The end of cows?

[Boustrophedon]

Chambers dictionary says:
milk /milk/
noun
1: A white liquid secreted by female mammals for the nourishment of their young
2: A milklike juice or preparation

Milky milky.

[TimW]

Ilkley

[dyqik]

Milk of magnesia is so called because of its resemblance to milk, but no-one is likely to confuse the two. Maybe we should extend the same credit to consumers of nut milk.

Ditto the milk of the rubber tree, and coconut milk.

[Gfamily]

Amusing that the OED has this for the sixth use of 'milk'

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[Bird on a Fire]

Investments in plant-based alternatives to meat lead to far greater cuts in climate-heating emissions than other green investments, according to one of the world’s biggest consultancy firms.

The report from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found that, for each dollar, investment in improving and scaling up the production of meat and dairy alternatives resulted in three times more greenhouse gas reductions compared with investment in green cement technology, seven times more than green buildings and 11 times more than zero-emission cars.

Investments in the plant-based alternatives to meat delivered this high impact on emissions because of the big difference between the greenhouse gases emitted when producing conventional meat and dairy products, and when growing plants. Beef, for example, results in six-to-30 times more emissions than tofu.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... port-finds

Go, free market, go!

[Sciolus]

Crikey. Private Eye's farming columnist, hardly a right-on firebrand, says we should eat less meat and dairy. They are mostly concerned about food self-sufficiency, but also say that "much of the land that is currently farmed with livestock or used to grow grain for chicken, pigs and cattle could then be released for rewilding."

[Bird on a Fire]

Crikey. Private Eye's farming columnist, hardly a right-on firebrand, says we should eat less meat and dairy. They are mostly concerned about food self-sufficiency, but also say that "much of the land that is currently farmed with livestock or used to grow grain for chicken, pigs and cattle could then be released for rewilding."

Awesome. The normies are fiiiiiinally catching up.

[Bird on a Fire]

Plant-based meat alternatives have suddenly become cheaper than their conventional counterparts, according to new figures. Compiled by supermarket researcher Questionmark on behalf of the Dutch branch of food awareness organization ProVeg International, the data shows how inflation and high raw material prices have caused animal meat prices to skyrocket in comparison with plant-based alt meats.

“Meat is much more sensitive to disruptions in the world market than meat alternatives”

https://vegconomist.com/market-and-tren ... therlands/

Plant proteins in general have been cheaper than meat for ages, if not forever, due to using orders of magnitude less resources. But at least in some economies even fake meat is cheaper than the dead animal version, which is good news. (Fake meat prices are basically stable, whereas dead animals have increased above inflation).

[shpalman]

Vegan activists have vowed to cause massive disruption to the UK’s milk supplies this month

Vegan activists have vowed to cause massive disruption to the UK’s milk supplies this month, as they demand the government supports a transition to a “plant-based food system” and rewild land used for animal pasture.

Animal Rebellion, an offshoot of Extinction Rebellion that focuses on the environmental harms of animal agriculture, claims it has hundreds of supporters willing to be arrested and go to prison for taking direct action.

The group also said it would take action at supermarkets in five UK cities on Saturday by blocking shoppers from reaching milk and dairy aisles.

[Bird on a Fire]

Sounds like a brilliant PR move. Unlike meat, dairy substitutes are more expensive AFAIAA (due to enormous taxpayer subsidies which need to be phased out).

Not great to put the blame on consumers, especially during a cost of living crisis, and disrupting the milk aisle isn't as effective a protest as disrupting e.g. a motorway.

Really wish activists could organise a bit more strategically against important targets, but it's not easy with all the police surveillance and infiltration and the fact that many of the most important targets would come under "anti-terror" legislation.

[Bird on a Fire]

Dutch city of Haarlem may be world’s first to ban most meat ads

The ban is proposed due to meat's hefty impact on global climate:

The UN says livestock generate more than 14% of all man-made greenhouse gases, including methane.

"Meat is very harmful to the environment. We cannot tell people that there is a climate crisis and encourage them to buy products that are part of it," Ziggy Klazes, a councillor from GroenLinks who drafted the motion, told the Trouw newspaper.

Some backlash from the usual types:

"The authorities are going too far in telling people what's best for them," said a spokesman from the Central Organisation for the Meat Sector.

