TWN Info Service on Sustainable Agriculture
21 April 2022
Third World Network

The Politics of Protein – A comprehensive review of livestock, fish, ‘alternative proteins’ & sustainability

http://www.ipes-food.org/pages/politicsofprotein

7 April 2021 | A major new report from the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) assesses the sustainability of livestock, fish, and ‘alternative proteins’ – and sets the record straight on the misleading claims and false solutions that dominate today’s debates.

With governments from Washington to Beijing readying major ‘protein’ investments, the report finds that:

• Industrial livestock production is clearly unsustainable, and momentum for change is growing.

• Big meat, dairy, and fish firms are now rolling out a range of technologies – such as plant-based alternatives, lab-grown meat, and precision livestock and fish-farming.

• But these and other silver bullet ‘solutions’ are being shaped by the same actors responsible for today’s unsustainable food systems, and are based on misleading claims and uncertain evidence.

• This leads to a disproportionate focus on ‘protein’, a GHG-only approach to sustainability, a systematic failure to account for differences between production systems and world regions – and ultimately to the wrong solutions.

• We must urgently: shift the focus from ‘protein transition’ to sustainable food system transition; refocus on broad sustainability metrics within territorial/ regional contexts; reclaim public resources from ‘big protein’, refocus innovations on the public good, and democratize the debate.

Phil Howard, lead author of the report, said:

“It’s easy to see why people would be drawn to the marketing and hype, but meat techno-fixes will not save the planet. In many cases, they will make the problems with our industrial food system worse – fossil fuel dependence, industrial monocultures, pollution, poor work conditions, unhealthy diets, and control by massive corporations.”

“Just as electric cars are not a silver bullet to fix climate change, these solutions are not going to fix our damaging industrial food system.We need to change the system – not the product.”

READ THE REPORT

Executive Summary: EN | FR | ES | PT
Full report: EN | Bientôt en FR | Próximamente en ES | Em breve em PT
Infosheet on alternative proteins: EN

JOIN THE CONVERSATION @IPES-Food & #PoliticsofProtein.

For media enquiries/ interview requests, please email IPES-Food communications.