Faith and diet: Religion’s modern influence shaping future foodscapes

07 Dec 2023 --- With the intersection of lifestyle and diet being the crux of food innovation, plant-based proponents are drawing ties with tenets of the Catholic faith in an appeal to Pope Francis to encourage wider adoption of meat reduction to offset climate change. Due to illness, the Vatican sovereign was absent from this year’s COP28 summit in Dubai where he was anticipated to speak on environmental issues at the summit’s inaugural inter-religion Faith Pavilion.

Projections by the Pew Research Center forecast that the vast majority of the world’s people will continue to identify with a religion, including about six-in-ten who will be either Christian (31%) or Muslim (30%) in 2050. Just 13% are projected to have no religion.

Gathered under the Plant Based Treaty group, 50 religious and environmental organizations and leaders have written to Pope Francis supporting what they deem a “hidden message” in his recent apostolic exhortation, Laudate Deum, to address animal agriculture’s negative impacts on the climate directly.

“COP28 saw the first ever COP resolution to address food emissions and call for a food system transformation. Whether we meet the 1.5°C target of the Paris Agreement rests on transforming the food system, because food emissions alone would breach the threshold,” Nicola Harris, communications director of Plant Based Treaty, tells Food Ingredients First.

“The resolution is a promising first step, as long as the 134 countries who signed it follow through with meaningful action on a safe and just plant-based transition.”

“This year, scientists confirmed that six out of nine of our planetary boundaries have been breached,” reads the open letter. “We ask Your Holiness to sound the alarm at COP28 about food system impacts missing from the Paris Agreement. Please use your influence to encourage collective action to safeguard our future.”

Cell-cultured protein is at the center of talks surrounding its halal status, while it is widely considered less environmentally intensive than traditionally slaughtered meat.“Secret meaning” in Pope’s Laudate Deum
The growing convergence of faith and dietary choices is signaled when examining the affiliations of signatories in the open letter. These include organizations like In Defense of Animals’ Interfaith Vegan Coalition, Christians for Animals, Catholic Action for Animals and Animal Interfaith Alliance.

The letter references Pope Francis’ “Laudate Deum” issued on October 4 to address the climate crisis. It follows his 2015 encyclical, “Laudato Si’, On Care for Our Common Home,” which details the “intrinsic value of all God’s creatures.”

Signatories of the coalition letter expected Laudate Deum to build on Laudato Si’, by explicitly defining human interaction with animals and nature as the “root cause” of the climate and global ecological emergencies.

But the signatories argue that the Pope’s messaging in this document is “implicit” rather than targeted, pointing out that any signaling of plant-based advocacy remains in subtext.

“Since animal farms cause extreme cruelty to billions of birds each year and cause tremendous environmental devastation through water and air pollution, the Pope has implicitly condemned animal agriculture in Laudate Deum. Pope Francis’ actions make the secret meaning of Laudate Deum even more apparent,” the letter reads.

A line in the statement also references Pope Francis’ remarks in the Laudato Si’ encyclical, paragraph 221: “We read in the Gospel that Jesus says of the birds of the air that ‘not one of them is forgotten before God.’” 

Responding to this, signatories suggest: “How then can we possibly mistreat them or cause them harm?”

Halal and cell-cultured food
The parallels drawn between faith and dietary trends have also been drawn out in the context of the emerging cell-based protein market. Industry has been in talks with religious authorities ever since the first lab-grown beef burger was unveiled in 2013. 

Muslims have particularly grappled with moral perceptions on the development of cell-cultured animal protein — produced without slaughtering — which has been found to cut carbon emissions, fertilizer use and water consumption drastically.

In 2021, Indonesia’s ruling Islamic authorities dictated that lab meat is haram and, therefore, forbidden for the country’s nearly 230 million Muslims. A commission decided that the absence of slaughter and the process of tissue engineering is “unclean.”

However, a panel of “leading Islamic scholars” recently examined the process of making cell-based chicken in detail, concluding that cultivated meat can be halal if it meets certain conditions.

This news came at the heels of the Orthodox Union, the world’s largest kosher certification agency, announcing that the chicken cell line of Super Meat meets the highest level of kosher supervision: Mehadrin standards.

In 2021, ruling Indonesian Islamic authorities labeled cell-based meat as haram. However, this is under debate by leading Islamic scholars.SuperMeat’s head of business development, Osnat Shostak, previously told Food Ingredients First that developers continue to “actively engage” with Halal and Kashrut agencies to determine how to make their products suitable for religious consumers.

Didier Toubia, co-founder and CEO of Aleph Farms, affirmed his company is already doing this and establishing relationships with authorities in both the Jewish and Muslim worlds.

COP28 plays host to cell-based pioneers
Convinced that protein diversification is a key element of an inclusive transition toward sustainable, resilient and equitable food systems, the Global Cellular Agriculture Alliance (GCAA) will host a series of dialogues on complementary proteins scheduled on December 9 and 11 at the Food Systems Pavilion of COP28. 

The GCAA represents the collaborative effort between the US-based Alliance for Meat, Poultry and Seafood Innovation (AMPS Innovation), the APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture and Cellular Agriculture Europe, including members from over 30 cultivated meat, seafood and dairy companies.

“Cellular agriculture is one of many critical tools that can help complement the global food system both to increase food security and resilience and also mitigate and adapt to climate challenges,” urges Shannon Cosentino-Roush, president of AMPS Innovation.

A National Library of Medicine survey of the broader domain of stem cell science suggests that Western nations tend to demonstrate greater openness and acceptance toward emerging cellular research.

In the US, moral acceptability was more influential as a driver of support for stem-cell research; in Europe, the perceived benefit to society carried more weight; and in Canada, the two were almost equally important.

“We also find that public opinion on stem-cell research was more strongly associated with religious convictions in the US than in Canada and Europe, although many strongly religious citizens in all regions approved of stem-cell research,” the authors conclude.

By Benjamin Ferrer