A leg of Lab, Di Caprio?

Let's face it. If die-hard consumerism is the future, naturally-available resources will soon be the past.

Now most consumers get this. And most agree, the simplest way to satisfy demand is to concentrate on substitutes for familiar products.  But to some, lab-made beef will just never truly seem “the real thing”. When, in 2017, The US Scientific Journal PLOS One ran a poll asking how many people would be willing to substitute “real” meat for the synthetic, in vitro (IVM) kind, 70% said no. “Frankenfoods”, as they have become known, are generally getting a pass.

Yet technological evolution presses on. In California, in 2015, American Bioengineers Perumal Gandhi and Ryan Pandya devised the world’s first “artificial cow’s milk”.  Then, after much anticipation, in January 2016, a San Franciscan company called Memphis Meats produced a “cultured meatball” for around $1,000 (US). Here in New Zealand, Sun Fed Meat, an innovative tech start-up, is experiencing relative success with its aptly-named "Chicken-free-chicken."

Dutch Pharmacologist Mark Post, head of an avant-garde initiative in the Netherlands, is confident in the significance of his innovations. “This is the beginning of an industry that could be as massive, or even larger, than meat production is right now.”

Governments (though ours is more loath) are also joining the trend. Last year China signed a $300m deal to purchase Israeli meat grown in a laboratory in a deal that has given vegan food manufacturers a lucrative market share in the world’s most populous country.  The US cannot call itself nearly as progressive.

Meanwhile, as poor countries grow richer, so does their appetite for flesh. Global meat consumption, as forecast in a recent study by The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is to increase by up to 75% before 2050. And old-fashioned dairy milk production too, is churning out over double the number of white cartons than it did in 1975. At some point we are forced to ask, where does it stop?

The artificial manufacture of food, industrial and other produce dates back to our hunter-gatherer days. From at least 85,000 years ago to the birth of agriculture around 73,000 years later, we combined hunted meat with gathered veg. Some people, such as those on North Sentinel Island in the Andaman Sea, still do.

But while these methods have sustained us up until now; they are a far cry from providing the wealth of commodities any foreseeable future would require. There is a “take/make” relationship running through human history, and it’s now right now, that we need more "make" and less "take." 

Not on the beaches, but a fight
nonetheless
“The war is won,” declared Winston Churchill in 1931. The victory in question was not military, but scientific. Advances in synthetic engineering prompted the future British prime minister to enthuse that soon “we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing”. His optimism outlived him in the end. But now, eight decades later, scientists have finally come close to realising his dream. On August 5th, 2013 they cooked the world’s first hamburger made of meat grown from scratch in a laboratory.

Scepticism is still readily plentiful. Unlike however, that poultry Churchill spoke of. When the World Health Organisation released its famous rocketing population graph late last decade, many were stunned. By next century, there will be simply too many people on Earth for the natural world to sustain. So why are these lab-grown miracles yet to become fully conventionalised? As The Economist puts it, why not opt in for “a leg of lab”.

And it’s not as if stem-cell grown meat is merely a substitute. Mark Post feels that man can only save nature by improving upon it. Grown for the media in 2013, his burger patty took three months to cultivate, which is, as Dr Post points out, “faster than a cow.”

Though our agriculture industry tends to shy away from it, there are environmental factors to consider too. Growing meat in factories—or, one day, in your home—is estimated to use up to 45% less energy, 99% less land and 96% less water than farming, as well as to spew out 78-96% fewer greenhouse gases. Also, an estimated 14.5 per cent of the planet’s total global-warming emissions are derived from the farming and eating of livestock – more than from the entire transport sector. It seems good old "green New Zealand" is not really so clean.

It’s true that we have arrived at a “culinary crossroads”, and it is one that has come about not by chance, but by necessity. Whatever form the future takes, it is clear that some change, in some form, will be needed for the continued survival of our species. Strangely, the only thing holding us back in this case—is ourselves.

Mine-less gems?
Moving away from food, the revolution does by no means end. A new start-up in Silicon Valley is focusing on creating artificial diamonds free from the controversies tainting their natural counterparts, such as the renowned “blood diamonds” mined to fund conflict and civil war in countries such as Congo and Angola. The company raised capital of over $100 million from 12 billionaires, including Twitter founder Evan Williams and actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio, who contacted Diamond Foundry after hearing about them. DiCaprio, who starred in the 2007 film “Blood Diamond,” which investigates the skirmish around the mining industry in war-ravaged regions of Africa, has advocated the company's ethical approach to diamond production.

Around this innovation, there is less disagreement than you see surrounding food. However, sceptics do arise. Companies like De Beers, Rio Tinto and other members of the Diamond Producers Association (DPA) have cried foul, saying lab diamonds are inauthentic. Diamond Foundry's Austrian-American CEO and founder Martin Roscheisen says this is irrelevant: “A diamond is a diamond,” says Roscheisen. “Scientifically it is a tetrahedral carbon allotrope, and it is the same thing whether mined or man-made.”

No one is arguing that unrestrained consumerism and a lack of expendable resources are not big issues. The twenty-first century is wrought with them. And many, like Martin Roscheisen, are trying hard to find a fix. But here in New Zealand, most farmers are not so welcoming—they see innovation as a threat to their position in the economy. The real question seems to be: will synthetic options be the way to go? We will have to decide soon, or we may no longer have a choice.