[Military and Martial Plane]: The birth of artificial meat from Da D is a flower blooming from human environmental protection concepts, and it is also a fruit born from the nature of capital profit-seeking. Can you tell whether this is artificial meat or pork? ▲The appearance of

[Military Martial Plane]: The birth of large D

artificial meat is a flower blooming from human environmental protection concepts, and it is also a fruit born from the nature of capital profit-seeking

Can you tell whether this is artificial meat or pork?

▲A certain brand of artificial meat patties

The appearance is almost the same as pork

Maybe you thought artificial meat was far away before, but pay attention, and it has begun to change now.

▲KFC and Starbucks artificial meat new product official poster

This means that in the face of the hottest Chinese market, which ranks first in the world in meat consumption, foreign artificial meat-related companies can finally be unable to hold back.

also caused deep thought: Will artificial meat really replace real meat in the future?

Origin of artificial meat

The earliest leader to publicly propose the concept of artificial meat was former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill .

As early as 1931, he wrote in an article published in Riverside magazine that in another 50 years, humans will no longer have to do the ridiculous things like , "to raise the whole chicken in order to eat chicken breasts and chicken wings," , but to cultivate them separately in the appropriate medium.

▲Former British Prime Minister Churchill

But it was not until the early 21st century that after six years of research that Dutch scientist Mark Post finally cultivated the world's first artificial meat in 2013.

▲Mark Post and his cell culture meat

Then Post made it into the world's first artificial meat burger. The cost of a single burger was as high as 250,000 pounds (equivalent to RMB 2.17 million). If 7 bites were needed to finish this burger, then 1 bite was equivalent to eating 30 Apple laptops.

KFC's upcoming planting and cultivation golden chicken nuggets are priced at .99 yuan/5 yuan . Why is there such a huge difference between the prices of the two?

In fact, what people usually call artificial meat, is divided into two categories according to the production raw materials and technology. One is "plant protein meat " and the other is "cell culture meat".

Plant protein meat is essentially not meat, but an imitation meat product with meat edible characteristics. Through complex production processes, we try to replicate the appearance, flavor and taste of meat. KFC will launch a new product of golden chicken nuggets, which is a type of plant protein meat.

Beyond Meat, a famous American artificial meat startup, once publicly disclosed the production process of plant protein meat.

▲American plant protein meat production factory

The raw materials are mainly derived from yellow peas. The protein of yellow peas is separated by physical methods, and then a series of methods such as heating, pressure change and cooling are used to weave the protein into a fibrous structure to make it have a taste similar to muscle fibers.

Then use beet juice and other materials for coloring and flavoring, and finally produce plant protein meat.

Interestingly, long before plant protein meat was launched on the market, the Chinese people had tried to use legume protein to make vegetarian chicken , bean curd and other foods.

▲Chinese traditional soy products: vegetarian chicken

And snack manufacturers are even more unique, using various flavoring agents and flavors to simulate barbecue, pickled peppers with different flavors of vegetarian tripe, vegetarian steak and other snacks, which are very popular among consumers.

But it is still a bit reluctant to classify this type of food as plant protein meat.

People position plant protein meat as a substitute for meat, which means that plant protein meat must not only look and taste similar to meat in terms of appearance and taste, but also need to meet certain conditions in terms of nutrition.

At these points, Chinese soy products are hard to match plant protein meat.

▲Isn’t this spicy strip vegetarian meat also artificial meat

But in the final analysis, no matter how meat looks like meat, it is not meat, it is still a piece of plant protein. It is not the same product as what we imagine artificial meat.

is different from plant protein artificial meat, cell culture artificial meat is more like real meat.

The technical principle, simply put, is to extract stem cells from animals, , put them in culture medium, let the cells continuously divide and reproduce, and finally differentiate into muscle fibers, becoming the "meat" used in our daily lives.

▲Extract stem cells from cattle

Put them in

containing amino acids and carbohydrates

culture base culture

6

▲Step cells proliferate and differentiate muscle cells

▲Step cells differentiate into myocytes

to form myotubes and more mature muscle fibers

We mentioned earlier that Professor Post, the world's first to develop artificial meat for cell culture. He spent three months in the laboratory and cultivated more than 2,000 tiny muscle fibers with bovine muscle stem cells, making a "meat patty" weighing 85 grams.

