Solar Foods Wants to Replace Industrial Animal Farming With a High-Tech Protein Harvest
NotSanguine writes:
TechCrunch is publishing what appears to be an adaptation of a company PR release from a company called Solar Foods.
Solar Foods is growing bacteria to be used as a protein source which can replace traditional sources like meat, fish and soybeans, thus reducing the environmental footprint of agriculture/food production.
From the TechCrunch hagiographic take:
Fermentation has a long, rich history in food production, from beer and wine to yogurt and cheese, leavened bread and coffee, miso and tempeh, sauerkraut and kimchi, to name just a few of the tasty things we can consume thanks to a chemical process thought to date back to the Neolithic period.
[...]
The industrial biotech startup is working on bringing a novel protein to market - one it says will offer a nutritious, sustainable alternative to animal-derived proteins. The product, a single-cell protein it's branding Solein, is essentially an edible bacteria; a single-cell microbe grown using gas fermentation. Or, put another way, they're harvesting edible calories from hydrogen-oxyidizing microbes.
[...]
The production of Solein requires just a handful of 'ingredients': Air, water and energy (electricity) - which means there's no need for vast tracts of agricultural land to be given out to making this future foodstuff. It could be produced in factories located in remote areas or inside cities and urban centers.Nor indeed are other foods needed to feed it to create an adequate yield, as is the case with rearing livestock for human consumption.
I guess if it's cheap enough, it's not a bad idea. Much less waste than this site's namesake I'd reckon.
What say you, Soylentils? Is a bacteria-based burger in your future? Should there be?
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.