DOWNTOWN ‘FACTORY FARMS’: How cultured meat technology will change restaurant menus for the better
Why ship food from hundreds of miles away into a city when you can build a cellular agriculture farm in the middle of downtown? Minus the cow. Supply constraints on a type of fish due to overfishing? That same cut of fish can be produced outside of the ocean.
LEJJY GAFOUR: Much of how software and computing have changed how we work day to day, biotechnology and food will do the same for how we eat. The industry goes by many names: cellular agriculture, lab-grown meat, cultured meat, and cultivated meat, to name a few. The technologies of cellular agriculture will shift how we produce food directly and the entire supply chain around it. Something that was once only thought of as science fiction — the ability to create food without needing the animal — is already here today…
A far-reaching implication of cultured meat is the companies working to create culinary experiences and nutrition profiles that are impossible through traditional agriculture. The success of this is evident in Singapore at the restaurant 1880, where cultivated chicken is already being served. The entire experience is more than simply “just” a piece of chicken made in a novel way… With the common cuts of meat in the western world consisting of beef, chicken, pork, and types of fish, the potential exists to domesticate any animal without needing the animal itself. The range of potential dishes and flavors is unexplored and waiting to be discovered…
This idea extends to nearly every product you can think of that typically needs an animal’s body to create. Remember that you are creating these products in a controlled environment rather than an animal, which massively reduces the time, space, water, and potential energy required to make products, enabling production models that are not possible by any other means.
Why ship food from hundreds of miles away into a city when you can build a cellular agriculture “farm” in the middle of downtown to act as your primary supplier? Are you concerned about how the leather for your shoes was produced? Your shoes can be made of genuine leather minus the cow. Supply constraints on a type of fish due to overfishing? That same cut of fish can be produced outside of the ocean. Is an area too arid or too cold to raise livestock? As long as there is the ability to generate enough power to run it, a factory that can produce protein for an area could conceivably be spun up to serve the community…
Cellular agriculture represents a comprehensive option to reduce the environmental impact of food production, which extends into the potential reduction of food system waste. An estimated 17% of food grown worldwide in 2019 was wasted, amounting to 931 million tons. While the consumer side is often pinned with the blame for wasting food, the supply side is no different. Overproduction and overconsumption leading to waste go hand in hand. At the same time, we risk empty shelves and the ability to handle shocks to our production systems, as we experienced during the pandemic, if we do not have enough slack.
Therein is another potential aim of the cultivated meat industry — the ability to increase or decrease food supply in several months or weeks instead of entire seasons. And allowing restaurant owners and patrons to positively impact the climate by simply choosing to buy products produced through these novel methods… With the urgent need to cut greenhouse gas emissions and the world’s food systems accounting for over one-third of total global greenhouse gas emissions, we likely do not even have a choice but to create smarter, cleaner, and more sustainable alternatives to feed the world. SOURCE…
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