Earlier this year, the Grocery Gazette reported that the UK was set to be a world-leading developer of lab-grown meat. In the recent past, Guardian climate hysteric George Monbiot claimed lab-grown food “will soon destroy farming – and save the planet”. Alas, such boosterism is being challenged by hard facts. Lab-grown meat is up to 25 times worse for the environment since it needs ‘pharmaceutical-grade’ production to make it fit for human consumption. In particular, there is a need to remove endotoxin from the cultured mix, a substance that in concentrations as low as one billionth of a gram per millilitrie can reduce human IVF pregnancy success rate by up to four fold.
These are the startling conclusions of ground-breaking work recently published by a group of chemists and food scientists from the University of California. It turns out that ‘pharma to food’ production is a significant technological challenge. The major problem with lab meat is that it uses growth organisms that have to be highly purified to help animal cells multiply. Compared with environmental savings on land, water and greenhouses gases, the whole bio-process is noted to be “orders of magnitude” higher than rearing the actual animal.
“Our findings suggest that cultured meat is not inherently better for the environment than conventional beef. It’s not a panacea,” said co-author Edward Spang, an associate professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology. The study found that even across scenarios using lower pharma standards, efficient beef production outperforms cultured meat within a range from four to 25 times. This suggests that investment to advance more ‘climate-friendly’ beef production may yield greater reductions in emissions.
The route to New Zero is littered with improbable technologies that promise much – and give endless opportunities for virtue signalling – but deliver little. While many countries press ahead with plans to destroy conventional animal husbandry, the options for new ways of actually feeding populations look thin on the ground. To be fair to Monbiot, he has picked up on the problems of lab meat, noting in a recent blog post that “the more I’ve read about cultured meat and fish, and the more I’ve come to appreciate the phenomenal complexities involved… the more I doubt this vision will come to pass”. Always the worrier, Monbiot asks, “How can mass starvation best be averted”? Not removing the 337.18 million tonnes of global meat production in favour of flaky factory solutions might be a start.
The California study could throw a major stick into the spokes of the lab-grown meat bandwagon, which to date has had a largely uncritical mainstream media ride. Grocery Gazette’s cheer-leading report noted that the sector was predicted to “rapidly increase its market share within the food industry”. Research was quoted suggesting cell cultured meat was expected to make up almost quarter of global meat consumption by 2035.
The authors in California acknowledge that lab-grown meat ventures have attracted around $2 billion of investment to date. Early reports on feasibility were bullish with some predicting a 60-70% displacement of beef by 2030-2040. But of late, sentiment has waned with more conservative estimates noting a 0.5% share of meat products by 2030. As noted, the huge problem in producing lab meat is the presence of endotoxin which is said have a variety of side effects including harm to in vitro fertilisation. In pharmaceutical labs, animal cell culture is traditional done with endotoxin having been removed. There are many ways to remove the unwanted substance, but the use of these refinement methods “contributes significantly to the economic and environmental costs associated with pharmaceutical products since they are both energy and resource intensive”.
The study also highlights concerns about past scientific consideration of lab-grown meat. There is said to be “high levels of uncertainty in their results and the lack of accounting for endotoxin removal”. It is further noted that despite researchers “clearly reporting high levels of uncertainty”, the results were often cited as clear evidence for the sustainability of lab-grown meat.
So a much-touted green Frankenstein food solution – arguably to a problem only promoted in alarmist circles – looks to be biting the dust, sweeping away a billion or two of credulous capital in the process. As the authors note, investing in scaling this technology “before solving key issues like developing an environmentally friendly method for endotoxin removal… would be counter to the environmental goals which this sector has espoused”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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People that would enjoy eating such a product must be devoid of all logic and have no real sense of joy in their lives. Truly quite sad!
Same who are busy munching ‘plant’ based super processed garbage, refusing to have children, and freezing themselves in winter. All in order to ‘save the planet’ by adhering to ever more crackpot ideas cheered on by the virtue signallers-in-chief. Monbiot and his type really are the worst kind of humans. Soylent green anyone..?
