The Weekly Distillation No.38
Refugees; Artificial Monkeys; Russia; Attention Economy; Lab Meat, WWII
Photo by Kyle Mackie on Unsplash
Welcome to The Weekly Distillation. This is a newsletter that seeks to distill the noise and help you be informed, provoked to think, and inspired to create as you lead in life and in your organisation.
The Weekly Distillation is sponsored this week by Rise
Rise is an amazing social enterprise which combats barriers to employment that refugee women face in Glasgow, Scotland – tackling problems such as lack of self-esteem, experience and qualifications.
They teach practical, hands on hospitality skills that equip women to enter long-term employment, gaining confidence along the way.
They inspire women to take ownership of their abilities and talents, and show them that the ways they contribute to society have intrinsic value.
They do this through food and hospitality on a food trailer, events, and catering. If you would like to attend one of their events over the upcoming summer, keep an eye on their website and social media, or if you want an event catered for get in touch at info [at] riseglasgow.org.uk
I had the chance to get to know Helen, the founder of Rise, in 2019 when they were running pop-up kitchens; she is a great leader, with lots of relevant experience and drive, and I look forward to following the journey as Rise grows its impact.
People once said…
“I'm on the very blackest part of the black list.” - Alexei Navalny
“I don’t think our industry is a particularly sincere, trustworthy or reliable one in general.” - Andrea Agnelli, Chairman of Juventus FC
“Stripe itself is now bigger by payment volumes than the entire ecommerce market was when we started working on Stripe” - John Collison in the FT after receiving a private market $95bn valuation for Stripe
“There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.” - Montesquieu
“A whole bunch of big technological shocks occurred when Asian innovations - paper, gunpowder, the stirrup, the moldboard plow and so on - came to Europe via the Silk Road.” - Charles C. Mann
Skim it in a minute
Russia accused of bombing an arms depot in Czechia.
Why the European Super League is the logical conclusion of the attention economy
Neuralink uses a brain interface in a monkey to let it play ping pong by just thinking. That’s the hype, here’s the facts.
A Deep Dive - Lab Based Meat
This week’s deep dive has been a process of educating myself first. It’s also one of relevance in so many ways - we all eat; we all are affected by the environment we live in; we all can experience the country and farms and food systems; we all have an opinion on health, animal wellbeing and technological solutions to problems.
But it’s more than that too - this space fascinates me because it takes an asset at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in food, and engineers a new approach. In the process it opens up a global and massive market, sometimes to areas that were completely unavailable to types of meat. It throws up the promise of energy savings, environmental benefits, financial returns, health benefits, superior animal wellbeing and greater use of rural space.
It’s a great example of a massive problem, a very big vision, some audacious risk takers and an attempt to develop business model fit as product/market fit evolves.
A beginning
I grew up in a farming family. For part of my life we lived on a hill farm in the South of Scotland. My siblings and I worked on the farm often, picking up bales, planting trees, moving animals. From there my next job was to work in my Uncle’s butcher’s shop (one of his brothers was a butcher too), mincing meat, plucking pheasants, cleaning animal blood from the chill room floor. I worked in the deli department of a supermarket, on the checkout tills of another supermarket, in a hotel kitchen washing dishes and in investment banking to the food and drink industry. I’ve served soup and 5* meals to the homeless, dined in luxury at the top of the World Trade Centre, eaten crocodile in Australia and rice in a slum in India. Food has been a significant part of my career.
I married an amazing cook and baker but I have never been a foodie. I have friends who tackle food poverty and think deeply and advocate for farm to table. I have a friend who swore off meat after visiting an abattoir. My sister is a pescatarian. I love my bacon rolls too much to stop eating meat. And yet, we all know that too much red meat kills us.
I’m fascinated by people bring new technology or technology enabled business models to bring about constructive transformation that benefits people and communities, particularly those in most need. When you bring that question to the food industry you quickly end up at lab-based meat.
What is lab-based meat?
Lab-based meat (or Cultured meat) begins with animal stem cells, harvested from a live animal. The stem cells are then cultivated in a nutrient-rich “soup”. As the cells multiply, they divide and then form together into groups of cells. These groups then form fibres, the fibres form cylinders and the cylinders form tissue. The tissue forms strands, which can then be layered together to make a finished meat product. At its simplest, it’s taking a tiny amount of the animal and growing it in a lap into a meat product.
What’s the buy case?
“We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium. Synthetic food will, of course, also be used in the future. Nor need the pleasures of the table be banished….The new foods will from the outset be practically indistinguishable from the natural products, and any changes will be so gradual as to escape observation.” - Winston Churchill in 1931
There are a lot of reasons to be excited about lab-based meat:
Animal welfare. By ultimately growing most of our meat in a lab, we can remove from the system the cruelty with which many animals are grown and butchered. I’m not anti-eating meat (I’m perfectly able to disassociate the steak from the cow) but the agri-industrial complex does not always have animal welfare high up its agenda. We are also able to create more sustainable fish stocks as we harvest less from the sea. Lab meat is slaughter free.
