Helmut Melzer
The billion-dollar IPO of "Beyond Meat“Was just the beginning. According to a study by the international management consultancy AT Kearney, in 2040 up to 60 percent of meat products will no longer come from animals. For the agricultural and food industries, this development means massive changes in their production conditions.
Cultivated meat, i.e. artificial meat, without animal suffering is not just a ray of hope for animal rights activists. As the number of people will increase from 7.6 to ten billion (2050), artificial meat offers the opportunity to ensure the long-term and sustainable supply of the world's population.
It is currently estimated that there are around 1,4 billion cattle, one billion pigs, 20 billion poultry and 1,9 billion sheep, lambs and goats. Field crop production, which is directly intended for human consumption, only makes up 37 percent. In other words, we feed most of the crops to animals to produce meat that is ultimately consumed by humans.
A lot has happened since the first tasting of a grown burger in 2013. According to the Dutch food technology company Mosa Meat, it has now been possible to grow meat in large bioreactors with a capacity of 10.000 liters. Nevertheless, the price of a kilo of artificial meat is still several thousand dollars. But that could decrease significantly in the next few years if processes for mass production are mature. "At a price of $ 40 per kilo of art steak, laboratory meat could become mass-produced," says Carsten Gerhardt from AT Kearney. This threshold could be reached as early as 2030.
Artificial meat vs. animal meat
There are many reasons to forego animal meat, especially climate and animal protection. However, a nationwide test by Greenpeace is also very current: The environmental protection organization has had commercially available pork tested for germs that are resistant to antibiotics. The result: every third piece of pork is contaminated with resistant pathogens.
The reason for this lies in factory farming. Pigs in particular are given an excessive amount of antibiotics. This way, the germs harden against the medication and become a health threat for us humans.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has been warning of an impending 'post-antibiotic age' for years if the excessive use of antibiotics in animal husbandry and in humans is not drastically reduced. In the EU alone, around 33.000 people die every year from antibiotic-resistant germs. Greenpeace is therefore demanding an ambitious and binding plan for the reduction of antibiotics in livestock farming from the Ministry of Health.
initiatives:
www.dieoption.at/ebi
www.wwf.at/de/billigfleisch-stoppen
Photo / Video: Shutterstock.
