Which Is Not True of Chicken and Beef Production
In many means, cultivated meat production is considered more than sustainable than its conventional counterpart.
To begin with, its antibody-costless production method is regarded a boon for public health. From an animal welfare perspective, cultivated meat is slaughter-gratis. And in terms of ecology sustainability, cultivated meat uses significantly less state and water.
However, cultivated meat product is energy-intensive. So much and then that researchers have suggested the benefits of reducing methyl hydride could exist outweighed by increased carbon dioxide emissions.
Could greenish energy help turn the tide on cultivated meat'southward carbon footprint?
What makes cultivated meat energy-intensive?
In 2019, researchers at the Oxford Martin School undertook a comparative study looking at the greenhouse gases produced by cultivated and farm-raised beef in the current free energy organisation.
The study suggested that in some cases, the manufacture of cultivated meat can result in more global warming due to the departure is gas emissions: methane vs CO₂. Warming as a result of carbon dioxide emitted by the current energy organization would persist, whereas warming caused by marsh gas ceases after only a few decades.
A 'large-scale' transition to a decarbonised energy system would be required, suggested the researchers, to make cultivated meat production the clear winner in the environmental sustainability stakes.
So what makes cultivated meat production and then free energy-intensive?
"A big part of it is just running the bioreactors which, mostly for mammalian cultures, demand to be kept at a like temperature to that of a trunk in which cells usually grow," explained Ed Steele, co-founder of cultivated fat get-go-up Hoxton Farms.
Speaking at FoodNavigator's Climate Smart Food issue, Steele connected: "Keeping cells in those sorts of conditions requires an input of energy."
What kind of energy used, nevertheless, could make all the difference.
Green energy potential
In environmental sustainability analyses where cultivated meat lags behind its conventional counterpart, the modelling assumes there will be petty or no transition towards renewable energy sources.
"Energy is kind of the only input on which cultivated meat is more environmentally enervating than conventional meat," explained Bath University researcher Christopher Bryant at the effect. "So if it's non-renewable free energy, then that does provide some kind of trouble."
However, Bryant, a social psychologist specialising in consumer perceptions of cultivated meat, doesn't believe manufacture will be reliant on fossil fuels forever.
"If, as will almost probable happen, in parallel to this technology we motion to an increasing proportion of renewable and zero carbon energy, so it pretty much becomes no contest."
The researcher also picked upwardly on the Oxford study'southward differentiation between methane emissions from cows and carbon emissions from free energy production: unlike CO₂ emissions, methane'southward impact on global warming discontinues after a fourth dimension.
"As long as we have cows, they'll e'er be making methane," he stressed. "Merely the aforementioned is not truthful for energy, which of course we can get to be zero emissions."
Hoxton Subcontract's Steele agreed in that location is a 'huge amount' industry tin do when growing cells in bioreactors, rather than in cows. "By that, I mean nosotros have a huge amount of control over the process," he explained.
"We can change the way that the bioprocess works, to reduce the amount of energy that we use."
One would be difficult-pressed to find anyone in the cultivated meat sector who isn't taking energy utilise seriously, Steele continued. "This is a primal reason why a lot of people got into this industry in the first identify. People are taking this very seriously – every company out there is doing some version of a life wheel assessment (LCA) to make sure their production is sustainable."
"We're all thinking about this effect really carefully and ultimately we'll get to a place where, given the amount of command nosotros have over the process, we'll be able to use greenish energy and brand sure this is a sustainable manner of producing meat."
A 'proven pathway' towards greener product
Bankroll up Bryant and Steele'south stance is a recent cultivated meat techno-economical assay and LCA conducted past CE Delft on behalf of the Good Food Constitute (GFI).
The reports establish that if renewable energy is used in its product, cultivated meat could have a lower environmental footprint than conventional meat production.
If renewables are used, the carbon footprint of cultivated meat production drops by lxxx%. And if conventional brute agriculture reduces its environmental impact, including past using renewable energy in subcontract and feed operations, cultivated meat produced leveraging renewable energy was estimated to reduce global warming impacts by 17% compared to conventional chicken, 52% compared to conventional pork, and betwixt 85-92% compared to beef production.
According to GFI, similar gains are not expected in the conventional meat industry, where fossil fuels account for simply approximately 20% of carbon emissions throughout the supply chain.
For Israeli start-up Aleph Farms, which is making thin-cut cultivated beef steaks, its biggest driver in sustainability is the environmental impact of cultivated meat on climate vs conventional agronomics.
At the Climate Smart Nutrient event, Aleph Farms' caput of sustainability Lee Recht welcomed the Delft report for its comparison of conventional and cultivated systems, where the latter incorporates light-green energy.
"I am a big believer that although nosotros are being compared to an extremely unsustainable sector, as a company we need to be answerable, we need to…exist extremely responsible in how we arroyo our manufacturing, our production lines and our supply chains.
"But actually, when we're looking at the more conventional, industrial ways of producing beef, cultivated meat has a proven pathway of existence highly reduced on its ecological bear upon."
Source: Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems
'Climate Impacts of Cultured Meat and Beefiness Cattle'
Published nineteen February 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/x.3389/fsufs.2019.00005
Authors: John Lynch and Raymond Pierrehumbert.
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Source: https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2021/10/28/Unlocking-cultivated-meat-sustainability-with-renewables-As-long-as-we-have-cows-they-ll-emit-GHG.-The-same-is-not-true-for-energy
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