Citizen Cartwright

AP’s protein problem series: Meat substitutes

For people who want to do their part to limit climate change but find going meatless unpalatable, there are plant-based and lab-grown meat options.

 

Plant-based meat

 

According to a University of Michigan study, if half of U.S. animal-based food was replaced with plant-based substitutes by 2030, the reduction in emissions for that year would be the equivalent of taking 47.5 million vehicles off the road.

"An explosion of new types of plant-based 'meat' — the burgers, nuggets, sausages and other cuts that closely resemble meat but are made from soybeans and other plants — is attracting customers all over the world," says The Associated Press. "Even in Germany, where cities like Hamburg and Frankfurt have given their names to iconic meat dishes, plant-based meat is becoming more popular."

But sales aren’t growing fast enough in enough places to reverse the global boom in meat consumption, AP says. To many people, it's still a novelty.

 

Lab-grown meat

 

More than 150 startups are working on meat that doesn’t require raising and killing animals, that's affordable and tastes and feels like the meat people are used to. 

Companies using cell biology to make so-called “cultivated,” or “cultured” meat, which also is popularly known as “lab-grown” meat, are trying to scale up quickly — partnering with traditional meat companies, drawing more and more investors and breaking ground on new production facilities in the United States and elsewhere, AP says.

But widespread adoption of meat from cells is nowhere near assured: The meat is expensive to make. There are scientific challenges, like learning how to mimic the complex structure of steak. Government regulation is another obstacle; only the United States and Singapore allow sales of cultivated meat.

AP’s protein problem series: ‘Raising better beef’

Worldwide, beef is the biggest agricultural source of greenhouse gases, and it has a bigger carbon footprint than any other type of protein, reports The Associated Press.

Climate scientists say the remedy is simple: Eat less beef and raise fewer cattle. 

 

But even with the wide availability of plant protein and the popularity of initiatives like Meatless Monday, most people around the world are eating more beef, not less, AP says. And as the population grows and more people move into the middle class, demand is expected to grow.

 

Researchers and an increasing number of ranchers agree that there are solutions that address climate change and satisfy demand, AP says.

 

They point to efforts to change the way cattle are raised to develop feed supplements that reduce gas releases, and to make genetic breakthroughs so animals digest their food without creating harmful gases.

 

For some ranchers, the solution is in the practice of regenerative ranching. In theory, it’s a holistic way to look at the earth, animals and water and the way they all interact. In practice, it’s an exhausting, never-ending process of moving cattle to different pastures in an effort to restore the soil, AP says.

The world’s ‘protein problem’

Before Thanksgiving, The Associated Press published a series of articles titled “The Protein Problem," on the global increase in animal food products and the environmental impacts.

 

It felt kinda churlish and out of sync to focus on the series in the run up to America’s Turkey Day but seems appropriate now, in the run up to the global climate talks starting Nov. 30.

 

In 1961, there were about 61.5 grams of protein available daily per person worldwide, and 32 percent came from animal sources, AP says. In 2020, 84.5 grams were available, with about 40 percent from animals.

 

"But livestock take up land, and the animals need to be fed," notes AP. "Some eat grains, which need cropland to grow. Others, like cattle and sheep, can eat grasses in pastures. That doesn’t require additional cropland, but the animals nevertheless emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas. And in some places, forests are being cut down to create these pastures."

 

So AP says its series "shows you some of the possible solutions, including better ways to raise beef and farm fish – and even ways to create meat without animals."

 

Let's look at details of some of the articles as time permits over coming days.

White House conference on hunger, nutrition, health

The conference led by President Biden on Wednesday was the second ever. 

 

The first White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health, in 1969, helped lead to the creation of school lunch programs, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, and changes to the way we label foods, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

 

This time around, the goal is "an America where no one wonders whether they will have enough money to put food on the table, where the healthy food choice is the easier choice, and where everyone has the same opportunity to be physically active" by 2030, according to the Biden administration’s strategy document.

 

The administration has gotten more than $8 billion in commitments, says a White House fact sheet. For example:

 

— The Food Industry Association says its members will donate 2 billion meals in 2023 to food banks and other anti-hunger organizations; make it easier to use SNAP and WIC benefits online and in retail settings; and promote consumer education on healthy foods – committing to reach a minimum of 100 million consumers annually from 2023 to 2030.

 

— The National Head Start Association says it will facilitate Head Start enrollment for about 100,000 children through the Department of Health and Human Service’s new SNAP eligibility pathway over the next three years.

 

— Pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk says it will invest $20 million over the next three years in at least six new locally led initiatives to improve access to healthy foods and safe spaces for physical activity in marginalized communities.

 

In conjunction with the conference, the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday proposed new rules to align the definition of "healthy" food more closely with current nutrition science.

Eating to protect the planet

I’ve mentioned before that I appreciate the Nutrition Action newsletter published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

 

The April issue is titled “The Planet-Lover’s Plate.”

 

Food accounts for nearly a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, Nutrition Action says.

 

And one change can cut your diet’s carbon footprint in half: replacing beef with chicken or pork (even better would be a plant-based burger).

 

“Cattle are ruminants, so they expel a lot of methane as burps as they digest food,” says Walter Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. And more comes from their manure.

As a heat-trapping gas, methane is about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and cattle live longer than other livestock.

“Chickens come to market in about six weeks, and pigs come to market in about six months,” Willett says.

“In contrast, cattle take about 1 to 1½ years to come to market if they’re grain fed and 2 to 2½ years if they’re grass fed,” he says. “And every day, they’re burping out methane and breathing out carbon dioxide.”

In addition, the fertilizers used to grow cattle feed release nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that’s 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

 

It also takes large quantities of fossil fuels to process and transport that feed.

