We’ll never swallow the test-tube burger

Tuesday, February 21st, 2012

It’s a tale straight from the pages of the weirder realms of science fiction. A mysterious millionaire and a brilliant professor join forces, with a single aim. To create Frankenburger: the world’s first test-tube beefburger.

Peculiar as it may sound, it’s the future for our food, according to the academic in question, Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands. He plans to serve up the first burger this October after growing beef muscle in his lab, which will eventually become a juicy quarterpounder. Post has grown small strips of beef muscle tissue using a cow’s stem calls and serum taken from a horse foetus (are you hungry yet?). Just like all growing muscles, they are currently flexing away in order to become bigger and healthier – only, in true sci-fi style, they are doing so in a Dutch lab, held in place by Velcro and stimulated by electricity. When fully grown, 3,000 of these muscles will be needed for one burger – and will cost an estimated £200,000.

Professor Post has big plans for his stem-cell-cum-foetus version of fast food. “Eventually my vision is that you have a limited herd of donor animals in the world that you keep in stock and that you get your cells from,” he says.

So who’s the chef who will cook up this scientific experiment and launch a culinary revolution? You guessed it – Heston Blumenthal. And the lucky diner? To be confirmed, says Professor Post. “My financier will decide who will eat it… [he is] famous, everyone knows this guy.” But we will not learn his identity, not at least until his Frankenburger has proved a success. Ketchup anyone?

Let’s be serious. We shouldn’t undermine credible efforts to solve the crisis in the world’s food supply. But rarely do the inventors of these technologies seem to understand why consumers are sceptical of their ideas and motives.

There are dozens of examples of food technology “big talk” that has come to nought. Scientists and biotech companies grumble that their efforts fail because of bad press – yet it is often entirely their own fault that the public are so suspicious.

To begin with, they tend to make our stomachs churn. In-vitro meat production uses stem-cell technology and fetal material. How will we feel, eating the product of an animal that, never mind being kept in a factory farm, was never allowed life at all? Technologies such as this unnerve us because they interfere with the magnificently sedate process of evolution. We like to think what we eat is unaltered and as natural as possible.

I’ve always thought it was astonishing that we subject our food to far fewer safety checks than we do our medicines. After all, we can eat the same foods every day for a lifetime, making them more risky. Medicines are (hopefully) only consumed for short periods of time. Genetically modified foods, for example, are not as thoroughly investigated as GM drugs. Cancer therapies using genetically modified organisms are rigorously tested over many years, yet pesticide-resistant wheat or soya needs only to be tested for three months – and tested on rats, not humans. The use of stem cells to cure human diseases is being debated all over the world by philosophers and politicians. Why is it being cleared for use on our plates with such ease?

The technology is expensive, but Post hopes that expanding his operation will make it affordable. The reality is, though, that efforts of scientists to feed the world sustainably rarely see the light of day. Twenty years ago, biotechnologists created super-nutritious GM “Golden Rice,” transforming rice with genes from a daffodil to add nutritious beta carotene. It was hoped it would reduce Vitamin A deficiency in developing countries. But the project has encountered many technological difficulties, while attracting fierce opposition from pressure groups.

Supporters of in-vitro meat say that it will solve many problems – not just hunger. Like what I wonder? In-vitro meat won’t prevent greenhouse-gas emissions from livestock farms because dairy farms are a major source of methane, and milk cannot be made in a laboratory (yet). And while less land will be used for livestock, I can’t see that there is a great need for it for other uses. We won’t need, presumably, as much grain for animal food (a test tube does not need feeding). And we certainly don’t need more potatoes or onions, cauliflowers or carrots – Spain, Holland and Africa can grow all the other vegetables we want so cheaply. What to do with the prairies of England? I predict the tumbleweed will be blowing across uninhabited plains in no time.

Heston Blumenthal will surely employ all his powers to get the Frankenburger to taste decent. He is no shirker when it comes to using gadgets to enhance his cooking. It will probably need colour added to the flesh – Professor Post admits that the muscle strips are currently “pinkish towards yellowish” – and the flavour of well hung beef needs replicating. But hey, a little hydrolysed vegetable protein, an unpleasant soya-based additive most often used in stock cubes to make them taste meaty, should do the trick.

