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