Our Planet Is Breaking And Upgrading Protein Could Save It.

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[Applause]

there’s a technology that we use today

to feed the world a technology that

hasn’t really changed in 10

000 years and now it’s breaking

the planet take a look at this slide

it highlights some of the biggest

problems in our global food system

caused by some of the most popular foods

humans love to eat

take cattle for instance if all the

world’s cattle came together to form

their own country

they would be the planet’s third largest

emitter of greenhouse gases

or chickens the most widely eaten meat

in india

they release 40 to 60 times more carbon

dioxide per calorie of protein

than lentils maybe you’re more of a

seafood person

over 90 percent of all fish populations

are strained

including one-third which are actively

declining leading to chains of bad

events that mean the oceans can’t

perform their critical job

absorbing carbon dioxide from the

atmosphere as effectively

if you’ve been following the news about

china perhaps you’ll know that

60 of the country’s entire pig

population has recently

died from or been killed to deal with

what’s known as

african swine fever and it’s now spread

to indian pigs too

sounds like a pretty bad deal but it

gets even worse

we already use over 75 of

all agricultural land and a quarter of

all fresh water on the planet

to feed and raise livestock and we’re

running out of places in the ocean to

get our fish too

now perhaps you’ve noticed a trend here

you may have realized that

all of these problems seem to have one

thing in common

they have to do with the animal protein

production platform

namely meat seafood eggs and dairy

it’s a technology we’ve pushed to its

biological limits over the last decades

and which is now causing serious threats

to the climate

and to planetary health but why isn’t it

working anymore

it’s very simple we eat animals

who eat plants those chickens we were

talking about earlier

they take in nine calories of feed for

every one calorie of output

in the form of flesh and fish depending

on the fish can be worse

pigs are definitely worse and cows are

much worse

so we use vast amounts of land water and

energy

and emit vast amounts of waste and

greenhouse gases to raise or catch these

animals for their meat

milk and eggs and as demand continues to

rise

we’re pushing the planet to breaking

point

all those steps and waste involved in

feeding

transporting and slaughtering animals

are very hard on the environment

it’s why animal agriculture is

responsible for more climate change than

emissions from

all transportation planes trains cars

on the earth combined the united nations

and a whole bunch of other people say

that if we care about

deforestation greenhouse gases ocean

acidification species loss

ocean dead zones any number of pressing

environment and climate challenges

rethinking animal protein is one of the

highest priority things

we can do and those zoonotic diseases

like african swine fever

they’re the most common global cause of

epidemics because they can jump from

animals to humans not only that

the vast majority of antibiotics

produced globally are not fed to humans

but to animals leading to antibiotic

resistant superbugs

which cause the former head of the world

health organization to declare

the world is heading towards a

post-antibiotic era in which common

infections will once again kill

this will be the end of modern medicine

as we know it

despite increasing awareness of the

issues with animal protein

and the climate crisis telling people to

eat less meat

hasn’t really worked the world’s

population is expected to grow by 30

by 2050 but poultry demand will more

than double

in that time this demand is driven by

countries like india

where meat consumption is rising with

incomes

and we can’t afford the consequences

we’ve come to a fork in the road

tragic as it is the kovit 19 pandemic

has given us that much

set against this backdrop of climate

change and pandemics

these dire threats to planetary health

we have the opportunity to take a step

back

and ask ourselves how will we feed

10 billion people by 2050 without

breaking the planet

any further it’s a question that ethan

brown the founder of beyond meat

asked himself around 15 years ago he

realized americans eat

three beef burgers a week on average

which is disastrous for the climate

so he decided to upgrade meat by making

it from plants

the beyond burger tastes like meat

sizzles like meat it even smells like

meat but it’s made

entirely from plants like peas and

beetroot

and if you replace just one of those

three animal beef burgers a week

with a plant-based beyond burger it

would be the equivalent

of taking over 12 million cars off the

road

or powering over 2 million additional

homes

then there’s the plant-based just egg by

san francisco company eat just inc

it’s made from ingredients like moong

beans which have been grown in india for

four thousand years

and it’s also vastly better for the

planet

these products are so good people can’t

even tell the difference

just look at this clip of late night

chicken egg aficionados in new delhi

trying the moong bean based just egg

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it feels like scrambled egg but if

you’re saying it’s vegetarian so i’m

shocked

it’s actually made from mung bean moong

dal

really is it mean girl what do you think

it’s really good

oh my god that’s surprising seriously

yeah i would

not have guessed it no not at all and i

think this would be a hit if this would

come to india i’m sure

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the customers were in disbelief that it

was not egg right

are you kidding me it’s not egg

no it’s not egg

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now plants aren’t our only option for

upgrading meat

new innovations are coming to market

soon which are just as exciting and have

similar potential to tackle the climate

crisis

take cultivated meat for example it’s

produced by cultivating animal cells

directly to produce meat

instead of raising and slaughtering

animals in that inefficient process

it’s sometimes called clean meat because

it’s literally cleaner

but also because like clean energy it’s

far better for planetary health

or take fermentation derived proteins

like those which chicago-based

nature’s find is bringing to market the

company set up a small production

facility in the city’s famous

old animal meat packing district to

produce their fungi-based protein

in that tiny space they will be able to

produce as many beef-like burgers as

cows living

on seven thousand acres of land

of course this is all very exciting and

shows huge promise to tackle the climate

crisis

but there’s also a huge amount of work

still left to do

at this fork in the road we have two

choices

one of those is to go back to the old

normal to continue to rely on systems

like animal protein

that brought us here the other is to

choose a fundamentally

different paradigm of development one

which makes a clean break

leads us away from the climate crisis

and towards a more resilient

abundant planet we need bold

systemic change to make a real

difference like the government of

singapore

which has made upgrading protein a key

piece of their food security and

economic growth story

for the next decade we need the

brightest minds

students investors entrepreneurs mega

food and agri corporations

entire countries all over the world to

make similarly visionary moves

to break free of inefficient

conventional animal protein

and unbreak the planet

as the then ceo of tyson foods one of

the world’s largest conventional meat

producers said in 2018

if we can grow meat without the animal

why wouldn’t we