November 2021
We're in a mess.
Our climate's crumbling and our ecosystem's in collapse.
Human 'progress' has become a one-way street, in which we're leaving a trail of devastation behind us and facing ever-more bleak views ahead.
In fact, we appear to be digging our own grave, and don't seem to know how to stop.
The most favoured proposal for saving mankind from himself has long been based on getting animals out of our diet.
Dr. Kellogg (1852-1943), inventor of the Corn Flake, also invented the veggie burger for just this purpose. He wasn't too fussed about the planet, the weather, the beasts in the field, or the birds and the bees, but as a Seventh-Day Adventist was moved to promote health and purity in the community in preparation for the second coming of Christ. Eating meat he perceived as the cause of man's moral and physical downfall, so he created an alternative made of wheat gluten, peanuts and soya to assist people in sticking to their vegetarian diets.
The Kellogg burger was soon exploited by people with a less philanthropic, more commercial mindset, and turned into products that more resembled real burgers and sausages.
As our soya-processing skills developed, all manner of fake animal products came on the market, culminating in burgers (with lots of GM ingredients) so like the dead-cow version that they 'bleed' [1].
Few of us can have missed the rise in veganism in recent years. For some, this is an animal welfare issue, for others veganism is "the only ethical response to what is arguably the world's most urgent social justice issue", the "iniquitous and grotesque ... diversion of ever wider tracts of arable land from feeding people to feeding livestock". Above all, "switching to a plant-based diet ... would reduce the global requirement for farmland by 76%", allow biodiversity to thrive in re-wilded areas, and "give us a fair chance of feeding the world" (Monbiot).
But, why stop at eliminating livestock? Why not eliminate agriculture too? After all, with 'precision fermentation' of specialised microbes and 'cell-based meat' it seems we can have food which is 'healthier', 'cheaper', 'refined', and completely farm-free.
Note. 'Refined' seems to mean constructed by humans from simple ingredients, while 'healthier' seems to come from not including any ingredients considered unhealthy. 'Cheaper' seems to be evidence-free because no one's carried out a whole system life-cycle analysis of these artificial systems.
This plan to save the world proposes the creation of huge industrial complexes in the desert, powered by solar panels. These will include giant vats of bacteria able to use hydrogen and oxygen (both generated from water) as their energy source to grow biomass. Also required will be the manufacturing capacity to produced ammonia from the nitrogen in the air (using high temperature and pressure), carbon dioxide captured from the air (via industry), and trace elements (presumably mined).
These unusual bacteria have a naturally high protein content of up to 70-75%. With genetic modification, they can be programmed to produce whatever food-like materials we choose.
Comment. The leader in this 'precision fermentation' is 'Solar Foods', a Finnish company which describes its product as "Food out of thin air". There's no mention of the extensive industrial input into the fermentation system.
Solar Foods stress that the protein produced is "natural". This will be true until the bacteria are genetically modified for specific purposes, but it will never be a natural human food.
The Company also describes its proposed fermenters as cosily familiar "almost identical to ones used in breweries and wineries". This may be true of the basic structure of the vat, but beer- and wine-making are ancient arts using yeast not bacteria, and using plant extracts not artificially generated hydrogen nor captured CO2 as a nutritional input nor ammonia nor trace element supplements.
Besides the staple carbohydrates, proteins and fats for our food, the bacterial cultures can be extended to generating the organic nutrients and growth factors needed to culture GM animal cells. That way, we can 'grow' meat, milk, eggs and fish on a factory floor.
Note. Animal cells don't like being outside of a body: genetic modification is necessary to create the DNA defects which make them grow, cancer-like, forever.
There are no plans (yet) to do away with old-fashioned fruit and veg growing in the dirt, taking up space and elbowing wild-life out the way.
Here are some of the views expressed about cultured-not-grown-nor-bred food:
Journalist and food-writer, Joanna Blythman, sees it as arrogance, not altruism: "when ideologues living in affluent countries, where obesity, type 2 diabetes, and neuroticism around food are rampant, when they try to pressurise poor countries into eschewing animal foods and going plant-based, they're displaying crass insensitivity and a colonial white saviour mindset".
Simon Fairlie points out that there are landless millions in the world who depend entirely on livestock able to feed on waste and common ground, while Chris Smage writes pointedly "historically, getting people out of farming has rarely ended well for the ex-farmers, and there are more farmers in the world than any other single job". At the same time as we're forcing farmers to eat bacterial gloop to save the world (which we messed up in the first place), what will we do with them: put them to work in the fake-food factories?
