Humanity quietly passes a remarkable milestone

From Adam Tooze

 

Humanity has quietly passed a remarkable milestone: Alcohol consumption is declining, a turning point in a habit at least as old as civilization itself. This unnoticed shift suggests other long-standing habits (from smoking to red meat consumption) could potentially fade just as effortlessly.

Not "effortlessly".  But, yes, smoking is falling in most developed countries, and vegetarianism/veganism is rising.  No government could try and stop meat-eating --- imagine the backlash! --- but as more and more people switch, it will become less and less normal to eat meat.

You're eating precision fermentation foods already

From green queen

Precision fermentation has been around for decades, and most of us eat foods that contain ingredients made using the technology on a daily basis. Animal-free dairy makers are now using it to bring you the cheese and milk you love without the environmental cost.

As the alternative protein industry matures, it is increasingly under attack from food industry lobbies and interest groups. Of late, precision fermentation technology, used to create animal-free dairy foods, has been the target of the Non-GMO Project, a U.S. based non profit organization focused on alerting consumers to the presence of genetically modified organisms (GMO) in food products. In a press release published during National Dairy Month in the U.S., the organization described animal-free dairy made from precision fermentation as unregulated and dangerous. We thought it would be prudent to address the allegations as a matter of separating fact from fiction.

Let’s start with the most important facts: precision fermentation (PF) is a technology that has been around for 30 years, is entirely safe and is used in dozens (if not hundreds) of products you interact with every day. That cousin of yours that’s Type 1 diabetic? Her insulin is made using PF. The cheese you buy at the grocery store? The enzymes are made using PF. The vitamin supplement you give your teenager for their skin? PF again. That naturally flavored grapefruit soda you love? That’s right, it’s made using PF.

Here’s the thing. Until Perfect Day and its peers crash landed onto our food scene, most of us had never heard of precision fermentation. Now, this technology that we interact with regularly (though perhaps unknowingly), has been put under the microscope by everyone from chefs to media personalities to lobby groups. When something feels or sounds new, it’s entirely natural to have questions. Particularly when it’s related to the food we eat.

When it comes to animal-free dairy, precision fermentation refers to a process used to produce bio-identical milk proteins like casein or whey, without the use of animals. It is done by encoding milk protein DNA sequences into microorganisms, like yeast or fungi, and then fermenting them with nutrients and sugar in fermentation tanks, much like those used to brew beer. During the fermentation process, these unique microbes produce proteins, identical to those found in cow’s dairy milk. These proteins are filtered into a pure milk protein isolate that can be used to create our favorite dairy products such as cheese, yogurt and ice cream, without the use of animals.

The whole point of using precision fermentation is to produce the dairy products we love (think milk, cheese, yogurt) with a fraction of the carbon emissions, land requirements and water usage that the conventional dairy industry requires. This means the hundreds of millions of people who consume dairy products daily can do so without causing global warming.

 

FACT: Conventional dairy has a global warming problem

Let’s be clear, we are at a critical point in the climate change fight. Unless we significantly reduce the outsized climate impact from conventional agriculture, and that includes dairy farming, we will not be able to achieve the Paris Agreement goals. With half of all habitable land already being used for agriculture and 77% of that devoted to raising animals for food, anyone who is serious about creating a sustainable food industry knows that we cannot go on with the status quo. We certainly cannot nourish a growing global population with an agricultural system that already consumes too much land and water resources and drives biodiversity loss, while also emitting a third of global greenhouse gases. If global animal agriculture continues to expand, it will prevent the decarbonization of our agricultural system and perpetuate the increase of methane emissions, a greenhouse gas that is 86 times more powerful at warming the planet on a 20-year scale than carbon dioxide.

When it comes to conventional dairy production, it’s hard to argue with its environmental cost. Producing just one litre of milk releases 3.15kg of CO2, while one kilo of cheese releases a whopping 23.88kgs of CO2- about the same as burning 10kg of coal!

On the water front, things are not much better. To get one litre of milk requires 628 litres of water. A kilo of cheese demands an incredible 5,606 liters of water, the highest among all foods.

Beyond water and emissions, producing conventional dairy foods involves heavy use of antibiotics, a huge amount of arable land and GMO corn/soy animal feed, not to mention that the fields where these are grown are sprayed with pesticides and glyphosate.

