Medium Rare: What’s Next For Meat?
From Climate One by Climate One from The Commonwealth Club
June 12, 2026 · 1h 5m
About this episode
The episode discusses the future of meat, focusing on the challenges and potential of meat alternatives and cultivated meat.
Industrial agriculture accounts for a significant share of global emissions, but meat alternatives face real hurdles in becoming a mainstay of consumer diets. The hype around plant-based meat has cooled: hurt by price gaps, ultra-processed rhetoric, and culture-war politics around masculinity and food identity. Yet feeding a growing planet will require eating less beef, wasting less food, and producing more food with less land. Cultivated meat – made from animal cells and grown in a lab – could offer a different path forward, especially in hybrid form combining plant and cultivated proteins. What might the future of meat look like? Guests: Robbie Lockie, CEO, Founder, foodfacts.org Michael Grunwald, Journalist and author, “We Are Eating the Earth” Claire Bomkamp, Senior Lead Scientist, Cultivated Meat & Seafood, Good Food Institute Highlights: 00:00 - Introduction 4:30 Robbie Lockie on changing his diet 11:54 Robbie Lockie on who is choosing plant based meat 17:55 Robbie Lockie on how plant based meat competes on taste 20:40 Robbie Lockie on the future of plant based meat 26:54 Michael Grunwald making more food with less land 30:16 Michael Grunwald on the efficiency of industrial…
People in this episode
Guests: Robbie Lockie, Michael Grunwald, Claire Bomkamp
Topics covered
- meat alternatives
- industrial agriculture
- cultivated meat
- food sustainability
- plant-based diets
Keywords
- meat
- plant-based
- cultivated meat
- sustainability
- food production
- agriculture
- food identity
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: foodfacts.org, Good Food Institute
Books & works: We Are Eating the Earth
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