The case for meat options that taste like the real thing (Live Mint)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: UNFAO
Mains level: Food Security problems and solutions

Context

• According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, rapid increases in the demand for foods derived from animals has led to an unprecedented increase in livestock production.
• Livestock accounts for about 40% of the global value of agricultural output today and supports the livelihoods and food security of almost 1.3 billion people on the planet.
• The total volume of land set apart for grazing and for the cultivation of crops dedicated to feeding livestock represents almost 80% of all land under agricultural cultivation today.

About Animal husbandry industry

• Animal husbandry has become an industrial enterprise designed to churn out livestock like widgets.
• Modern livestock farms are factories, keeping animals indoors so that they can be fed to a plan and bred faster.
• As a result of all of this, the average time-to-market for a US chicken has come down from 112 days to 48 over the last century, while its weight has more than doubled.
• Estimates vary, but in general farming today uses up anywhere between 70% and 90% of the world’s freshwater.

Significance of the environmental costs

• The huge amounts of nutrients and organic by-products of animal farming that make their way into our water bodies, the algae and plants in our lakes and ponds have begun to grow aggressively, using up all the oxygen available at the expense of other species.
• A recent study in Nature magazine indicated that 72–78% of all food related greenhouse gas emissions are related to animal products.
• According to the study, the environmental impacts of the food system exceeds the planetary boundaries for food-related greenhouse gas emissions by 110%, for cropland use by 70%, for nitrogen application by 125%, and for phosphorus application by 75%.
• Unless we make drastic changes to our global dietary habits, we will not be able to meet our planetary target of keeping global warming to under 1.5 degrees Celsius.
• This means that everyone on the planet will have to eat, on average, 75% less beef, 90% less pork and half the number of eggs, while tripling our consumption of beans and pulses and quadrupling the nuts and seeds we eat.

Way ahead

• Central to its verisimilitude is a food molecule called heme that Impossible Foods claims to have been the first to identify.
• Heme is found in every living plant and animal, but is most abundantly available in animal tissue.
• This, apparently, is what makes meat taste like meat and what we yearn for when we bite into a burger.
• Plant-based heme is widely available—most commonly in the root nodules of soybean plants—but Impossible Foods seems to have found a way to produce heme at an industrial scale through the fermentation of genetically engineered yeast.
• This is what makes their meatballs, kebabs, sausages and burger patties so hard to distinguish from the real stuff.

Conclusion

• Given human consumption patterns, it seems inevitable that we will need to change the way we farm.
• In which case, instead of banning meat altogether, we’d do well to encourage a tasty alternative.

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Prelims Questions:

Q.1) With respect to skill the youth for the digital economy, consider the following statements:
1. This programme will equip students enrolled in ITIs across India with skills for the digital economy over the next two years.
2. The programme includes tailor-made curriculum with modules for digital literacy, career readiness, employability skills and advanced technology skills via the Bharat Skills portal and in-classroom modules.

Which of the statements given above are correct?
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) None of the above

Ans: C
Mains Questions:
Q.1) What are the significance of the environmental costs with relating to Animal husbandry industry?