Links tagged “science”

Europeans now also allowed to eat cricket powder and small mealworms - Earlier in January, the Commission also approved the use of small mealworms. The small mealworm may be used as (spread) paste, frozen, dried and powdered. Powdered mealworm larvae will also serve as a food supplement.

Daily Wire: Cricket powder will now be permitted in a number of food products, such as multigrain bread, crackers, cereal bars, biscuits, beer-like beverages, chocolates, sauces, whey powder, soups, and other items “intended for the general population,” according to the new regulation. Cricket One, a company that asserts that the insects are “nutritionally more efficient” and serve as a more reliable “source of alternative protein” than livestock, submitted the original application.

The New York Allergy and Sinus Centers has nevertheless found that “several allergic reactions to crickets” have been reported in the past two years. Individuals allergic to shellfish such as shrimp, crabs, and lobsters “may develop an allergy to crickets” because the species share many of the same proteins. ... Proposals for the increased consumption of crickets and other insects occur as many policymakers voice concern about the impact of meat production on climate change.

Eat lab grown meat from 'massive bioreactors' to save the earth! 'Our planet is in crisis' - Restaurateur Andrés, known for his work on global food security, told Reuters he wants to sell cultivated meat because of its environmental benefits. "We can see in what is happening all around us, in every country around the globe, that our planet is in crisis," he said.

(Reuters) - Once the stuff of science fiction, lab-grown meat could become reality in some restaurants in the United States as early as this year. Executives at cultivated meat companies are optimistic that meat grown in massive steel vats could be on the menu within months after one company won the go-ahead from a key regulator. ... Cultivated meat is derived from a small sample of cells collected from livestock, which is then fed nutrients, grown in enormous steel vessels called bioreactors, and processed into something that looks and tastes like a real cut of meat. Just one country, Singapore, has so far approved the product for retail sale. But the United States is poised to follow. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in November that a cultivated meat product - a chicken breast grown by California-based UPSIDE Foods - was safe for human consumption. ...

The biggest challenge companies face is growing the nascent supply chain for the nutrient mix to feed cells and for the massive bioreactors required to produce large quantities of cultivated meat, executives said. For now, production is limited. UPSIDE’s facility has the capacity to churn out 400,000 pounds of cultivated meat per year – a small fraction of the 106 billion pounds of conventional meat and poultry produced in the United States in 2021, according to the North American Meat Institute, a meat industry lobby group. ... 

Another draw is that growing meat in a steel vessel instead of in a field could reduce the environmental impact of livestock, which are responsible for 14.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions through feed production, deforestation, manure management, and enteric fermentation - animal burps - according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

"We are confronted with unprecedented and multiple challenges. First, our global economy is undergoing deep transformation," Schwab said during his opening address. "The energy transition, the consequences of COVID, the reshaping of supply chains are all serving as catalytic forces for the economic transformation."

"The spirit of Davos is positive and constructive. It means investing into a greener and therefore more sustainable economy, investing into a more cohesive society by providing everyone with the appropriate skills and opportunities, investing into the hard and soft infrastructure that modern societies require," he said.