I was at BBQ last week cooking quality butchers burgers and sausages. I asked my sister (not a veggie) if she wanted a burger she said ‘I’m not eating that muck’ then proceeded to tuck into a factory produced veggie burger and sausages with an ingredients list as long as your arm that taste like cardboard. We grew up on a farm.
I might “enjoy” it if it tasted good and was safe. Why wouldn’t I?
Big ifs though.
And of course, I won’t touch it if they try to shove it down my throat to “save the planet”.
It’s just so tiresome that everything is turned into a moral crusade of some sort.
I might “enjoy” it if it tasted good and was safe. Why wouldn’t I?
I distrust human ingenuity. Today’s hot new product is the absolutely stupid idea nobody should ever have come up with of tomorrow. With regards to food, conservatism is IMHO extremely prudent: Stick to what people have been eating for centuries as that’s known to work. Ignore any fads.
Safe? When the endotoxin referred to (‘…also known as lipopolysaccharides (LPS) are a critical component of the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria”) is derived from E Coli (the D&V bug) and as far as I can discover no published short or long term studies have been done on the effects of these frankenfoods on the gut biome or human metabolism more generally? I don’t think so.
I veiw lab grown meat the same way as vaccines, never in a million years will i even get close to any of that artificial crap!
The main reason is because non of it is nessasary!
“The main reason is because non of it is nessasary.”
While I don’t disagree with this comment my view is that these products are inherently dangerous. Furthermore, many of the problems with these foods could take ten years or more to reveal themselves as with the so-called “vaccines.” Cost cutting will become an absolute staple of the industry and epidemics of food poisoning spawned by this industry are more probable than not – who would have thought eh?
Food security can only be achieved by sticking to what works. Livestock and arable farming have been refined by mankind over many thousands of years and to be forced to turn our backs on these now highly specialised modes of food production reveals a deeply sinister intent – no surprises there.
Instead of seeking to destroy nature and farming we should be investing in ways to bring more wild, unused land into production. This does not require destruction of habitats just a more enlightened use of our land.
Here at over 600ft above sea level fruits of all types grow well. Commercial apple farming takes place in West Yorkshire as does a commercial vineyard at almost 1,000ft.
We could comfortably feed everyone on the planet if we harvested the thousands of years of accumulated wisdom and skill and set about broadening this sound base.
Nobody on here seems to support the notion of chemically created foods and why would they? Methods which have served mankind well for millenia are at risk of being lost and even destroyed in order to inflate the wallets and egos of a few evil megalomaniacs.
The truth is that synthetic foods are intended to further the control agenda and if allowed to develop will become calorie counters as well as population counters.
“Populations have increased by 5% this month Bill.”
“OK. CXY66 in the next “beef” run. That should get the numbers down.”
“Pandemics” are going to be manufactured with greater frequencies in the future and factory produced ‘protein’ is the perfect vector.
Artificial foods are about control and that includes population controls.
Artificial foods will be malevolent by design and dangerously so. If we do not fight against these developments Soylent Green will become a reality. All to save the planet.
Spot on Hux. I would just slightly disagree with the last sentence.
Supposedly all to save the planet, in reality to save the multi-billionaires who want to swan around the world without having the hoi polloi standing about in the way, taking up beach spaces and crowding historic sites and museums. Just enough plebs to serve the uber-lords, planet schmanet.
Thanks Jane.
Seconded 👏
Thanks Dinger 👍
Look out for the ones still wearing masks, using help-seed or soy milk, making a fuss about plastic, obsessive recyclers – and you have your subject.
there is much undiagnosed mental illness being exposed.
I recommend viewing the interview with Patrick Moore, ex founder of Greenpeace, on UKcolumn.org. He eviscerates totally the global warming scam.
Thanks for the link. I’d never heard of it. An interesting organisation and worth subscribing to I think.
I am a subscriber to UK Column and it is an incredibly sound news organisation. Why it is routinely ignored on DS is beyond me.
For those who want to understand what is happening in the farming industry have a watch of “Slaughtered” which is an incredibly moving and powerful film about the last Foot and Mouth epidemic in which Tony Bliar set about seeking to destroy livestock farming in the UK.