The right-wing BVNL party called it an "unacceptable violation of entrepreneurial freedom" and said it "would be fatal for pig farmers".

"Banning commercials from politically born motives is almost dictatorial," Haarlem BVNL councillor Joey Rademaker said.

Yes sweetie, democratically elected governments passing motions is a dictatorship, while small groups of private interests conspiring to cook the entire planet is just "entrepreneurial freedom".

[Woodchopper]

Cultivated meat has been greenlit in the United States for the first time. The decision by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) means that a company called Upside Foods will soon be able to sell chicken made from real animal cells grown in bioreactors instead of requiring the slaughter of live animals.

A positive response from the FDA has long been seen as the next major milestone for the cultivated meat industry. In the past few years, startups in the space have built small-scale production facilities and raised billions of dollars in venture capital funding, but haven’t been able to sell their products to the public. Up until now, the small number of people invited to try cultivated meat have had to sign waivers acknowledging that the products are still experimental.

There are just two smaller regulatory steps remaining until cultivated meat can be made available to the public. Upside’s production facilities still require a grant of inspection from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the food itself will need a mark of inspection before it can enter the US market. These two steps are likely to be completed much more quickly than the long FDA premarket consultation process that resulted in the approval.

“It’s the moment we’ve been working toward for the past, almost seven years now,” says Uma Valeti, Upside’s CEO. “Opening up the US market is what every company in the world is trying to do.”

Different startups are focusing on a range of cultivated meats, including beef, chicken, salmon, and tuna. This announcement applies only to Upside Foods and its cultured chicken, although it’s likely that other declarations will follow soon. The products have been greenlit through an FDA process called Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS). Through this process, food manufacturers provide the FDA with details of their production process and the product it creates, and once the FDA is satisfied that the process is safe, it then issues a “no further questions” letter.

The FDA decision means that cultivated meat products may soon be available to the public to try, although it’s likely that tastings will be limited to a very small number of exclusive restaurants. Michelin-starred chef Dominique Crenn has already announced that she will serve Upside Foods’ cultivated chicken at her restaurant Atelier Crenn in San Francisco.

Valeti says that he wants the public to have their first taste of Upside chicken through selected restaurants before they can buy and cook it at home. “We would want to bring this to people through chefs in the initial stage,” says Valeti. “Getting chefs excited about this is a really big deal for us. We want to work with the best partners who know how to cook well, and also give us feedback on what we could do better.”

Atelier Crenn won’t be the first restaurant to serve cultivated meat, however. In December 2020, Singaporean regulators gave the green light to cultivated chicken from the San Francisco–based startup Eat Just. The chicken nuggets were sold at a members-only restaurant called 1880 and later made available for delivery.

[…]

growing cells in this way is still extremely expensive. Startups keep the exact cost of growing their cells tightly under wraps, but it’s likely that pure cultivated meat will still be several times the cost of conventional meat. Some projections for future facilities suggest that even large facilities will produce meat at a cost of $17 per pound—which would translate into much higher prices in restaurants and grocery stores. Because of this price premium, it’s likely that the first cultivated meat products released to the public will be a blend of animal cells and plant-based meat.

The FDA decision doesn’t mean that cultivated meat will be widely available in the near future. Current production facilities are very small, and many in the industry have serious reservations about lab-grown meat’s ability to eventually put a dent in global meat consumption. “The next phase for us and the industry is demonstrating scalability,” says Valeti, likening the cultivated meat industry today to the electric car industry’s infancy. “Our industry is similar in that it’ll take five, 10, 15 years to scale up and for most people to access it in many parts of the world. But it is the future.”

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lab-grown-meat-approval

[Grumble]

It absolutely seems like the kind of thing that might have a learning curve reducing cost in the future. Be interesting to see if that does happen.

[Bird on a Fire]

Definitely.

I also wonder if blending with plant material might be a long-term part of the answer - cheap lean plant protein for the bulk, with animal cells providing the extra whatever (authentic flavour, presumably).

Potentially very good news for the climate and biodiversity if it can replace beef especially, and it would be nice to stop hunting red-listed top predators (tuna) too.

[Woodchopper]

I agree, it should be possible to scale up production, though that may take some time. Novel products like brontosaurus burgers would be interesting. It looks like they have enough venture capital for now at least.

