Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Creating animal food from a greenhouse gas
Industrial agriculture or aquaculture causes a high water footprint, deforestation, biodiversity destruction, water pollution by fertilizers, and creates greenhouse gasses. For example, one of the most popular animal feeds is soybeans, which are produced in a vast land, by heavy machinery, and with a lot of fertilizer. When they are produced, they need to be shipped to places where animals are fed, often in other continents. Obviously, there is a lot of carbon footprint and greenhouse gasses are created through the process. This is going to become more problematic when the world’s population increases by 25% in the next three decades and feed over nine billion stomachs in the middle of the century. So, researchers and entrepreneurs are trying to develop more environmentally friendly animal feeds, called Single-cell proteins, or SCP. It is edible unicellular microorganisms that could be extracted from algae, yeasts, fungi, or bacteria.
Interested in how it is produced and when it works?
Enjoy reading the first article of the year and learn about what SCP is about.
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