Feeding the future without feeding risk
Scaling protein production in ways that protect antibiotics, prevent disease, and nourish a growing world
Many people say they prioritize health when choosing what to eat—but what do we really mean by “healthy”?
Health extends beyond the nutrients on our plate. It also reflects how our food is produced and the ripple effects that production has on people, animals, and the planet.
If a food is made in ways that contribute to the spread of zoonotic disease and accelerate antibiotic resistance—is it still healthy? What if its production pollutes our ocean and waterways? Exacerbates hunger and malnutrition?
These questions are shaping how we understand health in a world where food production intersects with our biggest global challenges.
In the past few years alone, we’ve watched waves of avian flu move through bird populations and spill into new species, including marine mammals. Swine diseases have disrupted food supplies. Scientists continue to warn that land-use change and livestock expansion are increasing the likelihood of pathogens jumping from animals to humans. And in the background, antimicrobial resistance is steadily rising—already responsible for more than a million deaths each year, with projections reaching up to 10 million annually by mid-century.
Nobody wants another global pandemic, and most don’t like the idea of antibiotics in their food. They want a food system that supports their health in the fullest sense—one that reduces the risk of future pandemics, preserves the effectiveness of antibiotics, and protects our rivers, creeks, and coastal ecosystems.
And yet, the way we produce much of our food today runs counter to those goals. Our food system doesn’t need to repeatedly trigger disease outbreaks. That’s a design flaw that alternative proteins can help solve.
A system under strain
Two of the most likely drivers of the next pandemic are already well known: increasing global demand for animal protein and the continued expansion of industrial animal agriculture.
Raising large numbers of animals in close quarters creates ideal conditions for viruses to evolve, mutate, and spread. As production scales up to meet demand, so does the risk. We tend to treat outbreaks as isolated events—but whether it’s avian influenza, swine flu, or something we haven’t yet named, taken together, they are a clear signal of the risk that industrial animal farming brings to the food system.
The widespread use of antibiotics in animal agriculture compounds the problem. Livestock alone is estimated to consume 50% to 80% of the antibiotics produced in high- and middle-income countries. Most of these animals are given antibiotics prophylactically, even when they’re healthy. Bacteria exposed to these drugs at scale evolve, adapt, and become resistant. And when they do, the consequences don’t stay on the farm. In fact, a study in Nature from 2018 found that widespread colistin-resistant bacteria, including in hospitals in London, could be traced to a single event in 2006 in China when bacteria jumped from pigs into humans.
In 2023, the World Health Organization reported that approximately one in six infections tested by labs worldwide were resistant to antibiotics. It also found that over the past five years, nearly 40% of antibiotics used to treat common infections have become less effective. Routine procedures—surgeries, cancer treatments, even childbirth—depend on effective antibiotics. Losing them would reshape modern medicine as we know it, and, as with many public health inequities, lower-income countries with weaker health infrastructure would likely suffer the most. The same is true for food security and malnutrition.
A recent Project Drawdown study highlights a core inefficiency in our food system: while croplands produce more than enough calories to feed the global population, only about half directly feed people. The rest are diverted to livestock feed and biofuels, effectively “lost” along the way—enough in 2020 alone to feed 7.2 billion people. This gap has widened over time, driven largely by rising meat demand— particularly beef, because cows are the least efficient at converting feed into food. It’s clear that the way we use cropland is contributing to global food scarcity.
Then there’s the environmental layer. Livestock production is a major contributor to water pollution, primarily through manure and fertilizer runoff. These nutrients fuel algal blooms that create “dead zones” in rivers, lakes, and coastal waters—areas where oxygen levels drop so low that most aquatic life cannot survive. Contaminated water affects drinking supplies, food systems, and livelihoods. At the same time, environmental stressors are compounding microbial risk in less visible ways: research shows that drought conditions can increase antibiotic resistance in soil bacteria, with signs that this resistance may ultimately affect infections in humans.
Taken together, these risks—pandemics, antimicrobial resistance, and environmental degradation—all stem from a single, interconnected system.
Starting where people are
You don’t have to be a public health expert to recognize that something isn’t working. Most people already sense it. They don’t want food that comes with hidden risks—but they also don’t want to give up the foods they love.
