The Future of Protein?
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@tim Agreed, and perhaps will be a market angle in the future for NZ Beef. Still hard to escape the emissions, water use, manure etc.
Australia has a lot more feed lots than many people realise and I happen to live not far from one. Thankfully I am far enough away theat the smell doesn't hit us but when driving past on certain days reminds me of driving past the slaughterhouse on a bad day.
I also think most land clearing in Australia and particularly QLD is for livestock. Australia I believe is one of the worst land clearing nations yet we are quick to condemn Brazil etc.
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can you back that up?
As someone who spends a bit of time on Qld cattle stations, i don't see a lot of evidence. Farmers certainly aren't bulldozing the Daintree to run cows. Those central and North Qld stations are the size of small countries with sparse tree cover as it is. Fuck all grows out west, it's hot and dry.
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@mariner4life yea flying over that place i dont know how cattle even survive
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@mariner4life said in The Future of Protein?:
can you back that up?
As someone who spends a bit of time on Qld cattle stations, i don't see a lot of evidence. Farmers certainly aren't bulldozing the Daintree to run cows. Those central and North Qld stations are the size of small countries with sparse tree cover as it is. Fuck all grows out west, it's hot and dry.
Australia cleared 3.5 million hectares of land in nine years. Check out the state-by-state breakdown
We've been compared with some of the worst countries on earth for land clearing, yet Australia's National Greenhouse Accounts data shows an increase in tree cover in Australia over the last 10 years. So what is actually going on with land clearing in Australia?
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@chimoaus said in The Future of Protein?:
@mariner4life said in The Future of Protein?:
can you back that up?
As someone who spends a bit of time on Qld cattle stations, i don't see a lot of evidence. Farmers certainly aren't bulldozing the Daintree to run cows. Those central and North Qld stations are the size of small countries with sparse tree cover as it is. Fuck all grows out west, it's hot and dry.
Australia cleared 3.5 million hectares of land in nine years. Check out the state-by-state breakdown
We've been compared with some of the worst countries on earth for land clearing, yet Australia's National Greenhouse Accounts data shows an increase in tree cover in Australia over the last 10 years. So what is actually going on with land clearing in Australia?
What do they define as forest? IMHO there's a huge difference between pristine rainforest and scrub land.
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@chimoaus said in The Future of Protein?:
@mariner4life said in The Future of Protein?:
can you back that up?
As someone who spends a bit of time on Qld cattle stations, i don't see a lot of evidence. Farmers certainly aren't bulldozing the Daintree to run cows. Those central and North Qld stations are the size of small countries with sparse tree cover as it is. Fuck all grows out west, it's hot and dry.
Australia cleared 3.5 million hectares of land in nine years. Check out the state-by-state breakdown
We've been compared with some of the worst countries on earth for land clearing, yet Australia's National Greenhouse Accounts data shows an increase in tree cover in Australia over the last 10 years. So what is actually going on with land clearing in Australia?
From that ABC article:
Despite the clearing of more than 3.5 million hectares nationally during the 2010-2018 period, according to the National Greenhouse Accounts(NGA) data there has been a net increase in tree cover in Australia during that time.
To get to that conclusion, they have compared the amount of cleared land (3.78 million hectares) with the amount of land regrown (4.19 million hectares), to come up with a "net forest clearing" figure of negative-401,000 hectares.
Again, the lion's share of that regrowth — 2.7 million hectares —has reportedly happened in Queensland, and to a lesser extent in New South Wales. -
if that article is right, and it seems to tie itself in knots to say that the data is hazy
then only 10% or so of clearing is of "forest" 30 years or older.
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There was an article in the Herald the other day about a startup making cheese with casein protein expressed in yeast. There are other companies doing this, for ice cream too.
This is a more interesting and economically/technically feasible application of biotechnology for animal product alternatives than growing mammalian cells.
Impossible Meat already to this with a heme protein (from soy bean plant roots, expressed in pichia pastoris) to simulate the "bleeding" of myoglobin containing muscle juice in cooked beef.
Will be interesting to look into the economics. I have a related idea I am interested in exploring.
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@tim said in The Future of Protein?:
There was an article in the Herald the other day about a startup making cheese with casein protein expressed in yeast. There are other companies doing this, for ice cream too.
This is a more interesting and economically/technically feasible application of biotechnology for animal product alternatives than growing mammalian cells.
Impossible Meat already to this with a heme protein (from soy bean plant roots, expressed in pichia pastoris) to simulate the "bleeding" of myoglobin containing muscle juice in cooked beef.
Will be interesting to look into the economics. I have a related idea I am interested in exploring.
Sounds interesting, I am sure once it is affordable and tastes similar consumers will make the switch to the environmentally sustainable option. Also, countries that import most of their animal meat will love the ability to create their own food supply.
