Jaap Korteweg (59), who was born in the Netherlands and, of all things, comes from the lowlands, wants nothing less than to abolish a sacred animal, our cow – at least as a farm animal.
The farmer is working on a revolutionary invention in Ghent, Belgium: cheese without cows. It is therefore about as popular with dairy farmers as foot-and-mouth disease.
Unfortunately, Korteweg’s justification does not go down well with cattle: cows are climate killers. On the one hand because of the methane gas, which is 25 times more harmful to the climate than CO2, and is not only produced in landfills or swamps, but also in the stomachs of ruminants.
On the other hand, the area becomes a problem. Around the world, 80 percent of agricultural land is used to produce meat and milk – which only provide 20 percent of the calories we need. Plant-based alternatives would be better.
Dairy farmers without animals
Korteweg argues that milking was done by hand 100 years ago, the milking machine came 70 years ago and the milking robot 30 years ago. “Now comes the stainless steel cow.”
The dairy farmers of the future are supposed to feed the grass from the Swiss meadows to a steel tank. Genetically modified microbes then produce the milk protein casein in it and use it to create cheese. Precision fermentation is the name of the process that is already being used today in a very similar way to conventional types of cheese.
And what happens to the Helvetian cow? It would become a wild animal, without a bell, without a pawn, if possible with horns. Korteweg: “Your milk would only be intended for your own calves.” That’s the theory.
What sounds like science fiction is called novel food: the next big thing in the food sector. Billions will soon be fed on artificial cheese, meat and fish from the laboratory. It could be the solution to our environmental problems, stop climate change, end animal suffering.
After the energy sector, the global agricultural industry is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, worse than road and air traffic. Not to mention the consumption of water and antibiotics.
According to Germany’s vegan pope Christian Vagedes, cheese alone causes four percent of global CO2 emissions, a third of what cars blow into the air. The only green thing about this industry is actually the image that it spreads in its advertising campaigns.
Korteweg is familiar with visions. His company The Vegetarian Butcher has reinvented nuggets, hamburgers and the like. Three years ago, he sold the soy meat substitute brand to Nestlé’s competitor Unilever for millions.
Fleischmarkt continues to grow undeterred
Although retailers and innkeepers declare the meatless January as “Veganuary” for the new Lent, the appetite for animal products is increasing. According to US market researchers, the global meat market, worth a trillion dollars, will have almost doubled in size by 2040: to 1800 billion. Especially in Africa and Asia, the desire for meat is increasing. If things continue like this, there will soon be a lack of agricultural land.
Meanwhile, plant-based substitute products have long since arrived in stores. According to the Meat Substitutes Report by the Federal Office for Agriculture (FOAG), the Swiss are becoming a nation of flexitarians, deliberately avoiding animal foods several times a month. 20 percent eat like this today.
With the substitute – mostly high in calories, spiced up with emulsifiers and flavors – the retail trade made sales of 117 million francs in 2020, twice as much as in 2016. Today, every sixth burger sold in the supermarket is a purely plant-based product.
Cheese from the fermentor and meat from the bioreactor are the next step. And not at some point: According to the BLW report, laboratory meat will be ready for the market in the coming years.
What Christoph Mayr (37) is currently experimenting with in his laboratory in Wädenswil ZH is of great interest to the world. Nowhere in Switzerland and hardly anywhere in Europe is there something like this to be seen. Mayr just had to put off the people on television that his researchers would otherwise not be able to do their research.
The scientist tugs at his smock: “It’s better not to photograph this table, or film that screen,” he says. It’s a secretive industry. Here, company founder Mayr and the 15 employees of Mirai Foods (Japanese for future) only work on minced meat. It just comes from the bioreactor and is intended to replace the original one day.
And how do things taste? Mayr has nothing to taste. In this industry, rarely anyone is allowed to test eat. Years ago the media wrote about zombie meat. According to the latest reports, the taste hardly differs from the original.
Consumers are still hesitating
The industry knows: Taste and consistency are crucial for success. But many consumers still have doubts. In surveys, only 44 percent of the French respondents said they would even try something like this, at least half of the Germans.
Even the young have concerns. Two in three Australians in their 20s would not accept lab meat, surveys have found. Meanwhile, Migros has completely removed the insect snacks, another “trend product” in the industry, from the range due to a lack of demand.
“It is difficult for consumers to assess what they will want in the future,” says Christine Schäfer, trend researcher at the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute. “No one was waiting for the cell phone either. And now you can’t do without it.”
The bioreactor is a comfortable 37 degrees warm, with a red liquid wafting beneath it, modeled on the conditions in real cattle. Muscle and fat cells multiply in the nutrient solution to form so-called in-vitro meat. No manipulated cells, no genetic engineering, emphasizes Mayr: “Nature is awesome, you have to admit that.” And adds: “But it also has a lead of a few million years.”
