Around one-quarer of the freshwater we use globally
each year goes straight to producing meat and dairy via
factory farming. The industry is notorious for both using
water unsustainably and being a leading polluter of our
water systems, and is at high risk from water-related
issues like fooding and drought. Water is used at every
step of the animal-rearing process — from growing and
producing feed to actually feeding and hydrating animals,
cleaning their facilities and, eventually, their slaughter. A
single slaughterhouse can use millions of gallons of water
every single day.
While aeroponics systems can minimise the water needed
to take a plant from farm to fork, a less water-intensive
future for factory farming looks like an even greater
paradigm shift: it looks like not rearing animals at all.
“Ultimately, we have 2 billion more people to feed in the
next 30 years, and as a global population we’re consuming
more meat, not less”, says Will Milligan. Will is Founder
and CEO of Extracellular, a Bristol-based research,
development and manufacturing company of cell-based
products — including cultivated meat.
“We’d need to rear twice as many animals as we do today
to feed that growing population given the amount of meat
we consume, but we simply don’t have the land or
resources. As meat is societally and culturally embedded in
our food system, alternatives just aren’t cuting it — we
need to come up with beter alternatives for the real thing.
To meet demand, we need beter, more efcient, novel
ways of producing real meat.”
Cultivated meat is a hugely promising way to do just this.
Instead of leading animals to an abatoir, meat could be
grown cleanly and without cruelty in a kind of meat
microbrewery. A single small cell sample is taken from a
living animal, given everything it needs to grow in a big
tank, and can go on to produce the equivalent of
hundreds of meat products — all thanks to a single animal.
Rather than being a pipe dream, cultivated meat is already
on sale in the US and Singapore, and was served to global
leaders at 2022’s COP27 conference in Egypt.
Creating meat products in this way drastically cuts
carbon emissions; reduces land, water and energy use;
and could enable countries across the world to be more
self-sufcient in their food production (without the need
for emergency cows). “Countries that don’t have the
traditional basis for raising animals — maybe they don’t have
the rolling green hills of the UK, for instance — may be able
to feed their populations more efectively and securely with
this technology”, adds Will. “That’s a really exciting prospect
for me.
“In shor, when we look at the future of our food system,
it’s all about feeding the planet more sustainably: feeding
more with less. Cultivated meat is really the key solution
to eating meat in a sustainable way. Who knows — in 20
or 30 years’ time, it might be seen as crazy that we used
to kill animals for food, in the same way that the idea of
smoking in a pub right now is a foreign concept. Just 20
years ago, you’d walk into a smoky haze.”
THE EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY
IS LOOKING AT GROWING
MEAT IN SPACE, POSSIBLY
IN EARTH ORBIT OR ON LONG-
HAUL TRIPS TO MARS. YOU
CAN’T TAKE AN ANIMAL WITH
YOU, BUT YOU COULD TAKE
THEIR CELLS.
THE ELEPHANT
IN THE ROOM HERE IS
ANIMAL AGRICULTURE:
AN INDUSTRY WITH
A COLOSSAL WATER
FOOTPRINT
FARM
TO
FORK
FROM
11
12
Will Milligan,
Founder and CEO of Extracellular