Get Off My Case!

There are plenty of companies that have meat alternatives available, but not all of them are trying to do something new and innovative. Impossible Foods wants to create something more that helps the world in many ways.

Impossible Foods was founded in 2011 with the mission:

To drastically reduce humanity’s destructive impact on the global environment by completely replacing the use of animals as a food production technology. We intend to accomplish this mission within two decades by creating the world’s most delicious, nutritious, affordable and sustainable meat, fish and dairy foods directly from plants.

They want to create a synthetic meat from plant based proteins, that is not only more affordable than current products, but is also tastier and more desirable. Currently, they only produce a beef alternative, but they plan on expanding over time. They claim that this burger uses 95% less land, 74% less water, and emits 87% less greenhouse gas than a traditional beef patty.

The most interesting thing about this company is how open they are about the process of creating this plant based patty. The m,olecule that gives meat its flavors and smells is called heme, and it’s not very easy to recreate. The scientists at impossible foods found that soybeans create a functionally identical protein called leghemoglobin. They then spliced it into yeast, and breed yeast in fermenting tanks like the way beer is made, but this protein is the result instead. This allows the burgers to be sold at a competitive price. With this process out in the open, perhaps more companies will attempt to make their own meats, allowing competition to drive down the prices even more.

Impossible burgers are available in over 5,000 restaurants all over the United States, Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore. They are planning on bringing the meat to grocery stores later this year. Since they are spread all over the world, they reach a lot more people than smaller companies. As more people learn about Impossible, they will continue to grow as popularity expands their market from mostly people who cannot eat meat, to people who will change what they eat in order to help the environment.

Sources:
https://medium.com/impossible-foods/how-gmos-can-save-civilization-and-probably-already-have-6e6366cb893
https://medium.com/impossible-foods/the-mission-that-motivates-us-d4d7de61665

Eating meat is a staple of human culture that has been around for millennia, and with good reason. As our population on earth continues to grow, certain production processes have become increasingly unethical in order to increase output to satisfy demand. One of these is the production of meat. There are many different factors that make this an unfortunate truth. Some of this stems from the conditions that animals are put through in a commercial farming environment, but it also comes from the massive carbon dioxide emissions generated from all parts of the production process.

Beef is extremely inefficient to produce. One kilogram of beef requires over 25 kilograms of grain, and over 1500 liters of water. Other types of meat, such as pig and chicken, are a little better, but are still inefficient. This grain used for production takes up over 30% of the world’s surface. If this grain was used to feed people, it could nourish an additional 3.5 billion people.

As we use all of this feed and water, it needs to be harvested, collected, transported, and distributed to the livestock. In our industrial world, this process is highly industrialized with machines that spit out greenhouse gasses. This creates 15% of all greenhouse gasses produced in the world.

The animals are required to ingest copious amounts of antibiotics, so that the meat will be disease free and to promote weight gain. Over 80% of the antibiotics in the United States are used in livestock production. This large usage of antibiotics has a negative effect on humanity, as it makes bacteria more resistant to these antibiotics, making more and more people sick.

Finally, as much as people hate to admit it, animals do feel things, and when they are abused during this process, it does hurt them mentally and physically. In some cases, this does lower the quality of the meat. When cows are farmed for milk, they are forced to constantly breed in order to constantly produce milk. While we certainly can use the animals as resources, we do not need to abuse them to get these resources.

Ultimately, we need to cut down on animal consumption in order to increase human, animal, and the planet’s well-being. In my next blog post, I will to discuss a company that aims to do just that: Impossible Foods.

Sources:

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/987

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034015

https://theconversation.com/five-ways-the-meat-on-your-plate-is-killing-the-planet-76128

The beginnings of Impossible Foods came from when the now CEO, Patrick Brown, took an 18 month sabbatical in order to attempt to eliminate intensive animal farming, which he determined was the world’s largest environmental problem. After raising attempting to raise awareness at a conference in 2010, he found that the better solution would be to offer a competing product on the market. Impossible’s whole mission statement is based around creating a plant product that simulates real meat.

This year, Impossible released a new and improved, gluten free version of the Impossible Burger. They claim this burger is better for the environment than a traditional burger, but how can we be so sure? Well, Impossible enlisted Quantis, a company that focuses on sustainability metrics, in order to find out just how much better the production of this burger really is, and the results are impressive.

From this data analysis, we can see that Impossible Burger production truly is better for the environment than traditional beef. They are advocating for the growth of this sector in order to really make an impact on the environment. The CEO has stated that they are currently attempting to produce “whole cuts of beef”, which would entice a new group of people into the market, and, as he believes, would disrupt the beef and meat industry as a whole.

Overall, I think that the goals that Impossible has set out for them selves are lofty, but they will eventually reach them. As they continue to produce more and better quality products, more companies will follow suit, helping our planet hopefully become more healthy over time.

Sources:

https://impossiblefoods.com/if-pr/LCA-Update-2019
https://thespoon.tech/video-impossible-foods-ceo-pat-brown-says-theyll-tackle-steak-next/