It's not the role of government - any government, anywhere - to finance research into lab-grown meat, or indeed any of the various "meat alternatives." But Vox's Julieta Cardenas not only thinks that the government should spend money on this research, she thinks that the billion or so dollars already poured down this rat hole isn't enough. Not by a long shot.

The upshot: Governments around the world are more ready to fund alternative proteins in the wake of unstable food prices in 2022, a year that shed light on the effect of geopolitical tensions on food security. By developing an alternative protein sector, countries such as Singapore and Israel aim to be more self-sufficient while transforming their agriculture sector to be resistant in the face of wars, climate change, and export bans. 

Not only could investing more in alternative meats buoy countries’ food sovereignty aspirations, it could help their economies. If governments continue to invest in cellular agriculture — the process behind no-kill, lab-grown meat, different from plant-based meat substitutes like Beyond or Impossible meat — then the report estimates that there could be $1.1 trillion in global economic activity by 2050 and 9.8 million jobs in the sector. For reference, the meat industry value globally was $897.5 billion in 2021. 

Though the $1 billion benchmark bodes well for the staying power of alternative protein, and it’s certainly enough to get some projects off the ground, the GFI report estimates that much more will be needed to truly scale alternative proteins — about $10.1 billion total. 

This "cellular agriculture," as Cardenas calls it, is not within the purview of the federal government here in the U.S. - anyone with nodding familiarity with the Constitution would know that. But it's not just the constitutional issues that are troubling here; it's the blind, confident assurance that people will behave in the manner some leftist thinks appropriate if only "encouraged" to do so, and that questionable technologies yielding questionable results can be made to work if only we throw enough taxpayer dollars at them.

This is the kind of attitude that gave us Solyndra. It's concerning because the mask is coming off; as my colleague Becky Noble recently informed us, even at the UN, the so-called "climate chief" is discussing the necessity of forcing compliance with questionable climate agendas. It's already being done, after all, elsewhere in the world.

Julieta Cardenas' claims here are spurious, her logic is faulty beyond description, and her blithe acceptance of wasting taxpayer money is horrifying. The very issue of lab-grown meat is questionable, but more to the point, no government at any level has any business funding it. If lab-grown meat is economically viable - that is, if enough people want to buy it to make it worth producing - then, eventually, improvements in technique and economies of scale will make it appeal to more people and a market will develop. I suspect the copy would have to be a fair sight cheaper than the real thing before it achieves any commercial success, but that's not for me to decide. That's for the markets to decide. It's not for governments to pick winners and losers. It's up to people to spend their own money as they see fit.

This repeated mantra of "We need to pour billions of taxpayer dollars down rathole X" is growing very tiresome. As I've said many times, markets can be messy, but they usually get things right in the end if they are just left alone.