The Ribeye Manifesto

Meat, Math, and the Malaise of Modern America

If we took every ribeye steak produced annually in the United States and distributed it evenly among American adults, each person would get to savor exactly one ribeye every sixty days. That’s right. In the land of supersized dreams and cholesterol-rich freedom, your fair share of red meat is a single, lonely ribeye every two months.

Welcome to late-stage carnivore capitalism: where beef is abundant, but access is rationed by zip code, paycheck, and political donation.

Stay with us—the steak gets juicier.

Because when we zoom out and factor in the entire buffet of American animal protein—beef, pork, poultry, and fish—we discover that the problem isn’t supply. It’s not like America has some tragic cow drought or an unexpected chicken apocalypse. The U.S. produces billions of pounds of edible flesh each year. If distributed equitably, we’d be eating protein like ancient Roman emperors—minus the orgies and lead poisoning. (Probably.)

But instead of abundance, we get bureaucracy. We get marketing campaigns that tell us meat is freedom while 44 million Americans don’t know where their next meal is coming from. That includes 1 in 5 children, by the way. Which means while lobbyists are carving filet mignon on Capitol Hill, someone’s kid is licking the inside of a Lunchables pack for the last trace of nitrates.

It’s not just a tragedy—it’s a punchline. The kind you choke on.

And into that absurdity came hope: lab-grown meat. Cultivated meat. Slaughter-free protein. A science fiction solution with the potential to disrupt the food pyramid and maybe, just maybe, make eating ethical.

Billions poured in. The tech got leaner. The flavor got cleaner. A hamburger was grown without a heartbeat. And then—because irony is never in short supply—Florida banned it.

Yes. Florida, where bath salt zombies roam free and hurricanes are considered character-building, decided the real threat was a synthetic chicken nugget. Under the new law, producing or selling lab-grown meat could land you in jail. Jail. For making a hot dog without blood.

Why? Because it threatened “real beef.” Because it was “un-American.” Because some lobbyist with a cowboy hat and a six-figure speaking fee whispered in the governor’s ear: "Son, that vat-grown brisket's gonna bankrupt the herd."

Meanwhile, the carbon footprint of cattle farming continues to trample the climate. Greenhouse gas emissions from the beef industry make most small nations look eco-friendly by comparison. But go ahead, tell us again how you’re banning clean meat to save tradition. America has a long history of protecting traditions, after all—like slavery, leaded gasoline, and corporate bailouts.

And here's the kicker: this isn't about meat. It never was.

This is about control. About who gets to eat, who gets to innovate, and who gets to make money while the rest of us chew on moral ambiguity and undercooked ideology. Capitalism—especially the American flavor—doesn’t solve hunger. It packages it, brands it, and sells it back to you as scarcity.

Lab-grown meat wasn’t banned because it was dangerous. It was banned because it threatened to work.

Because in a system built on profit, solutions are the enemy.

So here we are. A nation with the resources to feed everyone but the willpower to feed no one fairly. A country that outlaws food in the name of freedom. A place where the steak is always medium-rare, but the politics are well-done.

We’re not running out of food.

We’re running out of excuses.

Want to dig deeper into the numbers, policies, and power players behind America’s protein paradox? Check out the full breakdown in our exclusive blog post on The Extinction Files. Because extinction isn’t just about the species—it’s about the systems that feed them.

Want more extinction-era commentary? Stick around. Because this train’s not stopping at the salad bar.