It’s not that I’m against growing protein, per se. Let’s not forget Quorn, a vegetarian mycoprotein developed in Buckinghamshire using a soil fungus. Grown in tanks in oxygenated water, it develops from a single spore to a mass that can then be processed, given texture and sold as a meat alternative. It is not a mushroom, and it certainly does not taste like fungi, or anything else much. But it has made a lot of vegetarians happy and is a thousand times less controversial than using genetically modified organisms and stem cell science in food technology.

Think back to the origins of the “food without fields” fantasy. NASA, contemplating putting astronauts in space for long periods, initiated the in-vitro meat project nearly 20 years ago. They hoped that one day, those sent to space could feed themselves from on-board “farms”, which grew beef, pork, lamb and salmon. That, too, sounds like another great sci-fi story.

But could it provide a clue to the provenance and funding for Frankenburgers? Consider the three elements of this story: space travel, mystery wealthy investor and great publicity stunt. It feels very Richard Branson (who’s set to send tourists to space some time in 2013) to me. If so, Sir Richard, let me whisper a little something in your ear. Please don’t call it Virgin Beef.

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This Tory bonfire of regulations lets the rich foul the poor with impunity

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

This Tory bonfire of regulations lets the rich foul the poor with impunity

Twelve players booked and one dismissed: the World Cup final wasn’t pretty. Both sides argued with the referee, but no one was stupid enough to believe that the match would have been a fairer or a better one without him. Yet we have been asked to imagine that the outcome of the power struggle between corporations and the public would be fairer and better if there were no referee.

The referee is government. It is always biased and often bought, but in principle in a democratic society it exists to prevent us from being fouled. More precisely, it is supposed to prevent those who have agency – the rich and powerful – from planting their studs in the chests of those who don’t. When the government walks away from the game, the rich can foul the poor with impunity. Deregulation is a transfer of power from the trodden to the treading. It is unsurprising that all conservative parties claim to hate big government.

This one has just lit its long-promised bonfire of regulations. The Conservatives claim that deregulation will save money and relieve business of unnecessary burdens. But the government’s new policies go far beyond simplifying a cumbersome bureaucracy.

Last week the health secretary Andrew Lansley sought to shift responsibility for improving diets and preventing obesity from the state to society. He blamed the problem on low self-esteem and deplored what he called “a witch- hunt against saturated fats, salt and sugars”. In future poor diets would be countered by “social responsibility, not state regulation”. From now on, he announced, communities will be left to find their own solutions. The companies which make their money from selling junk food and alcohol will be put in charge of ensuring that people consume less of them. I hope you have spotted the problem.

This is care in the community for public health, whose outcomes will be similar to those of the previous Tory government’s care in the community for mental health. Volunteers have neither the power nor the motivation to fight slick, well-financed PR professionals working for big business.

Lansley would do well to read the analysis published by the Government Office for Science. “For an increasing number of people, weight gain is the inevitable – and largely involuntary – consequence of exposure to a modern lifestyle. This is not to dismiss personal responsibility altogether, but to highlight a reality: that the forces that drive obesity are, for many people, overwhelming.” Advances in neurobiology, it argues, show that the hunger drive is far stronger than “satiety cues” (knowing we’ve eaten enough), and easily exploited by advances in taste technologies and presentation.

The same study points out that obesity rates are much higher among the poor than the rich; that they are likely to double between now and 2050; and that, by then, the problem will cost the NHS £10bn a year at today’s prices, and the economy £50bn. This was all before the food companies were let off the leash. So much for deregulation saving money.

Lansley’s assault on public health is just one skirmish in the Tories’ new war on regulation. The government has now set up a taskforce to deregulate the farming industry (the plans were first reported by the Guardian last month). Farming is the major cause of the loss of biodiversity in the UK. It is one of the two top causes of water pollution. It has the highest rates of death and injury of any industry in this country. Now the industry has been asked to police itself.

