5 The Fake Food Dystopia

Through her biosphere and her complex ecological processes, the earth regulates her water systems, her nutrient cycle and her climate system. We have a duty to live within the ecological limits that the earth sets. We do not have the right to pollute and disrupt her ecological processes; taking the share of other species, other people and future generations is an ecological crime.

Half a century of eating oil, two hundred years of industrialisation, combined with the colonisation of nature and of our diverse cultures, have destroyed the earth’s ecosystems and biosphere. Fossil fuels have polluted the land, water and atmosphere, built up emissions and disrupted the delicate balance of the earth’s climate systems and hydrological systems, intensifying floods, droughts and cyclones, causing climate chaos and catastrophe.

We have seen how corporations like Bayer, Monsanto, Cargill, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Nestlé have pushed 93 percent of crop diversity to extinction. Even as industrial agriculture has brought the planet and our economies to the brink of collapse, it is reinventing its future based on fake farming and fake food, with more chemicalisation, more GMOs and more mechanisation, combined with digital agriculture, surveillance drones, robots and spyware. Farming without farmers, without biodiversity, without soil, is the vision of those who are accelerating the ecological collapse.

This industrialised system is currently pushing digital agriculture and fake, farm-free food—laboratory-engineered meat, milk, cheese, fish and even lab-made breast milk. The health costs, social costs, energy costs and climate costs of this system have not yet been assessed.

The columnist George Monbiot is among the messiahs of fake food. He works with a group that calls itself ‘ecomodernists’, who have launched a campaign to ‘reboot’ food as part of ‘RePlanet’.1 Quite clearly, the living earth is inadequate for them and needs to be re-engineered. Mark Lynas, an ecomodernist, also works for the Gates-funded Cornell Alliance for Science,which promotes the genetic engineering of seeds and food. They do not understand that food is not a Microsoft programme that needs to be rebooted.2 Monbiot writes, ‘Lab-grown food will soon destroy farming—and save the planet.’3 His assumptions are false at every level.

Lab food will not put an end to industrial farming—it will accelerate and expand it. As Bob Reiter, Bayer’s head of Research and Development in the company’s Crop Science Division, says,

In order for plant-based companies to produce at scale and succeed, they require efficient sources of amino acid and carbohydrates, which will bring them round to grow crops that can be tilled and cultivated by machinery.4

Lab-grown counterparts require massive energy intensive bioreactors and the use of sterile, single-use plastic equipment. To come close to matching current meat consumption, for example, production facilities would need to number in the tens of millions, increasing problematic plastic consumption and escalating energy requirements, all while still relying on globalised industrial agriculture models and supply chains.

Most significantly, in order to function, these bioreactors require large amounts of nutrients for cells to grow and reproduce. Given the limited production of individual amino acid formulations suited for cell culture globally, one hope is to use soya to derive the full amino acid profile necessary for cell growth. This will further entrench the already destructive cultivation of soya.

Gruesomely, and ironically, other parts of the nutrient broth used to culture cells also directly derive from current industrial animal production, as some of them are made using foetal cow’s blood obtained from conventionally slaughtered pregnant cows. Stem cells necessary for cell reproduction during the cell culturing process are obtained from foetal cows as well. Without an abundance of slaughtered foetal cows, can cell-cultured meat scale up? And can lab-grown meat solve the problem of animal welfare and environmental degradation if it is completely dependent on ingredients that derive from industrial beef production? This grim reality says otherwise.

Meat analogs and cell-based meats are much more carbon intensive than we are led to believe. A preprint study, not yet peer-reviewed, by researchers at the University of California, Davis, reveals that the fossil fuel energy required to produce lab meat is not sustainable and could, by far, surpass the output of livestock like pigs and poultry.5

The production of synthetic foods, too, requires vast amounts of energy, including several energy intensive steps such as operating bioreactors, temperature controls, aeration and mixing processes. On the basis of these indicators, the sector is in no position to claim that synthetic food production is inherently more sustainable than traditional systems. A recent paper by Purdue University indicates that lab meat will require more acreage and need more production of grain than real beef:

The total amount of feed excluding harvested forages fed to beef cattle equals approximately 64.5 million tons in 2019 in the U.S. Roughly 57% of this amount came from corn and only roughly 4% was soy-related ingredients.6

The researchers’ analysis, based on certain assumptions, goes on to note that plant-based, and especially cell-Ag proteins, increase the market for soyabean, since soya isolates are used in many of the plant-based products and soya hydrolysate is the most available source of amino acids used in the cell media to grow stem cells. They conclude, ‘Our major results show that one unit of conventional beef, plant-based beef and cell-cultured beef would require 0.24, 0.54 and 1.44 units of soyabean, respectively, to feed…’ In other words, plant-based ‘meat’ and cell-Ag actually increase the demand for soya since these forms of alt protein require, respectively, over two to nearly six times the amount of soya needed for conventional beef.

Lab-grown meat, which is cultured from animal cells, is often thought to be more environmentally friendly than beef because it is said to need less land and water and to emit fewer GHGs than raising cattle. But the UC Davis research shows that lab-grown or ‘cultivated’ meat’s environmental impact is likely to be ‘orders of magnitude’ higher than retail beef based on current and near-term production methods.7 The researchers conducted a life-cycle assessment of the energy required and GHGs emitted during all stages of production and compared it with natural beef.

One of the current challenges posed by lab-grown meat is the use of highly refined or purified growth media required to help animal cells multiply.8 Currently, this method is similar to the biotechnology used to make pharmaceuticals. It sets up a critical question for cultured meat production: is it a pharmaceutical product or a food product? ‘If companies are having to purify growth media to pharmaceutical levels, it uses more resources, which then increases global warming potential,’ says Derrick Risner, lead author and doctoral graduate, UC Davis Department of Food Science and Technology. ‘If this product continues to be produced using the “pharma” approach, it’s going to be worse for the environment and more expensive than conventional beef production.’

