Lab-grown meat pitched as an answer to Chicago food deserts

By Sheryl Zhang, Chicago Tribune

In a recent article, The Chicago Tribune looked at whether lab-grown meat could help close Chicago’s “meat divide” as rising grocery prices and SNAP cuts make fresh protein harder to afford in neighborhoods such as Englewood and Austin.

The story profiles Clever Carnivore, a Chicago biotech company working on cultivated meat products like bratwurst, and presents the technology as a possible way to produce protein closer to urban consumers and less dependent on cattle herds, drought, feed costs, and global supply chains.

But the practical case remains thin: cultivated meat still faces major technical barriers, expensive infrastructure, uncertain consumer acceptance, declining investment, and the risk that production becomes controlled by a small number of well-funded companies.

For food-desert communities, the real question is not whether meat can be grown in a lab, but whether this would actually make good food cheaper, healthier, more local, and more accountable, or simply replace one concentrated food system with another.

Read more: https://www.chicagoreporter.com/can-chicagos-bio-labs-solve-a-growing-meat-divide/