farms.
In vitro meat could solve many of the problems of animal meat. But can humans eat this in vitro meat? Scientists do not know if it even tastes like real meat. Because of food research laws, they are not yet able to taste their meat. But they have hope. They argue that it is real meat and it is just made in a different way.
A lot of people are still worried about in vitro meat. However, it will be years before the meat is ready to sell. Kate Shepard is a writer for Mother Jones magazine. She says,
It will require hard testing before it can be fed to humans. It is still such a new idea that we do not know yet what health concerns it may have. Right now, there are no rules for in vitro meat.