[Woodchopper]

I also wonder if blending with plant material might be a long-term part of the answer - cheap lean plant protein for the bulk, with animal cells providing the extra whatever (authentic flavour, presumably).

Yes, for burgers, sausages, nuggets etc.

As far as I’m aware the main consumer problem with existing plant based products is texture.

[shpalman]

I also wonder if blending with plant material might be a long-term part of the answer - cheap lean plant protein for the bulk, with animal cells providing the extra whatever (authentic flavour, presumably).

Yes, for burgers, sausages, nuggets etc.

As far as I’m aware the main consumer problem with existing plant based products is texture.

I've switched to using tofu instead of chicken for the curry I make and portion up for lunches during the week.

[dyqik]

I also wonder if blending with plant material might be a long-term part of the answer - cheap lean plant protein for the bulk, with animal cells providing the extra whatever (authentic flavour, presumably).

Yes, for burgers, sausages, nuggets etc.

As far as I’m aware the main consumer problem with existing plant based products is texture.

Texture is the main reason that I don't eat much meat apart from burgers, sausages, nuggets, ham

[Bird on a Fire]

It's an interesting one.

It's clear to me that texture is a key difference between real and ersatz meat. I'm not keen on it either - the replacement of bean burgers with fakemeat burgers isn't to my taste, for example. But I can see its being very noticeable, and "different from expectations" is generally bad with food.

One wonders how long a preference for meaty fibrousness would last following a large-scale switch to plant protein.

For instance, I know people who don't like the muscly, gamey free-range chickens from their family farm because they prefer shop-bought battery meat. But I bet a generation ago there were folk who didn't like the newfangled kind.

[Al Capone Junior]

I'll eat the produced protein over dead animals. Extra GMOs for me please!

I was happy for them but pissed for myself that aqua advantage salmon sold out b4 I could get any

[Woodchopper]

Interesting comparison of carbon emissions produced by different meats and meat substitutes: https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/ca ... ubstitutes

As most people here are from Europe, when compared to European production lab grown meat has lower emissions than beef, but not pork and chicken. That’s because the processes use a lot of energy. But as mentioned in the article it’s likely that the technology will become more efficient as it matures.

[dyqik]

Interesting comparison of carbon emissions produced by different meats and meat substitutes: https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/ca ... ubstitutes

As most people here are from Europe, when compared to European production lab grown meat has lower emissions than beef, but not pork and chicken. That’s because the processes use a lot of energy. But as mentioned in the article it’s likely that the technology will become more efficient as it matures.

And as the energy production mix in Europe shifts to lower emissions per kWh, that number will drop even without any technological improvements.

[Bird on a Fire]

That is interesting, thanks. An important caveat for Europe is that she's using the "lower bound" of values for European meat, rather than the mean, to represent the most sustainable meat production.

So s consumer or restaurant etc could get lower carbon meat than lab-grown meat currently,, but probably only if they're trying to source it specifically.

The calculations also don't include land footprint. That's more of an issue for lamb and beef anyway, though.

[shpalman]

The Guardian can reveal that the government’s upcoming land use strategy will not include a reduction in area used for animal agriculture in England.

Eighty-five per cent of the land that feeds the UK is committed to animal agriculture. A government-commissioned food strategy by Henry Dimbleby last year found that for a sustainable future, this has to be reduced, leading to a 30% cut in the average amount of meat consumption. Intensive and excessive animal agriculture leads to carbon emissions as well as pollution and the degradation of nature. It also uses an amount of land found by experts to be unsustainable.

[shpalman]

I tried a vegan burger with 'bacon' and 'cheese' and it was pretty much slop in a bun so the sooner synthetic substitutes are affordable, the better.

I can't eat dairy so any vegan version of very strong cheddar that isn't vaguely cheesy coconut crap would be welcome. Could there be a synthetic cheese that doesn't affect us lacto-wimps?

That probably depends on the exact variety of lacto-wimpage. Very strong cheddar should be essentially lactose free naturally, but there are other forms of reaction to milk components.

Texture of veggie burgers is a constant battle for my wife. Impossible and Beyond burger seems to be better than most, but doesn't hold together as well as medium-well ground beef - at all levels of doneness it seems to be about rare to medium rare texture, which isn't necessarily what you want in a burger.

Sales at Beyond Meat have slumped by almost a third as consumers opt for cheaper animal protein amid the cost of living crisis.