FACT: You are already consuming precision fermentation foods and products

Precision fermentation is safely used to make insulin, most vitamins, flavors and countless enzymes found in nearly all commercially produced foods. We’ve all been eating foods produced with the aid of precision fermentation for decades. This is not new. Here’s an overview of common foods and supplements made using PF:

Enzymes: PF is used to make all sorts of enzymes used in food production, from amlysases to keep bread soft and prevent staleness, pectinases to make fruit juices clear instead of cloudy, transglutaminases to make deli meat products such as salami hold together better.

Vitamins: Almost all of the common vitamins we use to fortify foods (in powder form) or to supplement our own diets (in pill form) such as B vitamins (B2 and B12 in particular) and vitamins A, C, D, E and K, are made via precision fermentation technology.

Natural Flavors: Many flavorings and aromas regularly used in food are made via PF such as vanilla flavoring. When you see the term ‘natural flavors’ on an ingredient list? That’s PF too. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (the FDA)’s own definition of “natural flavor/flavoring” includes ingredients made using precision fermentation.

Medicine: Specifically, insulin for Type 1 Diabetes patients to inject themselves with. Until the 1980s, we used to have to inject diabetes patients with insulin obtained from pigs and cows.

Cheese (this one is ironic, given the conventional dairy industry’s anti-PF stance): Rennet is a key ingredient in most cheeses. It is composed of the enzyme chymosin, which helps to separate the milk solids (the parts used in cheesemaking) from the liquids. In other words, rennet enables the formation of firm curds and is crucial in helping cheesemakers achieve their desired cheese texture. 80% of rennet used in global cheese produced comes from precision fermentation using microorganisms as host factories (the rest comes from the stomachs of ruminant animals). So chances are, if you have eaten dairy cheese, you have eaten PF-made rennet. 

FACT: Animal-free dairy is regulated by the US FDA

Animal-free dairy is a regulated industry. The U.S. FDA oversees and regulates any substance that is intentionally added to food as an additive through the GRAS Notification Program. This is also how enzymes, vitamins and flavors are regulated. To date, both Perfect Day and Remilk have followed this process prior to launching products in the U.S. market.

Animal-free dairy proteins do not fall under the USDA National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard, because the final product (animal-free milk protein) does not contain any detectable genetic material.

While genetic engineering techniques are used in creation of the microorganisms that produce the dairy proteins, they are filtered out at the end of fermentation. The resulting product is a high purity milk protein isolate, which is bio-identical to milk protein from cows. 

FACT: Animal-free dairy has a lower carbon and water footprint than conventional dairy

The planetary toll of the conventional industry when we are in the midst of a worsening climate crisis that is threatening our global food security is exactly why we need to rethink how we produce food and support nascent industries like animal-free dairy made from precision fermentation. This will allow consumers to continue enjoying the milk and cheese they crave and love at a lower cost to the planet.

In the RethinkX report on agriculture, the authors write that “modern alternatives will be up to 100 times more land efficient, 10-25 times more feedstock efficient, 20 times more time efficient, and 10 times more water efficient. They will also produce an order of magnitude less waste.”

According to a Life Cycle Assessment commissioned by Perfect Day, their technology allows for “a reduction in environmental impact of up to 99% less water use, up to 97% fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and up to 60% less renewable energy use compared to traditional (dairy) production methods.”

The future of our planet and the ability to feed next generations depends greatly on our ability to bring these new solutions to life. Precision fermentation is part of a broader ecosystem of sustainable food solutions, which include regenerative organic farming, plant-based foods and animal-free dairy. Without them we are at risk of losing the battle against climate change and in the years ahead, we will face unrelenting challenges to affordably feed 10 billion people.

Dairy farms still draining the Colorado river dry

[Delia Johnson/Cronkite News]
The report warns that factory farming is not only accelerating our climate crisis,

but the industry will also need 'more and more water' in the future,

 thanks to extreme heat and other weather changes fueled by the climate crisis.

From The Tucson Sentinel

A new report warns that a vital U.S. waterway depended upon by more than 40 million people is facing severe decline, as the Colorado River is being ‘drained dry.’ Agriculture is largely to blame for the “water crisis” in the western U.S., particularly industrial meat and crops raised to feed livestock, says Food and Water Watch, the environmental advocacy group responsible for the new findings.