In the race against man-made problems, the researcher sees himself as an environmentalist: Laboratory meat causes ten times less greenhouse gases, doesn’t kill any animals, and doesn’t need antibiotics. Mayr even wants to surpass the “previous” meat. “We can enrich it with vitamins, for example,” he says.
He himself likes meat, but he has a bad conscience about it. People like him are his target group. Mayr wants to supply the first restaurants in Singapore next year. Breeding from the laboratory is only permitted in the Asian city-state and in Israel. Chicken nuggets are served there for $23 a portion. Mayr: “In three years we want to supply Switzerland.”
But it is difficult to recreate nature. And expensive. His team worked for two months on 200 grams of minced meat. A year ago, a kilo cost as much as a mid-size car. In the meantime, Mayr has reduced the costs to those of a bicycle.
Investors smell the roast
There is a gold rush mood among investors. Novel Food is a huge bet, a billion dollar thing. Raising the necessary money doesn’t seem to be a problem. Celebrities like Bill Gates or space entrepreneur Richard Branson are involved.
Future Meat, a competitor of Mayr from Israel, raised $347 million in investor funds last month. Nestlé is already working with Future Meat. Migros takes a stake in the Israeli Aleph Farms, and Coop invests in Mosa Meat from the Netherlands.
Around 40 companies around the world are competing. The alternative protein market will grow to $290 billion by 2035, according to a study by the Boston Consulting Group. Despite all the euphoria, no laboratory success has yet led to a profitable business.
Friederike Grosse-Holz occasionally bites into an in vitro burger, then again she tries an alternative egg. Everything is top secret, she’s not allowed to really talk about it, says the biotechnologist. Only so much: The vegetable protein could actually be beaten to snow.
Grosse-Holz works as scientific director for Blue Horizon, a Zurich investor. For this “impact investor” she is looking for the miracle start-up that is supposed to make investors happy and at the same time save the world. Your key question: Is the invention better for the planet, humans and animals?
She and her investor have raised 850 million francs to invest in protein alternatives or sustainable food. So far, the investors have mainly been wealthy private customers, but by the end of the year the capital is to be doubled with institutional investors. In other words: Swiss pension funds could soon invest their money in laboratory meat and the like.
Grosse-Holz believes that renunciation sells poorly, having tried unsuccessfully for 20 years. “But soon I’ll get my favorite food without eating an animal.” Hybrid products could come first, a mix of lab meat and plant-based protein. By the end of the decade parity should be reached in production, with lab meat costing as much as the original. Grosse-Holz: “In ten years, every fifth schnitzel will no longer come from animals.”
Fish fingers from the cornfield
It’s the fish fingers that people go crazy for. “A childhood memory,” says Noah Rechsteiner (21). Of course, his chopsticks are made of wheat, but they taste like fish. The chef runs Anoah, currently Zurich’s hippest address for vegan cuisine.
According to Rechsteiner, ten percent of his guests eat vegan. Many did not want substitute products, but specifically vegetables, such as a vegan oyster made from mushrooms, braised celery or mayonnaise made from pumpkin and salt. “If you want to change food culture, you need three generations,” the chef is convinced. Only then did the sense of taste change.
Rechsteiner has certain doubts about the sustainability of the laboratory food. Biotechnologist Grosse-Holz confirms that plant-based substitute products still do better in the ecological balance. But the laboratory is always more sustainable than real meat.
Back in Wädenswil: Mirai Foods is moving these days, the researchers need more space. Company founder Mayr is unrestrainedly optimistic, he expects that in a few years the next 100 billion dollar Croesus will rise from his industry, a company in the size of Novartis. “But we would also be satisfied with 50 billion,” says Mayr and laughs.
How healthy is vegan?
According to studies, vegetarians and vegans often have a lower risk of diet-related diseases. The reason for this is the high consumption of vegetables, fruits and whole grain products. In addition, there is an overall healthier lifestyle compared to the average. However, the health effects of a long-term vegan diet (in terms of cardiovascular disease and diabetes) are “not unequivocally positive”. Deficiencies in certain nutrients are common. That is why the Nutrition Commission cannot yet recommend a vegan diet as a health measure. In principle, however, the following applies to all forms of nutrition: only a balanced diet is healthy.
According to studies, vegetarians and vegans often have a lower risk of diet-related diseases. The reason for this is the high consumption of vegetables, fruits and whole grain products. In addition, there is an overall healthier lifestyle compared to the average. However, the health effects of a long-term vegan diet (in terms of cardiovascular disease and diabetes) are “not unequivocally positive”. Deficiencies in certain nutrients are common. That is why the Nutrition Commission cannot yet recommend a vegan diet as a health measure. In principle, however, the following applies to all forms of nutrition: only a balanced diet is healthy.