But even the "meat" cultivated in this way still has many differences from real meat.

On the one hand, the color of meat is given by heme in the meat, while the heme content of muscle cells obtained by through cell culture is very low and cannot show the true color of meat.

On the other hand, the texture of cell cultured meat is generally loose, making it difficult for users to produce the elasticity and chewing feeling brought by real meat. Therefore, Israeli company MeaTech once suggested using 3D printing technology to improve the texture of farmed meat, making it more similar to natural meat.

▲Muscle fibroblasts under microscope

Therefore, if the produced cell culture meat is not processed and reshaped, it is difficult to truly achieve the color, fragrance and taste of artificial meat products.

2

Why do we need to develop artificial meat?

As one of the important nutrition sources of human beings, our demand for meat is also growing with the growth of per capita income and population. Global meat consumption has increased by 58% to 360 million tons in the 20 years to 2018.

But our environment is under heavy pressure.

▲Human demand for meat has increased several times over the past few decades

According to statistics from FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations), livestock accounts for about 14.5% of the human-made greenhouse gas emissions, and is the world's largest source of greenhouse gases in addition to burning fossil fuels. In addition, the animal husbandry industry will bring consumption and pollution of resources in land, water and other aspects.

Among them, cattle will bring greater harm to the environment than other poultry and livestock. As ruminants, cattle produce methane, a greenhouse gas that is 20 times more harmful than carbon dioxide.

study shows that compared with pork or chicken production, beef production consumes about 28 times the land, 6 times the feed and 11 times the water resources.

▲Animal Husbandry will occupy a large amount of land

Compared with artificially cultivated meat products, the culture process of cell culture meat is more efficient and environmentally friendly.

Scientific research speculates that under ideal conditions, up to 50,000 tons of meat can be produced from ten pig muscle cells in two months. It takes about 6 months for an ordinary pig to be born and slaughtered, and its weight is about 120-130 kg.

, and cell cultured meat also produces only 4% greenhouse gas emissions during the production process, which can reduce the energy demand generated by up to 45% of the meat, and the land required accounts for only 2% of the global livestock industry.

Although the cost of cell culture meat cannot be reduced at present, plant protein meat can be very cheap (Isn’t it just high-end meat-flavored spicy strips)

If human meat is replaced by artificial meat, it will alleviate the growing conflict between meat demand and environmentally friendly to a certain extent, and can also solve the hunger problem .

Moreover, through standardized production methods, artificial meat is less susceptible to biological risks and diseases, and swine fever and mad cow disease can basically be eliminated.

In addition to the characteristics of plant protein meat itself being high in protein and low in cholesterol, with the improvement of technology, it may even be customized to produce according to consumer needs, and add specific nutrients needed by consumers to artificial meat products to improve consumers' health level. For example, artificial meat for vitamin C, artificial meat for kidney nourishment, etc.

From the perspective of animal protection, as artificial meat is put into use, the number of livestock and poultry slaughtered by humans will be greatly reduced, and plant protein meat can meet the eating habits of vegetarians.

Thinking of this, in order to protect the environment and human health, everyone involved in this wave of artificial meat innovation seems to have become a "saint" fighter. But don’t forget one thing, apart from scientific researchers, what else can’t be separated from the research and development of new technologies? It's money.

The most important driving force behind this wave are actually those capitalists hiding in the dark. The essence of capital is profit-seeking. If there is no benefit, no one will choose to invest huge amounts of funds to support R&D. What they are interested in is the world's meat consumption market that is hundreds of billions behind.

In 2008, the four major multinational grain merchants ABCD (abbreviated as, I won’t mention the full name) was called the “behind the scenes” of the international grain market at that time, monopolizing nearly 80% of the world’s grain transaction volume and occupying the pricing power of bulk crops including soybeans.

China is the world's largest soybean importer, and the price control of soybeans is in the hands of these "grain oligarchs". Regulating the price casually can make domestic enterprises and the people very uncomfortable.

As one of the four major grain merchants, "C" is one of the first five major meat processing companies in the United States to enter the Chinese market. This time, artificial meat has entered the Chinese market. It has another identity, which is the supplier of KFC's new product "planted and cultivated golden chicken nuggets".

