“If we’re going to address the world’s insatiable craving for animal meat, we’re going to have to replace like for like.” That means cultivating meat from cells in brewery-like factories or making taste-identical plant-based meats. In both cases, for people to buy them, the products must also cost the same or less than conventional meat.
In most cases, for people to buy them, you'd have to hold a gun to their head. Or maybe that's just me?
These alternative proteins are the electric vehicles (EVs) of food, Friedrich says; the same experience, but better: “Just like a car doesn’t now need a combustion engine, a phone doesn’t need a cord, and you can take pictures without film, you can make meat without the need for live animals.”
It's Frankenfood. I suppose it's a natural progression from the 'science' that seems to believe it's possible to change women into men and vice versa.
But such progress will require governments to ramp up their support for the scientists overcoming the obstacles in this still-embryonic field. They have done it before for previous transformative technologies, from penicillin to the internet to renewable energy, Friedrich says.
All vastly useful inventions, that had no viable alternative at the time, or like this, did but it suited governments and lobbyists to pretend the viable alternative had become problematic.
If China went all-in for example, he says, conventional meat could be all but history by mid-century: “They took EV sales [at home] from 1% to more than 50% in the 10 years to 2025, and that’s a tougher tech challenge and scaling challenge than alternative meats.”
China? You're pinning your hopes on China?! The population of which eats everything with wings that isn't a airplane, and everything that with four legs that isn't a table? Well, good luck with that!
Friedrich is a compelling advocate for his goal of ending industrial agriculture, with answers for the many criticisms: “It’s just a shockingly inefficient way of producing food. It takes nine calories of crops to get one calorie of chicken, 10 or 11 calories of crops to get one calorie of pig meat or farmed fish and 40 to 100 calories of crops to get one calorie of beef.”
That's industrial factory farming. But - for example - lamb and goat can be produced on land that is useless for any other type of food production.
Frequently raised is the “yuck factor” of cultivated meat. This is overblown, Friedrich says. “People are not eating meat because of how it’s produced,” he says. “They’re eating meat because it’s delicious and affordable. All of the polling indicates significant enthusiasm for cultivated meat, especially among people who eat the most meat.”
Who are you polling, Friedrich ? Is it the people who are expected to eat this? Because, let's face it, this stuff isn't going to be on the menu at Davos or the Oscars, is it?
10 comments:
Shades of Soylent Green. Why go to the cost of cultivating animal protein in labs, when you have all these people dying every day, says some bloke in China.
Penseivat
Sounds like ultra-processed food? I thought ultra-processed foods were generally regarded as being bad for you?
John Tee
"These alternative proteins are the electric vehicles (EVs) of food"
I don't think that is the slam dunk argument he thinks it is!
John Tee
From the original article: "But global meat consumption has risen every single year since good records began in 1961."
They don't think that might sorta be because the global population has risen every single year since 1961 do they?
Perhaps unconstrained population growth is the problem?
John Tee
Meanwhile, more of the funny colured hair tribe will be screaming about ultraprocessed food.
Consistency eh
The reason consumers are happy to have a phone without a cord and cameras without film is that the innovation delivered a superior user experience at an affordable price.
The same is not true of cars without internal combustion engines or meat without dead animals, hence we won't be troubling our wallets buying any of that stuff any time soon.
Is it some kind of coincidence that fuckwits like this always emerge from the grauniad?
It's truly sicko stuff, all of it. Imagine having brains into all these things big time. Sad.
If meat is it’s delicious and affordable, why replace it with a synthetic alternative?
The only way the government will get involved in this, just like with EVs, would be to ban the delicious and affordable meat, so we have no alternative but to use the crappy substitue, just like EVs
Or maybe rising living standards worldwide, meaning more people can afford it?
Stonyground.
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