We – Homo sapiens – are walking disasters. When we first reached Australia, some 45,000 years ago, we drove to extinction 90% of its large animals. This, our first major ecological disaster, was not the last.
15,000 years ago, we colonised America and wiped out about 75% of its large mammals. Records in country after country tell a similar story. Altogether we drove to extinction about 50% of all the large terrestrial mammals of the planet before the first wheat field was even planted. But those animals made extinct were arguably the lucky ones.
For next came the agricultural revolution when we turned from hunter-gathering to farming. We domesticated wild-life to create completely new life-forms here on Earth. In the beginning, domestication was a minor happening affecting fewer than 20 species compared to the thousands that remained wild. This was the start of the First Domestication – the hereditary reorganization of wild animals and plants into domestic and cultivated forms according to the interests of Homo sapiens.
But today, over 90% of all animals of at least a few kilos in weight are domesticated: the chicken being the most widespread bird in the history of all life on Earth. Tens of billions of sentient beings, each with their own complex world of sensations and emotions, now live and die imprisoned in industrial production lines. Peter Singer in his book “Animal Liberation” (See: Intrinsic Earth Database) argues that industrial farming is responsible for more pain and misery than all the wars of history put together.
In the next few years, this terrible situation can be put behind us, buried in history. We cannot remove the memory and past suffering of the devastation we caused but we can liberate future animals far and wide from industrial torture and truly rewild the planet – whilst enjoying healthier, tastier, more varied and cheaper food to nourish mind, body and soul. This is the promise of the Second Domestication.
The First Domestication was about Macrobiology – life that we can see. The Second Domestication is about life that we cannot see so readily – the microorganisms – and Precision Fermentation.
Fermentation already gives us beer, yoghurt and bread. In fact, fermented foods first entered our diets some 10,000 years ago when milk underwent spontaneous fermentation into yoghurt; whilst breweries first opened their doors around 7,000 BCE. But it was Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) who identified the role of live yeast in fermentation to give us a first understanding of the fermentation process.
Jumping forward to today, microbiological and cellular engineers use Precision Fermentation to produce specific proteins. Fermentation, the oldest biotechnology we have, will in the next few decades provide nutritious, tasty, healthy and far more varied foods to replace the existing meat and dairy industries – cows, sheep, chickens and the supply and distribution chains that support them will all go. As the demand for livestock dwindles worldwide, massive areas of land will be freed up for reforestation and rewilding. The considerable, harmful environmental impacts of modern farming methods will also be slashed. Jobs will be lost and jobs will be made, but food will be cheaper and available widely and consistently.
Cracking the Cheese Code
The potential of Precision Fermentation
ProVeg International
(See: IE Database)
This Symbiotic Transformation is being driven by economics. It is estimated that the cost of proteins will be 5X cheaper by 2030 and 10X cheaper by 2035 than existing animal proteins. But these proteins will also be superior in every key attribute – more nutritious, healthier, better tasting, and more convenient and unimaginably variable. (“Rethink X Rethinking Food and Agriculture 2020-2030”. See: IE Database)
Intrinsic Earth Knowledge Database Search Tags: Symbiotic Business, Intrinsic Eats, Precision Fermentation