The environment. A 2011 study from scientists at the University of Oxford & University of Amsterdam showed that emissions could be as much as 96% lower as a result of lab meat (beat that Biden with your meagre ambition of 52%….), and 7-45% less energy to produce the same volume of meat. Combined with 99% lower land use and 96% less water, lower transport miles and less waste (no organs and bones to dispose of), the environmental benefits are massive. In fact, mind-blowing. Methane is around 30* more effective at trapping heat than Carbon Dioxide and around 40% of methane emissions come from the 1.4bn cows in the world. Much of global deforestation today is to make space for agriculture - this is another way to protect the environment.
The market opportunity. One study estimates that the market will grow to $2.8bn within the next 9 years, from $1.6m now. And yet that remains tiny relative to how much meat we eat. The market for meat in the US is $95bn annually ($286 per person) - if 7bn people in the world moved to that level of meat consumption (we’ve always been told this is impossible because of the ability of the earth to support that much agriculture) then the market for meat would become $2trn. Annually. There are very few markets in the world that have this scale and this opportunity. Hence VCs backing companies in this space regularly.
The health benefits. Aside from reducing the exposure of the meat to disease and bacteria (and CJD maybe?), it is also likely to see reduced exposure to pesticides, fungicides, plastic (for lab based fish). Possibilities exist to add more omega-3 fatty acids.
Tackling poverty. In India once I was sitting down for lunch when the leader I was with told me he wasn’t having lunch because he could only afford to eat 2 meals a day. The concept of not having 3 meals a day was so alien to me. But 9% of the world goes to bed on an empty stomach each night. Every single day of the year. 690,000,000 people can not feed themselves. This figure is actually rising, having gone up 60m people in just 5 years. 21% of children under 5 in the world are stunted because of lack of food. The cost of a healthy diet exceeds the international poverty line of $1.90 per day. Imagine if factories in developing nations around the world could create high quality, safe, tasty, nutritious lab-based meats at scale and distribute them fairly and efficiently at a low price? In developed nations, food inequality is well known, as well as food insecurity. By bringing nutritious, low price, lab-based meat to these communities there would be multiple benefits and greater food equality.
Religious communities get more options. Whereas Christians will eat most things (I came across this verse this week “Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.”), Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims have long ruled out different meat products. Buddhists may find it preferable, Jews might be able to eat lab-based pork, Islam may also decide it is Halal. Hinduism is not sure although consumer acceptance is already higher in India. This all equates to more people with greater health.
Space food. OK, lots of studies and articles. But let’s get wild. Imagine sitting in your pod on Mars, eating a steak. Or 100m people on Mars ordering McDonalds. Too far? Lab based meat opens up the options even more for space life.
What are the problems
Has the dream outpaced reality? Where are we in the hype cycle? And will you ever eat meat grown in a petri dish? The key challenges come down to three main factors:
1) Environmental. As studies have evolved since 2011, there has been much debate over whether these savings are real. How much energy do you need to manufacture lab based meat at scale? The last figure I came across was that cultured meat could reduce greenhouse emissions by 15%, still a meaningful figure.
2) Health. By growing in a dish rather than in an animal, growth hormones need to be inserted. Also, the meat may lack iron. More studies and regulations are needed.
3) Complexity. This is really hard. And it’s costly. The first burger cost $250,000 to $300,000 to produce. And we’re nowhere close to where we’d ultimately want to get to yet. And yet - one pack of Impossible Foods burger meat is just $9.99. Costs are falling rapidly.
“We are super, super far away from whole-muscle meat,” says Bouzari. “And we are blindingly far away from whole-muscle meat of the same quality that you can find from animals that are allowed to move around and breathe and experience a diverse set of biological stimuli.”
What I am reading
After finishing off the excellent and disturbing Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber I’ve delved back into fiction. I read this book years ago, the second part of a trilogy covering 5 families through the 21st century. The first book, The Fall of Giants, is the pre-during-post periods around WWI and the second book, Winter of the World picks up the tale in the ruins of the Weimar Republic and starts with the rise of Hitler, Roosevelt’s New Deal and the rise of fascism in the UK. An excellent read, reminding me of the failings of diplomacy, the inadequacy of the optimists in the face of evil and the dangers of extreme nationalism.
Thanks for reading. A final thought. Last week’s HandyPoll showed that you like to read a range of topics (the 7 choices received 9%-19% of the votes each) and that the newsletter should remain deep and broad. I will do my best! I’ve been encouraged by the response to my ask of sponsoring the newsletter and now have the next few weeks of sponsors in place. Finally - if there are topics you’d love to read a deep dive on, do let me know.