A lot can change in a lifetime. A centenarian living today would have been born around the same time that the first factory farms emerged. This practice revolutionised farming, dramatically decreasing the cost and increasing the supply of meat within Western markets. It’s easy to forget that this farming practice was an aberration only one lifetime ago, as it has since become the dominant method of meat production in the Western world.
Meat is an important subject. It is more than just food; it is a vessel for culture, passed down through generations as the centrepiece of cherished recipes. It is perhaps central to the story of human evolution, and, if things do not change quickly, it could be central to the story of human extinction. Humankind’s appetite for meat (particularly in the most developed countries) is causing us to live wildly beyond the boundaries that our planet can sustainably support. As a species, we simply have to change our relationship with eating animals over the next 100 years.
Ever since humankind began eating meat, our relationship with it has constantly evolved. Our ancestors learnt to utilise technology to increase the supply of meat. Whether crafting stone tools to hunt megafauna, constructing pens for domesticated livestock or building industrialised slaughterhouses to produce meat at the scale demanded by an exponentially growing population, humans have continually invented technologies to secure access to meat within the social and environmental contexts of the time.
This trait has shaped our evolutionary history. The human brain, which enabled humankind to become the world’s dominant species, is calorically expensive. The bioavailable nutrition within meat plausibly gave early humans a biological affinity for consuming it. Hunting large mammals required cooperation and the shared meals that followed successful hunts likely enhanced our ability to work and socialise together. Meat, therefore, has been both nutritionally and socially significant in making us who we are today.
As we face the Anthropocene—a period where humanity is the most significant force shaping the planet’s climate and ecosystems—it is clear that we must once again innovate. Meat production today is not sustainable. Animal agriculture is a terribly inefficient way to produce food, since animals waste a large number of calories growing feathers, mooing and moving about. Given the poor conversion rates of animal food into meat, disproportionally large amounts of land (in relationship to the calorific proportion of meat in the global food system) have to be allocated to growing feedstock and producing meat. Land though is a finite resource and by the end of WW2 most of the world’s decent farming land was already being used for food production. Additional land that has been freed up since has been at the expense of nature. Whether removing hedgerows and draining wetlands in Britain, or felling trees in the Amazon rainforest, this destruction of nature is inextricably linked to our demand for meat.
In light of the climate and biodiversity crises, the importance of protecting nature is clearer than ever before. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Something has to change if we are to protect global biodiversity for future generations, meet our climate objectives and continue to feed the global population, who demand meat.
Many environmentalists advocate for a global shift to veganism to combat climate change. While reducing global meat consumption would undoubtedly yield significant environmental benefits, expecting the world’s population—set to grow to almost 10 billion by 2050—to abandon meat entirely is unrealistic. Food choices are often driven by emotion rather than logic, with meat holding deep cultural significance and supporting millions of jobs around the world. Decarbonising the food industry will require balancing these competing interests—addressing environmental concerns, safeguarding livelihoods and respecting cultural traditions—while still advancing innovative solutions. Moderation in meat consumption has a role to play, but it alone cannot build a sustainable food system.
Fortunately, we are on the cusp of a revolution in agriculture, with the latest innovations in bioscience technology offering a more sustainable way to source meat. Cultivated meat allows us to produce real meat, complete with its nutritional benefits, outside of the animal. This slaughter-free method uses a fraction of the land and produces substantially fewer greenhouse gas emissions than conventional meat. Cultivated meat is the next logical step in humanity’s long history of building technologies that provide meat in accordance with the needs of the time.
Whilst this technology has the potential to be transformative, we believe it must not be introduced in a way that unfairly disadvantages farmers, who are our incumbent meat producers and custodians of the countryside. Meat production is an important driver of rural economic prosperity, and, if we hope to capitalise on the land-use savings that cultivated meat yields, farmers and rural economies must benefit financially from this new technology. Additionally, British farmers have the social license to produce food that bioscientists do not.
Red Tail is breaking down the barriers to entry and democratising access to cultivated meat technology, building a model that protects the crucial role of farmers as food producers and custodians of the land, whilst restoring nature and diversifying farm income.
If someone born today were to live to 100, what might the global meat production system look like by then? Cultivated meat, integrated onto farms and paired with large-scale ecosystem restoration, could redefine our food system and our relationship with nature. By embracing this change, we have the opportunity to create a world where future generations can enjoy the cultural and nutritional significance of meat without sacrificing the planet’s ecological integrity. This is not just an evolution in how we produce meat, it is a revolution in how we think about sustainability, innovation and our place within the natural world.
