"A meat-eater with a bicycle is much more environmentally unfriendly than a vegetarian with a Hummer."
--Dr Mark Post
The world's largest food concern, Unilever, has opened a new research lab at the world's most prestigious agricultural university, the University of Wageningen (the Netherlands). Unilever will locate all elements of its foods R&D there. A spokeswoman on Dutch radio stressed plant-based meat alternatives as an important research subject.
Wageningen University has strong credentials in that respect, with the development of shear cell technology.
Shear cell technology strings plant proteins together in tightly controlled fibers, resulting in a meat substitute where texture (fibrousness, bite, mouthfeel) can easily be controlled, and changed at will. This, combined with 3D food printing, offers the possibility of creating multiple meat (substitute) variations in future.
Unilever's food campus is open to startups, innovators and partners. One of the first to have build its own lab on the same grounds is Symrise, an industrial flavours and scents group.
About half of Dutch people call themselves 'flexitarians'. This means that they don't eat meat with their main meal at least three times a week. The proportion of vegetarians is stable, at just under five percent of the Dutch population.
Wageningen researchers believe, however, that feeding 9 billion people with animal meat will not be sustainable for the planet.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday December 06 2019, @07:14PM (1 child)
Actually, the traditional use for that kind of land was wood lot. This assumes, of course, that you get enough rain for trees to grow without irrigation.
Today, instead of making it a wood lot we could make it an "ecological reserve" and allow limited tree culling. But to satisfy the "ecological reserve" status you'd really need to limit the tree culling, and prohibit clear cutting and "purning". Perhaps allow seasonal hunting of large animals...though again that would need to be strictly limited to prevent overuse.
If you need irrigation for trees to grow, then this approach won't work, of course.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @07:22PM
So basically we would release the CO2 in random forest fires like they do in California rather than in a useful fashion.