The production of lab food is resource intensive, energy intensive and extractive.

Feedstock intensive and energy intensive lab food, synthetic food and cellular food will increase feedstock demands fivefold and increase emissions by 25 times.9 The researchers defined the global warming potential as the carbon dioxide equivalents emitted for each kilogram of meat produced; their study found that the global warming potential of lab-grown meat, using these purified media, is four to 25 times greater than the average for retail beef.

Jim Thomas (formerly with ETC), writing in defence of Chris Smaje, a social scientist, farmer and author of the book Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future (in which he counters the claims of food solutions based on techno-fixes), says,

He [Chris Smaje] shows that every kilo of bacterial protein will require at least 65 Kwh of energy—twice the daily energy use of an average US household. This is electricity use which in aggregate would then have to be added on top of expected additional electricity demand for electric vehicles, electric heating of our homes, running an ever-ballooning internet, cloud and AI infrastructure and much more—all from clean energy sources without damaging[,] mining and extraction for the infrastructure build out. Food would seem to be an unnecessary use of additional electricity generation since for now agroecological land-based food production doesn’t require electricity at all. Incredibly[,] food really does grow on trees.10

The microorganisms used in lab food need to grow and produce commodities; the feedstock for the nutrient path is derived from industrial crops, including genetically modified corn and soyabean. The nutrient conversion efficiency of microbes needs to be compared to livestock, the resource and energy efficiency needs to be compared to animal-based products and the land used for feedstock has to be included while calculating real efficiency, as well as the pollution generated and waste material produced. The infrastructure cost of thousands of fermentation tanks and the particular environmental conditions required for microorganisms to grow and thrive need to be internalised in any cost accounting of lab foods. All these issues were ignored in factory farming and are now being ignored for lab substitutes.11

Thomas also points out that in order to grow, lab-produced meat, just like animals on farms, would need

ongoing nutrient addition of phosphate and nitrogen as well as other elements—which must be acquired, mined, carried[,] etc with additional energy and biodiversity costs. Of course[,] industrial agriculture already requires large amounts of these artificially acquired inputs but not agroecological farming[,] which draws nutrients from soil and animal waste.12

In other words, lab meat will continue to be resource intensive and extractive.

Another potentially serious problem in lab meat production or alt protein, as Thomas points out, is the high risk of contamination, since fermentation processes attract wild bacteria and yeasts. Lab food, combined with further industrialisation of farming, intensifies all the processes that have contributed to the agrarian crisis, the climate crisis and the health crisis.

While further industrialisation and globalisation of food in the form of fake food (as a false solution to the climate crisis) are being assiduously promoted, carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the industrial processing of synthetic meat may persist in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, unlike methane produced by traditional livestock farming, which dissolves in the atmosphere after about ten years.13 Therefore, synthetic food does not seem to have a legitimate place in the category of eco-friendly food; rather, it belongs in the category of ultra-processed food, due to the high-impact transformation process required for its production.

The idea of farming without farmers and food without farms is dystopian, a continuation of the false assumption of eco apartheid—that we are separate from nature and can live outside the earth’s life-giving processes.

Continuing on the resource intensive, energy intensive, pollution and emissions intensive path of the industrial food system while expecting a different outcome is a clear sign of insanity; as Einstein had said, ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.’14

Fake food and who benefits

The Poison Cartel, Big Food and Big Money are investing millions of dollars in the fake food industry to support the mass proliferation of fake food products such as eggs, dairy and meat. Most fake food ventures are funded by tech oligarchs and billionaires. Bill Gates became a billionaire by enclosing the commons of software,15 and is planning the same enclosure for food. The key questions are: who holds the patents on lab food? What are the implications of one company owning the formula for milk, honey, eggs, meat and our daily bread?

It is no coincidence that, along with industrial giants like Cargill and Tyson Foods, even the biggest ‘environmental’ philanthropists are investing in this sector. High-profile Big Tech investors such as Bill Gates, Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos and Virgin founder, Richard Branson, have joined up by providing substantial financial support to start-ups and biotechnology companies pursuing innovations in the fake food sector. Gates alone has already invested US$50 million in Impossible Foods and actively finances Beyond Meat, Ginkgo Bioworks, BIOMILQ, Motif FoodWorks, C16 Biosciences, Hampton Creek Foods and Memphis Meats (now UPSIDE Foods) through his Breakthrough Energy Ventures investment fund.16

Other prominent start-ups funded by this billionaire investment fund include Eat Just (egg substitutes made from plant proteins), Perfect Day (lab-grown dairy products) and NotCo (plant-based animal products made through AI). Indeed, the promotion of fake foods seems to have more to do with giving new life to the failing GMO agriculture and junk food industry than to provide a solution to the food crisis, as well as countering the threat from a rising consciousness regarding organic, local, fresh food that regenerates the planet. Consequently, investment in plant-based food companies soared from nearly nil in 2009 to US$600 million in 2018.

Over the last couple of years, and following the rapid growth of new start-ups, the market for synthetic and plant-based alternatives has been expanding, with financial backing skyrocketing in 2020. The Good Food Institute, a lobby group for the adoption of animal product alternatives, reports that in the United States, the plant-based market has already grown from US$4.9 billion in 2018 to US$7 billion in 2020, which represents an overall increase of 43 percent in dollar sales over the two years. Plant-based meat, too, is booming, having reached a value of US$1.4 billion and registered a growth of 72 percent in 2020.17 The synthetic biology industry follows close behind; it reached a value of US$12 billion in the last decade, is expected to double by 2025, reaching US$85 billion by 2030. Companies specialising in this field have grown sixfold over the last ten years. This exponential growth is confirmed by the recent figures from SynBioBeta (a network of biological engineers, investors, innovators and entrepreneurs): the first quarter of 2021 saw record investments of US$4.7 billion in start-ups, and of US$4.2 billion in the second quarter.18 Over the last two decades, the number of companies specialising in this field has risen from less than 100 in 2000 to more than 600 in 2019. Beyond Meat was one of the ‘hottest’ stocks in 2019, its shares growing a phenomenal 859 percent in the first three months of its incorporation!

