Meat Without the Animal?

Here is a TED talk to introduce my next topic: cultured meat. After speaking of GM crops as one of the  possible methods for future food production, I want to take have a look at another fairly controversial but promising vision for the future. Livestock production is one of the biggest contributors to the world's greenhouse emissions with estimates of as much as 18% (FAO, 2006) of all global greenhouse gas emissions (read more about the effects of meat production in my previous post). In vitro meat offers an environmentally sound, land effective way of producing meat (although hugely expensive at the moment). In addition, cultured meat would eliminate waste and crops that currently go to feed the livestock could be used for human consumption.

I will return to this issue in my next post but for now, have a look at this inspiring TED talk on how to produce meat and leather without the animal. Andras Forgacs (a Hungarian working in the United States) is an entrepreneur in tissue engineering and co-founder and CEO of Modern Meadow. His talk focuses mainly on producing leather but the same benefits come with producing meat. It is also argued that in order for people to be willing to eat cultured meat, tissue engineering and biotechnology will have to guarantee its safety, while wearing a wallet made out of cultured leather will be easier to do. Something truly innovative and worth thinking about!

Till next time,
Laura

Love Food Hate Waste This Christmas

Christmas is the time for family, home and delicious food. But whether we like it or not, Christmas also tends to be the most wasteful time of the year. The numbers are worrying! According to the Guardian's Environmental blog:

'We throw out the equivalent of 2 million turkeys, 5m Christmas puddings and a truly shocking 74m mince pies, according to the Love Food Hate Waste campaign run by the government's waste reduction advisory body, Wrap. To put it into context, that means we are binning nearly twice as many mince pies as retail giant Marks & Spencer sells every year (40m).'

Source and recipe for these cute Christmas pudding truffles made out of leftovers: http://england.lovefoodhatewaste.com

The campaign Love Food Hate Waste (read more about them from my previous post) wants to help us make the most of our Christmas meals and save money. Have a look at their pointers here: http://england.lovefoodhatewaste.com. They have instructions from Christmas Day to New Years Eve to make sure all our leftovers have a delicious recipe to go into. 

But most importantly, Merry Christmas to you all!

Till next time,

Laura

Genetically Modified Crops: Friend or Foe?

In my previous posts, I have mostly been talking about the environmentally destructive problems today's agricultural sector faces. It is now time to look at the future and what can be done to ease the burden the planet bears due to our eating habits and food production. This time I want to take on a widely controversial topic of genetically modified (GM) crops and their potential risks and benefits to our planet's health. I understand that biotechnology is a vast area of study and this blog cannot by any means cover all its ups and downs from ethical to socio-economic aspects. It is an interdisciplinary and complex issue and discussions about the future of GM crops have still not come to a conclusion. I will however try to understand whether GM crops can be a viable option for future food production in terms of its environmental impacts.

As time moves on, the world population is estimated to hit 9 billion in 2050 and we are desperate for ways to produce food in a more sustainable way ensuring higher yields and better nutrition to feed the world's population. GM crops have been considered as one of our promising options to reach our goals. If talking about genetic engineering and biotechnology, GM crops are considered as organisms whose characteristics have been deliberately modified 'by the manipulation of genetic material, especially DNA, and transformation of certain genes to create new variations of life' (Uzogara, 2000: p 180). There has been a longstanding debate between the advocators and the critics of GM crops. The proponents of GM argue that the benefits to humanity are limitless and that genetic engineering can be the answer to many of today's agricultural, health and ecological problems. They say the fear of GM crops is irrational and based on trade protectionism rather than realistic environmental and health concerns (Uzogara, 2000).

(Source:http://ecologyescapades.com)

One of the environmental concerns that GM brings along is the unintentional gene transfer to wild plants. Once genetically engineered crops are cultivated in the nature, they become harder to control and could easily cross-pollinate with wild species. This could lead to the creation of 'super-weeds': as GM crops incorporate a resistance to herbicide and insects, these characteristics could pass on to weeds that may become hard to eradicate. GM crops can therefore introduce invasive plants with potential to lower crop yields and the possibility of disrupted natural ecosystems (Uzogara, 2000).

