Why Our Future Starts With Being Cruelty-Free
I think it’s crazy that 69% of the world’s fresh water is used for agriculture. The production of beef, chicken, and other popular meats are consuming our planet’s fresh water. Just one pound of beef requires about 10 years worth of drinking water.
Today we have 7.6 billion people on the planet. Just today 30,000 people died from hunger. 1 in 7 people lacks clean water. 1 in 9 people do not have an adequate food source. 800 million people are malnourished. This is happening today, on our planet.
By 2050, our population will reach a staggering 10 billion people. 10 billion people we won’t be able to feed or have enough water for.
The thing is, we DO produce enough food. 1/3 of the land on earth is used to grow food! And 40% of it is wasted in the US alone! Clearly, this needs to change.
Truthfully, we probably have enough water for anyone. Our problem is the lack of distribution of the water resource. I think people’s water supply should be prioritized from water for raising livestock for agriculture needs.
We are wasting these precious resources (mainly through agriculture) something needs to change.
Raising Livestock requires a lot of land and is a prime factor in disrupting natural habitat. This is why the way we farm needs to transform!
Meat and animal products demand plenty of water and food. If we continue our wasteful food habits, we will run out of food and water for livestock and humans. The irrigation systems are also incredibly wasteful.
Raising livestock is also responsible for the emission of methane in the atmosphere. Agriculture is accountable for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions. Compared to transportation which is 14% and emits carbon dioxide. Agriculture and transportation are roughly equally responsible for greenhouse gas transmissions, methane is 23 times more powerful and destructive to the environment than carbon dioxide.
Clearly, raising livestock in “normal” ways is not going to work for our fast-growing population. The way we eat needs to change.
But we couldn’t possibly ask everyone on earth to become vegan in order to maintain our limited supply of water and land and sustain climate change. The problem is, all of the foods us humans have grown up to love and enjoy, are draining our water systems, using all our land and causing severe climate change problems. But we are destroying our environment by raising cattle and other animals for meat and byproducts, and we don’t even have enough food to feed 7 billion people (because we waste it all)— nevermind 10 billion.
What’s the Solution?
Cellular agriculture. The answer is to produce all of the delicious animal products through sustainable methods: cellular agriculture. Cellular agriculture is the food of the future. Cellular agriculture is the production of products, using once living or currently living cells. This technology can be used for the growth of animal products in labs using cell cultures, instead of raising animals. This will alter the food industry and fix our meat problems.
Cellular agriculture can be used to produce meats and animal byproducts in labs by using cells instead of growing livestock. The products harvested through cellular agriculture will use a fraction of the land, water and food needed to produce the same products through traditional agriculture.
Clean meat will Change the Agriculture Industry and Safely Produce Delicious Meats without Killing Animals
Cellular agriculture can be used to produce lab-grown meat. The production of lab-grown meats using cellular agriculture means taking once living cells out of animals such as cows, and placing them in bioreactor tanks in order to duplicate and grow them into beef, and other meats. Cultured meat is meat that has been grown and produced in a lab. It is created by taking a few cells from a small amount of tissue in the animal. These cells are developed and duplicated with the help of heat, oxygen, sugar, salts and proteins. Essentially, the cells will naturally replicate, because the environment they’re produced in mimics how they would be treated in their original owner. The cells are then grown into muscle and tissues like they do in the body of the animal. They will form meat the same way as they do in an animal (since they include animal DNA from the tissues), but no animals died; we just took a small bit of their DNA.
Clean meat production isn’t perfect. In order to grow the cells, a serum must be used to provide the cells with the necessary nutrients needed to grow and duplicate. The serum and process of producing lab-grown meat is expensive. Currently, lab-grown meat companies are working on finding alternatives to the different serums to grow the cells, that are more cost-effective and make their products have a more appealing taste.
The serum is also made from animal products. Which is counterproductive to the whole point of cleanly producing meatless-meats. Scientists and developers are working on finding a replacement serum that is vegan and cheaper.
Another challenge is perfecting the taste of cultured meat. In order for clean meat to survive the market, it must actually taste like meat. Different companies are working on improving the taste and texture of their products to best match the meat offered on the market. Artificial intelligence machines are used to test different nutrients, and how they affect the taste or texture of the meat.
Memphis Meats is a start-up company working on the production of lab-grown meats. So far they have made cell-based meatballs, poultry, chicken, etc. The production of meat from a cell-based level means it is easier to tailor the product in order to ensure healthier and safer meat than traditional agriculture methods. It’s also much better for our world as cellular-based meats provide the same taste as regular meats, are healthier (they don’t get diseases like E-Coli and can be modified since they are made in a lab) but they require a fraction of the water resources, land and food needed to raise animals and kill them.
Here’s what Memphis Meats is doing:
Just is another company working on several animal-free alternative foods, to wipe animals out of the food industry picture. They are working on animal-free mayo and egg-free cookie dough. But, they are also involved in clean meat production. Just is part of a handful of companies working on advancing the production of meat. They are aiming to improve prices, nutritional value, taste and texture of their products.