This is where the conversation often stalls. For decades, it’s been framed as an either-or: enjoy the taste, familiarity, and nutrition of meat despite how it’s produced, or eat significantly less meat—which the majority of people don’t want to do.
With adequate investment in alternative proteins, there’s no longer a tradeoff.
Decoupling protein from risk
Plant-based, fermentation-derived, and cultivated meat offer a path to producing the foods people already know and enjoy—like burgers, sausages, chicken nuggets, and fish fillets— without the many risks associated with using animals for food at scale.
That changes the biology of the system:
No crowded barns or feedlots where viruses can spread, mutate, and jump species
No routine use of antibiotics to promote growth or compensate for high-density conditions
No massive volumes of manure and runoff entering waterways
No need for hormones, steroids, or nitrates
Plant-based meat, for example, is inherently antibiotic-free. The entire category sidesteps one of the primary drivers of antimicrobial resistance because there are no animals to keep alive in crowded, disease-prone environments. Fermentation offers another pathway. By using microbes to produce key ingredients—like whey, casein, and egg proteins and functional inputs—we can make familiar foods without relying on animal agriculture while maintaining consistency, safety, and scalability. This approach has been used safely for decades in foods like yogurt, cheese, and vitamins— and now, those same techniques are being applied to produce the specific proteins that give animal products their taste and function.
On a global scale, shifting even a portion of protein production toward these methods reduces reliance on a system that amplifies pandemic risk. It doesn’t eliminate all risk, but it meaningfully lowers it by removing one of the most common sources of zoonotic spillover: large populations of animals raised for food.
Because alternative proteins are more efficient by design, they require fewer inputs—less land, less feed, and fewer fertilizers. Instead of cycling crops through animals (and losing a significant portion of calories in the process), these systems can produce protein more directly. That efficiency reduces pressure on land-use change, a known driver of emerging infectious diseases, and helps preserve natural ecosystems that act as buffers between humans and novel pathogens.
It also reduces waste streams. Without animal manure at scale, there are fewer pollutants entering rivers, lakes, and coastal ecosystems—helping prevent the kinds of environmental conditions that degrade both ecosystem and human health.
From incremental change to systemic shift
The true power of alternative proteins goes beyond adding choices to the marketplace. It’s about redesigning a system that meets the rising global protein demand, reduces pressure on ecosystems, and minimizes public health risks–all with the promise of maintaining cultural and culinary continuity. In other words, a system that works better by design.
We’ve seen this kind of transition before in other sectors. Energy systems shifting toward renewables. Transportation moving toward electrification. In each case, the goal is to improve efficiency and design a system that is better for people and the planet. Food is no different.
Markets play a major role in the success of alternative proteins, but they are not designed to account for public goods like pandemic prevention or antibiotic preservation. These are shared benefits, and they require shared investment.
That means supporting science-led solutions:
Funding research and development to advance alternative protein technologies toward taste and price parity
Building the infrastructure needed to scale production
Creating policy environments that enable innovation and a clear path to market
Ensuring equitable access to these foods across communities
Other public health interventions provide a useful model. We invest in vaccines not because they are profitable in the short term, but because they prevent catastrophic outcomes. We invest in sanitation, clean water, and disease surveillance for the same reason. Alternative proteins deserve to be part of that conversation because they are, at their core, a preventative measure.
Imagining more for ourselves and our planet
Progress in public health depends on collaboration—across countries, disciplines, and sectors. Food is one of the clearest places where those connections converge: agriculture, medicine, environment, and technology all meet on the plate.
We already know what it looks like to mobilize science during a crisis. We fund research. We coordinate globally. We invest at scale. The opportunity now is to apply that same approach earlier—upstream—so we can mitigate threats before they become crises.
Imagine a food system that not only nourishes people, but actively safeguards health at every level. One that’s designed to reduce risk before it spreads across people, animals, and the environment.
That’s the promise of reimagining protein. It starts with a simple idea: we have the power to change course. With sufficient investment and strong cross-sector partnerships, we can build a future with more choices, more resilience, and better health—for everyone.
Imagine it.
 | A guest post by
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Thank you so much for your important work!
Thank you, Chelsea for this clear and succinct message about the health risks that large-scale commodity meat and dairy production impose on people, planet, and animals and the power we have to change this.