Factory farming fuels Colorado River crisis

Last year, a study found that the U.S. west was facing the worst drought it had seen in 1,200 years. Since then, the extremely dry conditions have modestly improved — especially after unusually heavy rains hit California — but the problem of water scarcity remains. And the stakes are high — Colorado River provides drinking water to seven U.S. states and two Mexican states, and two reservoirs fed by the Colorado River — Lake Mead and Lake Powell — play an important role in the nation’s power grid.

Despite being the largest drain on the river, factory farming hasn’t been held accountable. “Huge agribusinesses remain unphased by this crisis, continuing to abuse water supplies to feed animals on factory farms that, in turn, worsen the climate crisis and associated drought,” write the authors of the report. The Colorado River Basin is “Ground Zero” for the industry’s water and climate harms, according to the nonprofit, and 218 million gallons of water are used daily from the basin in order to feed and water 2.5 million dairy cows.

Alfalfa also requires a massive amount of water from the river. In 2022, over 2 trillion gallons were used for 2.7 million acres of land for alfalfa crops. For comparison, just .63 trillion represents all of the indoor household water needs for Basin residents, according to the report. And alfalfa is largely grown just to feed meat and dairy farm animals. In April, Vox explored which crops account for the most water from the Colorado River, concluding that 70 percent went to alfalfa, hay, grasses and corn ultimately used in cattle feed on beef and dairy farms. Other crops, such as soy, wheat and barley, may also be grown and used for feeding livestock in the region.

The way we eat creates a disastrous climate cycle

States along the river’s basin exceed the national average for irrigation water usage by 70 percent, finds Food and Water Watch, and this use is creating a vicious cycle. The report warns that factory farming is not only accelerating our climate crisis, but the industry will also need “more and more water” in the future thanks to extreme heat and other weather changes fueled by the climate crisis.

Research published in 2020 estimates that the Colorado River’s flow declines by over 9 percent with every degree Celsius that the Earth’s temperature rises, a loss that is too high to be countered by expected increases in precipitation.

States take action to address water crisis, but is it enough?

Earlier this year, Politico called the uphill battle to reduce usage of the Colorado River “the first climate brawl” faced by President Joe Biden. In May, three river basin states agreed to, in total, reduce their use of water from the river by 13 percent, with Arizona, California and Nevada farmers and communities receiving $1.2 billion in Inflation Reduction Act funding in return for taking steps to conserve water.

Taking action to limit states’ use of the river is complicated, however. For example, Southern California’s Imperial Valley and its approximately 400 farms account for the largest percentage used, reports the Washington Post, and here there are farmers who “have some of the oldest legal rights to that water, dating back more than a century” — older than the Bureau of Reclamation, established in 1902 and now responsible for overseeing the use of the Colorado River.

Indigenous communities are greatly impacted by the river as well and, as the report points out, have inhabited the surrounding land since before the passing of federal and state laws. Despite their senior water rights in some cases, tribes have been largely left out of talks and decisions when it comes to the river. “This has led to a patchwork of rights across the basin, where some tribes have officially quantified water rights while others are still working to achieve them,” reads the report.

‘A history of bad policy’

To Food and Water Watch, though, it is crucial that “a history of bad policy” is now corrected — and the agreement between these states and the Biden administration does not go far enough.

The agreement lasts through the year 2026 and is therefore “not a permanent solution,” write the authors of the report. “The proposal also does not cut nearly enough water to restore the Colorado River — states need to cut four times as much annually for the reservoirs to recover.” Food and Water Watch is calling for both state and federal regulation of water usage, along with aid for small-scale farmers to facilitate their transition to more sustainable practices.

Vegan diet massively cuts environmental damage

Researchers said people in rich nations needed to radically reduce their meat and dairy consumption for global food production to be sustainable. Photograph: Nathaniel Noir/Alamy

From The Guardian

Eating a vegan diet massively reduces the damage to the environment caused by food production, the most comprehensive analysis to date has concluded.

The research showed that vegan diets resulted in 75% less climate-heating emissions, water pollution and land use than diets in which more than 100g of meat a day was eaten. Vegan diets also cut the destruction of wildlife by 66% and water use by 54%, the study found.

