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# Fully Automated Luxury Communism A Manifesto

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History will likely remember Post as the person who took the field of cellular agriculture to a mass audience. It is unlikely, however, that he will be the one to perfect it given the sheer number of individuals and organisations working in an increasingly crowded field. Cellular agriculture can be understood as an approach which designs new mechanisms to re-create existing foods. While much of the attention so far has been on cultured meat, its possibilities go far wider extending into cheese without cows and yeast that can make vegetables taste like medium rare beef. Think of it, perhaps, as the work of Norman Borlaug meeting the second half of that exponential chessboard.

Underpinned by the same technologies of the Third Disruption, defined by declining costs of information and exponential progress in digital technology, it is no coincidence that cellular agriculture arrived at around the same time as genome sequencing, consumer AI and autonomous vehicles. Ultimately it will mean a world where producing meat, leather, milk and eggs no longer requires animals.

Post’s approach is easy to grasp if not to execute. First you remove a small sample of muscle from an animal before isolating stem cell tissue which can be scaled in a bioreactor. You then proceed to warm it while feeding those cells with oxygen, sugar and minerals. After between nine and twenty-one days, the developed cells – which have grown into skeletal muscle – are harvested. At present this approach can’t work with all meats, especially those whose composition is highly complex and contains additional fats. It is a diferent story, however, with fish, shellfish and avian meat, whose lean protein content make them the perfect candidates for early-stage innovation in the field. Indeed initial evidence suggests avian muscle cells may not even need a scafold to grow like red meat, and could instead be cultured in a vessel-like keg or bioreactor in a manner not dissimilar to brewing beer.

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The early meat products will most likely be fish, however. Perhaps it’s only fitting that the last animals hunted for food on a mass scale, could be among the first grown synthetically for a consumer market. One player in the field, Finless Foods, believes they can get their product to market as soon as 2019 by developing synthetic fish fillets ‘in a brewery-like environment’. The most likely candidate is the much-valued bluefin tuna, a fish the company’s CEO Mike Selden believes can be price competitive before 2020.

Even more impressive than the original concept behind the technology are improvements in price performance since. While Post’s original hamburger cost \$325,000 to create in 2013, just three years later US-based Memphis Meats produced the first cultured meatball for \$1000. While that might sound like a lot, it represented a significant fall in price, with a quarter-pounder of meat now costing less than 2 per cent of Post’s original patty. But it didn’t stop there: a year earlier Post, now at Mosa Meats, had already claimed the process he initially pioneered could produce beef in a laboratory for \$80 a kilo, meaning that a burger using cultured meat could cost as little as \$12 – a more than 99 per cent fall in cost from just four years earlier. And all in the absence of truly industrialscale production.

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That isn’t to say there aren’t major hurdles to commercially viable steaks that don’t require cows. For one thing the material in which the stem cells currently grow is foetal calf serum. Using animal products to feed ‘synthetic’ animal tissue defeats the whole point, although those at the forefront of the industry claim a vegan alternative isn’t far away.

The other major issue is energy – specifically for synthetic mammal meat like pork, beef and chicken. While synthetic seafood will be able to grow at room temperature, mammal meats need something close to the temperature of our bodies. So while any shift to synthetic meat could ofer major savings in land use, greenhouse gas emissions, labour and water, the amount of energy consumed could be higher. With the trends already outlined around renewable energy and heat conservation, however, this is a relatively small price to pay.

Given the ecological overhead of contemporary meat production – as well as its intense demand for scarce resources – synthetic meat could ofer a paradigm shift. Uma Valeti, CEO of Memphis Meats, thinks synthetic products will take most of the market but not all of it, specifying, ‘We are not out to end all forms of animal agriculture. We ’re opposed to factory farms, not family farms. But family farms can only supply a tiny fraction of the world’s demand for meat.’

Mike Selden, CEO of Finless Foods, disagrees, however, placing greater emphasis on animal rights and welfare. ‘We’ve moved past needing to kill animals and ruin the environment for food; we can do much better with the technology that we have.’ Regardless of who is right, the advantages of synthetic meat are in keeping with tendencies to extreme supply. More than simply meeting the challenges of climate change and a growing population, this technology permits abundance like never before. Just imagine it, cheap, healthy, delicious meat with no animal sufering, no antibiotics and no hygiene concerns.

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While synthetic meat is the most prominent aspect of cellular agriculture and has already attracted vast amounts of venture capital, it is also the most technically dificult to perfect. What is more, while certain kinds of meat like fish, ground beef and chicken breast could soon be commercially scalable, specific cuts like ribs, a T-bone steak, or even fatty bacon, will prove far harder to replicate. The breakthrough will likely come from the same process used to grow muscle tissue being applied to fats and then using a 3-D printer to ‘print’ steaks, bacon rashers or even a leg of lamb.