A graph showing the global growth of biotech crops

(Source: James, 2011)

The graph above from a report on global status on commercialised GM crops shows the growth of biotech crops from 1996 to 2011 (James, 2011). Although biotech crops are becoming more common and are introduced all over the world, some critics still have their doubts. Some argue that due to the novelty of GM crops we also do not know how the new genes affect genetic diversity, nutritional values and health of humans (allergenicity) (Dale et al, 2002). Since 1996, GM crops have seen a dramatic rise in the United States, alongside with the increased health problems. But GM crops do not only affect humans (and animals) who consume them, they can impact the wider ecosystem as well. The new DNA sequence can enter the ecosystem by several means. For example, plant DNA becomes present in the soil as a result of decaying plant remains resulting in novel DNA make up in the soil (Dale et al, 2002). These small genetic alterations can lead to large-scale ecological changes. The impact of these novel DNA is largely dependent on whether it survives long enough to be transferred to other organisms (Dale et al, 2002).

Now let's look beyond the fears. If you look back a few posts, I addressed the issue of using agro-chemicals and pesticides in food production, linking them to their environmental risks. If you missed this post, here is a refresher. In addition to the potential of extended shelf-life and improved nutritional quality of GM crops, reduction in pesticide use is considered to be a benefit of genetic engineering (Phipps and Park, 2002). GM crops could be engineered to be weed and pest tolerant, leaving little room for pesticide use, leading to reductions in carbon dioxide releases to the atmosphere. GM also increases the efficiency of nitrogen extraction from the soil by plants, leading to the decrease in need for fertiliser use. This eliminates the danger of wasted fertilisers leaking into waterways or evaporating to the atmosphere (Uzogara, 2000).

In addition, GM crops could introduce increased crop yields through reduced crop loss due to high-tolerance crops (to weeds, temperature, salinity and so on). GM crops would ensure an increased global food supply without losing further land to deforestation or peat destruction. 'Agricultural biotechnology will be particularly useful in land conservation in developing countries where valuable temperate and tropical forest lands are being converted to farmlands at an alarming rate' (Uzogara, 2000: p 197). To further consider the extended shelf-life of food products thanks to genetic engineering, food waste by supermarkets and individuals can shrink thanks to GM as well (you can read about impacts of food waste in my previous post here).

(Source: http://www.cooksbookblog.com)

Do you believe that introduction of GM crops will help the environment and the benefits overweigh the threats? Phipps and Park estimate that if 50% of maize, oil seed rape, sugar beet and cotton was grown as genetically modified crop, we would see a decrease of 7.5 million hectares sprayed, saving us 20.5 million litres of diesel and resulting in a reduction of approximately 73 000 tonnes of released carbon dioxide. Is that enough to overlook the risks of, as some like to call it, 'Frankenfood'? The polarisation of public debate around GM has led to huge losses in public goods, Potrykus (2013) argues in his paper published in Trends in Biotechnology. He points out that as a result of unjustified regulation, 'GMO product development is so expensive and time-consuming that it is beyond the capacity of public institutions and for public good'. Looking at the past 25 years of biotechnology research, Portykus finds no novel risk associated with transgenic plants. And if research is not enough, we have almost 17 years of practical experience incorporating 150 million hectares with no single documented case of harm related to GM crops. He takes the case of Golden Rice, genetically modified to be vitamin A rich compared to traditional rice. The invention could cure health problems related to vitamin deficiency in many countries with populations dependent on rice. However, due to tight regulation, the deployment of Golden Rice has taken 12 years, requiring up to USD 30 million, and is still largely debated and criticised.

The unknown threats to human health, biodiversity and ecosystems seem to raise still raise concerns about wide commercialisation of GM crops. Although research to date has not found any human health risk connected to GM crops, the public attitude remains negative and protected by rigorous regulation. In the longer run however, I believe that biotech regulation will start to ease and the GM crops will become a standard part of our food production (like we see it happening all over the world with the United States taking the lead (James, 2011)). If the modern food system continues in its current path (as the point of this whole blog), dramatic environmental consequences will follow.

