How Science is Saving Farmed Animals

Scientists across the nation are teaming up to save animals and the environment while also feeding the world – and a roster of big-name international investors and venture capitalists are on board.

Just last week, the Wall Street Journal announced that a new round of investments in Hampton Creek Foods totaled $90 million. In explaining why his firm as taken up this issue, the founder of Khosla Ventures said: “We must invest in humane foods that avoid the industrial food chain like Hampton Creek, which can achieve 5X improvement in efficiency through innovation without compromising taste.”

Hampton Creek is on the cutting edge of technology, pioneering ways to use plant in food production, but they’re hardly alone.

While Hampton Creek is focusing on egg replacers, scientists at Muufri (yup, that’s pronounced moo-free) are hard at work growing milk. That’s right – they’re cultivating yeast and tweaking plant molecules to grow milk that is just like cow’s milk – but it’s made without cows.

And that’s not all. New Harvest is using a few cells from cows to grow real meat in labs – a painless procedure that disintegrates the need for factory farming and slaughterhouses. Scientists at Modern Meadow are even championing a cruelty-conscious way to grow leather in their labs in a technique called “biofabrication.” Perk? Modern Meadow’s cruelty-free leather eliminates the slaughter and torture of millions of sentient beings while preserving our environment – something our current system can’t claim.

Want to stay plant-based? There’s meat science for that too, in the Bill Gates-funded 100% plant-based burger-that-bleeds by Impossible Foods.

All of this is good news for farmed animals, billions of whom are raised and killed each year simply for us to eat. The routine cruelty that happens behind the closed doors of the meat, milk, and egg industries is so horrific, it would lead to legal prosecutions if those same abuses were inflicted upon the dogs and cats with whom we share our homes.

Simply put, our food production system is broken and these companies are all aiming to lend an important hand in fixing it.

Each one of us can also play a vital role in helping fix this broken system — most importantly, by leaving animals off our plates. But there is so much more that we can — and urgently need to — do. We have the power to give a voice to the voiceless – and we must ensure our voices are getting are stronger each day.  With your support, we’re doing just that:

Donate before December 31, 2014 to DOUBLE your impact for animals.