Ridiculous?

Another Saturday Blog deadline goes to the wire even as COP26 negotiations are trundling to a less than successful conclusion in Glasgow. The latter is hardly surprising when the two biggest polluters, China and the USA, backed up by India, refuse to sign up to hard and fast targets for reducing fossil fuel usage and Saudi Arabia, the biggest oil producer, similarly skewers attempts to set effective goals for ramping down oil production. 

Okay, China and the USA may have come up with a bilateral agreement to tackle global warming issues together - but don't be fooled, that is mostly a PR exercise. Behind the scenes, the USA actually plans to increase its mining and consumption of coal in the coming years; and who knows what the Chinese intend, as their plans are secret. Even the UK, hosting this latest world symposium, refused to sign up to the fossil fuel phase-out target which the science insists is necessary to reverse our rush towards climate catastrophe. Hugely disappointing all round. COP out, one might say.

I've blogged about various aspects of the climate crisis several times over the last five years, but I'm going to spare us all another blah blah blast this evening. Instead I've been tracking one of the more improbably bizarre but constructive attempts to provide green alternatives to our destructive lifestyle. How would you like to print your own meat? Ridiculous? Read on...

sizzling steak on the grill

It seems to be the case that the world and his dog loves a juicy steak, burger, or roast beef feast, often washed down with a milkshake or followed by a dish of ice-cream.  Even 60% of the menu available to the COP26 delegates was based on animal and dairy products! There's a revealing graphic at the bottom of today's blog that highlights the volume of greenhouse gas emissions from animal and plant based foods - scroll down for a quick check now and you'll note that beef production is by far the largest of all, with cow's milk coming in a close third, making the two cow-based items combined way more significant as sources of emissions than anything else.

I was looking into the progress that's been made to date with bringing vegan, plant-based versions of bacon and sausages to market when I stumbled upon the concept of 'novameat' and a novel way of manufacturing it to resemble as closely as possible the texture and taste of a beef steak.

We are all now familiar with the concept of 3-D printers being able to 'print' quite complicated pieces of kit by using plastic and resin instead of ink in the printer jets, building up workable objects in a layering process driven by computer programs. Some high-tech companies, mainly in the USA and Israel, have taken the idea to another level by developing liquids and spraying algorithms that can be used to replicate edible products - ersatz beef and pork steaks among them. I'll repeat. Ridiculous? Take a look at this...

3-D meat printing in action

Instead of inks, the nozzle jets spray out lines of tasty protein to build up a product that has both the fibrous texture of meat, but also the look, colour and taste before and after cooking. It's still a very expensive option, still niche and still being enhanced, but like all innovations it will become cheaper over time and who knows, one day all restaurant kitchens will feature 3-D printers as part of their standard equipment...and we may even see domestic versions nestling next to the microwave.

Of course, that's going to be of no immediate consolation to the swathes of the world with barely enough food for their families today and no kitchen to prepare it in. Which leads into my latest poem, anticipating the COP after next in 2023 when I'm supposing things will only have got worse. Again, probably not the finished article as it was written as the clock ticked down, but here it is (edit: now with revisions after discussion with my Stanza buddies).

From Printer To Plate at COP28
The kitchen's 3-D printers have been

working overtime so ruthless leaders 

of the world can dine on grilled meat

that never knew a cow, washed down

by a wine of rare vintage from a land

already drowned by rising seas. Still 

a minute off midnight, still too much

hot air, not just inside the dining hall.

And everywhere, secret oil wells and

illicit beef farms for the few; poison,

famine, searing fires and inundations

from swollen oceans for the many. It

is funny how the science can warn us

and technology provides alternatives,

yet unless there is an obvious means

of getting something on the cheap or

making a killing out of it, then a will

to change is sadly lacking. Supposing

tonight I were one of the poor waiters,

refugees from devastated states, I'd be 

longing to hi-jack the damned printers 

and hack two hundred humane hearts,

that we might best transplant empathy

into the cynical, self-satisfied old farts.

Should it be the end of the road for the friendly cow? What are your thoughts?

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Anaemia schmemia...VEGANS

I have to say I think vegans are very healthy people. We eat far too much food, particularly meat here in the west and much of it we don't need. My ex was a coiliac, which is a severe gluten allergy which erodes the gut lining causing a multitude of health issues, so I've had to check packaging pretty carefully over the years in supermarkets. Our food has a multitude of hidden additives and bizarre chemicals added to it. Even the meat. Fresh meat in supermarkets is injected with salt, water and sugar to increase its weight and therefore they can charge more per kilogram. I have even found frozen meat in major supermarket to have gluten added. Yes theyve injected wheat in there to stodge it up. Now I know most food is likely to be tampered with, but the meat really does concern me. What on earth do they think they are doing to our food? What right do they have to inject stuff into meat and sell it sneakily like this? It's fraud. Profit over health. But the supermarkets get away with it because they know many people neither understand nor care. Theyve worked a 12 hour shift or are juggling 3 children around or are STANDING DAYDREAMING IN FRONT OF ME WITH THEIR TROLLEY BLOCKING THE AISLE WHEN i JUST WENT IN FOR SOME MILK. Ahem.

I can take meat or leave it. I can't stomach processed meat and if chicken is frozen it has a funny aftertaste to me so I'm happy to avoid it. You know when you're cooking meat and loads of foam comes out of it? That's all the crap they've added to it being released. That's why baon sometimes shrinks by half under the grill. Many ready meals contain chicken reared in thailand where the regulations are far more lax and then processed into meals when the meat is shipped here so they bypass regulations. Check the labels, it states that some of the produce is from Thailand, even the thieving robdog supermarkets like Sainsbuggers do it. Yuck.

Cooking from scratch is the best option but if the meat has been tampered with before it's cooked, what then? The veggies probably have pesticides on them but there is the option of organic veg. But the meat? It may be organic but I'll guess the supermarkets can still claim that it is 'happy' meat if they are just injecting stuff afterwards can't they? Unless you have a local butcher you're stuck with it.

With more intolerances and allergies to foods being discovered nowadays I do think we have to be more aware of what we are eating, surely it does have an impact on our health in more than a physical sense? How about emotional and mental health? If you put crap in...

So, vegans. I'll bet they cook most things from scratch, avoid processed foods like a dose of chlamidia and study packaging carefully for added nasties. So they are on to something I think. I may have no opinion on the animal cruelty aspect but I do think vegans are more careful with what they put into their bodies, which is no bad thing. S'a temple innit?

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