Modern Meat Production

PROBLEM:
Conventional methods of meat production have the following problems:
•It is inefficient means of production for example 1 kg of grain produces 3kg of live weight in cattle with only 40% edible meat which is a 4% plant animal protein conversion.Up to 52% of the world’s grain is used to feed cattle and it is very water intensive for the production of feed and direct feed to livestock.Land must be used to not only grow grain and soy for livestock but also to rear livestock. This is a severe problem in the tropics such as the amazon
•Meat especially red meat is high in omega 6 and saturated fats
•Certain animals cannot be domesticated due to behavioral characteristics brought on by genetics i.e. zebras are naturally more arrogant than horses.Also some are endangered and farming them for meat would be illegal.Farming wild animals can escape into the wild.Also some mammals do not produce enough meat to be commercially viable
•Meat production produces large amounts of methane directly from flatulence and manure (livestock create 130 times more waste than total human population) but also carbon emissions in the form of production and transportation of grain and transportation of animals to factories and then transportation of finished products to the consumers
•Antibiotics must be used to combat the spread of disease and problem of bacterial resistance means that remain in the meat, eggs or milk when collected by the consumer.Hormones are also used to speed up growth this can affect human health and also cause problems for the animals i.e. the grow so big too fast the struggle to move and suffer an agonizing death.
•It is labour intensive both for feeding, herding and artificial insemination
•Production of milk is also resource heavy
•Slaughtering of animals can be seen as animal cruelty and is messy.In the case of larger animals such as pigs and cattle this can labour intensive and require space to store meat

SOLUTION:
There are three main solutions to this that are interlinked.They are local rearing of livestock,in vitro meat and entomology the consumption of insects.
•Insects are better at converting plant protein to edible meat.The can be grown indoors at home in an aquarium and fed waste food.In vitro meat allows for cells to be extracted from a locally reared animal and grown and in a lab.Grown tissue can stored and used to grown even more tissue thus limiting the amount of cattle, pigs and other livestock needed on the planet to feed a growing population.A single extraction of cells/tissue can potentially be used to grow tissue and thus meat for many years possibly even centuries and millenia.This means the population of livestock will dramatically decrease leading to less methane/carbon emissions and resources for meat production.Both entomorphagy and in vitro meat use significantly less water and nutrients in their production and can allow for local production
•In vitro meat can be altered to remove saturated fats and substitute them with either omega 3 fatty acids or no fat at all.Insects are lower in fat and contain more protein per kilogram of flesh than chickens and cattle
•In vitro meat can allow global production.For example cells extracted from an endangered species like a tiger, cheetah,elephants,rhinos,reptiles,amphibians,whales or wild animals such as zebra from zoos or the wild and transported to an area only once saving on energy used for transportation.It can also bypass the problem of non-native animals escaping into the wild and endangering local communities and ecosystems
•In vitro meat produces no methane and fewer carbon emissions.The same goes for entomorphagy.With regards to locally produced livestock and in chicken farms manure can be collected to produce algae feedstock creating a looped system.Case in point the Megha Farm in Mysore
•In vitro meat and entomorphagy do not require hormones or anti-biotics.Anti-biotics can be reduced or eliminated through breeding or engineering livestock to become resistant to disease, use of bacteriophages and improving living conditions.Free range livestock can reduce this alongside checking new livestock for disease through new and efficient technology and maintaining sterile conditions.Large scale chicken farms have become more efficient than this.In vitro meat can be used alongside rearing livestock for slaughter increasing the amount of meat they produce without having to use hormones
•Feeding of all livestock can automated.The same can be said for herding and artificial insemination
•Although GEA systems have developed a system of automated milking, raising livestock especially cows for milk is unsustainable.Plant based milks such as those from algae and almonds for those that are allergic to it.Also scientists in Silicon Valley have successfully engineered yeast to produce cow’s milk.This means than individual milk from virtually any mammal on earth can be produced the same way allowing for a large diversity of sustainable milk to be available with the same taste and nutritional content of natural sources.Alterations in the DNA can allow for yeast not to produce lactose or any other proteins or carbohydrates that can produce allergies and intolerance
•In vitro meat does not require slaughtering animals