What past disruptions tell us about Cellular Agriculture and Alternative Proteins
Incumbent industries are almost always too slow to adapt to new technologies which leads to their downfall. This doesn't have to be the case with our food system.
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win”. This adage has quite effectively illustrated the blinkered behaviour of many incumbent industries faced with the looming threat of a new technology. Perhaps the best documented example is that of the horse and carriage. Until the late 1800s, horses were the dominant mode of transportation. The piling horse manure in the streets of cities worldwide represented one of the biggest environmental crises of the time. So much so that in 1880 a committee of experts predicted New York city would be buried under a pile of manure and cease to exist altogether. Yet, in 1913 horses all but disappeared from the streets of New York. The reason? Not a diplomatically brokered partnership between the Automobile and Horse industry but rather a combination, and surgical application, of a number of contemporary innovations with exponentially dropping costs: rubber tyres, the assembly line, petrol combustion engines, electric ignition to name a few. A brutal display of free-market capitalism.
The Horse industry went bust, it underestimated the speed at which the car was disrupting their industry. It rested on its laurels, got complacent and horses in such great numbers quickly became unneeded. And so were eaten.
The Whale Oil industry suffered the same fate. In the mid 19th century whale oil was the most ubiquitous of fuel sources. New Bedford MA, with its enormous whaling fleet was once known as the “City That Lights the World ‘’ and Whale Oil was estimated to be the fifth largest industry in the United States. Yet within a matter of decades the industry went from 735 ships slaughtering over 8,000 whales a year to only 39 in the mid 1870’s. The cause? The discovery of petroleum-derived Kerosene by Canadian geologist Abraham Gesner. The population then began switching to Kerosene to light their homes because it was cheaper and more convenient. In a comical display of Karma, Kerosene would later be rendered extinct by Thomas Edison’s electric light bulb.
The Ice industry suffered the same fate. By offering a much cheaper product through the cooling of water rather than the harvesting from frozen lakes, Industrial refrigeration displaced the Natural Ice industry. In a move taken straight from the same play book employed by Big Meat, Big Oil and Big Tobacco, the incumbent sought to discredit the up-and-comer by spreading disinformation around the new technology. “The ammonia used in refrigeration will leak into your water” the rhetoric went. In reality, refrigerated ice was much cleaner as it was first boiled, filtered and then frozen, whereas natural ice was polluted by local industry dumping in waterways and then by the very horses towing it.
The Film Camera industry suffered the same fate. As the digital era of photography threatened to change everything with consumers preferring the convenience, immediate photo viewing capabilities, and the ease of sharing pictures online, Kodak and Canon fought for market dominance. Canon adapted whereas Kodak lagged, reluctant to move away from film and underestimating the rapid adoption of digital technology. Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012, needing to sell a number of its patents and operations to stay alive as a technology company offering imaging for business. In the meantime, Canon became the market leader with a present-day valuation of 29 billion dollars.
Animal Agriculture is destined to suffer the same fate. Despite a muffled and timorous mention at COP28, the catastrophic environmental impacts of meat production are incontestable. We simply cannot address climate change without revolutionising how we produce our food. Fortunately a revolution is underway and cellular agriculture, a technology which produces animal-based food items without the animals, is already disrupting this industry. The wheels are in motion and we must seize this opportunity to transition to a vastly superior food system. One that can provide us all with healthy and nutritious food whilst using but a fraction of the resources currently needed. We have the opportunity to reclaim enormous swathes of land condemned to feeding animals that are then fed to us, to spare billions of animals from a sordid existence and to capture billions of tonnes of CO2 whilst helping biodiversity recover through rewilding.
Animal Agriculture incumbents need not suffer the same fate as the examples above. Some are embracing this new technology: Tyson, Cargill and JBS foods have already invested millions of dollars in Cultivated Meat whilst industry titans collaborate with startups on Precision Fermentation ventures and numerous Government grants from countries such as the Netherlands, Singapore, US, Israel and Germany are being awarded.
Henry Ford is quoted as having said “If I had asked people what they wanted they would have said ‘faster horses’”. We find ourselves in a similar, if not more urgent situation, needing to answer how we feed ourselves without further compromising our future. Far too many of us are fixated on making marginal improvements to an archaic agricultural technology. This is not enough and will only lead us down a path submerged in manure. To overcome the environmental challenges imposed on us by animal agriculture we must innovate, disrupt and embrace progress for a brighter future, like we have done with so many past technologies. Industry incumbents are perfectly positioned to thrive, and should adapt, if not for the planet then for themselves. The question is: who will be Kodak and who Canon?
Sources -
The Big Names Investing in Lab-Grown Meat
The Fall of Kodak: How Ignoring Digital Technology Spelled Doom
CO₂ emissions — Our World in Data
Food and Agriculture Report — RethinkX
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Thanks for writing this article! It made me feel hopeful.