Among the top players in the fake food sector are Mosa Meat, Eat Just, Inc., JUST Egg, GOOD Meat, MeaTech 3D, Aleph Farms, CUBIQ FOODS, Because Animals, BlueNalu and UPSIDE Foods.19 The last-mentioned has attracted the attention of Richard Branson, Suzy and Jack Welch, Kimbal Musk and Bill Gates. This company uses biotechnology to extract and cultivate stem cells in different muscle tissue, which is then fed into bioreactors in order to grow meat products.

Fake chicken uses a bioreactor which accelerates the growth of animal cells taken from poultry. Eat Just produces lab-grown chicken, for which it received sales approval in Singapore in 2020. Founded in 2011 in San Francisco by Josh Tetrick, Eat Just also produces plant-based egg product alternatives. In 2016, it surpassed US$1 billion in valuation, becoming a unicorn in the protein foods market. MeaTech and Aleph Farms both use the 3D printing technology to develop what they claim are sustainable alternatives to conventional meat. As for CUBIQ FOODS, it specialises in providing the fatty ingredients needed to improve the taste of fake meat. Because Animals provides a niche product by way of lab-grown meat for pets. The seafood sector is occupied by BlueNalu which is into the large-scale commercialisation of cell-cultured seafood. It is developing lab-grown counterparts of bluefin tuna, mahi-mahi, red snapper, molluscs, crustaceans and other seafood.

The corporate push for synthetic foods.

(Source: Navdanya International)

A German start-up company, Formo, has received record funding of US$50 million from its shareholders for the production of ricotta and mozzarella in laboratories. The funding represents a record for a European foodtech start-up and sends a clear signal to investors and markets around the world.‘Founded in 2019, Formo is Europe’s first cellular agriculture company to develop animal-free dairy products using real, nature-identical milk proteins derived from precision fermentation.’20

Over the last few years, the market for plant-based foods has been steadily expanding.

(Source: Navdanya International)

Given the widespread success of the plant-based industry, it is not surprising that big plant-breeding companies like Bayer see a great opportunity for investment and expansion in this market. Clearly, it is the Poison Cartel, the ultra-processed junk food industry and agribusiness that stand to profit from this lucrative and rapidly expanding market.

Wooing green consumers

The creation of so many start-ups in the fully artificial food sector indicates the increasing popularity of developing a line of synthetically-produced, ultra-processed food products by using recent advances in synthetic biology, artificial intelligence and biotechnology. These new products seek to imitate and replace animal products, food additives and expensive, rare or socially conflictive ingredients (such as palm oil). Biotech companies and agribusiness giants are seizing the opportunity to move into this promising market of ‘green’ consumption with their products being marketed to a new generation of environmentally conscious consumers. As a result, meatless burgers and sausages, as well as imitations of cheese, dairy and seafood have begun to flood markets, found anywhere from fast food chains to local grocery stores.

One of the key differences between conventional junk food and the new synthetic foods is the use of technological innovations such as synthetic biology and genetic engineering. Synthetic biology creates entirely new organisms and microorganisms through the genetic modification or engineering of an organism’s internal genetic components to reconfigure them in new ways. By implanting bits of other organisms’ DNA into microorganisms, or reconfiguring internal genetic information, these new technologies induce microorganisms, cells or other genetic material to ‘ferment’ and reproduce in order to create new, completely synthetic ingredients. The use of the word ‘fermentation’ in synthetic biology creates a false analogy between traditional forms of natural microbial fermentation and these new, completely artificial biotechnologies.

These technologies are being used by companies such as Beyond Meat, Motif FoodWorks, Ginkgo Bioworks (custom-built microbes), BIOMILQ (lab-grown breast milk), Nature’s Fynd (fungi-grown meat and dairy alternatives), Eat Just (egg substitutes made from plant proteins), Perfect Day (lab-grown dairy products) and NotCo.

Companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods use a DNA coding sequence derived from soyabean or peas to create a product that looks and tastes like real meat. Filler ingredients for these products still rely heavily on the extensive processing of conventionally-cultivated and mostly GMO crops. For instance, the Impossible Burger is made almost entirely from industrially produced wheat, maize, soya, coconut and potato, as well as additional bioengineered ingredients. Proteins and carbohydrates from these conventional crops are chemically extracted, cooked, and then extruded through machines that blend and shape them into strands resembling short muscle fibres, allowing manufacturers to convincingly imitate a range of processed meat products.

In cell-based meat, tissue is taken from a live cow and combined with extracted stem cells to grow into muscle fibre in the lab. Once enough (over 20,000) have been obtained from this process, they are coloured, minced, mixed with fats and shaped into burgers.

UPSIDE Foods produces meat by using self-reproducing animal cells. The rationale is that such a process eliminates the need to breed and slaughter larger numbers of animals, thus side-stepping ethical and ecological concerns along the supply chain. While lab-grown meat is not yet widely available to the public, companies like UPSIDE Foods are investing heavily in research and development in order to make their products economically affordable over the long term and to compete with commercial meat.