The chair of the taskforce is the former director general of the National Farmers’ Union. His deputy is a senior NFU official. The rest of the taskforce is composed of another farmer, three corporate executives, a county council official and … well, this is where it gets interesting. The eighth member, the government tells us, is “a Nuffield scholar who has been involved with developing an animal welfare scheme”. In reality he is yet another farmer, who supplies milk to Sainsbury’s. This selective citation suggests dishonesty on the part of Caroline Spelman’s food and farming department.

The last member is the head of public affairs at the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust. This group purports to protect wildlife, but it runs fox snaring courses and gives advice on setting spring traps to catch smaller predators. There is no one on the taskforce representing rural workers, and no one outside the industry seeking to defend the landscape or the wider environment, water quality or animal welfare.

Private Eye revealed last week that the government may scrap property developers’ obligations to provide social housing. This won’t save money or streamline the state, but it will allow developers to create enclaves for the rich and ghettos for the poor, ensuring that the UK becomes an even more divided society. The Department for Transport tells me that it will be discouraging local authorities from erecting speed cameras.

The department’s own studies show that deaths and injuries are reduced by 42% where cameras are deployed. This, among more obvious benefits, saves the NHS and the emergency services a packet. Again the poor will be hurt most: pedestrians in the poorest areas are three times more likely to be killed or injured by cars than pedestrians in the richest areas. Drivers will instead be urged to regulate themselves: the department tells me that it wants councils to use “more publicity campaigns” instead.

As the economist Willem Buiter observed, “self-regulation is to regulation as self-importance is to importance”. The financial crisis was caused by government expectations that the banks could police themselves. That provoked the state spending crisis, which the government is now using as an excuse to administer more of the poison which started it.

The difference in approach between this government and the last is quantitative. New Labour capitulated to the corporations across all the industries I have mentioned here, but it didn’t go as fast or as far. The Tories can carry off this coup partly because the opposition has squandered the moral authority required to fight it. Hearing Andy Burnham criticising Andrew Lansley for deregulating the health sector is a bit like watching the Dutch side going into conniptions about a Spanish foul: they might have been right, but by that stage in the game it wasn’t a credible protest.

So here’s what’s going to happen. The failure of big business to police itself will cause a series of crises: in public health, social provision, quality of life, the environment. The state will have to shell out billions to put them right. Eventually (think of BSE, the railways, tobacco advertising) the government will be forced to re-regulate, but not before large numbers of people have been hurt. In the meantime we’ll be instructed to pull our socks up and take responsibility for issues out of our control. It’s an age-old story from which governments learn the square root of nothing. It happens as predictably as a punch-up when the referee quits the pitch.

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No EU ban on buying ‘dozen’ eggs

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/10461548.stm

Grocers will still be able to sell eggs by the dozen in the EU

The EU is not preparing to ban the sale of groceries by quantity, such as “a dozen” eggs, the Euro MP steering new food labelling legislation says.

Renate Sommer MEP was responding to suggestions that shoppers might have to change the habits of a lifetime if all food had to be sold by weight.

“There will be no changes to selling foods by number,” she said on Tuesday.

“Selling eggs by the dozen… will not be banned,” she said. No final agreement is expected before mid-2011.

Earlier this month the European Parliament rejected an amendment which said that in some cases EU member states could leave the weight off the label, if the produce was traditionally sold by number.

The amendment said: “In the case of foodstuffs normally sold by number, member states need not require indication of the net quantity provided that the number of items can be clearly seen and easily counted from the outside or, if not, is indicated on the labelling”.

Ms Sommer said the new rules would allow both the weight and quantity to be indicated, so the number of items in a box of eggs or bag of bread rolls would be clear.

Existing EU rules on egg sizes would be unaffected, she said. There are four official sizes of eggs – very large (73g and over); large (63-73g); medium (53-63g) and small (under 53g).

Earlier, UK officials said they would defend food producers’ right to label groceries by number.

EU countries currently have exemptions allowing some pre-packed foods to be labelled by number alone.

The new legislation will now be considered by EU government ministers before a second reading in the parliament.

British Labour MEP Glenis Willmott, closely involved in the negotiations, said “there is absolutely nothing in the new rules… that would prevent producers from selling their products by quantity – so to say that it won’t be possible to sell eggs by the dozen is plain wrong”.