The heavy impact of meat and dairy on the planet is well known, and people in rich nations will have to slash their meat consumption in order to end the climate crisis. But previous studies have used model diets and average values for the impact of each food type.

In contrast, the new study analysed the real diets of 55,000 people in the UK. It also used data from 38,000 farms in 119 countries to account for differences in the impact of particular foods that are produced in different ways and places. This significantly strengthens confidence in the conclusions.

However, it turned out that what was eaten was far more important in terms of environmental impacts than where and how it was produced. Previous research has shown that even the lowest-impact meat – organic pork – is responsible for eight times more climate damage than the highest-impact plant, oilseed.

The researchers said the UK should introduce policies to help people reduce the amount of meat they eat in order to meet the nation’s climate targets. Ministers have repeatedly said they will not tell people what to consume, despite the precedent of, for example, taxes on high-sugar drinks.

Prof Peter Scarborough at Oxford University, who led the research, published in the journal Nature Food, said: “Our dietary choices have a big impact on the planet. Cutting down the amount of meat and dairy in your diet can make a big difference to your dietary footprint.”

The global food system has a huge impact on the planet, emitting a third of the total greenhouse gas emissions driving global heating. It also uses 70% of the world’s freshwater and causes 80% of river and lake pollution. About 75% of the Earth’s land is used by humans, largely for farming, and the destruction of forests is the major cause of the huge losses in biodiversity.

Prof Neil Ward at the University of East Anglia said: “This is a significant set of findings. It scientifically reinforces the point made by the Climate Change Committee and the National Food Strategy over recent years that dietary shifts away from animal-based foods can make a major contribution to reducing the UK’s environmental footprint.”

The study also showed that low-meat diets – less than 50g a day – had half the impact of high-meat diets on greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution and land use. However, the differences between low-meat, pescetarian and vegetarian diets were relatively small.

Prof Richard Tiffin at the University of Reading said: “This study represents the most comprehensive attempt to link food consumption data to the data on the environmental impacts of food production.

“Encouraging high-meat-eaters to reduce meat consumption and encouraging vegetarians to become vegans should result in lower emissions,” he said. “However, it’s hard to justify changes to the diets of moderate omnivores on the basis of these results, other than to switch to a completely vegan diet.”

The researchers who conducted the new study said diets enabling global food production to be sustainable would mean people in rich nations “radically” reducing meat and dairy consumption.

They said other ways of reducing the environmental impact of the food system, such as new technology and cutting food waste, would not be enough.

The biggest difference seen in the study was for emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas produced by cattle and sheep, which were 93% lower for vegan diets compared with high-meat diets.

There is so much we as individuals can't do about cutting emissions.  Governments are owned by fossil fuel companies and billionaires.  Governments continue to subsidise fossil fuel production.  Changing things means persuading others to vote for parties which will actually enact policies which cut emissions.  We can't all afford an electric car.  And even though electric grids are greening, we still produce emissions every time we turn a light on (unless you can join a utility which produces 100% carb-free electricity) 

But there is at least one thing we can do:  turn vegan.   That will cut your personal emissions by 1/3rd, on average.   Even becoming vegetarian will cut your personal emissions by 15%, according to this study.   We need to cut emissions by 50% over the next 10 years to prevent catastrophic climate change.  If rich countries go vegan, we'll be more than halfway there.  And if we succeed in replacing petrol (gasoline)/diesel cars and light trucks, we'll have achieved the 50% cut we need.  

Let's start with the cow

From a tweet thread by Tony Seba

Let me start with #insulin. In the 1970s, insulin was extracted from the pancreas of animals. In the 1980s, @Genentech, working with Eli Lilly (@LillyPad), developed insulin using a new technology that I call #PrecisionFermentation. It wasn’t animal insulin. It was human insulin.

The mainstream would say: “health care is slow, it can’t be disrupted.” Well, here’s the S-curve of #PrecisionFermentation human insulin. Human insulin disrupted animal insulin in about 13 years.









#PrecisionFermentation is a concept that I coined in my  @rethink_x report ‘Rethinking Food and Agriculture’ with @CatherineTubb in September 2019.

Think about beer #fermentation. You take a microorganism (a yeast) and feed it sugar, wheat, nitrogen.. and out comes beer.

