"Precision Fermentation" will bankrupt beef and livestock and chicken farmers within 5 years. And it's a good thing!

[eclipsenow]

As I understand it for now - we would still grow crops for bread and pasta and rice, and fruit and veggies and herbs and spices for flavour and texture. But if you are into farming beef or lambs or chicken or turkey or ducks or any animals - even fish - be worried. Precision Fermentation could bankrupt you in the next 5 to 10 years. Which is a GOOD thing for the environment and food security of the human race (and even space exploration!) But it's a bad thing for you - if you're a cattle rancher. I'm sorry - you'll have to retrain, grow timber for carbon credits or get a combination of forestry and eco-tourism and solar or wind farms on your farm. Everything we thought we knew about food is about to change forever. It's the biggest leap in 10,000 years!

Let me illustrate how big a leap this is. Imagine you're in a world with a much deadlier pandemic than Covid - say a 50% mortality rate - and you've found the cure and vaccine all in one! Imagine you're a climate scientist and have all the models in your head and are pretty sure we're heading for WW3 because of it - but you wake up one day and find out there's this thing called renewable energy. Imagine you know an asteroid is heading for earth - just as in "Don't Look Up" - and you wake up one day to find out Elon had already sent a Starship up to nuke the thing out the way. That's how big this is!

All around the world, vital ecosystems are being undermined by weakened forests. They're being chopped down for palm oil and soy beans. Various species are on the brink of extinction. All this extra logging and burning increases CO2 emissions. It's carnage out there, with increasing pollution and smoke from Indonesian fires making it barely breathable in Singapore - and that's just one example. Then this magic 'electric food' grown in a vat comes along - and undermines the business case for soy beans and palm oil! They've already grown proteins and fats that mimic the same proteins as chicken and fats as palm oil! There's already ice cream and cheese cream and milk being sold - milk without lactose but with exactly the same taste and proteins as milk!

Check it out. The biggest change to food in 10,000 years. And we get to see it introduced - before all the livestock farmers go bankrupt - and see the biggest change in food history. It's like we're at the dawn of Henry Ford's car era - just getting a glimpse of what could be coming.

Over to George Monbiot.

I'm excited!

 

[FireDragon76]

They sort of already have this. You can make pea or soy protein taste more or less like chicken already. There's a brand called Daring in US stores, for instance, that looks, feels, and tastes like bits of chicken meat.

Most analysts predict that plant-based meat will only have 30 percent adoption in a few decades, based on current trends. People are very much set in their ways and have emotional attachments to the idea of food being "real", or they have negative perceptions of "vegan" food, even though plant-based meat can be alot healthier and much more environmentally sustainable.

I suspect what's really needed is economies of scale, and more advertising. If plant-based or cultured meat gets cheap enough, people will switch just to save money.

 

[YorkieGal]

Gross!

 

[eclipsenow]

They sort of already have this. You can make pea or soy protein taste more or less like chicken already. There's a brand called Daring in US stores, for instance, that looks, feels, and tastes like bits of chicken meat.

Sure - and it feeds more people on vastly less land than cattle. But Precision Fermentation feeds more people on vastly less land than soy protein! Why? Because the energy to grow these bugs comes from solar panels which are already more efficient than photosynthesis. Plants take about 6% of the sunlight, and only deliver a minute fraction of that back as protein and fats. It's an even worse return if we feed those plants to chickens, let alone cattle. But solar panels harvest around 15-20% of the sunlight today, split water, and then give 70% of that energy directly to the bacteria to eat in the form of hydrogen. So that's like 10.5%-14% pf the sunlight as hydrogen going straight to the bugs.

Now here's the awesome bit. The potential for renewable power is huge. Wind has huge potential, especially as it works at night to help solar along. Solar could supply us with 12 times the electricity we currently use if we covered all our rooftops and fresh water reservoirs. And that's without touching any land yet! So basically PF removes the pressure on our best arable lands, and lets us get the majority of our proteins and fats from rooftops and fresh water. (Which also reduces the evaporation loss of our precious fresh water.) Bottom line? If you include the solar panels in the PF food system, it's 10 times more efficient than our best farmed crops with the area. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2015025118
But if you do not worry about the solar panels because they're not actually on farmlands but in deserts, rooftops and floating on water reservoirs, PF is 1700 of times more efficient than soy. Edible Microorganisms—An Overlooked Technology Option to Counteract Agricultural Expansion
And 157,00 times more efficient than beef! Embrace what may be the most important green technology ever. It could save us all | George Monbiot

Most analysts predict that plant-based meat will only have 30 percent adoption in a few decades, based on current trends.

