“Many of you will be doing jobs in 20 years’ time that don’t yet exist today,” the headmaster of the primary school where Oli and I first met in the mid-noughties used to say. He was right. Whilst seven-year-old me presumed this meant that my future office would be on Mars, building a model to maximise the social and environmental uplift of a disruptive technology isn’t a bad alternative.
We both grew up in Shropshire. I lived in a rural village, next to a dairy farm, and “helping” to milk the cows on a Saturday morning was something I looked forward to every week. The harvest festival in October was one of the biggest events in the village calendar, alongside the annual scarecrow competition. Farming was the lifeblood of the village.
We had a few animals and reared around ten geese a year for friends and family to eat at Christmas. We occasionally took in ex-laying hens at 50p a piece to come and live out their retirement with us. They tended to be in pretty poor condition when we got them, with obvious missing plumage, and it was not uncommon for them to die on the 20-minute car journey home. This provided an early insight into the conditions that industrially farmed animals endure.
I spent as much time as I possibly could outdoors with animals and, from an early age, felt that I would like to work with them. I had a particular affinity for chickens, and upon discovering that the army could pay for university fees, I planned to join the army as a vet. Unfortunately for me, bomb disposal chickens is yet another job that seems to have been lost to robots!
As is often remarked upon, in those days, driving through the country lanes in the summer would leave your windscreen covered in unfortunate insects. I remember this well, alongside insects in my mouth and eyes from cycling. This just does not happen to the same extent anymore. The rate of change is extremely alarming and serves as the canary in the coal mine for the biodiversity crisis—one that a shocking number of people continue to ignore. Many of these insects are key pollinators on which all life depends.
The same disinterest is worryingly prevalent in the climate crisis. Despite already surpassing the Paris Agreement’s target to keep global warming within ‘safe’ levels of 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels and the looming likelihood of exceeding 2 degrees, the lack of serious action to deal with this crisis is staggering. Of course, some amazing people are doing incredible work in this space, but we need more of it, and we must bring more people along with us. Regrettably, well-intentioned individual action such as stopping flying or eating meat is only a drop in the ocean. We must make climate solutions politically viable within democratic systems to garner the government support needed for meaningful progress.
There is little doubt that industrialisation is the most significant factor behind the alarming loss of biodiversity and rising global temperatures. The industrial revolution began in Shropshire, in the blast furnaces of Coalbrookdale, and spread across the world through the British Empire. While the wealth generated during the industrial revolution has improved living standards immeasurably, we must also acknowledge its role in the anthropogenic climate change that poses an existential threat today. Given Britain’s central role in industrialisation, its history of innovation and its immense intellectual talent, it seems only reasonable that the UK should be at the forefront of global climate change mitigation.
Recent technological advancements have allowed many industries to decarbonise substantially in a relatively short period. However, animal agriculture lags behind badly. Ultimately, animals are unavoidably inefficient at converting feedstock into meat. This poses a significant challenge in a world addicted to meat.
Some argue that the only way to sufficiently reduce the environmental footprint of our global food system is for everyone to adopt a plant-based diet. While this would undoubtedly have a significant environmental impact, it fails to recognise other important interests. How can a farmer, whose land is unsuitable for cultivating crops but ideal for grazing animals, survive if we eliminate animal products from our food? Do the meals passed down through generations, often centred around animal products, not have cultural value worth preserving? Would this even be at odds with our biological evolutionary constitution?
Even if it were intellectually indisputable that widespread adoption of plant-based diets is the best course of action, the simple reality is that this will not happen. While there is some evidence of declining per capita meat consumption in Western countries, the trend is reversed in many other parts of the world. Global population growth will more than offset dietary shifts towards plant-based foods, meaning demand for meat is set to increase, potentially doubling by 2050. Only systemic change can produce the outcomes needed at the speed and scale required to reduce the environmental footprint of meat production.
Cultivated meat presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to decarbonise animal agriculture by growing meat outside of the animal. This is substantially more efficient, as energy is not expended on everyday activities or growing inedible parts of an animal. However, with this promise comes risk. There is a risk that struggling livestock farmers will be financially harmed if the market is flooded with meat produced in industrial cultivated meat production facilities on the outskirts of urban centres. This would be highly detrimental to rural economies and an affront to those who have produced our food and stewarded our land for generations.
There is also a significant risk that this opportunity to decarbonise agriculture will be squandered if cultivated meat is not scaled considerately. For many people, bio-scientists and multinational food conglomerates do not have the same social license to produce food that farmers do. Farming groups are politically powerful and will understandably move to protect farmers' interests. If cultivated meat is perceived as damaging to farmers interests, regulating it could become political kryptonite, leading to bans, as seen in Italy and Florida. Given the severity of the climate crisis, we cannot pass up an opportunity to radically and rapidly decarbonise one of the most polluting industries in the world. If the UK positions itself as a global leader in cultivated meat, the economic rewards could be substantial. It is thus vital to involve farmers as key stakeholders to ensure the industry's success.
Leaving Shropshire, I studied Law and Political Science at the University of Liverpool. There is no better city to learn about the importance of social justice. The failure to facilitate a just transition and create alternative employment when the city rapidly deindustrialised and containerisation disrupted Liverpool’s docking sector led to high unemployment and social issues in the 1970s and 80s. The scars of this era are still healing.
Having learned lessons from the deindustrialisation of Northern cities and the closure of coal mines, the government appears cognisant of the importance of a just transition for fossil fuel-dependent areas in Scotland and the North East of England. This is equally vital in sustainable agriculture. Although less geographically concentrated, rural communities reliant on livestock farming require support in transitioning to a sustainable model. Red Tail's model will facilitate this.
The environmental benefits of cultivated meat can only be fully realised if landowners are given a stake in this emerging industry. While reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and water use per kilogram of meat are significant, the stand-out benefit is reduced land use. By requiring less land to produce meat—especially beef and lamb—we can create habitats for the UK’s critically endangered wildlife, green spaces for human wellbeing and sequester significant amounts of carbon.
Landowners are unlikely to rewild at scale out of pure altruism; it must make commercial sense for those who make a living from the land. We also should not overlook the deep sense of identity among those whose families have played a fundamental role as food producers for generations. We must develop a model in which nature restoration is financially viable for landowners. By repurposing farm assets and know-how, we can achieve this.
This is what has drawn me to the mission of enabling farmers to produce cultivated meat. A foundational respect for the vital role of farmers as food producers and custodians of the countryside; a love for nature and deep concern over its erosion; an awareness of the need for systemic change through politically viable climate solutions; and a belief in the UK’s responsibility to lead on some of the greatest sustainability challenges of our time.
