In two generations, meat has gone from the Sunday roast, a symbol of success, to the planet’s favourite culprit. Both stories are false.
Putting it on a pedestal was absurd. Demonising it is just as absurd. Meat remains a dense, cultural, deeply human food — not a sin you atone for by ordering a veggie burger.
The problem was never meat. It’s excess, and the way we produce it. Eat less, but better; produce differently, not produce for the sake of producing. The real question isn’t “for or against”, but “which meat, in what quantity, at what cost to the land”.
As long as we argue in slogans, we’ll fight the wrong battle.
Colleagues: in your labs, are you trying to replace meat — or to make it reasonable at last?