Whether upscaling lab-grown meat will one day be economically viable remains doubtful, especially since there are many obstacles faced by cultured meat companies. Scientific data demonstrates that cultivated meat gives rise to many inefficiencies and limitations in scalability, as evident in the need for intensive and sophisticated machinery, structural limits on cell metabolism and immunity to foreign contaminants and a series of complex processes that place a strict limit on the expansion of production. All these contribute to a lack of cost competitiveness with the conventional meat products they wish to replace, especially as cell-culturing facilities at the scale needed have never been made viable.21

Being energy, resource and capital intensive, the lab food and fake food economy is highly non-sustainable. In fact, dependency on capital is so high that despite doing very well for six years, the UK company Meatless Farm was forced to lay off much of its workforce as its biggest investors and potential new investors decided to discontinue funding due to a reported slump in plant-based meat sales along with increasing competition.22 Post-Covid, some outlets, including Hopdoddy Burger Bar, preferred to turn to regenerative meat and in-house vegetarian patties.23

In an article on the Impossible Burger, Pat Brown, CEO and founder of Impossible Foods, says, ‘We sought the safest and most environmentally responsible option that would allow us to scale our production and provide the Impossible Burger to consumers at a reasonable cost.’24

(Source: Navdanya International)

The Impossible Burger, based on vast monocultures of GMO and Roundup-sprayed soya, cannot be considered a ‘safe’ option, both because of its high levels of glyphosate and its effect on our gut microbiome. Zen Honeycutt of Moms Across America says,

The levels of glyphosate detected in the Impossible Burger by Health Research Institute Laboratories were 11x higher than the Beyond Meat burger…This new product is being marketed as a solution for ‘healthy’ eating, when in fact 11 ppb of glyphosate herbicide consumption can be highly dangerous.25

Pat Brown admits:

We use genetically engineered yeast [obtained from soya DNA] to produce heme, the ‘magic’ molecule that makes meat taste like meat—and makes the Impossible Burger the only plant-based product to deliver the delicious explosion of flavor and aroma that meat-eating consumers crave.26

In fact, the Impossible Burger is a plant-based burger, the key ingredient of which is a protein called soya leghemoglobin (SLH), derived from genetically modified yeast.

Artificial meat is also made up of protein and fat from peas, potatoes, soya and maize grown in monocultures, based on the same heavy-duty processing methods, chemical inputs and GMOs that compromise global biodiversity, destroy wildlife, alter soils and pollute groundwater sources. Yet, the first benefit highlighted in the marketing campaigns of synthetic food companies remains that of reduced environmental impact. This assumption is difficult to prove, considering that plant-based synthetic foods are based on exactly the same system as industrial agriculture. And ‘plant-based’ is often shorthand for ‘plant-based proteins’, meaning proteins derived from plants rather than from meat or dairy.

Steps involved in plant-based food processing.

(Source: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9717/10/12/2586)

The health hazards of industrially- and ultra-ultra-processed foods are widely recognised, and the latest generation of junk synthetic foods are no better; in fact, they are worse, since genetically engineered artificial ingredients as well as chemically extracted protein isolates are used to produce them. They are as detrimental to health as everyday ultra-processed foods because they contain the same health-altering ingredients: additives, fat, sodium, sugar. With regard to the controversial SLH produced through synthetic biology, according to the Center for Food Safety, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did not conduct adequate long-term testing before approving the additive in 2019; after a short-term rat trial, several potential adverse effects were detected such as weight gain, changes in the blood that could indicate inflammation or kidney disease, disruptions in the reproductive cycle and possible signs of anaemia.27

Despite this lack of evidence regarding its safety, Impossible Foods’ products containing genetically engineered heme are being sold in supermarkets across the United States, exemplifying a reprehensible laxity in testing and regulation for these new products and technologies.

The Canadian company BetterMilk, is investing heavily in the production of cow’s milk using bovine mammary cells. TurtleTree, a start-up lab based in Singapore and the US, is poised to launch human lactoferrin in the market as the first commercial cellular product for newborns. US-based BIOMILQ has also announced that it is ready to market the first synthetic baby milk cultured from human cells. Is this product comparable to breast milk? The company doesn’t claim so but says, ‘It will be free from the environmental toxins, food allergens, and prescription medications that are often detected in breast milk,’ because ‘it is produced outside the body in a controlled, sterile environment.’ Indeed, this is a well-founded argument, as the latest studies on natural breast milk show. A recent American intercollegiate study found the presence of PFAS (a group of synthetic chemicals used in consumer products) in 100 percent of breast milk analysed: all 50 samples examined showed the presence of dangerous chemical substances at levels up to 2,000 times higher than those considered safe in drinking water.28 Yet, in spite of this, the industrial apparatus systematically aims to invest in technological solutions in order to profit from the problems it has itself created.

(Source: Navdanya International)

Synthetic and lab foods represent yet another profit-making machine used by billionaires and big corporations to capitalise on proprietary technology, reflected in companies’ relentless pursuit of patents for anything from novel synthetic biology processes to genetically engineered ingredients like SLH and protein texturising processing and even the patenting of genetic material used as raw material. As we demonstrated in our report Gates to a Global Empire,29 27 patents have been assigned to Impossible Foods, with over one hundred additional patents pending for other fake meat proxies, from chicken to fish. The patenting logic that underlies the synthetic food movement sees animals and nature as disposable elements that can simply be replaced by more efficient technologies and lab-engineered products.

(Source: Navdanya International)

The EAT forum and Big Food

The Poison Cartel and the junk food industry promote fake food in partnership with the EAT forum, which is closely associated with the World Economic Forum (WEF). EAT has a partnership through FReSH (Food Reform for Sustainability and Health) with the junk food industry and Big Ag, such as Bayer, BASF, Cargill and PepsiCo, among others. Bayer became the biggest GMO seed and agrochemical company after it merged with Monsanto, and Yara is the biggest chemical fertiliser corporation in the world.

EAT forum’s FReSH initiative has partnered with over thirty companies to ‘transform’ the food system.

(Source: ‘FReSH,’ EAT, https://eatforum.org/initiatives/fresh/)

In 2019, the EAT forum released the EAT–Lancet Report, ‘Food in the Anthropocene: The EAT–Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems’, that sought to impose a monoculture diet of chemically-grown, hyper-industrially-processed food on the world, claiming that a ‘healthy and sustainable [plant-based] diet’ protects the health of the planet and of people. By not addressing the key danger of pesticides and toxins in growing and processing food in chemical intensive industrial agriculture, the report turned a blind eye to chronic disease epidemics in many parts of the world.

