Food & Climate
America has just elected a climate change denier as president, Donald Trump, who has been against climate-friendly foods like cultivated meat, and his election promises a rocky period for the US food tech sector.
With Florida and Alabama – both states that helped him regain the presidency – having banned these proteins already. Other Trump-worshipping Republicans, like Illinois’s Chris Miller, are hoping to introduce similar restrictions.
And JD Vance, the vice-president-elect, recently slammed “disgusting fake meat”, labelling it “highly processed garbage”.
The ‘Make America Great Again’ section of the GOP has also been against climate-friendly foods like cultivated meat, according a report seen by “Food & Climate” platform.
The signs are ominous for food tech, and the wider climate-centric agrifood industry. Cultivated meat approvals could now be on hold, the ultra-processed bandwagon against alternative proteins will likely get louder.
Cultured meat is grown in laboratories from animal cells. It is not yet commercially available.
Trump and cultivated meat
Getting in bed with Robert F Kennedy Jr, the former independent presidential candidate turned Trump surrogate, lays bare a dark and uncertain future for many key US food and climate agencies and policies.
RFK Jr, a known anti-vaxxer, has promised to “get the toxic chemicals out of our food supply” and suggested that under Trump, “American agriculture will come roaring back and so will Americans’ health”. His proposals have worried agrifood stakeholders, who penned a letter to Congress to reject efforts to undermine science-based regulatory frameworks, given his rhetoric about the “corruption in our federal agencies”.
There are a host of reasons why Kennedy won’t make America healthier again under Donald Trump, who has undermined food safety and public health time and again.
He rolled back regulations and bans on toxic chemicals, denied millions of Americans access to healthcare, picked a former coal lobbyist to run the Environmental Protection Agency, and initially denied and dismissed Covid-19, according to “Green Queen“.
The concern around ultra-processed foods has ballooned in the last couple of years, but the plant-based meat industry has been the subject of biased criticism amid misguided connections of processing with nutrition.All this will be dialled up under Kennedy’s charge, who has said “we’ve got to get off of seed oils and we’ve got to get off of pesticide-intensive agriculture”, but also faced pushback from food manufacturers defending their use of additives and other ingredients.
“I’m gonna let him go wild on health. I’m gonna let him go wild on the food. I’m gonna let him go wild on medicines,” Trump said of the former Democrat.
“We’re going to give farmers an off-ramp from the current system that destroys soil, makes people sick, and harms family farms,” Kennedy promised in turn, adding: “I’ve seen some of what America’s most innovative, regenerative farmers are doing today. They can literally green deserts. They rebuild depleted soils, wells that have been dry for 30 years start flowing again.”
A lot of science around regenerative farming is wobbly at best, and meat and dairy giants have happily embraced it as a greenwashing tool.
Food more expensive
Trump’s promises to slash “wasteful” government spending, cutting regulations, using more homegrown oil and gas, combined with Kennedy’s promise to dismantle organisations like the USDA, would mean “some of the most vulnerable people from low-income groups – including women, infants and children –would struggle to access healthy and nutritious diets”, according to Prof Shonil Bhagwat of the Open University’s environment and development faculty.
He noted that if Trump carries out the proposals of Project 2025 – described as a blueprint for Trump’s second term and a disaster for climate change, health, and really, most things – he would defund and repeal programmes that would have helped the USDA advance food stamps, free school meals and other nutritional initiatives. “US food assistance programmes all be diluted, if not demolished,” he told Newsweek.
Trump has floated the idea of up to a 20% tariff on foreign goods (and even higher on those from China), but this would mean consumers would end up paying more for Scotch whisky, Coke, Oreos, and paprika, among other popular food and drink products.
Electing Trump again means an unstable four years and beyond for the food sector, and disaster for the global fight against climate change.
America has made its bed, but it seems like the planet will also have to lie in it.