Till next time,
Laura

Next Up: GM Crops

The next topic for my blog is GM crops and their viability for future food supply. In recent years, much of the world has been opposing GM crops from becoming commercially used. Here is a BBC Radio 5 conversation I found that mirrors the current mainstream attitude towards GM crops: Helen Wallace suggests there are better ways to improve nutrient efficiency in the future and opposes the 'golden rice'.

Before starting the discussion, I thought it would be interesting to think about the current mindset that the agriculture and policy sector has for GM crops. In the case of 'golden rice': after genetic modification, this rice contains more vitamin A than any other conventional rice, which can eradicate nutrient deficiency in many Asian and African regions. But why are so many people against it? What is your take on this?

(Source: http://www.npr.org)

I leave you with this thought and I will return next time to discuss whether GM crops can be a viable option for future food production in terms of its environmental impacts. The focus will be on its environmental costs and benefits as it is a highly controversial, multidisciplinary and complex topic and analysing all its aspects lies outside the scope of this blog. I will however try to figure out whether GM crops can be a beneficial and a sustainable farming method or are they as bad and dangerous as many (Greenpeace) want us to believe.

Till next time,
Laura

News on Nutella

Don't we all love Nutella? I am sure this speaks to all the Nutella lovers out there (starting with myself), but today I found an interesting piece that reveals all the countries that contribute to a single jar of Nutella. I have talked about food trade and how much energy is lost (and emissions released) with transporting our food all over the globe. But have a look at this: 

'Even though Ferrero International, which makes the stuff, is headquartered in Italy, it has factories in Europe, Russia, North America and South America. And while certain inputs are supplied locally—like, say, the plastic for the bottles or milk—many others are shipped from all over the world. The hazelnuts are from Turkey; the palm oil is from Malaysia; the cocoa is from Nigeria; the sugar is from either Brazil or Europe; and the vanilla flavoring is from France.'

(Source: http://www.howmanyarethere.net)

Seems like Nutella has the world covered and is a good example of popular foor products consumed today. Nutella has become a truly global product but let us look at the other side: can you imagine the emission toll behind one jar of Nutella? Not to mention 20% of it is palm oil from Malaysia. Ferrero International is now proudly part of the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and is committed to 100% sustainable palm oil. Ferrero is actually one of the few companies that Greenpeace sees as going beyond RSPO and achieving its goals. But as Greenpeace says, RSPO is falling short in protecting rain forests and promoting truly sustainable palm oil. In fact, RSPO specifically protects primary forests, which can have different definitions in different contexts (the age or thickness of the forest). Neither is RSPO successful in effectively preventing peat destruction and carbon release in the process of introducing new plantations. Greenpeace is encouraging companies to go beyond RSPO in order to ensure sustainable palm oil supply. 

Here is the Nutella map of the world:

(Source: http://qz.com)

Just something I thought was worth sharing here and show the background of one popular food products in the world. Hope you will think about it next time you pick up a Nutella jar or make your Sunday night Nutella sandwich! 

Till next time,

Laura

Further on Palm Oil

In my last post I introduced the discussion around palm oil production and its negative impacts to the environment. Today I want to continue on the topic of palm oil and look further into how it is impacting our planet. Palm oil production has emerged as a controversial topic and there is literature for both for and against palm oil production. But despite my best efforts, I am seeing the extensive negative impacts of palm oil plantations more clearly than the positive ones. If you are interested, here is an article showing palm oil from a positive light by Lam et al 2009 (arguing that  palm oil is indeed the most economical and sustainable source of food and biofuel in the world market).