What is cause for real alarm is that synthetic food is slowly encroaching on multilevel governance arenas. This was most evident at the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), as well as at COP 26 in Glasgow, Scotland, both of which served as forums to reveal the true intention of agribusiness and food giants—keeping the system unchanged. Both summits were yet another failed attempt at addressing power imbalances in the food system, with sustainable farming practices like agroecology playing a marginal role.

Reflected in the themes and proposals in both international events was a willingness to maintain business as usual—relying on the failed industrial agricultural model and allowing big actors to dictate terms. During both the UNFSS (September 2021) and COP 26 (October–November 2021), there was an explicit promotion of artificial and ultra-processed plant-based foods, cloaked in the language of achieving ‘protein diversification’ and ‘sustainable diets’. During the UNFSS in New York, Action Track 2, ‘Shift to Sustainable and Healthy Consumption Patterns’— led by Nestlé, Danone and the controversial EAT forum—was based on solutions whose sustainability is questionable, and at COP 26, the Plant Based Treaty was promoted and backed by all the abovementioned actors.

In fact, the Bill Gates–run UNFSS, held amid protests from international environmental associations, was where the intentions of the food multinationals found their best expression. The development model must remain the same, namely that of the failed but profitable Green Revolution. The actors involved, i.e., big investors and agribusiness multinationals, must also remain the same in order to continue to profit from new technological investments. What needs to be radically changed is, quite simply, the narrative. This is the only truly green element to be found in the action plans of the masters of food! Yet, it cannot be said that we had not been warned. After all, Action Track 1 and 2 of the summit laid out the global strategy very thoroughly.

Action Track 1, ‘Ensure access to safe and nutritious food for all’, called for large-scale food fortification as a solution to malnutrition. Food-fortification is the process of supplementing food with additional nutrients, which can also involve the use of biotechnology and genetic modification. It is an approach often recommended and put into practice in developing countries where nutritional deficiencies are common.

A classic example is that of Golden Rice, rice that has been genetically modified to contain levels of beta-carotene that can remedy vitamin A deficiencies in the population. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has so far given US$28 million to fund Golden Rice, in direct collaboration with the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN, founded in 2001 by Gates). GAIN, leader of Action Track 1, was among the first organisations to operationalise the public-private partnership model. Since then, it has continued to support biofortification projects to combat malnutrition and food insecurity. GAIN shares many of the same donors as AGRA (Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa), such as the Rockefeller Foundation, BSF or Unilever, and received no less than US$251 million from the Gates Foundation between 2002 and 2014.

We present here an Impossible Menu of Fake Food: a plate of fortified Golden Rice as the first course, of Impossible Burger as the second course, with a side dish of synthetic mozzarella and vegetables grown from genetically modified seeds. Of course, selling a menu like this isn’t very easy, but if stated clearly that such a menu is necessary to protect the environment and that it is also beneficial to our health, perhaps more people would be willing to go along. There may even be more governments willing to fund private research in this artificial nutrition. There is no doubt that a menu conceived in a laboratory, yet at the same time presenting itself as ecologically sound, makes for a seductive narrative. But is this a realistic representation, or are we faced with yet another greenwashing operation to hide the usual suspects behind a fluorescent green veneer? How many of those opting for the Impossible Burger or Beyond Meat are actually informed about the long chain of production, starting from GMO soya to animal parts, of their green burger? One thing can be said with certainty: the development of the artificial food industry as the best response to environmental challenges is based on the global food industry trying to reshape its range of products to appeal to an increasingly green consumer base, and it is aware of the fact that many of these consumers are not au fait with the causes of the current environmental disasters. It is not surprising that the tremendous rise of synthetic foods is taking place at a time when ethical concerns linked to the meat and dairy industry are increasingly in the spotlight. As the industrial agrifood industry is threatened by consumer awareness, big companies that stand to lose significant profits are trying to tap into a new market of environmentally-aware consumers looking for alternatives. It would seem that Big Food has found a way to impose yet another set of technological ‘solutions’ to a series of problems caused by the very model of industrial agribusiness on which it is based.

(Source: Navdanya International)

(Source: Navdanya International)

If today, ordering a whole meal of fake food at a restaurant seems far-fetched, it might, in the near future, even sound like a responsible choice. In the more distant future, it may no longer be a choice, but the only option left for not leaving the table hungry. If agroecology and organic production are not adequately supported, that future, which seems dystopian right now, may actually come to pass due to a lack of alternatives.

Some might object: but aren’t the European Union’s Farm to Fork and Biodiversity strategies asking us, among other things, to expand the area under organic production by 25 percent and cut pesticide use by 50 percent by 2030? The answer lies in the implementation of these strategies, which should primarily take place through a reform of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) which, when allocating resources, prefers to subsidise large-scale conventional producers. Finally, we should not forget that the Farm to Fork strategy itself inclines towards new technologies of genetic manipulation, which includes the generation of new GMOs. All this notwithstanding, the fact remains that the EU’s policies, by far, are the most progressive globally.

If this is the scenario in global politics, what is happening at the individual level? Consumer choices have a major impact on markets, as demonstrated by the growth of organic foods worldwide. According to the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), 2020 recorded the highest growth in the global market for organic products, increasing to €120 billion. Consumers instinctively mistrust synthetic food and this is perhaps why it is necessary to associate these products with an ecological narrative. While vegetarian and vegan diets have the potential for a positive impact on the environment, artificial meat, eggs and cheese substitutes may not. On the contrary, as shown earlier in the chapter, there is much to suggest that the biotech industry is not as sustainable as it claims to be. A growing number of consumers genuinely want to make greener food choices, and if not misled by the industry’s greenwashed narrative, would most likely opt for an organic diet. Large investments in the biotech and synthetic food industries could actually delay those regenerative and truly sustainable processes that are trying to emerge, regardless of great difficulties, at a local level all over the world.30

Animal-free farming?