Not for the faint hearted.
Just found it. Another breath of fresh air. Thanks Rowland and Hux’ies for the nudge.
It’s a pleasure.
Three programmes per week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 1pm or at your convenience when loaded on to the website.
Yes he knows the truth , an actual poacher turned gamekeeper so to speak ! I thought it was it was the Old Star gazer himself at one point but this chap is the real Mc,coy !
Which would you rather see – fields of cows and sheep, contentedly grazing or vast factories, with the massive supply chains of transport feeding in the raw materials and consuming unspecified quantities of power?
A food product full of toxins, when has this ever stopped them.
The natural world seems to be better optimised for such tasks as producing meat and anything that lives, taking an ecosystem to do it. Thinking that can be replicated in a factory by scientists who could not explain consciousness is almost certainly doomed to toxic failure. However, corporations have money they can use to influence politicians and marketing departments to convince the public otherwise.
Yet another food product that adversely affects health. It never ceases to amaze me how so many people don’t seem to mind putting toxic muck into their bodies and then wonder for the rest of their lives why they get ill. Sadly there seems little doubt that this stuff will be promoted by the MSM and become as popular as diet coke.
Sort of reminds me of something else that around 80% of us in the UK were happy to have punped into their bloodstream – although mRNA jabs are of course both safe and effective.
It sounds rather like the “experts” push to get us to eat more carbs and stop eating animal fat, instead consuming seed oils and starch – necessary to bulk out products which have had the natural animal fat removed (ie yoghurts).
The result? An explosion in obesity and dementia, which it is now being suggested is directly linked to the reduction of animal fat in our diets.
My father in law veggie best part of his life, very fit low stress life style. Only animal fats he ate were in cheese. Got dementia at 80 ( Which I know is a good age). I always thought the dementia was due to the lack of animal fat in his diet.
The plural of “anecdote” is not “data”
Moon-bot is an idiot
It is an oddity that after decades of being told to eat healthy natural food, now unnatural foods – factory make butter aka margarine/low fat spread – highly factory processed vegetable matter as meat substitute, various ‘milks’ which have never been inside a mammal, and now factory made gloop that resembles meat.
However it is no longer about Human health, it’s about health of the Planet… aka Paganism.
Lab-Grown Meat Bioterrorism
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
The Million Leaflet Challenge
If 1,000 people delivered 1,000 = 1 million would be delivered
t.me/MillionLightPaperAndLeaflet
REFORMING” FOOD SAFETY PRACTICES TO RUSH THROUGH “SUSTAINABLE” FOODS
The UK’s Food Standard’s Agency is in the middle of a revision of its labelling and safety procedures that make it easier for “emerging foods” to bring products to market, according to a report in the The Grocer.
Beginning back in February, the UKFSA has been reviewing its practices for products which contain CBD and – perhaps most tellingly – insect protein.
One proposed reform is introducing a “triage system” which would create a [emphasis added]:
“priority lane” for certain applications, most likely based on the government’s policy agenda around bringing sustainable plant-based alternatives to market”
Another proposed change would be switching to the US system, essentially meaning foods are passed until proven unsafe rather, rather than banned until they are proven safe:
This would mean the threshold for what a company needs to demonstrate to establish their product is ‘safe’ might be more aligned to the US standard of ‘reasonably certain of no harm’ rather than the legacy EU precautionary principle which is a higher standard,”
It’s no secret what this “shake-up” is about, it’s about forcing through approval of lab-grown meat, insect burgers and other “new food”.
From Off-G.
https://off-guardian.org/2023/06/18/this-week-in-the-new-normal-66/
Always a good round up.
Engineered by the same people of stellar integrity that brought us the bioweapon injections. No thanks.
we scientists have a particular phrase to describe this sort of fantastical tomfoolery:
”it’s a load of faceless techno bollocks” – and that’s a scientific fact!
Why are environmental nutters fighting against nature. Where once again the only gain is in pharmaceutical company’s profits?