Let us go back to how palm oil plantations introduce land clearance and deforestation. Last week I mentioned the impacts of deforestation but this time I will look at peatland destruction. Globally, peatlands take up about 3% of the planet's land area but store up to 528 000 megatons of carbon. This makes up one third of total global soil carbon and is equivalent of 70 times the annual carbon release from fossil fuel burning (Hooijer et al. 2006).  Peatlands act as important carbon sinks and maintain the health of the global carbon cycle. In the past, peatlands were seen as unattractive for agriculture but in recent years, when deeply drained, peatlands have become suitable for palm oil production. Hoojier et al show evidence that Southeast Asia, the area of most intensive palm oil production, makes up 6% of total peatlands in the world. In Indonesia, 25% of its palm oil plantations are on peatlands, which means enormous amounts of carbon dioxide release occurring when these areas are dried and organic material is decomposed with contact to air (Tan et al. 2007). Looking at the paper by Tan et al. it becomes evident that even though some negative impacts like land loss and deforestation are overemphasised (some land for plantations comes from land previously occupied by cocoa or sugar), palm oil production has vast environmental and climatic impacts.

Peat and oil palm

(Source: http://understory.ran.org)

So far this blog has largely focused on the climatic impacts of emissions released by the food sector. Here I feel like it is time for a slight diversion from the main topic. Namely palm oil production has had extreme impacts on biodiversity and I feel like this deserves a mention. Fitzherbert et al. (2008) argue that palm oil plantations support fewer species than the forests that have been taken down in result and habitat much fewer other tree crops essential for providing habitat for local biodiversity. The result is decreased species richness as oil palm consistently hold fewer than half as many vertebrate species as primary forests. Due to changes towards lower plant species diversity and reductions in habitat structural complexity, fewer animal species are living in plantations. This leads to destruction of local ecosystems and possible excitation of species. If you are interested in biodiversity loss and habitat fragmentation (not only caused by palm oil), here is a good blog post for you to look at: at-the-edge-of-extinction.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/habitat-fragmentation (I encourage you to look beyond than just this post to understand biodiversity loss further).

A specific example of biodiversity loss is the case of orangutans in East Asia. Sumatran orangutans and Borean orangutans are under threat, they depend on natural forests for habitat and food. Natural habitat is being degraded due to plantation expansion and orangutan death rate has skyrocketed while birth rates are shrinking (Tan et al. 2007). Even after the clearing of the forests and introduction of plantations, confused animals tend to wander in their former habitats and end up being killed to protect the crops or for meat.

Sumatran orangutan rescued as the palm oil plantations close in

(Source: http://www.orangutan.com)

Palm oil itself is not necessarily climate damaging but the way it is produced, as presented earlier, can have vast environmental impacts. In efforts to move towards more ecological palm oil production, the roundtable on sustainable palm oil (RSPO) was established in 2004. RSPO operates around eight principles that promote sustainable palm oil production: transparency of management, compliance to local and international laws and regulations, responsibility in conservation of natural resources and many others. Boycotting all palm oil products just seems unrealistic and unreasonable, we just need a environmentally sound production process involving all stakeholders.

So what do you think? Do you see a future in sustainable palm oil production with no biodiversity loss, peatland destruction and deforestation? Do you believe that RSPO can actually achieve sustainable palm oil production or is it all just greenwashing? I leave you with a Greenpeace advert from a few years back raising awareness about KitKat using ecologically unsound palm oil in their products. It is a fairly disturbing and controversial way to raise awareness but it seemed to work, this video went viral in a few days after being posted in 2010. If you haven't already seen it yet, I warn you, it is not very pleasant.

Till next time,
Laura

Processed Food and the Curse of Palm Oil

If you think about it, most of our food today goes through some kind of processing at a particular moment in the production chain. Even fruits and vegetables are now delivered after serious processing- canned, frozen or made into a syrup. Even when fruits come in their 'original' form, a secret of processing may lie within. But so what? Doesn't this just enrich our choice at our local supermarket? In reality, many of the processed foods are actually dangerous for the health of us and out planet.

