Policy Implications of Cellular Agriculture
This page features two papers on the policy implications of cellular dairy. The figure below is take from the paper, Bioengineering, telecoupling, and alternative dairy: Agricultural land use futures in the Anthropocene, and it displays a systems maps of potential interactions that could occur with the implementation policies designed to incentivize cellular agriculture production of dairy products. For more information on this work and other policy considerations related to cellular agriculture, access the papers through the buttons below.
Source: Newman, Newell, Mendly-Zambo, & Powell (2021)
Publications
Dairy 3.0: Exploring policy implications and public perceptions of cellular agriculture
An emerging application of bioengineering is the production of agricultural products such as meat and dairy without using live animals. These technologies could potentially decrease animal suffering, lower the environmental impact of agriculture, and could improve food security in remote regions. However, significant policy questions remain. Funded by Genome BC through its social issues competition, this project studied the potential impact of these cellular agriculture technologies on British Columbia's food system.
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Bioengineering, telecoupling, and alternative dairy: Agricultural land use futures in the Anthropocene
The global environmental impact of rising consumption of animal products presents significant challenges to sustainable land use. One alternative to the production of animal products is a set of technologies for culturing meat and dairy alternatives referred to as ‘cellular agriculture’; in the case of dairy, cellular dairy. Optimism around the benefits of these technologies is widespread, and they fit within a larger narrative of land sparing, in which high‐yield farming allows the protection of habitats and the return of fallow land to ecological uses. However, questions remain as to whether cellular dairy is truly land sparing because although lab dairy could offer significant ecological benefits, these could be countered by increases in agricultural activity in other regions for the production of feedstocks. In addition, considerations around broader impacts to individuals, communities, and the environment are needed to understand whether/how cellular dairy aligns or conflicts with local, regional, and global sustainability goals. This paper employs the concept of telecoupling, which refers to socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances, to examine the potential cellular dairy may have for contributing to sustainable food production and consumption.
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