The nutrients and protein required for cattle in order to grow their delicious parts is substantial. So many nutrients are required to feed cattle, but when the beef and other parts are harvested, only 3% is available for us to eat. This is incredibly wasteful of the food we feed them. If we took all the food we feed animals (which is essentially 97% wasted) we could feed an additional 3.5 billion people.
Other important companies working on clean meat are Impossible foods and Beyond meat .
Producing Dairy Through Cellular Agriculture Will Help Us Achieve Our Vision of a Better World.
Another issue with our modern day diets is dairy products. Milk, cheese, and all our favourite dairy products come from animals. In order to have sustainable dietary habits as a population, we must create a viable dairy alternative. This is possible with cellular agriculture.
Animal-free milk. Produced without animals, but has the exact proteins made in a cow. How? Animal-free milk that tastes identical to traditional milk is made from the compilation of cow DNA, yeast and sugars. It goes through an age-old fermentation process in order to produce milk without the regular environmental footprint.
Start-up company Perfect Day is working to reduce the environmental footprint of the dairy production industry, without compromising the taste of dairy. Yes, there are many milk alternatives, including almond milk and soy milk. But, they will never replace the taste and functionality of regular milk in other dairy-based products such as butter and cheese. The alternative options for yoghurt, ice cream and cheese on the market are so bad, no one even wants to try them. Making cheese using almond milk will not give you promising taste provided by regular milk. However, the use of traditional milk in these products is very harmful to the environment.
Animal-Free Milk Proteins Will Save the Dairy Industry
The issue with poor alternatives to dairy products like yoghurt and cheese is that they’re missing the milk proteins which give dairy products their texture, taste, and unique properties. You cannot include these proteins in dairy by using plant-based alternative kinds of milk like pea-milk or coconut milk.
The company Perfect Day, is perfecting its casein production. Casein is the protein found in milk, that is essential to traditional diary yielding. Through an age-old fermentation process, Perfect Day has managed to create these casein proteins, without harming animals, with cellular agriculture. See, told you cellular agriculture will solve our dairy problems.
Perfect day combines yeast and sugar, along with cow DNA to produce casein. The casein proteins created through cellular agriculture are identical to those produced by cows, but instead, they are made from yeast cells, not a 2000 lb animals. The environmental footprint is a lot less significant.
The animal-free casein proteins can then be used throughout the dairy industry to produce other dairy products. Perfect Day’s cellular agriculture dairy proteins will revolutionize the way dairy is produced and disrupt the market. We will be able to eat yoghurt, cheese and ice cream, that still tastes good, but isn’t made from animals.
This food industry disruption is necessary in order to feed our emerging population. We will not have enough room on our planet to raise billions of 2000-pound cows in order to produce the dairy products we love. We also cannot expect 10 billion people to eliminate dairy from their lives. Casein protein production from yeast cells is the most realistic and effective solution to our problems.
Eggs without Chickens.
Clara Foods is yet another cellular agriculture company working towards disrupting the food industry. By traditional means, our current agriculture system is wasteful of earth’s valuable resources. Clara Foods is working towards alternatives for eggs.
In the food industry, there are two types of chicken: those who lay eggs, and those who are slaughtered for meat. Chickens who lay eggs lay eggs for about 100–130 weeks at a rate of one egg per day. When they no longer can lay eggs they are slaughtered, but they are not used for meat because they were not breaded to be killed for meat. They were breaded for their eggs. So essentially, they go to waste.
Clara Foods is a start-up that wants to create egg whites without the hens. Egg whites have 12 proteins which cause them to react the way they do when heated. Similar to the casein protein production process, the proteins in egg whites made through Clara Foods are produced from yeast cells rather than animals. As the yeast is grown, it is given sugar and chicken genes in order to produce the same egg proteins. These proteins are then separated from the yeast and sugar and turned into traditional eggs.
Key Takeaways of the Benefits of Cellular Agriculture
Although Cellular agriculture is a relatively new industry and form of technology, it has great potential for righting the wrongs of the food industry. It will provide solutions to feed our growing population without slaughtering animals, wasting our water resources and land.
Cellular agriculture will revolutionize the food industry. Clean meat and dairy is the solution to helping our planet. Cellular agriculture will:
- Use much less land. 26% of earth’s ice-free land is used to raise livestock. 33% of earth’s land is used to grow food for the livestock. Cellular agriculture will require a fraction of that land to produce even more food.
- Require less water. A pound of beef takes between 5 000 to 20 000 litres of water to produce.
- Release less greenhouse gas. Livestock produce methane, which is really bad for the environment. Labs to grow cellular agriculture products might still emit carbon dioxide, but not nearly as much methane that is currently being released by livestock (and carbon dioxide is less damaging to the atmosphere).
- Be able to feed our rapidly growing population at a production rate that won’t suffocate our earth’s resources and environment.
Our future is farming cells. Now that you’re aware of the problems with current agriculture techniques, stay posted for clean meat and dairy on your grocery store shelves.
Watch this if you’re still not convinced that the way we produce food needs to change:
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