A Pentagon contractor that has received more than $500 million from the Defense Department wants to produce lab-grown meat for America's soldiers in order to "reduce the CO2 footprint" at Defense Department outposts, the Free Beacon reports.

BioMADE, a public-private DoD contractor, "is a Manufacturing Innovation Institute (MII) sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) with a vision to build a sustainable, domestic, end-to-end bioindustrial manufacturing ecosystem," according to a project overview posted last month. It is seeking proposals to develop "innovations in food production that reduce the CO2 footprint of food production at ... DoD operational environments," which include "novel cell culture methods suitable for the production of cultivated meat/protein," aka lab grown meat.

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." -Free Beacon

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