Yes - based on current trends. I don't think they've taken in what a complete and utter food revolution is coming!

People are very much set in their ways and have emotional attachments to the idea of food being "real",

True - and I don't think this means all 'real' stake will disappear. But it may be kept for that special 21st birthday rather than a weekly staple - because it will be so expensive! Basically, it will be like when cars arrived. People can still ride horses if they own a farm or join a club - but it's much rarer these days to actually ride a horse for transport.

I suspect what's really needed is economies of scale, and more advertising. If plant-based or cultured meat gets cheap enough, people will switch just to save money.

Again - this is expected to scale so fast that within a few years PF protein will be half the price of soy protein. They're already selling ice cream and milk - but it's like computers or solar power back in the day - still expensive before the adoption curve kicks in and drives prices down.

I think it's just so exciting to see what happens! Also, imagine the implications for any future Moon or Mars colony? Get one of these running and you can feed them convincing chicken analogues from local resources.

 

[FireDragon76]

I don't think this process is exactly going to make "chicken" without processing (it's more like a biomass food than cultured meat). The process produces protein, which has to be formed into a product through processing. The thing about protein that most people probably don't realize is that protein itself is mostly flavorless. You can turn the same protein into milk, or into mock meat, and so on, with the right kind of processing.

The first modern biomass food, BTW, wa autolyzed yeast, also known as Marmite, which actually came out of Germany during the First World War. Then in the 80's, a UK government sponsored lab was doing research on alternative protein sources, and discovered they could use fungi grown in bioreactors to produce mycoprotein- protein made from fungi. Fungi as a kingdom are an interesting food because metabolically they are very similar to animals (moulds, fungi and yeasts digest their food just as animals do).

 

[eclipsenow]

I don't think this process is exactly going to make "chicken" without processing

AGREED! It's a weird yellow paste until the food techs process it. And it's ABSOLUTELY NOT 'clean meat' cultured in a dish that has stem-cell grown meat cells. That whole system is vastly too complex to keep clean, well 'fed', and economical. PF is absolutely weird gloop. But think about what soy beans must look like all mashed up? A different more sustainable food source is seaweed - and they're trying to put that in everything like soy beans are. But while I LOVE some of the side-effects of seaweed farming, like stimulated ocean food chains, cleaner waters, less acidic oceans in that region, etc - I think ultimately PF is going to be the base feedstock for almost everything we eat. There will still be some crops and vegetable farmers - and probably coconut fibre through some things for texture. They've gotta make this gloop edible somehow, right?

But check these - not so gloopy!

“What is it like to cook ravioli made with Solein? Watch how we made pasta dough with Solein instead of eggs, the ravioli filling with wild mushrooms and Solein cream cheese alternative and topped it off with porcini foam made with Solein dairy alternative!”
60 seconds - ravioli.

“What is it like to cook bao buns made with Solein? Watch how we steamed milky, fluffy bao buns made with Solein dairy alternative, and filled them with some crispy teriyaki-glazed Solein imitation meat alternative strips, Solein alternative mayonnaise dressing and crunchy, pickled and julienned veg wrapped in a shiso leaf. Our top chef Sebastian Borg describes it as a perfect balance of soft and crunchy, sweet and salty, sour and umami.”

(it's more like a biomass food than cultured meat). The process produces protein, which has to be formed into a product through processing. The thing about protein that most people probably don't realize is that protein itself is mostly flavorless. You can turn the same protein into milk, or into mock meat, and so on, with the right kind of processing.

The first modern biomass food, BTW, wa autolyzed yeast, also known as Marmite, which actually came out of Germany during the First World War. Then in the 80's, a UK government sponsored lab was doing research on alternative protein sources, and discovered they could use fungi grown in bioreactors to produce mycoprotein- protein made from fungi. Fungi as a kingdom are an interesting food because metabolically they are very similar to animals (moulds, fungi and yeasts digest their food just as animals do).