Is precision fermentation the future for food? – Stuff

Dr Jacqueline Rowarth, Adjunct Professor Lincoln University, is a farmer-elected director of DairyNZ and Ravensdown. The analysis and conclusions are her own. jsrowarth@gmail.com

Precision fermentation keeps appearing in the news as the climate-friendly way of producing food. All you need is the right genetic modification for a micro-organism such as a yeast, put the yeast into a vat with the right ingredients, and away you go. After a while you can extract and purify the material in the vat all without animals (except for the genetic material at the start). Meat (steak and burgers, for instance) and milk proteins are being made in this way, all with lower environmental impact than is possible when real animals are involved.

That is the claim.

Most claims are not backed with evidence, but increasingly a suspicious public is asking for the facts. Some companies are on the ball and making life cycle analysis available. This makes examination of the claims easier but doesnt mean that the claims stack up.

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At the end of April, an article recently excerpted in the Genetic Literacy Project explained the possibilities for New Zealand. The article pointed to research which estimated precision fermentation for milk proteins could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 91-97% in comparison with animal production. Water use and land required were also significantly reduced.

The milk protein company Perfect Day has put the report on its website, which makes it relatively easy to understand how the savings have been made.

The life cycle analysis for the animal milk protein started with grass, fertiliser, pesticides and fuel, moved to the cow (diesel, electricity and water) and then to milk processing (electricity, gas, chemicals, enzymes and water) before use and disposal.

The analysis for the precision fermentation cradle to gate started with the material manufacturing stage (corn and other raw ingredients), then transportation followed by protein production. Neither in the flow diagrams nor the process detail diagrams, not the written explanation in the report was there any indication that the corn had to be grown somewhere, and that growing it would require fertiliser, pesticides and fossil fuels.

Perfect Day has been transparent. Most other companies have not. Non-profit investor network Ceres has shown that the claims made by alternative protein companies are based on the environmental impact of the company alone, not a complete life cycle analysis which would include the supply chain and waste. Over 80% of the emissions generated by food systems come from agricultural production but because they are not under the direct control of the company, they are not included in the calculations. Its tantamount to Fonterra doing the calculations from the tankers emptying at the processing plant no cows involved.

Sam Scannell/Stuff

Precision fermentation keeps appearing in the news as the climate-friendly way of producing food.

Precision fermentation is also not as simple as purported. Although the entrepreneurs are suggesting that cows will be obsolete within two to three decades, commercially viable products are taking a while to appear. The energy costs of maintaining a controlled environment are considerable, the embodied energy costs in creating large vats for fermentation are significant, and the energy for the fermentation has to be provided by something. Sugar is the cheapest option, and sugar, whether from corn, cane or beet, is a crop, requiring agrichemicals and fossil fuel.

The Good Food Institute has examined the problems of scaling up to deliver 10% of the worlds meat demand, estimated at 40m metric tonnes by 2030. Four thousand factories, each costing around 382 million and housing 130 x 10,000L stirred tank bioreactors would be required. Each bioreactor would need 4 x 2,000L perfusion tanks. Each factory would need to be able to host 2,300,000L cell culture. The current largest facility hosts 250,000-350,000L cell culture. Scaling up is extremely difficult.

Further, the impact of all the overlooked factors could last very much longer in the atmosphere than the methane from ruminants. University of Oxford physicists have suggested that under continuous high global consumption, cultured meat results in less warming than cattle initially, but this gap narrows in the long term and in some cases cattle production causes far less warming, as methane emissions do not accumulate, unlike carbon dioxide

The authors identified a need for detailed and transparent life cycle analysis of real cultured meat production systems. They concluded that the relative impact of cultured meat will depend on the availability of decarbonized energy generation and the specific production systems that are developed.

Increasingly the real issue for the world is decarbonised energy. The New Zealand article in Genetic Literacy Project suggested that waste could provide the energy source for vats in the future. Certainly biofuel from waste is being investigated but even though New Zealanders are high waste producers, the number of people and the geographical spread means economies of scale are lacking.

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Dr Jacqueline Rowarth, Adjunct Professor Lincoln University, is a farmer-elected director of DairyNZ and Ravensdown.

Research in precision fermentation is continuing. The process will become more efficient and the product more like the animal version. At the same time research is continuing to make animal production, with all its associated minerals, vitamins and co-products ever-more efficient.

New Zealand leads the world in efficient pasture-based production of animal protein.

Pasture grows in New Zealand where corn cannot.

And all marketing claims should be examined to sort the reality from the hype.

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Is precision fermentation the future for food? - Stuff