Ever since the rise of industrial agriculture, removing farmers from the land has been one of its main objectives. Chemicals and machines have been designed to displace farmers, and now climate change is becoming the driving force for removing them and their animals from the land. ‘Animals,’ says Pat Brown, ‘have just been the technology we have used up until now to produce meat.…What consumers value about meat has nothing to do with how it’s made. They just live with the fact that it’s made from animals.’

‘If there’s one thing we know,’ argues the Impossible Foods CEO, ‘it’s that when an ancient, unimprovable technology encounters a better technology that is continuously improvable, it’s just a matter of time before the game is over.’ Brown also seems on his game when he says that his investors clearly see ‘a $3 trillion opportunity’ on the horizon.

Ecological sciences have been based on a recognition of the interconnections and interrelatedness between humans and nature, between diverse organisms and within all living systems, including the human body. Diets have evolved according to climates and the biodiversity that the local climate allows. The biodiversity of the soil, of plants and of our gut microbiome are one continuum. Technologies are tools. Tools need to be assessed on ethical, social and ecological criteria. Tools and technologies have never been viewed as self-referential in living cultures; they have been assessed in the context of contributing to the well-being of all.

Through fake food, evolution, biodiversity and the web of life are being redefined as an ‘ancient, unimprovable technology’, ignorant of the sophisticated knowledges that have evolved in diverse agricultural and food cultures, in diverse climate and ecosystems, to sustain and renew biodiversity, the ecosystem, the health of people and of the planet. Fake food is thus building on a century-and-a-half of food imperialism and food colonisation and on half-a-century of a fossil fuel-based industrial food system.

Animals are being exterminated based on a pseudo-science that says animals are a source of methane pollution. Methane is part of the biogenic cycle of nature. Samantha Werth, senior director of sustainability at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, USA, explains the process:

As a by-product of consuming cellulose, cattle belch methane, there-by returning that carbon sequestered by plants back into the atmosphere. After about ten years, that methane is broken down and converted back to CO2. Once converted to CO2, plants can again perform photosynthesis and fix that carbon back into cellulose. From here, cattle can eat the plants and the cycle begins once again. In essence, the methane belched from cattle is not adding new carbon to the atmosphere. Rather, it is part of the natural cycling of carbon through the biogenic carbon cycle.31

Thirteen countries have joined something called the Global Methane Hub, dedicated to the reduction of methane in various ways. They are: the United States, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Chile, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Germany, Panama, Peru, Uruguay and Spain. US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, said in a statement,

Mitigating methane is the fastest way to reduce warming in the short term. Food and agriculture can contribute to a low-methane future by improving farmer productivity and resilience. We welcome agriculture ministers participating in the implementation of the Global Methane Pledge.

Kerry makes no mention of fossil chemicals and nitrous oxide. Targeting methane, which is part of the biogenic cycle, is like targeting animals that have the potential to be partners in ecological agriculture. The problem is not the cow or other farm animals; the problem is factory farming.

All ecosystems have plants and animals, and all non-violent ecological agriculture systems are based on a symbiosis between them—plants feed animals; animals feed plants. Cows eat plants; plants are nourished by the manure the cows provide, creating a regenerative circular economy that needs no fossil fuel or external inputs and creates no pollution, no waste. Indigenous varieties of crops were bred to maximise both straw and grain, with the straw feeding animals, grains feeding humans. Animals, too, were bred for diversity and were multipurpose, giving food for the soil as manure, energy for farming and food for human consumption.

Industrial agriculture broke this symbiotic relationship between plants and animals. Instead of plants being fertilised with organic manure, they were fertilised with synthetic fertilisers. Plants from indigenous seeds could not tolerate synthetic fertiliser, so they were engineered to be dwarf varieties by Norman Borlaug. Straw, which is food for animals, disappeared. It was substituted with feed made from grain, especially GMO corn and soyabean—40 percent of the corn grown is used for animal feed, 77 percent soyabean is used as feed for livestock, aggravating the hunger crisis. Cows are herbivores and like to eat grass. Shifting them to an intensive grain diet disturbs their metabolism, contributing to increased methane emissions.32

The biogenic cycle of renewal is in fact part of a circular economy between plants and animals, as illustrated above: Plants absorb the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, animals eat plants and fertilise the plants with their ‘waste’. Herbivores have four stomachs—they eat and, through enteric fermentation, digest the carbon in the cellulose of the plant and transform it into milk and other metabolic processes.

(Source: CLEAR Center, University of California, Davis)

Cars eat food

At the G20 Summit in New Delhi, on September 9, 2023, the Global Biofuel Alliance (GBA), comprising both biofuel producers and consumers, was launched by India. Member countries include India, Singapore, Bangladesh, Italy, the US, Brazil, Argentina, Mauritius and the UAE. Among the supporting organisations are the International Energy Agency (IEA), the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the WEF and World LPG Association.

According to predictions, the global ethanol market, which was US$99.06 billion in 2022, is expected to surpass US$162.12 billion by 2032.33 The main sources of biofuels are sugarcane, grains and agricultural waste. Yet, industrial biofuels raise several questions: Are they truly carbon neutral? Will the poor gain or lose with an explosive increase in the production of industrial biofuels? What are the implications of industrial biofuels vis-à-vis soil, ecology, land sovereignty and food sovereignty?

Even though biofuels are being promoted as a source of clean renewable energy, there are ecological reasons why converting crops like soyabean, corn and palm into liquid fuels can actually aggravate the CO2 burden, worsening the climate crisis while also contributing to the erosion of biodiversity and the depletion of water resources.

First, there is the question of deforestation in order to increase soyabean and palm oil cultivation. According to the FAO, 25 to 30 percent of the GHGs released in the atmosphere each year are a result of deforestation. Second, if we take into account the production of biofuels, we see that they cause more GHG emissions than conventional fuels. According to two important studies published in February 2008,34 ethanol and biodiesel production are linked to increased CO2 emissions and destruction of biodiverse forests, as well as air and water pollution. The destruction of natural ecosystems, be it rainforests in the tropics or grasslands in South America, not only releases GHGs into the atmosphere, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges that absorb carbon emissions.