MEPs rejected “traffic light” colour coding in nutritional labelling – a system already used by some supermarkets – in favour of “Guideline Daily Amounts” (GDAs).

Many food producers had lobbied against “traffic lights”, fearing that they would stigmatise certain foods.

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UK farmers lag behind as world embraces GM

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

UK farmers lag behind as world embraces GM

Eddie Gillanders
0 comments

Published on 26 Feb 2010

Europe is being left behind as the rest of the world takes advantage of genetic modification (GM) to boost food production.

Latest figures from ISAAA, the international umbrella group for the agricultural biotechnology industry, indicate that 14 million farmers in 25 countries are now growing 134 million hectares of GM crops – a 7% increase on last year.

“These figures demonstrate that more and more farmers around the world are recognising the role GM can play and voting with their wallets and their seed drills,” said Dr Julian Little, the chairman of the ­Agricultural Biotechnology Council.

“If we are serious about allowing UK farmers to produce high-quality, affordable food for consumers while safeguarding our natural resources, they must be given the freedom to choose modern, efficient farming ­methods based on tried and tested science, including the use of GM crops.”

Dr Little said the “dysfunctional approvals process” in Europe is not only denying UK farmers access to GM but is preventing companies throughout Europe from investing in the development of GM technology.

“To address the current ­challenge of food security, the solution is clear,” he said. “We must find ways to produce more food at affordable prices while continuing to reduce the environmental impact of farming.

“Agricultural biotechnology is already helping millions of farmers around the world to deliver higher and more reliable crop yields while mitigating major threats to crop production, such as the damaging effects of pests, diseases and droughts.”

Only last week, at the NFU Scotland AGM, Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Richard Lochhead, reiterated the Scottish Government’s opposition to GM.

His deputy, Roseanna Cunningham, the environment minister, has ducked out of a debate next week with a pro-GM German professor at the AGM of Scottish Agronomy by insisting that she speaks first and leaves immediately after delivering

her speech.

GM pioneer Shirley Harrison, whose trial crops of GM oilseed rape on her Aberdeenshire farm were destroyed by campaigners a few years ago, says in a letter in this week’s Scottish Farmer that it is tragic for Scotland that the SNP ­Government has its head “well and truly in the sand, like the proverbial ostrich” on the ­question of GM.

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Country of Origin Labelling

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

Country of Origin Labelling New guidelines for labelling of pork products

25 February 2010
Meat packaging

Supermarkets sign up to a new voluntary labelling code for pork, but Which? wants the food industry to go further

A number of major supermarkets, including the Co-operative, Morrisons, Marks and Spencer, Sainsburys, Tesco and Asda, and restaurant chains have signed up to a new voluntary code that will show the origin of pork used in a variety of products. But the new code only covers pork – it says nothing about other products. It also doesn’t cover protein powders.

Which? recently investigated origin labelling in ‘Produced in the UK: But where’s it from?’ in our March issue, where we expressed concern that manufacturers could get round current EU proposals to make supermarket labels explaining where your food comes from clearer by simply leaving off all country of origin labelling.

When we asked 1,000 members of the public what they wanted on food labels, 80% said they thought it important to have accurate country of origin labelling on all meat and poultry, and more than 70% also wanted it for all fish, dairy products, fruit and vegetables.
Protein powders
dining room of a restaurant

Manufacturers can enhance meat using some strange products you might not be aware of, and you could be eating them in restaurants without knowing it.

Protein powders, like hydrolysed collagen, can be added to meat products like chicken breasts to help keep added water inside. When the FSA analysed these powders in 2009 it found evidence of beef and pork proteins.

This practice isn’t illegal, and the information doesn’t have to passed on to you – the consumer. This is a big problem if you avoid beef and pork for religious or ethical reasons. Meat products in supermarkets do have to tell you about the ingredients, although they can choose where to display this information.
What we want

We support the EU proposals and welcome the new voluntary scheme, but we want both to go further. Until food labelling is mandatory consumers won’t get the full picture. Which? urges the FSA and EU to act so that consumers can have peace of mind when buying food and when eating out.