Combatting food waste here, there and everywhere

My thanks to the reader who responded to last week’s item on U.S. food waste with information on what China is doing on the issue.

 

Like the United States, about 30 percent of food in China is wasted.

 

I was unaware that in China, hosts traditionally order more food than necessary as a way to show hospitality to their guests. 

 

In April 2021, China enacted a law that, among other things, provided for $1,500 fines to restaurants encouraging excessive orders by customers. 

 

Restaurants in China's cities waste 17 million to 18 million tons of food a year, enough to feed 30 million to 50 million people, according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and other organizations. One estimate suggests that China could face a food shortage of about 130 million tons by 2025 as its farming population shrinks.

 

At the global level, about a third of food is lost or wasted, according to the U.N. Environment Program.

 

Here is what UNEP is doing to help countries "transform our relationship with food."

Combating food waste, one surprise at a time

My thanks to the reader who alerted me to the app Too Good to Go, which aims to reduce food waste by connecting us eaters with food that otherwise would go to a landfill.

 

Between 30 and 40 percent of food in the United States is wasted, according to a USDA estimate.

 

Using Too Good to Go, you can get a $4 to $6 “surprise bag” of groceries, a meal or baked goods that the supermarket or restaurant otherwise would throw out.

 

Here is more on the app, from Wired.

Biden coronavirus relief bill’s focus on low earners, middle class

The $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill that's expected to pass the House as soon as Tuesday and be signed by the president shortly thereafter isn’t just to stop a pandemic and jobs crisis but to "tackle deep issues of poverty, inequality and more,” says The Associated Press.

 

“When I was elected, I said we were going to get the government out of the business of battling on Twitter and back in the business of delivering for the American people,” Biden said after the bill passed the Senate on Saturday. “Of showing the American people that their government can work for them.”

 

The bill is more focused on people than on businesses and is expected to help women and minorities in particular, because they've taken an outsize hit in the pandemic recession, says a New York Times analysis.

 

Workers earning higher wages and those able to work remotely are far less likely to have been thrown off the job, and they've stockpiled savings in the recovery. 

 

But at the bottom end of the income spectrum — and in particular, among African American and Latino families — millions of Americans still are feeling the pain of the recession. The economy is nearly 10 million jobs short of its prepandemic peak, with women of all races and men of color struggling the most to regain employment. The unemployment rate for African American men remains above 10 percent.

 

Here is more on the bill’s child poverty provisions, from the Times.

 

And on provisions benefiting African American farmers "in a way that some experts say no legislation has since the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” says The Washington Post.

 

Here are provisions to prevent cuts and job losses at airlines, airports and public transit agencies, from the Post.

 

Here are provisions on health insurance savings for many people covered by Obamacare, from AP.

 

Here is a Q and A on the $1,400 stimulus checks the IRS is expected to start sending out within days, from the Post.

Singapore is first country to approve lab-grown meat

Dozens of firms are developing cultivated chicken, beef and pork in an effort to reduce the impact of industrial livestock production on the environment and provide drug-free and cruelty-free meat. 

 

And now the San Francisco-based company Eat Just will start offering lab-grown chicken meat in Singapore, after getting regulatory approval on Wednesday from the Singapore Food Agency. 

 

Currently, about 130 million chickens are slaughtered every day for their meat. By weight, 60 percent of the mammals on Earth are livestock, 36 percent are humans and 4 percent are wild, says Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

 

Livestock accounts for about 14.5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions each year — roughly equivalent to the combined emissions of cars, trucks, planes and ships, says The New York Times. Per gram of protein, cattle production has more of an impact than pork, chicken or eggs, mainly because cattle belch methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

 

Activists say chicken consumption is a key factor behind Amazon deforestation, says the Financial Times.

 

Lab-grown chicken is made of genuine chicken cells, but it’s grown on a cell-growth scaffold in a factory instead of in a live animal, says Vox. 

 

The approach differs from plant-based meats like the Impossible Burger or Beyond Meat, which use plant proteins to create products that taste like meat, says Vox. Plant-based meat often tastes very similar to the meat products it replaces, but it isn't identical on a cellular level.

 

The lab-grown approach can be used for beef, pork, and other animal products, but chickens are the most appealing place to start, says Vox. 

 

First, chickens represent most of the animals raised and killed for their meat in the United States, and they're raised in "particularly appalling conditions," says Vox. Second, the biggest challenge for lab-grown meat so far has been getting the structure of the meat right: Lab-grown products don’t as yet have the texture of tissue produced in an animal. That would make a lab-grown steak disappointing, but it’s less of a limitation for many chicken products — such as the chicken nuggets to be available in Singapore.

 

A city state of 5.7 million people, Singapore currently produces only about 10 percent of its food. But it has ambitious plans to increase local production over the next decade by supporting high-tech farming and new means of food production, says Reuters.

Why you and I should care about worker abuses on palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia

Palm oil is in half the products in grocery stores and most cosmetic brands (though it can be hard to tell, since it’s on labels under more than 200 names), says The Associated Press. 

 

It’s also in paints, plywood, pesticides and pills. And in animal feed, biofuels and hand sanitizer.

 

Most palm oil comes from Indonesia and Malaysia, where plantations are the size of Kansas.

 

Conditions for workers can be horrific, including slavery, child labor and sexual abuse, says an AP investigation.

 

AP is running an article this morning on abuses of female workers in the palm fields. An article on labor abuses in general ran in September and is linked to above.

 

If you’re short on time, this video with AP investigative reporter Margie Mason provides the key information.

 

As you know, I want to let you know what’s happening and leave it to you to decide what you want to do. I took a quick look online, and there are organizations working to prevent the exploitation of palm oil workers, in addition to the groups that address the environmental impacts of palm oil plantations.