According the New York Times, the NCBA does not Oppose Fake Beef
March 27, 2025
By Giles Stockton
If you have lived as long as I, not much surprises you. However, learning through the New York Times (“Who’s Afraid of Lab-Grown Meat? 2025/03/14) that the NCBA (National Cattlemen’s Beef Association) does not oppose fake beef – this I admit was surprising.
What on earth is the NCBA thinking? Perhaps I should not be so surprised because the NCBA is in favor of and opposed to just about everything that many of the people who actually raise cattle are opposed to and in favor of. The NCBA is against Country-of-Origin Labeling. It favors beef and cattle imports. NCBA opposes the restoration of competitive price discovery in cattle markets, including enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act. And, the NCBA is for sure against an independent audit of the Beef Checkoff Tax because without our tax dollars which they spend on pro-packer lobbying, they would be out of business.
The entire marketing premise of the companies making fake beef is to denigrate, disparage, and discourage the raising of cattle on natural pastures. There is nothing natural or environmentally beneficial about growing beef cells in a vat of artificial nutrients, hormones, and antibiotics, so in order to sell their stuff, they have to spread lies about naturally raised beef.
Why then should we, unlike the NCBA, make any accommodation with the purveyors of fake beef? They look to profit by discouraging the raising of real beef and spreading the false notion that cattle harm the environment. Their advertisements deliberately look to harm ranchers and cattle feeders and the New York Times is doing a disservice to their readers by perpetuating this false propaganda.
For instance, this quote by David Kaplan, an expert on cellular agriculture at Tufts University is totally misleading: “There is no way we can sustain healthy food the way we’re doing today with livestock production, because we just don’t have the land and the resources … We need alternative options.”
Dr. Kaplan appears to have professional and financial incentives to promote fake beef while denigrating natural beef. Just because he is a distinguished academician does not make fake beef a necessary “alternative option.” The authors of this article are trying to put lipstick on this pig by trotting out an academic who’s opinion is far from unbiased.
Grass lands cover at least 25% of the world. Grazing animals co-evolved, with the grass itself and are, therefore, dependent upon each other in order to flourish. For the past 10,500 years, domesticated livestock, rangelands, and human beings have been co-dependent and nothing has changed that dynamic. We don’t suddenly need “an alternative” to animal husbandry because the grass lands in much of the world are producing grass and feeding livestock much as they always have.
Granted there has spread an “urban legend” that cattle are somehow uniquely destructive to the environment and atmosphere. People believe it because they know little about the science/art of range management or the biochemical basis of grass-based animal nutrition. It does not help that otherwise reputable news organizations such as the New York times, are happy to spread the misinformation.
Methane is a byproduct of the digestion of grass by the animals, insects, and organisms that consume those grasses (and other plant-based foods, such as trees). It has always been thus, and nothing we do can alter this. If cows were for some reason eliminated from the rangelands, other animals, insects, and organisms would consume and digest that grass just the same. Methane would still be released. But that methane would continue to recycle back to carbon dioxide, which in turn would be reused to grow more plants. This is the cycle of life, and it is a colossal waste of time to think that suppressing cattle would have any beneficial effect.
However, some people have a vested interest in spreading this lie, and some of those people are the ones who want to sell you fake beef as a healthful alternative. Many consumers want beef raised with no hormones and antibiotics. It is indeed possible to raise cattle without ever giving them a hormone implant or an antibiotic. However, it is not possible to grow cell cultured beef without artificial hormones and antibiotics.
The good news in all of this, is that the cell cultured variety of fake beef is not even close to being price competitive. As for the vegetable versions of fake beef, consumers apparently don’t like it.
Gilles Stockton
March 27, 2025