Early County News

Farmers and “fake meat”

The Briefing


 

 

An article by Corie Brown begins, “Two generations ago, California gave birth to a consumer-led food movement with a big promise. Eating organic fruits and vegetables and pasture-raised meat would save us and our planet.”

It’s hard for many people to imagine eating fake meat. It is also debatable about just how meaty fake meat is, but it has become a commercial success.

Let’s just assume that we are sold out to the idea that we need to find a way to be more environmentally friendly when it comes to our food. The big sell was that fake meat is environmentally superior to real meat. But what if it’s not so?

The same issue has to be raised when it comes to electric vehicles, which are not environmentally pure. At least at this point in some places, there is an impact in terms of mining the precious metals, heavy metals and particular kinds of elements needed to create those giant batteries. The electricity to charge them doesn’t just come out of thin air either.

It turns out that at least in the short run, many of these supposedly sustainable technologies turn out to be sustainable only in theory, not in practice. And fake meat might be another one of these issues.

When you are looking at a new technology, it takes some time to have a full measure of it. But the point is with every decision like this comes a matter of weighing costs and benefits. There’s no way around it, and this is where Christians understand there is no position of environmental innocence. There is no reality, in which it will not take energy to produce food in order to feed the billions of people around the world. It takes not only biomass and energy, but also farmers and ranchers. It takes people absolutely committed to the production of the food that we will eat.

When you’re talking about fake meat, the food, which is the plants, has to come from somewhere. Absent farms and farming, we are on a severe diet to the point of death. The New York Times cites an authority from the firm, Sustainalytics, who says, “The problem with plant-based products, generally speaking, is that while they may be fixing one problem, … you could still be involved in deforestation issues. You still need the space to grow the soy that is in many of these products.” Again, a profound issue from the biblical worldview. It’s implicit in our understanding of creation.

It’s implied in the mandate that God gave us to exercise dominion. It is implied in the Christian doctrine of sin that makes very clear that there is nothing human beings touch and there is nothing in a fallen world that does not show some effect of sin. One of the things we note is that in the new environmental religion…. Again, Christians understand our responsibility to care for the created order. That’s a part of our Christian responsibility. The theme is stewardship, but still, we understand that in this new religion of hyper-environmentalism, there is a search for the recovery of some kind of innocence, some kind of innocence by what you wear, where you live, whether or not you walk or ride or drive.

This is an edited excerpt of The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. For the complete transcript, to listen or to subscribe, visit www.albertmohler.com/thebriefing.

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