LOS ANGELES — The entire food system contributes about one-third of total greenhouse gas emissions.

Production of meat is a large portion of that total, but understandably, it may be hard to get the entire population to stop eating meat.

Therefore, to address this problem, the future of food could come out of a lab.

And the research is happening right at the Alternative Protein Project at the University of California, Los Angeles.

At the Rowat Lab, graduate student researcher Stephanie Kawecki is working on improving food sustainability through alternative proteins.

“The idea is to make delicious products,” Kawecki said. “We can make them more sustainable. We can avoid the ethical concerns with traditional farming or factory farming, I have to clarify. And we can also make it more nutritious, too, and more available to populations that are in need.”

Rather than making alternative proteins out of plants, this lab is creating cultured meat, using animal cells to create classic cuts of meat that people are used to eating.

Kawecki’s focus is on layering muscle and fat to make a marbled steak.

“Our process to make marbled culture meat is under a patent application,” she said. “And so there’s potential for companies to license that so that they can use it in their company.”

The research is more than work for Kawecki. It’s also a passion project.

She became vegetarian in elementary school after learning about factory farming, a type of industrialized farming where large numbers of animals are confined to small spaces.

Cultivated meat could prove beneficial not only for animal welfare, but to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve global climate, health and biodiversity goals.

Michael Obersteiner, director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, visited the University of Southern California’s Climate Solutions Conference to discuss the future of food.

Spectrum News asked him how this sector could decarbonize fast enough to hit the targets that we need to hit in order to meet our emissions goals.

“For me, the quickest would be, you just eat better, better for yourself and better for the planet,” he said. “And this typically involves eating less meat because the meat sector is the one that uses most land and therefore knocks down most forests indirectly.”

Studies suggest that cultivated meat could reduce land use by 90% compared to conventional beef and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 92% if produced by renewable energy.

But Impossible Foods founder Pat Brown said the solution to a sustainable food future is replacing animals entirely in the global food system.

“Develop the full set of know-how and tools, to be able to make the best meat, fish and dairy foods in the world way more sustainably, directly from plant ingredients,” Brown said.

Impossible Foods makes meat from plants and believes this method is the way to cut our carbon footprint and feed a rising population for generations to come.

But meat production is projected to nearly double by 2050 to meet that growing demand.

Brown said the way to change eating habits is to make tastier options.

“Consumers think, ‘Oh, you’re gonna take away my burger. You’re gonna take away my chicken nuggets,’ or whatever. No, that’s not gonna happen because it doesn’t work that way,” he said. “That’s not gonna drive the change. It’s, you’ll have a better burger and a better chicken nugget and those foods that you love, but they’ll be made a much better way. That’s much less destructive, and we’re not gonna need this insanely destructive technology, animal agriculture, to give you what you need, and they’ll be more affordable.”

In 2022, the plant-based meat and seafood retail industry generated more than $6 billion in global sales.

But sales decreased 1%, and unit sales declined 8% from the year before.

The entire alternative protein industry is still in its early stages, but once scaled, it could lessen pressure on the planet and mitigate climate change — reducing emissions, requiring far less land and feeding more people with fewer resources.

But while cultured meat has promise, its total sustainability is still up for question.

“A lot of research and work needs to be done to develop efficient processes to ensure that it’s a sustainable product,” Kawecki said. “So that’s still yet to be determined. But as researchers, we need to keep that in mind so as we’re developing these protocols and these approaches that we’re developing sustainable practices.”

But to tackle the climate crisis, innovations for alternative proteins could be the solution for the future of food and agriculture around the world.