Eng 215
Instructor Kirsten Hilbert
Research essay
11 December 2017
Rethinking Meat Production
Livestock system has both positive and negative impact. Meat is huge part of human diet and it gives tremendous nutritional benefits. Harvard professor Richard Wrangham says human evolution is intimately tied to meat and cooked meat provides lots of energy which enables us to have big brain and become physically and anatomically human as such that we are species designed to love meat. In 15000 BC when population was small, we used to hunt for meat and it was very scarce because the only way to consume meat was after successful hunt. After invention of agriculture and domestication of animals, we get to have greater food security. As of now, high value, high nutritional meats are more available, affordable and convenient to get it on the go. According to Thornton, livestock products contribute 17 percent to kilocalorie consumption and 33 percent to protein consumption globally. However, the true cost of meat and where it comes from is truly problematic. Livestock is very beneficial but ironically, it became part of the system that threatens our being. Feeding the world has complex problem. People has not yet realized that meat consumption has huge impact on …show more content…
It might be lacking now, however in 10 years by the rate of technological advances, it is possible to produce bio-fabricated meat to the mass. According Forgacs, it costs couple thousand dollars to produce pound of meat in the lab because it is not operating in industrial scale. However, in the future, it can be cost-competitive with expensive meat as it operates in big scale because according to USDA nominal prices, the price of beef and pork has increased five times in the past decade and prices will inevitable increase in the future due to the negative environmental