The difference with #PrecisionFermentation: you genetically modify the yeast, so it can produce the ingredient you want. In this case, a #protein.

The #protein itself cannot be #GeneticallyModified. The yeast is, but there’s no genetic material in proteins. None. Anyone who tells you “#GMOprotein” is lying to you. Proteins have exactly no generic material.

How is #PrecisionFermentation going to disrupt #milk? — Milk is almost 90% water. 3.3% of milk is #proteins, and that is the commercially valuable part of #dairy. So, essentially, you disrupt 3% of that milk bottle and the entire dairy industry is gone.

The #PrecisionFermentation disruption of #dairy is a #B2B ingredient #disruption. No consumer behavior change is needed. All the industry needs to do is disrupt protein shakes, protein bars etc. and ⅓ of #dairy industry revenues go away.

This technology has existed for 40 years and they’ve gone through an incredible capability cost curve. #PrecisionFermentation dairy proteins are already in the market (cheese, chocolate, ice cream etc). This is not in the future. This is now.

To give you an idea of the cost curve of #PrecisionFermentation, between 2000 and 2020, the cost per kilo/pound went down by about 10,000x in 20 years from ~$1m to ~$100. That cost curve makes #MooresLaw (computing) look like a straight line into the future.




Over the next ten years, we’re going to experience the #disruption of #food and #agriculture. And I am going to focus on the cow.

Because the cow is — by far — the most inefficient food production technology on the planet.

Every #animal that we use for #livestock is going to be #disrupted. If the cost curve keeps improving the way it has over the last few decades, the cost-per-kilo of #PrecisionFermentation proteins will reach price parity with the cow by ~2025. That’s only three years away.

We know that in #food and #ingredients, #disruptions happen quickly and they happen as S-curves. Think about Pepsi and Coca Cola. In the 1980s, in the United States, they went from all cane sugar to all corn-based sugar in only four years.

This is not a “veggie revolution”.  What is happening today is the ‘Second Domestication of Plants and Animals’. We’re going from domesticating large organisms — cow sheep horse chicken — to microorganisms as a source of food.

#PrecisionFermentation proteins are 5-100x more resource-efficient than the cow. #PFproteins, casein and whey, can be made today using 100x less land than the cow. Think about it. 100x less land.

An Israeli company called @Remilk_Foods announced that they’re going to open the world’s largest facility to create cow-free milk in Denmark. They’re going to make the dairy equivalent of 50,000 cows on 750,000 sq-ft = a standard industrial-size facility. A fermentation farm.

Canada’s dairy industry has about 1 million cows (whole country). Take 20 @Remilk_Foods facilities, i.e. #PrecisionFermentation farms, and they could produce the equivalent of 1m cows. This would take 344 acres and disrupt the whole dairy industry in Canada. That’s it. Gone!

How quickly is this going to happen? — The CEO of @Remilk_Foods says they can produce dairy as cheap as animal protein by 2024, which is within the cost curve that I published 3 years ago. That’s only 3 years away, not 20 or 30 as the mainstream would suggest. We need to prepare.

#FermentationFarms are the new #FoodFarms where we are going to create our proteins. New business model innovations and possibilities will open up, in this case, for example: #FoodAsSoftware.

The #proteins we eat today come from just a few #plants and #animals that we domesticated thousands of years ago. 12 plants and 5 animals account for 75% of food. There are millions of plants & animals on Earth. There’s a huge possibility space out there. #PrecisionFermentation

With #FoodAsSoftware and #PrecisionFermentation, we can make proteins from any animal, from any plant, at speed and scale. The number of possible #proteins mathematically is infinite. I did the numbers. It is larger than the number of atoms in the universe.

And it’s not just about the cow. It’s not even about food. #PrecisionFermentation is disruptive across many sectors. It’s being used for #cosmetics. #Collagen, for instance. #HumanCollagen is being made with precision fermentation. Today!

#SweetProteins are going to be so disruptive! One of those proteins — #brazzein — is ~1000x sweeter than cane sugar. 1 pound of brazzein can sweeten the equivalent of 1000 pounds of sugar. Think about that! Without the #insulin reaction.

The magic #ingredient that makes  @ImpossibleFoods’ meat smell and taste like meat is #heme. Heme is only 2% of their burgers. Think about how  @generalelectric got disrupted with only 2% market penetration of solar, wind & batteries (#SWB). Same thing is happening with #meat.