Ethanol production entails the use of 1,700 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. Corn, one of the sources, requires more nitrogen fertiliser, more insecticides and more herbicides than any other crop. Increased use of corn and soyabean oil for biofuel production has raised world food prices by 10 percent, according to an IMF report.35 Biofuels have pushed up feedstock prices, too. Around the world, acreage under forests or food agriculture is being converted for biofuel production, thus aggravating the water situation. An International Water Management Institute study warned that ambitious plans in China and India to greatly increase domestic production of biofuels derived from crops will place enormous stress on these countries’ water supply, seriously undermining their ability to meet food and feed demands.36

Energy can only be considered sustainable if it does not compete with the food supply, does not divert organic matter from maintaining the essential ecosystem and is decentralised.

Replacing one resource intensive and energy intensive industrial food system with another within the old paradigm is not the transformation of the food system that the people and the earth are seeking. Then, because we continue to lose control over the origin and production of food, we are gradually giving up our food sovereignty. Artificial food does not present itself as a clear alternative to our diet; rather, by disguising itself as a form of traditional food, it tries to sneak up to our tables. It is a full-fledged counterfeiting operation that aims to gain control over our diets by making food ever more dependent on the multinational companies that produce and patent it.

The earth and our food systems are becoming more vulnerable and more undemocratic as resources and power are extracted from both the earth community and food communities.

 

  1. 1  A campaign which has its roots in a network of ecomodernist groups and societies established since 2015, after the publication of An Ecomodernist Manifesto.

  2. 2  Mike Hannis, ‘Rebooting Reality’, The Land, no. 32, https://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/rebooting-reality; Jonathan Matthews, ‘George Monbiot Teams Up With Mark Lynas and the Ecomodernists to Reboot Food’, GMWatch, November 14, 2022, https://www.gmwatch.org/en/106-news/latest-news/20127.

  3. 3  George Monbiot, ‘Lab-Grown Food Will Soon Destroy Farming—and Save the Planet’, The Guardian, January 8, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/08/lab-grown-food-destroy-farming-save-planet.

  4. 4  Tina Bellon, ‘Bayer Sees Potential Future Business In Plant-Based Meat Market’, Reuters, August 1, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bayer-agriculture-food/bayer-sees-potential-future-business-in-plant-based-meat-market-idUSKCN1UR5SF.

  5. 5  Amy Quinton, ‘Lab-Grown Meat’s Carbon Footprint Potentially Worse Than Retail Beef’, University of California, Davis, May 22, 2023, https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/lab-grown-meat-carbon-footprint-worse-beef.

  6. 6  Yanyu Ma, H. Holly Wang, Yizhou Hua, and Shihuan Kuang, ‘The Rise of Meat Substitute Consumption and Its Impact on the U.S. Soybean Industry’, Purdue Agricultural Economic Report, May 15, 2023, https://ag.purdue.edu/commercialag/home/paer-article/the-rise-of-meat-substitute-consumption-and-its-impact-on-the-u-s-soyabean-industry; see also ‘The Irony of Protein Corporations’, Regenetarianism, July 17, 2023, https://lachefnet.wordpress.com/2023/07/17/the-irony-of-protein-corporations.

  7. 7  Derrick Risner et al., ‘Environmental Impacts of Cultured Meat: A Cradle-to-Gate Life Cycle Assessment’, preprint, submitted April 21, 2023, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.21.537778v1.full.pdf+html.

  8. 8  Derrick Risner et al., ‘Cradle to Production Gate Life Cycle Assessment of Cultured Meat Growth Media: A Comparison of Essential 8TM and Beefy-9’, preprint, submitted April 21, 2023, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.21.537772v1.

  9. 9  Quinton, op. cit.

  10. 10  Jim Thomas, ‘George and the Food System Dragon’, Scan The Horizon, October 26, 2023, https://www.scanthehorizon.org/p/george-and-the-food-system-dragon.

  11. 11  Errol Schweizer, ‘What Consumers Should Ask about Precision Fermentation’, Forbes, March 2, 2022, https://www.forbes.com/sites/errolschweizer/2022/03/02/what-should-consumers-be-asking-about-precision-fermentation.

  12. 12  Thomas, op. cit.

  13. 13  Samantha Werth, ‘The Biogenic Carbon Cycle and Cattle’, CLEAR Center at UC Davis, February 19, 2020, https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/biogenic-carbon-cycle-and-cattle.

  14. 14  Vandana Shiva, ‘Rewilding Food, Rewilding Farming’, The Ecologist, January 24, 2020, https://theecologist.org/2020/jan/24/rewilding-food-rewilding-farming.

  15. 15  For more, see Vandana Shiva, with Kartikey Shiva, Oneness vs. the 1%: Shattering Illusions, Seeding Freedom (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2020).

  16. 16  Anna Starostinetskaya, ‘Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Richard Branson Lead $90 Million Investment to Create Next Vegan Impossible Burger’, VegNews, February 26, 2019, https://vegnews.com/2019/2/jeff-bezos-bill-gates-and-richard-branson-lead-90-million-investment-to-create-next-vegan-impossible-burger; see also Zack Friedman, ‘Why Bill Gates and Richard Branson Invested in “Clean” Meat’, Forbes, August 25, 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2017/08/25/why-bill-gates-richard-branson-clean-meat.

  17. 17  Kyle Gaan, ‘Plant-Based Food Retail Sales Reach $7 billion’, Good Food Institute, April 6, 2021, https://gfi.org/blog/spins-data-release-2021/; Brian Kateman, ‘Healthier Plant-Based Meat Is on the Rise’, Forbes, May 10, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/briankateman/2021/05/10/healthier-plant-based-meat-is-on-the-rise.

