Lab-grown meat is one of the worst technology failures of 2023, according to MIT Technology Review's annual list of the worst in tech. Exhibit A: billion dollar start-up Upside Foods, which is using lots of labour, plastic, and energy to make hardly any meat. MIT Technology Review

 

 

Investors in cell-based meats now include major meat companies Tyson Foods and Cargill; tech billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos; actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Ashton Kutcher; and state-owned investors such as the Abu Dhabi Growth Fund and Singapore’s Temasek Holdings. Upside Foods Inc. has become the industry’s biggest player. Yet after eight years of toiling away in labs, raising more than $600 million and getting US Food and Drug Administration and Department of Agriculture signoffs to sell its first product, Upside has little to show for itself. The company said its current plant would make more than 50,000 pounds of product each year and has recently announced plans to build a 187,000-square-foot commercial meat plant. But according to internal company documentation and eight former employees, most of whom requested anonymity, Upside at the moment is actually growing just minuscule numbers of chicken skin-type cells in small plastic bottles, then scraping them out gram by gram to compress and mould them into a single forkful of flesh. This labour-intensive chicken has higher levels of cholesterol and lead than the real thing, publicly available company documentation shows. Some scientists say the whole energy-intensive endeavour may actually be worse for the environment, especially with chicken, which has the smallest carbon footprint of anything at the local butcher. All of which points to this question: Why exactly are we chasing lab-grown chicken? [GMW: An archived version of this excellent article is here.] Bloomberg

 

 

We were sad to hear of the death of environmental journalist John Vidal in October 2023. He was an open-eyed critic of GMOs and the power structures that promote and support them, as you can see in his pieces here ("Taking the rap") and here. An archived version of an obituary in the Times is here. An obituary in the Guardian is here. GMWatch comment on obituaries in the Times and Guardian

 

 

Those of you who don't subscribe to our Reviews can read our latest Lobbywatch Review here. It delves into what George Monbiot, Bill Gates, a pro-GMO propaganda outfit, and a bunch of ecomodernists lavishly funded with dirty money, all have in common! Check it out – and subscribe to future Reviews so you don't miss out. GMWatch

 

We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible by readers’ donations. Please support our work with a one-off or regular donation. Thank you!