By the early 2020s we will start to see these products for sale – indeed Just Food launched its first chicken nugget product at the end of 2018. Initially expensive they will be the preserve of environmentally conscious and afluent consumers who prize ethical consumption over flavour. But as the decade progresses that will change with synthetic meat becoming more and more common – especially where ground, seasoned meat is used like in meatballs, hamburgers and hot dogs.

Were synthetic meat to completely replace present forms of meat production, it would put even the achievements of the Green Revolution in the shade. The savings in land, water and human labour would be immense, as would the reduction in emissions of methane and $\mathrm { C O } _ { 2 } ,$ with some estimates claiming that synthetic meat could require 90 per cent less land and water then current meat production. A 2011 report conducted by the Universities of Amsterdam and Oxford concluded that cultured meat could potentially require 45 per cent less energy, 99 per cent less land, and 96 per cent less water than conventional meat, not to mention leading to 96 per cent fewer greenhouse gas emissions. That same report stated that if the US switched to synthetic beef, the likely reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would be equivalent to taking 23 million cars of the country’s roads, with the substitution of a single cultured meat burger for the ‘real thing’ saving water equivalent to over fifty showers.

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With meat and dairy consumption set to double between 2000 and 2050, synthetic meat wouldn’t just be a nice thing to have – it will prove critical in meeting the rising demands of people around the world. Given what has happened to production costs in the decade since the field was first conceptualised, it seems likely that synthetic meat won’t just compete on price with animal meat but will, in the not too distant future, be far cheaper. All this while alleviating sufering and reducing our use of otherwise finite resources. Post’s personal view is that synthetic meat will be competitive on price within twenty years. The truth is that the power of the experience curve could mean it’s even sooner.

Meat from Vegetables

Cellular agriculture extends beyond just synthetic meat, however. Indeed, farming minced meat, fillets and breasts from stem cells remains incredibly time-consuming – at least for now – and while these products could be mainstream within a generation, for some that isn’t soon enough. Which is why Impossible Foods have chosen a diferent approach in trying to create vegan products that are indistinguishable from meat. But rather than ‘grow’ meat proteins, they think they can do that by making non-meat proteins more closely resemble those found in animals.

The science behind their model, which for now focuses on their flagship ‘Impossible Burger’, is far simpler than creating animal meat minus the animal. Nevertheless, it remains in the ambit of cellular agriculture because the intention is to create new biological mechanisms to produce existing foods. While the approach favoured by the likes of Mark Post is to create synthetic meat by eliminating the animal from a set of biological processes, Impossible Foods want to go even further and just use vegetables. While that might sound outlandish perhaps it shouldn’t. After all, from a biohacker’s perspective a cow is just a chemical reaction that converts feed and oxygen into beef.

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Part of the allure in opting for such a model is that much of nature ’s abundance remains unknown. Collectively comprising 8 billion proteins, 108 million fats and 4 million carbohydrates, the composition of most of the world’s 353,000 plant species remains little understood. From the perspective of Impossible Foods these are nothing less than nature ’s tools in eliminating processed sugar, salt and – yes – even meat from our diets.

Leading this revolution in re-engineering our food is ‘heme ’, the secret ingredient in the Impossible Burger. Heme is the molecule that gives blood its colour and helps carry oxygen in living organisms, but more importantly for Impossible it accounts for the rich, iron-like taste we associate with juicy medium-rare beef.

While heme is abundant in animal muscle tissue it can also be found elsewhere in nature, particularly nitrogen-fixing plants and legumes. The only problem is that if you wanted to substitute plant sources for animal ones you would need approximately an acre of soybeans to yield a single kilogram of soy leghaemoglobin. That’s where Impossible Foods have found a solution. They took genes that code for the protein and inserted them into a species of yeast called Pichia pastoris which they then fed with sugars and minerals, prompting it to grow and replicate. This, again, is ‘growing’ food – in this case a specific ingredient – in a manner not dissimilar to making beer.

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For an Impossible Burger, heme is the decisive element adding the taste, texture and smell of ‘meat’. Other than that, the burger merely substitutes animal fats and proteins for vegetable ones such as wheat, coconut oil and potatoes. While the resulting meal isn’t a real burger in the sense that one made from synthetic meat is, the ambition is to eventually create burgers – as well as other foods – indistinguishable from their carnal counterparts. And while synthetic meat might be price competitive in a generation, products from companies like Impossible Foods are already available, with the company now producing 1 million pounds of ground ‘plant meat’ each month. So far investors have thrown almost \$275 million at Impossible Foods, but when you consider the size of the global meat market is more than \$1 trillion – and growing rapidly despite the constraints of our planet – that seems a prudent investment.