In order to obtain high profits, these well-known multinational groups have used various methods to forcibly change the normal growth methods and growth cycles of animals and plants.

reduces the time it takes for breeding chickens to half of what they were 50 years ago, but at the same time, it can make them grow twice as physically as they were 50 years ago.

▲ Rapid Chicken incident Everyone should have heard of

▲The documentary of "Food Company": The "crazy" growing chicken

The birth of artificial meat is dual. It is not only a flower blooming from the concept of human environmental protection, but also a fruit born from the nature of capital profit-seeking.

Now research on cell culture meat is still underway. Although genetic engineering technology is not required in the current production process, researchers are discussing how to use such techniques to improve the quality and sustainability of farmed meat.

But if one day in the future, will the animal husbandry industry be eliminated?

What will happen to the world if artificial meat is eliminated due to low prices in the future?

If the patent for artificial meat consumed around the world is controlled by a company, will it cause a series of impacts?

Although it is impossible to assert that the role that capitalists will play in technological improvement in the future, will they take some special measures to expand the production and sales of artificial meat? But it is certain that the problems behind artificial meat will not be ignored at that time.

3

We really need artificial meat?

In fact, due to the cost of cell culture meat and large-scale production problems, the road to commercialization has been repeatedly blocked.Although Mosa Meat, an artificial meat company founded by Mark Post, has begun to build a cell culture meat production factory, the time it has been unlimited to launch its products to market due to the epidemic.

In contrast, plant protein meat has been successfully launched on the market and has also gained the pursuit of a group of foreign vegetarians.

As the first listed company for plant protein meat, Beyond Meat has launched chicken foods based on plant protein in 2013, and its products are spread across many stores such as McDonald's , KFC and Dunkin'. This time Starbucks launched an artificial meat lunch in China was created by it.

Another equally well-known plant protein meat company, Impossible Foods, has also attracted widespread attention because of its "Impossible Castle" jointly launched with Burger King on April Fools' Day in 2019.

▲ Burger King "Impossible Fortress"

But the people who are looking forward to plant protein meat bringing changes to the world are always facing an embarrassing reality- Global meat production is still growing, and plant protein meat has achieved the goal of replacing meat products.

In addition, the consumer reactions it causes in the market are also very contrasting.

The first thing that consumers complain about is mainly the taste. Although plant protein meat has tried its best to simulate the taste and flavor of real meat, many people still find it difficult to get used to it.

▲Foreign netizens crazily complained about

"Impossible Fort" taste

Another controversial point is the question of the safety of artificial meat. There are still many people linking artificial meat technology and genetically modified technology, and the genetically modified problem is so sensitive in China.

▲Chinese netizens question the safety of artificial meat

These make most people wait and see about artificial meat food. Jinzi Ham company, China's first artificial meat patty company to launch a plant-based protein meat to the market. After the related products were launched, sales were bleak, which also showed the attitude of Chinese consumers towards artificial meat.

▲Golden font ham artificial meat patties

Someone can’t help but reflect, can we really only rely on artificial meat to protect the environment? And do we really need artificial meat so much?

For Chinese people, meat, especially pork, is not only a tool to solve human physiological needs, but also an important part of China's long-standing dietary culture.

In the Chinese kitchen, there are hundreds of ways to cook meat into a delicious dish and serve it on the dining table.

▲In "Food Men and Women",

Father is preparing supper for his children

Perhaps, KFC and Starbucks can use artificial meat to make a burger with a good taste and a "chicken nugget" with crispy outside and tender inside. However, due to the characteristics of artificial meat itself now, it is difficult to adapt to China's complicated cooking techniques, let alone make a decent Chinese dish.

artificial meat, in the context of the current abundant meat supply, it may just be our occasional whim to try new and novel things.

But if the conclusion is made now, artificial meat will definitely not be able to replace real meat in the future, so it is too early. After all, behind artificial meat, there are many financial support from giants. Since they can allow those fast-growing chickens that are growing unreasonably "reasonably" to be served on the dining table and into people's stomachs.

Then no one can say whether these artificial meat will be reasonably served on our dining table like those chickens one day in the future.