In his new book, Bruce Friedrich argues that the way we produce meat is unsustainable,

for the climate, for public health, and for the planet, and that the solution isn't eating less

meat, but making it differently.

From lab-grown meat to plant-based alternatives, he says a food revolution is already underway,

whether consumers realize it or not.

I spoke with him about the book, Meat,

how the next agricultural revolution

will transform humanity's favorite food and our future.

Bruce Friedrich, welcome to the NewsHour.

Thanks very much, Jeff. I'm delighted to be here.

You open the book by saying, this is a quote,

I'm not here to tell anyone what to eat.

Why was it important

for you to start there and to focus on how meat is made rather than on the personal choice?

Well, because the environmental and global health and animal protection communities

have been basically starting on personal choice for more than 50 years. And what we've seen is that meat consumption just keeps going up.

So the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, they started tracking this in

1961, and we've literally hit a new global meat production record every single year since.

And that's a problem because cycling crops through animals is incredibly

inefficient. It takes nine calories into a chicken to get one calorie back out in the form of chicken

meat. It's just a shockingly inefficient system that has a lot of negative externalities,

negative external costs. And you describe this moment as the next global agricultural revolution.

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