First off, that hed is terrible. And this could have gone in either Food and Drink or Environment; for that reason, I’m splitting the baby and putting it here, as the “this” referenced is still in research phases.
Inside an anonymous building in Oxford, Riley Jackson is frying a steak. The perfectly red fillet cut sizzles in the pan, its juices releasing a meaty aroma. But this is no ordinary steak. It was grown in the lab next door.
What’s strangest of all is just how real it looks. The texture, when cut, is indistinguishable from the real thing.
“That’s our goal,” says Ms Jackson of Ivy Farm Technologies, the food tech start-up that created it. “We want it to be as close to a normal steak as possible.”
Lab-grown meat is already sold in many parts of the world and in a couple of years, pending being granted regulatory approval, it could also be sold in the UK too - in burgers, pies and sausages.
The elephant in the room is the reporter got to see it and smell it being cooked, but because of the lack of approval, couldn’t speak to the taste.
The carbon footprint is of course dependent on the emissions of the power source. Heating is incredibly energy intensive, and electricity isn’t going to be the best bang for the buck (there’s a reason I have a diesel heater in the van) on account of just how much solar (especially in England) would be needed. It would still take up less land than a cattle ranch, which reduces the CO2 emissions to the chemical precursors.
A few things about that.
Heat pumps would be an option, with significantly improved efficiency. Heat pump water heaters are also a thing, so likely more suited for vats.
Colocation is an option; i.e., setting up shop in an industrial area and hooking up to waste heat from an existing facility. To me, that counts as carbon neutral. District heating is another option. No waste heat available? Locate next to geothermal.
I think we’re going to see more and more bespoke microgrids going forward. Data centers are already signing contracts for this, and an entirely indoor operation doesn’t really care about the climate the way cattle do, so siting is far more flexible.
The issue more than some abstract estimate of carbon emissions is how much capital they’re willing to put in up front to go net zero. In the modern world of line-go-up, it’s unlikely to be as much as a company that intends to be in it for the long haul to realize significant savings.
The use of chemicals often means petroleum is involved, but as this is a proprietary blend, there’s no way to say for certain. Biofuels could be a replacement for long-chain hydrocarbons if they’re used. I doubt they’d want that level of chemistry from scratch brought in house, but it’s an option. Still, it’s the only other place in the chain where phantom CO2 can go unreported even if the operation itself is net zero.
As someone who reported on the energy sector for the better part of a year, there are a lot of technologies, some more mature than others, that simply aren’t in mainstream consciousness. This article’s emissions estimates seem to take a more conventional view, and during proof-of-concept and ramp-up, I’m sure the figures are reasonable, but by the time we hit industrial scale, even more energy tech will be mature.
Talking about what the economics would look like in, say, five years (which is on the low end for industrial scale) is a fool’s errand. Case in point: Model anything you like out by five years from December 2019 and see how accurate those predictions go.
That’s the energy side.
As to the ethical concerns, as far as I’m aware, reducing animal suffering is a big portion of the impetus behind lab-grown meat. My ex and I had a rabbitry for a couple of years (pets to start, but when you have two males and two females, you end up with a shitton of bunnies in short order), so I’ve gotten to witness skinning and butchering (I couldn’t bring myself to be in the washroom as she performed the actual slaughter). It’s horrific, and I had a very hard time eating something I’d fed and cared for.
Land use is not only about the grazing land; the land used for feedstock in traditional beef production isn’t insignificant, either, nor is the agricultural water use from growing said crops. So we’re talking a lot of land that can be repurposed in aggregate should cultivated meat scale.
On balance, I see zero downside. The lower bound of 1.2kg of carbon per 1kg of meat may well be trumped simply by transportation emissions for the finished product, but in total, there’s no way it’s not a significant improvement in terms of greenhouse gases. It’s 100% more humane, and land- and water-use considerations are a slam dunk.
Once they’ve nailed flavour, there’s lots of reason for optimism. I’m not paying five times as much for something that gets 90% of the way to the real thing, and in many such scenarios, that last 10% is by far the most difficult. Parity on price, taste, texture and Malliard reactions will be what ahem brings me to the table.