Time.news – Is there only the ethical question behind the artificial meat market? An investigation by French journalist Gilles Luneau points the finger at test-tube food lobbies and talk about interests that are hidden behind the progressive chemicalization of what we eat.
Luneau in his reportage talks about tens of billions of dollars that pass from the coffers of foundations, organizations, food multinationals and big technology companies to those of startups that today they thrive on the ultra-processed food business.
According to the Good Food Institute, a non-profit organization that promotes plant and cellular alternatives to animal products, especially meat, dairy and eggs, in two years – 2017-2018 – investments in meat substitute companies, milk and plant-based eggs reached $ 14 billion. And although cultured meat is not yet commercialized, between 2015 and November 2019 it attracted $ 155.3 million in publicly disclosed investments.
Meat grown in vitro, but also eggs, dairy products and fish reconstructed in the laboratory: this is the future of the world food we are destined for according to Luneau’s survey. A future that breaks all ties with nature and the earth.
Time.news met the author on the occasion of the publication in Italy of his book “Carne artificia? No, thank you “for the Castelvecchi publisher.
His analysis provides a rather alarming picture of the economic interests behind a progressive increase in the chemicalization of food. In your opinion, who would benefit and what are the interests at stake?
In addition to the handful of mainly vegan and antispecies start-ups who first launched this idea of producing synthetic food and who made this their business, are the agri-food multinationals (Cargill, Unilever, Tyson Foods, JBS, Nestlé, etc.) who are taking advantage of the situation. What is this situation? In countries with highly industrialized agriculture, consumers are disgusted by mistreatment in factory farms, by the environmental damage caused by a certain type of agriculture and by the health risks of food produced in this way, and multinationals use meat substitutes to disguise themselves as saviors of the planet and increase their market share, without however depending on farmers anymore
In your book you talk about the importance of the link between food and land: is synthetic food really a threat to this link?
For the first time in human history we can feed ourselves without depending on nature, without farmers, only with factories and robots. We are seeing an attempt to replace one technique with another to increase some multinationals’ hold on the $ 1.4 trillion global meat market. From another point of view, ceasing to raise livestock frees the land and other financial appetites as well. It is a massive economic offensive, on a global scale, with India and China at the forefront.
How do you explain so much funding for a product that seems to be falling even in the more mature markets, see the latest US data on the consumption of artificial caren?
We are far from what is meant by the mature market: fake meat based on vegetable proteins has been marketed since 2012 in the United States and it is only two years since fast food chains have been offering it in Europe, while synthetic meat grown in vitro can be sold in Singapore, in only one restaurant, since December last year, and in Tel Aviv where it is possible to taste it in two restaurants, but in this case it is fake chicken nuggets.
And compared to the decline?
We must not confuse a drop in the stock market with a drop in sales: -1.8% decline in sales in the United States in September 2021 (-0.6% on an annual basis), -50% on the stock market in November, for some companies. In the United States, sales of plant-based surrogate meat increased 45% to $ 1.4 billion in 2020. I have no overall figures for Europe, but in France the increase in surrogate meat sales is double-digit. So you have to be careful in interpreting the data, I am a journalist, not an economist. However, I can place these data in their context, that of the Covid19 pandemic and the consequent change in eating habits, in particular those related to out-of-home catering, which is strongly affected by confinement and teleworking.
You also talk about the exploitation of vegan choices. How would the vegan movement be used by artificial food companies?
It should be remembered that these are vegan activists, anti-species and some of these belong to the category of biohackers and transhumanists, and it is they who through their networks have mobilized the first millions of dollars to launch these startups operating in the artificial meat sector and which subsequently opened to agri-food companies. This is what is contained in my investigation. Then, as regards the ideological and consumerist impact of these products, I will not speak of the exploitation of vegan people, but rather of the exploitation by veganism and the antispecism of the malaise and discomfort of individuals, especially the younger ones, in front of to the damage (climatic, environmental, health, ethical) of industrial agriculture. If there is exploitation, this is to the detriment of the urban generations’ knowledge of nature, the food chain and cultures. Generations raised in individualism and consumerism, without any attention to the founding bonds of society.
To these disoriented generations facing challenges – climatic, environmental, demographic – the industrial biotechnology lobby provides an individualistic and unique solution: high-tech foods, artificial foods. The only solution offered, therefore, is in the name of the ideology of technology, the one that never questions its trajectory despite errors, because it aims to save one’s system. No intention of changing the consumer society. And the proof is contained in my book: the same networks finance start-ups, vegan and antispecific movements, animal protection NGOs and transhumanists. We are facing a diluted ideological offensive in the vegan-transhumanist movement that exploits the ability of multinationals (who don’t care about veganism as their first dollar earned) to build markets.
Why is disconnecting food production from nature a risk?
This presents several risks. The first and most serious is the risk of anthropological rupture. Livestock farming is the progenitor of our relationship with animals and our relationship with nature, with the world. Stopping cattle breeding and reducing farmers means breaking the most beautiful and essential mediation we have with nature. The one that assigns us to our animal condition with its responsibilities and duties due to our position on the Darwinian food chain. It is a rupture of the anthropological dynamic and a denial of the dynamics of life (with a cancellation of death). It is also a rupture of the link with the soil of our nourishing tissue since the Neolithic revolution. Artificial meat production transports us to another relationship with time. Unlimited time, which no longer has anything to do with what it takes for an animal or a plant to grow. The time of clicking on a digital platform to have “printed synthetic meat” at will, whatever the season or time. A virtual world, sanitized, without limits. A barbarism. The barbarism of the demiurges 2.0.
Philosophically we are on distant planes …
There is a big philosophical difference between knowing that our life depends on nature and knowing that it depends on the laboratory and the factory. Thus our representation of the world changes and consequently the construction of our identity is influenced. This is one more step to expel humans from their ecosystem. This is the door open to the posthuman, to the “augmented man”, to transhumanism. The second risk is that of the loss of sovereignty and food security, and this happens when the supply depends on a handful of robotic factories. The third risk is related to health: without speculating on the industrial risks associated with this type of product, these are ultra-processed foods, the risks of which nutritionists warn us about.
Are you following the evolutions around the topic of artificial meat, what are your predictions?
I am a journalist, I have agricultural and environmental skills, but I am neither a market analyst nor a diviner. As a reporter, I can report some predictions First, according to the consultancy AT Kearney, “the new vegan meat substitutes will show strong growth during the transition phase (up to 2030), while artificial meat – with an annual growth rate by 41% per year – will overtake new vegan meat substitutes between 2025 and 2040, due to technological advances and consumer preferences (…) 35% of all meat consumed in 2040 will come from stem cells and 25% vegan substitutes “In addition, RethinkX has predicted the end of farming, replaced by” a software-based feeding model, where foods are designed by scientists at the molecular level and uploaded to databases accessible to food designers around the world”.
Do you agree, however, that the intensive exploitation of livestock and land is no longer a sustainable model?
As a citizen and a person who needs to feed, faced with environmental challenges, I prefer collective and social responses: eat less meat but reared well and this implies a reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, cooking rather than eating industrially prepared food, meals, eating respecting the seasonal products of the place where I live. Without excluding from time to time some exotic gastronomic pleasures.
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