As the US Organic Consumers Association says in response to Monbiot's presentation on 'precision fermentation' and legless meat at the 2020 Oxford Farming Conference: "There wasn't much mention of health either. But that's par for the course in the techno-food world". In light of the deaths and disabilities caused by tryptophan, a refined GM bacteria-generated 'health' supplement which went seriously wrong (see below), there's no excuse for avoiding health and safety questions.
The tryptophan disaster
"An epidemic of a new disease, termed Eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome, occurred in the USA in 1989. This syndrome was linked to the consumption of L-tryptophan manufactured by a single company utilizing a fermentation process. All the findings indicate that the illness was probably triggered by an impurity formed when the manufacturing conditions were modified. This outbreak highlights the need for close monitoring of the chemical purity of biotechnology-derived products, and for rigorous testing of such products following any significant changes to the manufacturing process." (Mayeno & Gleich)
So far, the evidence on bacterial-food isn't encouraging. In a small-scale feeding trial of highly processed test 'food' from a culture of similar bacteria back in 1969, two thirds of participants experienced unpleasant side-effects such as vertigo, vomiting and diarrhoea (symptoms which could prove fatal to vulnerable individuals). Also, despite the extent of the processing carried out, some viable bacteria were found to have survived in the finished 'food'.
OUR COMMENT
What we are now beginning to realise about the links between our gut microbes, our health and disease [2] (which Dr Kellogg had his own insight into a long time ago) is that we should be very, very wary of extreme man-made offerings.
The bottom line here is that every GM bacterial product introduced into our diet from 'precision fermentation' would have to be extensively and expensively safety tested in all sectors of the population which might consume it and in all environments where its waste products might end up.
As you're tucking into your cancer-burger on a bacterial bun, spare a thought for vulnerable individuals in the world: are we really smart enough to reconstruct 'food' appropriate for the vast areas of the globe where populations suffer from under-nutrition? The last thing they, or the obesity- and diabetes-ridden people of the West, need is more processed food.
It's easy-as-pie to find ways of patenting processed, GM novelties. This, plus the necessary scale of the industrial and haulage infrastructure, and the limitations on appropriate locations needed to produce fermenter- and cell-culture-based 'foods', make corporate control inevitable. The system will be all about profit from 'food' sold to people who have money to buy it, not about feeding the hungry or regenerating the planet. Realistically, bacterial sludge will be fed to the masses, while those who have plenty of money will continue to eat pricey, niche-market real food. Nothing and no one will be saved, the starving will continue to starve, and the age-old division of humanity into 'haves' and 'have-nots' will be preserved.
Let's face it, the Kellogg dream of a healthy humanity looks vanishingly unlikely, and there's every possibility that "the vast majority of the bioreactor-fed population may grow increasingly sick in body and mind" (Robinson).
If it strikes you as absurd to address the problems our smart alec technofixes have caused us by applying ever-more extreme smart alec technofixes, you might well be asking yourself why is this happening: watch out for THE WHY OF FAKE FOOD- November 2021.
Background
[1] IMPOSSIBLE, INCREDIBLE, AWESOME, BEYOND ... - January 2020
[2] A TALE OF MICROBES, YOUR GUT AND DISEASE - December 2019
SOURCES:
Chris Smage quoted in Will lab-grown food really save the plant? GM Watch 14.01.20
Simon Fairlie, Meat - A Benign Extravagance, 2010, ISBN 978-1-85623-055-1
Clare Robinson, Will lab-grown food really save the planet? GM Watch 14.01.20
George Monbiot, Electric food - the new sci-fi diet that could save our planet, Guardian 31.10.18
George Monbiot, Lab-grown food will soon destroy farming - and save the planet, Opinion, The Guardian, 8.01.20
Pat Thomas, Save the Planet - By Destroying Farming? Organic Consumers Association, 16.01.20
Joanna Blythman quoted in Oliver Morrison, Cultured meat is fool's gold, www.foodnavigator.com, 10.01 20
Ernie Smith, The History of Fake Meat Starts With the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, www.atlasobscura.com, 17.08.15
John Harvey Kellogg Facts, https://biography.yourdictionary.com
Ilje Pikaar, et al., December 2018, Carbon emission avoidance and capture by producing in-reactor microbial biomass based food, feed and slow relase fertilizer: Potentials and limitations, Science of The Total Environment 644
Haber-Bosch process, Encyclopaedia Britannica
Carol I. Waslien, et al., January 1969, Human Intolerance to Bacteria as Food, Nature 221
False claims and miracles from the new vegan religion, Sustainable Food Trust, 10.01.20
Liz Specht, An Analysis of culture medium costs and production volumes for cell-based meat, The Good Food Institute, 13.02.19
Arthur N. Mayen and Gerald J. Gleich, September 1994, Eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome and tryptophan production: a cautionary tale, TIBTECH 12
https://solarfoods.fi/
Photo: Wiki Commons
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