Current meat production has spawned a host of major, structural problems. The worldwide bio-industry is regarded as the principal cause of GLOBAL WARMING. Besides the huge area of agricultural land required for the production of animal feed to supply intensive livestock farming in the western economies, it involves highly deleterious environmental effects, such as the manure problem, the emission of greenhouse gases, acid rain, overfishing and increased health risks (BSE, aviary influenza, salmonella, etc.), as well as ethical problems in the field of animal welfare. Total land and feed requirements relating to conventional meat production are considered more and more problematic since the weight of the meat produced amounts to only 15% of the total weight of the feed used, while much of this feed can equally well be used for direct human consumption.
To produce 1 kg of beef requires approx. 6 kg of vegetable feed and no less than 7,000 kg of water. Besides, only a fraction of the slaughtered animal can be used for meat consumption, leaving the rest of the carcass as “waste” (with all the problems that entails).
Furthermore, all the land currently used for grazing and animal accommodation could be used for growing crops for human consumption. Another thing to consider is that, due to the dependence on the slow growth rate of meat cattle, the lead time for the production of 1 kg meat is extremely long by modern industrial standards.
Western meat production is in fact extremely inefficient.
In developing countries –even though these are usually characterised by extensive livestock farming– the problems are of a different, possibly even more serious nature, particularly as a result of the excessive claim on the available raw materials (locally grown cash crops are fed to export livestock, thus giving rise to local food shortages). Furthermore, water consumption is disproportionately high in the often dry areas. Overgrazing is upsetting the ecological balance. Degradation of the natural environment (burning of forest areas for the purpose of growing feed crops, destruction of the coral reefs as a result of dynamite fishing, etc.), is causing serious problems that are difficult or even impossible to remedy.
In other words: global meat production has already been pushed way beyond sustainable limits.
The above-mentioned problems will make themselves felt even stronger in the near future as worldwide meat production supply will dramatically fall short of demand generated by an exponentially growing world population. Alternatives such as organic farming and vegetable meat substitutes are not sufficient to eradicate the global problem outlined above.
Such an environmentally friendly meat technology is offered by VITRO MEAT
There is a strong need for a radical change, for an industrial, sustainable approach to the meat production process, one which does not generate any of these problems. The Vitro meat technology is based on the principle that meat production, which has always been “in-vivo” (i.e. in the form of livestock), can now take place “ex-vivo” (so without the use of livestock), in a scientific and economically totally viable way on the basis of newly developed stem cell technology, with all the positive results that that entails.
Using animal embryonic stem cells, the Vitro meat technology produces, on an industrial scale, healthy, genetically completely unmodified, high-quality, safe meat for human consumption.
|
