About ten millennia ago, humans domesticated the first animals. We learned to use them for food, clothing and muscle strength, among other things. This domestication has become a direct threat to our health, a disaster for the climate and the greatest moral injustice of our time.
The facts speak for themselves. Worldwide, more than eighty billion land animals genus (and some two thousand billion fish). Seventy percent of all antibiotics is often used preventively in animals that we eat. Nearly 77 percent of all farmland world is now used for animal feed (livestock is therefore the main cause of the destruction of the last primeval forests with unique animal species). And – as we now know – animals living closely together are the perfect breeding ground for new virus variants. After all, livestock is responsible for at least 14 percent of all greenhouse gases in the world. Many animals lead a miserable existence from birth to death: a life with little room to move, sometimes without seeing the light of day, often ending in painful slaughter.
What to do? Make livestock farming even more efficient, squeeze even more milk from a cow? Want to eat less meat voluntarily? Making meat more expensive? Sympathetic ideas, but they are not the solution in a world with more and more people who are getting richer. That the demand for meat and dairy will increase in the coming decades is practically fixed.
The problem is not that the Dutch eat too much meat. The real problem is that the cow – like the combustion engine – is a dead end technology in a world of eight billion people. If we want to solve this fundamental problem, we have to go back to the drawing board. The good news is that there is a solution on that drawing board: the second domestication. And this time it’s not animals, but cells.
We can ‘brew’ meat
Meat, fish and dairy can be made by animal cells (‘cultured meat’) and micro-organisms (‘precision fermentation’). Instead of animal husbandry and fishing, we can produce the end product we want, brew – without the intervention of animals. And without antibiotics, viruses, massive violence against animals and with much greater efficiency. This is not science fiction but a proven recipe to which billions of venture capital are now flowing. The startups are springing up like mushrooms – from Gourmey (foie gras) in Paris to Those Vegan Cowboys (milk and cheese) in Ghent and Meatable (beef and pork) in Delft. Hundreds of startups are active worldwide.
Despite the enthusiasm of investors and entrepreneurs, we are not there yet. This is a long-term project. What is still missing is government support for this cellular revolution. Just as governments support solar and wind energy and electric cars, a similar policy will have to be pursued for new food.
The time is now ripe for it. But the public funding of cellular agriculture is small compared to the billions flowing into the energy transition. In 2020, for example, the Spanish research program Meat4all received 2.7 million euros in funding from the EU. Last year Mosa Meat received a European subsidy of 2 million euros. Much more fundamental research is needed and the market has to scale up enormously. It is early days, but that means that the Netherlands can play a significant role. So often, an opportunity doesn’t come along where we can change the world for the better and create a new industry.
The real problem is that the cow is a dead end technology
Worldwide, the Netherlands is already participating in the premier league of new proteins. Mosa Meat and Meatable are well advanced in the cultivation of meat. The Protein Brewery from Breda is at the forefront of brewing – also known as fermenting – healthy and tasty proteins from simple sugar beets. The Wageningen FUMI Ingredients makes proteins without chickens. The Netherlands has a fantastic opportunity to become the global market leader of this cellular agriculture – as we are now champion of regular agriculture.
Also read: the race for cultured meat
Cultivated chicken meat in the restaurant
If we want to remain the global leader in food, government must act. Three things are needed.
Firstly, startups need to be clear about the term within which they can sell their products. Currently, the sale of cultured meat in Europe has not yet been approved. The Netherlands must therefore make a case in Brussels for the removal of unnecessary bureaucracy in market admission. The Netherlands runs the risk that countries such as Israel, China and Singapore (and recently the independent United Kingdom) will become more popular locations for start-ups. The startup Eat Just – which originally wanted to establish itself in the Netherlands – has already moved to Singapore for that reason. With success: the first piece of cultivated chicken meat was sold in a restaurant in Singapore at the end of last year.
Secondly, fundamental research must be carried out on a large scale, the knowledge of which is freely shared. A National Institute of Cellular Agriculture was recently established in the US for this purpose. Why? Current startups collect money from private investors, but their knowledge usually remains behind closed doors as a result. New start-ups cannot therefore build on it. It is precisely fundamental, publicly funded research that produces public knowledge that accelerates the development of the entire field.
Finally, a new generation of scientists and entrepreneurs must be trained to scale up this sector. Since this year, Singapore is the first university course that is fully focused on new proteins. The same should happen in the Netherlands. We owe it to our honor. The first cultivated meat patent was granted to the Dutchman Willem van Eelen in 1999. And the first cultivated hamburger was developed at Maastricht University by Mark Post, who caused an international furore when he had the first cultivated hamburger baked live on television in 2013 and eat.
Attract the smartest scientists
Market access for start-ups, publicly funded research and universities offering curricula on precision fermentation and cultured meat – together these factors ensure that the Netherlands can attract the world’s smartest scientists and engineers. This pulls in even more talent, because smart people just want to be around other smart people doing interesting things. The companies – and the tax revenues of the future – will follow naturally.
And yes, that initially requires investments – but there are already funds for that. In the coalition agreement, 25 billion euros has been made available for the transition of agriculture. At least some of this money should go to fundamental solutions like fermentation and cultured meat. The National Growth Fund could also play a greater role in scaling these promising new industries.
Ultimately, it comes down to the question of what kind of future we are aiming for. As the Netherlands, do we want to ban and award champions? Do we want to fly and make meat more expensive? There is no economic gap here. The danger is that people will associate climate policy with a lower standard of living. In addition, climate taxes often have a regressive effect – the lowest incomes are hit the hardest. And the effects of prohibition and pricing are usually provincial: by having a few million Dutch people do something less, we have not yet convinced the other billions of people on earth to follow our example.
Also read this interview: ‘A love medallion of cultured meat from your own cells. Horror or poetry?’
Champion innovation and upscaling
The other possibility is for the Netherlands to become the champion of innovation and upscaling. The problem is not that people fly too much, but that we don’t have electric planes yet. The problem is not that we eat too much meat, but that we have not yet scaled up fermentation and cultured meat. The government’s goal is no longer to make everything that is bad for the climate more expensive, but to support the technologies that make meat and dairy and flying cheaper and cleaner than now.
This is, in other words, an ‘agenda of abundance’. Such an agenda aims to innovate as quickly as possible out of the current era of fossil fuels and animal proteins. And that is only possible by pioneering fundamental new technology.
The benefits of an abundance agenda are twofold. First, it means that new technology will allow us to accelerate cellular farming not only nationally, but globally. So the positive effects are potentially huge – compare it to Tesla’s impact on the auto industry.
Secondly, an agenda of abundance makes the Netherlands an interesting country for a new generation of companies that settle here and pay taxes. There is also an opportunity here for Dutch farmers, who are among the most innovative in the world. Their expertise in producing healthy and safe food and entrepreneurship will be necessary to scale up the second domestication sufficiently quickly.
Eating meat and dairy shouldn’t be a moral dilemma. It is a technological problem that can be solved. The muscle power of animals has already been replaced by the invention of the motor. We can produce enough food for everyone on earth without the intervention of animals and return agricultural land to nature on a large scale. The faster we solve this problem, the better for the world – and the Dutch economy.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 5 March 2022
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of March 5, 2022
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