We Will End Factory Farming With Technology
As we continue to wake up from the hangover of the industrial revolution, we are increasingly forced to confront the true cost, dealing with the pollution, the environmental destruction and the immense ethical dilemmas of industrial scale technology.
While many argue for less human consumption, fighting human nature is rarely a winning proposition and it is definitely never a fast solution. Luckily we seem to be innovating ourselves out of the mess created by technology, with technology.
We have seen incredible strides in the last decade with renewables making huge progress, the UK alone has reached over 50% of power generation. Emerging countries are now skipping fossil fuels and jumping straight to solar. Nothing quite like walking on a dust road past shacks and seeing an old scooter with the combustion engine ripped out zipping past you with nothing but an electric whine.
We can see the light at the end of the tunnel of the climate crisis.
Meanwhile not so much for factory farming.
99% of meat farming in America is brutal factory farming while 95% of people are very concerned about the welfare of farm animals and with 84% of Vegetarians returning to eat meat it is obvious that people care but people crave the real thing. Legislative efforts have helped but largely pushed the problem back a bit, ‘barn raised’ becoming just a very large cage packed with animals for example.
However, just as renewables and the electric car have disrupted oil and the combustion engine. There is a technological solution to factory farming.
Cultivated meat and Precision Fermentation. 99% less land, use 96% less freshwater and emit 80% less greenhouse gas than traditional production in a process that is actually very similar to fermenting beer.
All without ever harming an animal. We simply skip the cow and brew the burger.
No industrial livestock farming.
No slaughter house.
No need to harm animals.
Agronomics is the largest single source of funding for this new industry and the only way for a regular person to get involved. The technology is proven and moving out of the laboratory, factories are being built ready to produce not a pretend or imitation burger but real meat grown from a painless sample.
While many evidently take offense, 32% of UK respondents said they would eat cultivated meat. Indeed the UK pushes ahead on this front with a fast track set to approve the sale of cultivated meat to humans in March 2027.
I don’t believe the end of the horror of factory farming comes from convincing billions to change, I think it comes from technology making cruelty unnecessary and I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is.