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@mariner4life said in The Future of Protein?:
if that article is right, and it seems to tie itself in knots to say that the data is hazy
then only 10% or so of clearing is of "forest" 30 years or older.
The problem is it takes a fucken long time to replace 30+ year old forest and its ecosystems. That 10% in QLD is 370,900 hectares of forest, that is a fucken tragedy. Sure, you can plant some trees, but Koalas and most native fauna can't survive in these trees planted in offsets.
I have no idea why we should be allowed to clear native forest when so much of the country has already been cleared. We should be trying to be more efficient with the land we have.
I think the long term solution will be for the Govt to pay some sort of incentive for forested land people own. If farmers or landholders get rewarded for regeneration and forest then they will be less likely to chop it down.
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@chimoaus said in The Future of Protein?:
@mariner4life said in The Future of Protein?:
if that article is right, and it seems to tie itself in knots to say that the data is hazy
then only 10% or so of clearing is of "forest" 30 years or older.
The problem is it takes a fucken long time to replace 30+ year old forest and its ecosystems. That 10% in QLD is 370,900 hectares of forest, that is a fucken tragedy. Sure, you can plant some trees, but Koalas and most native fauna can't survive in these trees planted in offsets.
At a guess, 30+ years?
I have no idea why we should be allowed to clear native forest when so much of the country has already been cleared. We should be trying to be more efficient with the land we have.
I think the long term solution will be for the Govt to pay some sort of incentive for forested land people own. If farmers or landholders get rewarded for regeneration and forest then they will be less likely to chop it down.
My wife plans to stop working the land and let it recover. That's not just good management, but setting aside a few hundred acres for native reforestation also provides an opportunity to sell carbon credits to filthy polluters...
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@antipodean said in The Future of Protein?:
At a guess, 30+ years?
Unfortunately, it's not that simple is it. A functioning forest is made up of so many components that it would be very difficult to replicate by replanting. Plants, fungi, insects etc have a very symbiotic relationship, and I am sure there is a lot more to it then we understand.
This is why offsets are so fucken stupid. You can't clear pristine Black-throated finch habitat for a mine and then plant trees elsewhere and expect those birds to move. They are in that area for a reason and not in the other area.
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@chimoaus said in The Future of Protein?:
@mariner4life said in The Future of Protein?:
if that article is right, and it seems to tie itself in knots to say that the data is hazy
then only 10% or so of clearing is of "forest" 30 years or older.
The problem is it takes a fucken long time to replace 30+ year old forest and its ecosystems. That 10% in QLD is 370,900 hectares of forest, that is a fucken tragedy. Sure, you can plant some trees, but Koalas and most native fauna can't survive in these trees planted in offsets.
I have no idea why we should be allowed to clear native forest when so much of the country has already been cleared. We should be trying to be more efficient with the land we have.
I think the long term solution will be for the Govt to pay some sort of incentive for forested land people own. If farmers or landholders get rewarded for regeneration and forest then they will be less likely to chop it down.
totally agree. Also think there is money to be had in careful greening of cities, tree cover to keep the heating pavements shaded, etc etc.
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@taniwharugby plenty of debateable points in that one. she seems more in favour of plant which i would disagree with even from a health perpsective. but final message is really all that matters for most people. protein is protein.
Meat gets a bad rep, but you combine a gluten free vegan diet with 100g of lean meat per meal, and i would say you cannot eat better than that.
so many other big ticket health factors before you worry about saturated fat, and dietary cholestrol is unrelated to blood levels, eggs are great
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@chimoaus said in The Future of Protein?:
Once cultivated meat tastes the same and is cheaper or the same price will you buy it?
No
Do you think this is ever likely to happen?
People who can afford real meat will eat real meat.
Do you have any issues with the climate impacts of traditional animal agriculture?
None whatsoever.
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@Winger said in The Future of Protein?:
Do you think this is ever likely to happen?
Yes, I do.
Cultivated meat is likely to overtake real meat as it scales up. Don't know when. And I can see it being a protein source of choice for a number of people.
Note there's a big difference between meat grown in the lab (real meat) and meat subsitutes like the pea-proteins, etc.
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@nzzp
Once it gets to a point where taste and cost are the same then I do t think people will give a shit.Maybe the best way for people to eat top quality meat in the future is to keep human farms like the matrix and and they way usda prime rib in a simulation!
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The economics of the plant based "meat" may just never stack up, not so much as in plant based meat v normal meat but in that it's simply much easier and profitable to turn your peas, corn etc. into other products that have an existing market you can so easily sell to than to go to all the effort and expense of turning into plant based meat.
At the end of the day economics and economies of scale always wins...
