Beyond the Impossible: The Futures of Plant-based and Cellular Meat and Dairy (Full Paper) (PDF)

Beyond the Impossible: The Futures of Plant-based and Cellular Meat and Dairy (Policy Brief) (PDF)

Cellular and plant-based meat and dairy products are likely to play major roles in how or whether people shift toward a more sustainable diet. Beyond the Impossible: The Futures of Plant-based and Cellular Meat and Dairy offers an outline of the historical and conceptual background to both plant-based and cellular meat and dairy products. It then lays out the specific challenges (technological, knowledge-based, regulatory, and consumer-oriented) confronting the development of plant-based meat and dairy products and cellular agriculture. The paper then outlines concerns expressed by those advocating for broad adoption of a whole-foods, plant-based diet, as well as criticisms from social and environmental researchers and activists, and presents a vision of the future that offers a way through the conceptual, socio-political, and perhaps technological complexities that await both sectors.

Beyond the Impossible: The Futures of Plant-based and Cellular Meat and Dairy concludes with recommendations for how people in all these spaces might open up discussions, bring more stakeholders on board, and hold the competing values together, so we might chart a way forward, with maximal impact and minimal way, toward a genuine and lasting climate resilience.