Food processing comes in different forms: altering the color, taste, smell, texture, nutrition, shelf-life or stability of food products. But most importantly, all processing alters the nutritional values of our food, often towards the negative. Reading for this post I stumbled across some very technical explanations of chemical reactions caused by for example peptides and amino acids in meat flavor additives (chapter 3 in Shahidi et al. 2004) and trans fatty acid components in processed meat and cheese (Willard et al. 1954). But don't worry, these technicalities are beyond the scope of this blog and my ability to comprehensively write about chemistry. It should be however noted, that trans fats are largely responsible for contributing towards coronary heart disease and with evidence to other cardiovascular problems (Katan et al. 1995). Adding trans fats to our meat (especially fast food) through added hydrogen increases the 'efficiency of the product' by prolonging shelf-life. In addition, pumping meats with trans fats enables us to get 'more' (quantity not quality) out of our food products. Each step of the way on the processing cycle heats our climate: processed foods require more energy than whole foods. From chemical fertilisers and synthetic additives to freezing and canning, these foods carry a higher energy need than whole foods.

(Source: http://foodindustrymakeachange.wordpress.com/)

But let us look at a more topical example that is more connected to environmental health: palm oil. Palm oil is found in products ranging from food to cosmetics and comes with vast social and environmental costs. Primarily used for production of biofuels, products like KitKat, PotNoodle, Clover butter and Kellogg's Crunchy Nut all recuire palm oil for production. The reality is that most of today's palm oil is produced in an unsustainable and often illegal way. Negative impacts of palm oil can come in many forms: biodiversity and ecosystem loss, increased greenhouse gases though deforestation and others

(Source: http://buypalmoilfree.com)

Let us first look at the way palm oil production impacts the greenhouse gas balance of the planet. Palm oil plantations emerging all over Southeast Asia come in exchange of tropical rain forests that traditionally have acted as carbon storage sinks (Wakker et al. 2004). Wakker et al. estimate that palm oil is 'set to become the world's most produced, traded, and consumed edible oil, considerable expansion of the oil palm area is expected in the next 20 years'. They show the expansion of palm oil plantations in Indonesia below:

Total area of palm oil plantations established in Indonesia

(Source: Wakker et al. 2004)

Palm oil plantations contribute towards deforestation and therefore carbon release both directly and indirectly. If plantations are introduced on forest areas, burning is often used to clear the land. This leads to spreading of forest fires that extend beyond the planned areas and contribute further to deforestation. Forest fires are not common in areas with tropical rainforest but in 1997-98, much of rural Indonesia was suffering under forest fires that affected a total of 6% of the country's landmass. With the fires, thick smog emerged, covering Indonesia and neighboring Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei (Wakker et al. 2004). Looking at how palm oil industry is predicted to expand, the impacts to the environment are not promising. There is however an increasing movement to promote sustainable palm oil production with sound ethical and ecological standards (Greenpeace and others), but vast deforestation is still going on. 

As palm oil is such an important ecological issue at the moment, I will return to it in my next post.

Till next time,

Laura

Eat Low Carbon

After having discussed how our diets need to become more environmentally sound (local, less meat intensive, free of food waste), I found this fun and interactive website that helps you with the transition. It is called the Low Carbon Diet, launched in 2007 by Bon Appétit Management Company, which is committed to decreasing emissions and raising public awareness on dietary choices. They have calculated specific food scores for many of the food products found in our kitchen. Food scores reveal the carbon dioxide equivalent emitted during the whole life cycle of the product- from fertilisers and processing to packaging and transport. 

For example, a typical cheeseburger has a food score of 2826 CO₂ points while a turkey burger is only 697 points. There are vegetarian choices that are even less, but simply switching from beef to turkey is more than 4 times better for the environment. In addition, they offer food tips that I have discussed in this blog already concerning food waste, meat consumption and food trade. An addition to the discussion is the impact of processed food, which will be the topic of my next post.

(Source: http://www.eatlowcarbon.org/)

Go and check out the website here: http://www.eatlowcarbon.org/! I encourage you to take their quiz on picking out the more carbon friendly foods, it can surprise you. I hope you enjoy it!

Till next time,
Laura