And you may think: “will this fly in x” or “will they eat it in #Texas?” — Yes, they will. I was at the airport in #Houston, and sure enough, they’re selling #ImpossibleNachos & #ImpossibleQuesadillas. And the menu doesn’t even say it’s vegetarian.








This is not just the #disruption of the cow. This is the disruption of all food that comes from animals: pork, fish eggs etc. All of them can be, and will be, disrupted by #PrecisionFermentation and #FoodAsSoftware.

I expect three phases in the “#Disruption of #Food & #Agriculture”. What we’re undergoing now is the first phase, which is #ingredients, #B2B etc.

The second phase, which starts around 2024, is more complex proteins & meats that will be made with #PrecisionFermentation, and later, #CellularAgriculture.

I expect that the animal extraction industry, the livestock-as-food industry, will be gone by 2035. It’s pretty much over. I expect the dairy industry to be bankrupt by 2030 — that’s less than 10 years away — and the whole livestock industry by 2035.

That doesn’t mean you can’t eat a cow after 2035. You can, but it’s going to be a little bit like the horse and the car. You can still ride horses, but it’s not a mainstream form of transportation, and it’s very expensive. Eating cows will be just like owning a horse today


For those of you who think Tony Seba's views are way out there .... you're wrong. He has consistently called it right for at least a decade. He understands that new technologies grow *exponentially*, not linearly.  And given how high emissions from beef, mutton and other meats are, this could save the world.  Because if we're all eating vat meat and vat eggs and drinking vat milk, then all that land freed up by ending animal husbandry will be able to revert to forest.  And that will be the most powerful carbon capture and storage process we could have.

Lab-grown milk by 2024

Milk brewed in a lab using precision fermentation. Eden Brew expects the product to be on the market by 2024.

From Melbourne's The Age newspaper

A new animal-free milk promising to be more sustainable than dairy but with near-identical taste and nutritional content could hit supermarket shelves in the next two years, adding to the growing roster of milk alternatives available to Australian consumers.

CSIRO-backed start-up Eden Brew, which has worked out how to “brew” milk in a lab in a way that emulates the natural fermentation process that happens in cows, is working on industrialising the process and expects to have its animal-free products on the market by 2024.

Founder and chief executive Jim Fader said the company’s business model would be based on global beverages giant Coca-Cola’s supply chain, where the main ingredient - in this case the animal-free milk protein - is brewed centrally and then shipped to dairy companies across the world.

“We’re taking it from two- to 10-litre scales to 500,000-litre scale so that we can make it at a cost and scale that makes the whole thing worthwhile,” he said.

“We expect that by about 2028 to 2030, we will be at the same retail price to the consumer as milk, mostly because we come down in price but in part because there’s forecast continued inflation in dairy.”

The process involves inserting synthetic cow DNA into yeast to form a protein known as a casein micelle, the “essential building block” for cow’s milk. These proteins are then brewed, filtered and dried ready to be rehydrated and turned into animal-free dairy products.

Eden Brew is among a host of new companies racing to get animal-free products to consumers, promising a more ethical and ecologically sustainable alternative to dairy. In the US, consumers can already buy ice-cream, spreadable cheese and protein powder made from animal-free milk protein produced by Silicon Valley player Perfect Day.

Fader said the fledgling industry would help meet the growing global demand for protein, which the UN forecasts will increase by 74 per cent by 2050 as the global population nears 10 billion.

“You just can’t scale existing food manufacturing industry to meet that demand sustainably - you’d need two planets,” he said. “This will supplement, not replace, [dairy] supply as demand goes through the roof over the next generation.”

Fader said Eden Brew would consider its environmental impact at every step along the supply chain.

“There’s no point being a business that markets itself on good environmental outcomes and then not be a business that challenges every facet of itself, its supply chain and people it does business with to make sure it’s as optimum as it can be,” he said.

Emissions from agriculture (if you include methane from ruminants' burps and farts, mostly burps) contribute as much as 30% of global emissions.  It would make a huge difference to the rate at which the world warms if we could eliminate or reduce these.  And non-animal milk, and non-animal cheese, which taste like milk and cheese, will take us closer to that goal.