The Cow – Most Successful & Most Miserable of Species
Food 2.0 is Nigh – Will Daisy be Free at Last?

That many of us believe we are headed a dystopic world seems clear from the fact that not a week goes by without a book, movie or cable TV series being put out depicting some new or rehashed variation on a dystopic theme.

Visions of the future, dystopic or utopic, have ever haunted our imaginations. Dystopias really came into their own mid 20th century with Huxley’s eugenic vision “Brave New World” (1931) and Orwell’s totalitarian nightmare “1984”, in 1949. By mid 1960’s with Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove, followed by a succession of blockbuster disaster movies, the genre had come of age.

Of note was a book by Harry Harrison in 1966 entitled “Room, More Room”. The story was basically a detective story based in New York 33 years on in 1999, by when the world’s population had reached 7 billion and New York 36 million. The author got it about half right at least. World population reached 7 billion in 2011. New York’s population was still only 8.4 million in 2013. The backdrop to the detective story and accompanying love interest was runaway population growth and how to feed people. The answer was the mass production of a basic staple called Soylent, made from soybean and lentils.

“But”, I hear some of you say, “that’s not right, it was made from… People!”. No, that was a dark twist to the tale added for the movie, Soylent Green, which hit the screens six years later in 1973.

Few of us, except those who know nothing else, have not noticed that the cost of our food has increased enormously in the last decade. Ordinary foods, pretty much staples, but food that is real and was once cheap now seems to be priced as luxuries. Only the nutritional illusion provided by packaged processed foods appear to be affordable, though in fact they are very bad value. With world population heading toward 10 billion within our lifetime, shrinking purchasing power, growing economic disparities, nuclear breakout on the cards within the decade, our screens reporting daily atrocities, is it any wonder we get the feeling the world is not headed in a good way?

Is it Really all Going to Hell?

Honest answer – maybe. It does look like we may be in for a rough ride as we’re forced to adapt to climate change. But will most of us starve due to climate change and overpopulation? Probably not. Not if we’re smart. We now know how to feed ourselves efficiently and nutritiously. And, more to the point, the people who will bring us cheap nutritious food stand to make untold billions by engineering a food revolution needed to do it.

It means we must radically alter the way we obtain most of our food. We don’t actually need to eat the cow that processes the plant nutrients for us. In fact, given the toxic way most of the animals we eat are raised, it’s better we don’t. We already have the technology to use plant biomass and do it ourselves, more cheaply and more healthily than an animal. What’s more, the taste and texture can be bio-engineered to be identical.

Think for a minute what means. The end of industrial livestock farming. We won’t have to kill billions of mammals daily. We won’t have to raise them, medicate them, cut down forests to feed them, dismember and package them. Apart from a few specialist farms, these animals could return to their natural state, smaller herds roaming the vast territories now freed up from growing corn to feed them. Vast tracts can live again, freed from the daily tsunamis of animal ordure that pollutes the land, the rivers and the oceans.

The UN and other bodies estimate we kill and eat about 55 billion animals per year, not including fish. We’re talking cows, sheep, pigs and hens in the main. That’s 150 million animals slaughtered every day. Why do it if we can get the same if not better food more efficiently another way?

Silicon Valley to the Rescue

We’ve heard this sort of global world-changer scenario before but somehow nothing much seems to change. It is possible vested interests in the meat-raising and processing industries might delay things, but I doubt they’ll manage to derail this gravy train for long. There’s just too much money to made by too many people. It’s also the smart thing to do.

The Princes of Venture Capital are hungry for the new Big Idea, one that will radically change the world for the better, make new fortunes while lending added lustre to their big swinging reps as Masters of the Multiverse.

They think the new Big Idea is Food 2.0

Already hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in food biotech startups, companies such as Impossible Foods, Hampton Creek, Soylent, Beyond Meat and Modern Meadow by such major players as Bill Gates, Li Ka Shing’s Horizon Ventures, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures and August Capital. There’s also keen interest from the world’s major international food chains: Walmart, Costco and Target and Tesco (UK).

Howard Hartenbaum of August Capital sums it up, “everybody eats food. It’s one of the largest potential markets in the world. If it works the market is ungodly huge”.

We Don’t need the Cow…

In Redwood City, beating heart of Silicon Valley, watching a burger being prepared for him sits Tim Bradshaw, the FT’s San Francisco correspondent. Having eaten the burger he reports it tastes just as a burger should, with exactly the same smell and texture. But, he goes on to relate, the ‘meat’ has never been near a cow or a meadow: it’s made entirely of vegetables in Redwood City by Impossible Foods. CEO Pat Brown comments, “we make meat a better way, transforming cheap abundant biomass into meat same way a cow does – only without the cow”.

Josh Tetrick, Ceo of Hampton Creek, aims to liberate the millions of battery hens from terminal servitude by replacing eggs with a variety of Canadian yellow pea. His first product Just Mayo is pretty far along. Next he plans replacing sugar and eggs in sour cream, salad dressing, cakes and mixes.

“Innovation in food was all about making Doritos crunchier”, says Tetrick. “It wasn’t about how in hell do we feed 12 billion people in 2050 in a way that sustains them?”. Josh is doing his bit with the Just Mayo, which will be 40% more cost effective than using eggs while improving public health and benefiting the environment.

Rob Rhinehart, Soylent’s CEO, doesn’t care how food tastes he wants to replace it. He’s already brought to market a gooey beige drink containing all the nutrients you need to be healthy. It’s concocted to be bland so people don’t get tired of it and they can add their own flavours. No foodie he, Rob reckons the time wasted shopping and preparing food could be better spent elsewhere. He’s been proved right. Not only has he attracted investor support but he can’t produce enough of the stuff. He does allow that breaking bread, real bread, with family and friends is hard to beat, but otherwise…..

Other start-ups hot on the veggie trail are Beyond Meat with plant protein products and modern Meadow, a New York-based company that uses muscle-cell cultivation to grow new bio materials (read meatless steaks, etc.).

The logic and the economics seem inescapable. There is no scientific reason why we can’t cut animals out of the food chain and eat vegatable-based food that is just as good for us, just as tasty as before, if not better, and do it a lot cheaper. There is every reason why we should. The benefits to the Planet of our doing so are incalculable.

ParacelsusAsia
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The Cow – Most Successful & Most Miserable of Species Food 2.0 is Nigh – Will Daisy be Free at Last?

The Cow – Most Successful & Most Miserable of Species
Food 2.0 is Nigh – Will Daisy be Free at Last?