More than Meat

Whether its culturing meat or genetically modifying yeast to create new ingredients, the ambitions of cellular agriculture aren’t limited to creating meat without animals. Indeed, the principles are more easily adopted with other foods such as milk, egg whites and even wine.

At present milk appears to be the easiest one of all, and given it is such an important ingredient in a range of animal products – from cream to butter, yoghurt and cheese – an efective substitute would have a massive impact. What’s more, hundreds of millions of people are lactose intolerant or prefer not to consume dairy for ethical reasons, making milk an obvious place to start for anyone wishing to be involved in cellular agriculture. Sure, there are plenty of nut and soy milks out there, but none of them taste the same and, more importantly, they can’t keep pace with rising global demand.

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Perfect Day Foods are one of the first companies who think they can meet the challenge of making cow milk without cows. To do so the company’s co-founders, both trained in biomedical engineering, obtained a particular strain of yeast from the US Department of Agriculture and inserted a cow’s DNA sequence into it – much like how Impossible Foods did for heme. They then fermented the yeast with sugar, again akin to brewing beer, and made ‘real’ milk proteins with both casein and whey. These were then combined with plant-based fats and nutrients to produce lactose-free milk. Essentially this is the same process of fermentation as in a cow’s four stomachs, except there is no energy being expended on the rest of the animal, no unwanted by-products like methane and carbon dioxide, and land and water consumption is significantly lower.

Then there ’s eggs. Egg white substitutes are nothing new – indeed one of the most commercially successful vegan products in recent years is the mayonnaise substitute Just. In a manner reminiscent of the Impossible Foods burger, Just Foods examined numerous plant sources that possessed the emulsifying properties of egg whites to make mayonnaise. After examining eleven plant ingredients as a potential replacement they settled on a specific variety of Canadian yellow field pea – a type of split pea which possesses precisely the right properties and required no genetic modification.

But while that is impressive, it still leaves the hundreds of other recipes that need eggs, not to mention their use in omelettes, baking or just cooked plain. Which is where Clara Foods come in. They have developed a way to precisely replicate egg whites without a single chicken. Their process, unsurprisingly, starts with a genetically modified strain of yeast used to ‘grow’ egg whites and all twelve of its proteins. The potential benefits are immediately obvious: cheaper eggs with no risk of salmonella or avian flu and no need for antibiotics. In addition, they are more sustainable, with far lower greenhouse gas emissions and, again, less land and water being required. The science behind it is promising and, with the ambition of going to market with their synthetic egg whites by 2020, Clara Foods may play a major role in ending the welfare issues associated with battery egg production – all while leading to a healthier, cheaper product.

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That’s all very well, but what about the egg yolks needed for things like making pasta and omelettes? Clara Foods intend to produce a similar product there as well, but until then Just will have the field to themselves after releasing their ‘Just Scramble ’ scrambled eggs, made from a mung bean extract, in the summer of 2018.

Champagne Socialism

Cellular agriculture isn’t limited to the necessities of life. Indeed, things begin to get really interesting with wine, which unlike most food and drink, has a highly specific taste profile endowing each bottle with a distinctive status and value. And while the process in potentially replicating wine is diferent to the foods examined above, that means it – perhaps more than any other food or drink – is liable to becoming an information good.

The only barrier, until now, has been our inability to collect or replicate the necessary information. If we could, then a vintage magnum would start to resemble an MP3.

The uniqueness of each grape, terroir and year is part of the romance surrounding wine. To the refined palate, a 1990 Château Margaux is an entirely diferent drink than the reduced bottle of claret at the supermarket. From a commercial perspective this makes wine a great place to start for biotechnology companies, because it is highly popular but has multiple price points. If what we think about economic rationality is even remotely correct, the right incentives exist for wine to be at the forefront of the synthetic food revolution.

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That explains why a company called Endless West (previously Ava Winery) have jumped into the field with both feet. Not only do they think they can re-create wine without grapes, or fermentation, but that ultimately they will be able to replicate the precise flavour of particular grape varieties, soils and vintages. How they plan to do that is through molecular assembly, adopting a ‘scan and print’ approach in cataloguing existing wines, before recreating them with a precise mix of amino acids, glycerin, sugars and ethanol. The end product could be a classic bottle at a massively discounted price – and they have already tried replicating a 1992 Dom Pérignon (though it was never released).

But wine has a highly complex flavour profile so, in a pivot to whiskey, they recently launched Glyph – what they refer to as the world’s first ‘molecular spirit’. If Endless West’s approach works it would, like so much else in the context of the Third Disruption, make previously high-value alcohol an informational good. Overnight the most precious of bottles, whose value is a function of their scarcity, would be technically subject to infinite replication. What’s more this process would require far less land, water and labour – indeed it could very likely be entirely automated. It’s ironic that the perennial dismissal of left-wing radicals as indulging in ‘champagne socialism’ might be a fitting description of our not-too-distant future.

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