  18. 18  ‘Q1 Shatters Previous Synthetic Biology Investment Record–Signals Projected 2021 Investment of up to $36 Billion’, SynBioBeta, April 7, 2021, https://www.synbiobeta.com/read/q1-shatters-previous-synthetic-biology-investment-record-signals-projected-2021-investment-of-up-to-36-billion.

  19. 19  Joseph Mapue, ‘8 Pioneering Companies Creating Sustainable Lab-Grown Meat’, Ross Dawson, https://rossdawson.com/futurist/companies-creating-future/8-pioneering-companies-creating-sustainable-lab-grown-meat.

  20. 20  Thomas Ohr, ‘Berlin-Based Foodtech Startup Formo Raises €42 Million to Supercharge Animal-Free Cheese Production’, EU-Startups, September 13, 2021, https://www.eu-startups.com/2021/09/berlin-based-foodtech-startup-formo-raises-e42-million-to-supercharge-animal-free-cheese-production.

  21. 21  Jean-François Hocquette et al., ‘Review: Will “Cultured Meat” Transform Our Food System Towards More Sustainability?’, animal (2024), https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751731124000764; Xin Li Ching et al., ‘Lab-Based Meat the Future Food’, Environmental Advances 10 (December 2022), https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666765722001508; Konstantina Kyriakopoulou et al., ‘Plant-Based Meat Analogues’, in Charis M. Galanakis, ed., Sustainable Meat Production and Processing (Cambridge, MA: Academic Press, 2019), 103–26, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-814874-7.00006-7.

  22. 22  Maxwell Rabb, ‘“Nobody Expected This”: Beloved Vegan Meat Brand Prepares for Bankruptcy’, Plant Based News, June 20, 2023, https://plantbasednews.org/news/economics/vegan-meat-brand-meatless-prepares-for-bankruptcy.

  23. 23  Bret Thorn, ‘Hopdoddy Burger Bar Adds More Regenerative Meat to Its Menu As it Removes Manufactured Plant-Based Protein’, Nation’s Restaurant News, September 19, 2023, https://www.nrn.com/fast-casual/hopdoddy-burger-bar-adds-more-regenerative-meat-its-menu-it-removes-manufactured-plant.

  24. 24  Pat Brown, ‘How Our Commitment to Consumers And Our Planet Led Us to Use GM Soy’, Medium, May 16, 2019, https://medium.com/impossible-foods/how-our-commitment-to-consumers-and-our-planet-led-us-to-use-gm-soy-23f880c93408.

  25. 25  Zen Honeycutt, ‘GMO Impossible Burger Positive for Carcinogenic Glyphosate’, Moms Across America, July 8, 2019, https://www.momsacrossamerica.com/gmo_impossible_burger_positive_for_carcinogenic_glyphosate.

  26. 26  Pat Brown, op. cit.

  27. 27  ‘Rat Feeding Study Suggests the Impossible Burger May Not Be Safe to Eat’, Organic Consumers Association, April 1, 2023, https://organicconsumers.org/rat-feeding-study-suggests-the-impossible-burger-may-not-be-safe-to-eat; originally published in GMWatch, September 20, 2022, https://www.gmwatch.org/en/106-news/latest-news/20099-rat-feeding-study-suggests-the-impossible-burger-may-not-be-safe-to-eat.

  28. 28  ‘100% of Breast Milk Samples Tested Positive for Toxic “Forever Chemicals”’, Toxic-Free Future, May 13, 2021, https://toxicfreefuture.org/press-room/100-of-breast-milk-samples-tested-positive-for-toxic-forever-chemicals/; see also Guomao Zheng et al., ‘Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in Breast Milk: Concerning Trends for Current-Use PFAS’, Environmental Science & Technology 55, no. 11 (2021): 7510–20, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.0c06978.

  29. 29  Carla Ramos Cortés, Gates to a Global Empire…over Seed, Food, Health, Knowledge and the Earth—A Global Citizens’ Report, Navdanya International, October 2020, https://navdanyainternational.org/publications/report-synthesis-gates-to-a-global-empire.

  30. 30  Manilo Masucci, ‘An Impossible Menu: Fake Food Is Taking Over Our Tables’, Terra Nuova, February 2022, https://www.terranuovalibri.it/fascicolo/dettaglio/terra-nuova-febbraio-2022-9788866817000-236614.html.

  31. 31  Werth, op. cit.

  32. 32  Jan Dijkstra, ‘Changing The Cow’s Diet Reduces Methane and Nitrogen Emissions’, Wageningen University & Research, February 16, 2021, https://www.wur.nl/en/article/changing-the-cows-diet-reduces-methane-and-nitrogen-emissions.htm; see also Jena Wilson, ‘Reducing the Carbon Footprint of Cattle Operations through Diet’, Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, August 8, 2019, https://water.unl.edu/article/manure-nutrient-management/reducing-carbon-footprint-cattle-operations-through-diet.

  33. 33  ‘Ethanol Market Size to Hit around USD 162.12 Billion by 2032’, Precedence Research, January 2024, https://www.precedenceresearch.com/ethanol-market.

  34. 34  Rhett A. Butler, ‘Biofuels Are Worsening Global Warming’, Mongabay, February 7, 2008, https://news.mongabay.com/2008/02/biofuels-are-worsening-global-warming. See also Joseph Fargione et al., ‘Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt’, Science 319, no. 5867 (2008): 1235–8; Tim Searchinger et al., ‘Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gasses through Emissions from Land-Use Change’, Science 319, no. 5867 (2008): 1238–40.

  35. 35  Valerie Mercer-Blackman, Hossein Samiei, and Kevin Cheng, ‘IMF Survey: Biofuel Demand Pushes Up Food Prices’, IMF News, October 17, 2007, https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2015/09/28/04/53/sores1017a.

  36. 36  ‘Biofuel Threatens China, India Water Supply’, International Water Management Institute, May 5, 2008, https://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/news/biofuel-threatens-china-india-water-supply.