According to The Washington Free Beacon, a Pentagon-funded company is seeking proposals to feed U.S. troops lab-grown meat at Department of Defense outposts.

“BioMADE is now accepting submissions for projects that accelerate technology development related to mitigating the causes and consequences of global climate change through bioindustrial manufacturing,” BioMADE, who reportedly received more than $500 million from the Defense Department, said in an announcement.

The Sustainable Logistics for Advanced Manufacturing (SLAM) Project Call focuses on:

“Sustainable food production: Innovations in food production that reduce the CO2 footprint of food production at and/or transport to DoD operational environments.”

According to BioMADE, the SLAM Project Call also focuses on:

  • Converting waste to bioproducts: Valorizing waste streams by directly using them as feedstocks.
  • Carbon capture technologies: Processes that convert greenhouse gases including CO2 or methane into bioproducts that are of industrial use and are recalcitrant to degradation.
  • Lowering the resources requirements for processing steps: Innovations in scale-up production or downstream processing steps that substantially reduce resource requirements to improve the net sustainability of biomanufacturing
  • Mitigating environmental impacts: Developing bioproducts useful in mitigating the negative environmental impacts either regionally or globally.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

BioMADE, a public-private company that has received more than $500 million in funding from the Defense Department, announced earlier this month that it is seeking proposals to develop “innovations in food production that reduce the CO2 footprint of food production at … DoD operational environments,” according to an online announcement.

These include “novel cell culture methods suitable for the production of cultivated meat/protein,” or lab-grown meat, a product that is still in its experimental phases. This type of meat is grown in a lab from animal cells with the aid of other chemicals, and has emerged as a flashpoint in debates about the efficacy and morality of manufacturing meat products without slaughtering animals.

BioMADE—which earlier this year received a $450 million infusion of taxpayer cash—maintains that lab-grown food products will reduce the Pentagon’s carbon footprint, a priority for the American military as it pursues a Biden administration-mandate to address climate change and other cultural issues that critics describe as “woke.”

Per Newsmax:

Critics of the BioMADE-Pentagon partnership assert that U.S. troops should not be used as guinea pigs for an experimental process such as lab-grown meat, which is not available on store shelves, the Free Beacon reported, even though the Department of Agriculture in 2023 gave two California companies permission to sell cultured chicken to area restaurants.

“Taxpayer dollars should not be used to fund the lab-grown meat sector,” Jack Hubbard, executive director at the Center for the Environment and Welfare, a consumer group that analyzes emerging markets such as bioengineered meat, told the Free Beacon. “Our troops deserve better than to be served lab-grown meat, produced in bioreactors with immortalized cells and chemicals.

“Unfortunately, this effort is being driven by an agenda that is political and anti-farmer. Our soldiers should never be used as guinea pigs.”

A 2023 study published by the University of California-Davis suggests that “lab-grown meat’s carbon footprint [is] potentially worse than retail beef,” the Free Beacon reported.

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