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Plans for trials of a blight resistant GM potato

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Plans for trials of a blight resistant GM potato

Scientists in Norfolk hope to start field trials in May of a genetically modified potato resistant to blight if they can get government approval.

The disease, which can wipe out whole harvests, costs the worldwide potato industry £3.5bn a year.

Scientists at the John Innes Centre have identified two genes from a wild variety which can resist the disease.

Following vandalism of GM crops at the site, £20,000 has been spent on a security fence and cameras.

If government department Defra approves the proposal, a three-year field trial will start in May – with the first results expected to be announced by the end of the year.

‘Cutting chemicals’

Dr Jonathan Jones from the Sainsbury Laboratory said: “UK potato growers spray crops 10-15 times a year and in 2007 Europe ran out of chemicals to control blight, it was such a wet year.

“If our research goes ahead and is successful, this will cut chemicals and carbon dioxide generated by the use of tractors.”

The two genes were transferred from a wild variety found in South America, whose potatoes grow only to the size of peas.

If Defra grants a licence, the genetically modified Desiree variety, at present growing under glass in a secure greenhouse, will be planted in a field plot.

The plants will then be monitored to see its resistance to blight which is always present.

India has also started similar trials.

Dr Jones anticipated commercial production of the GM potato could start within five years.

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A setback for GM in India

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

A setback for GM in India

HUNDREDS of farmers in long, faded cotton sarongs swarmed outside an auditorium at Bangalore University on February 6th. They were waiting for India’s Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh. This was the last of his public consultations on the commercial release of Bt Brinjal, a genetically modified (GM) aubergine, created by Mahyco, an Indian hybrid-seed company, and Monsanto, an American biotech giant. Waving placards and appetising images of aubergines, known in India as brinjal, they shouted themselves hoarse praising the transgenic vegetable.

But most of these men, registered at the consultation as farmers, were in fact landless labourers with no aubergine experience. Mr Ramesh was the first to call their bluff. The companies, he said, without naming any, had bussed farmers from rural districts, to play the pro-GM crowd at the hearing that day.

The tactic failed miserably. On February 10th Mr Ramesh announced that he would not allow Bt Brinjal to be grown or consumed in India until independent studies could show that it would have no adverse impact on human health, the environment or biodiversity. This overruled the recommendation last October by India’s Genetically Engineered Approvals Committee (GEAC) that Bt Brinjal was safe, in spite of being modified with a gene from the soil bacterium, bacillus thuringiensis.

Mr Ramesh’s seven-city roadshow to canvas public views was unusual. And many were surprised at his decision to snub the seed companies and powerful domestic and American biotech lobbies. GM crops have always been highly controversial in India. But they already account for about 85% of the cotton grown there. Supporters claim that Bt Brinjal could cut losses from insect damage by over 50%, and pesticide usage by 80%.

The moratorium is a victory for what has become India’s first nationwide anti-GM movement. After the GEAC judgment, consumers, medical groups, farmers and state governments mobilised at once to campaign against Bt Brinjal. Hindu-nationalist and Communist politicians rallied to the unmodified brinjal’s cause. Anti-GM groups cried foul over India’s lack of an independent biosafety regulator. They also argued that the guidelines for trials of GM foods are flawed and that studies revealing more about the long-term health dangers had been ignored.

Environmental groups claimed Bt Brinjal might, through cross-pollination, wipe out thousands of indigenous brinjal varieties. Throughout November and December the “Coalition for a GM-Free India”, grouping more than 100 NGOs from 15 states, campaigned at village councils and farmers’ meetings, political rallies and in the non-English press and blogosphere. They held countless protests, fasts and educational drives in public schools.

The crucial step, however, was to enlist the support of the chief ministers of the state governments—a requirement the seed companies seem to have overlooked Under India’s federal constitution, agriculture is a “state subject”. States have the authority to regulate the planting or importing of GM crops. In mid-January the states, one after another, began to declare themselves against the release of Bt Brinjal. With nearly half of India’s 29 states opposed, “a lack of consensus in the scientific community” and an unusually well-organised national protest movement, Mr Ramesh, said his official statement, felt obliged to be “responsible to science and responsive to society” and impose an indefinite moratorium on Bt Brinjal.

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