Good Morning,
and great to have you join us for the Weekly Debrief for week 25 of 2021.
Just like every weekend, we got the latest from the world of plant-based business, food, fashion, travel, and lifestyle, curated and contextualized for you.
The best news of them all, however, is this: You can subscribe to this thing and have it delivered as a newsletter every Saturday, right in time for brunch.
This week, we applaud Canada Goose for finally ditching fur, wander around the world’s first factory for cell-based meat in Israel and look at the newest science, creating a new wave of alternative protein — microbes and everything.
Here we go:
Canada Goose Goes Fur Free
The biggest news of the week no doubt was this story: Canada Goose, the outerwear giant known for its use of real fur and down, has been in the crosshairs of animal rights activists for years. This week, however, the brand announced that they would step away from fur. “In 2021,” a brand statement on Instagram reads, “we will end the purchase of all fur and cease manufacturing with fur in 2022.”
While this is a big step that is deserving of ovations (standing ones, too, if you like), it’s likely more a brand crumbling under the pressure of times changing than an actual recalibration of the values inside the company. PETA said it best: “In light of Canada Goose’s decision, PETA is placing a moratorium on our campaign against the company while we work behind the scenes on ending its use of down feathers.”
World’s First Factory for Cell-Based Meat to Open in Israel
Future Meat Technologies, an Israeli food startup, has opened what has to be the world’s first industrial cultured meat facility. The production facility, capable of producing 500kg of cultured meat per day “marks a huge step in Future Meat Technologies’ path to market,” said CEO Rom Kshuk, “serving as a critical enabler to bring our produts to shelves by 2022.”
What’s especially exciting about that is the company’s process, which does not require the use of animal serum (as it is standard practice for most cultured meat productions).
Microbes & Solar Power
Great read: In this piece in The Guardian, author Damian Carrington looks at a new study that suggests that a combination of solar power and microbes could produce 10 times more protein such as soya beans and would have very little impact on the environment — “in stark contrast to livestock farming, which results in huge amounts of climate-heating gases as well as water pollution.”
That’s the kind of forward thinking we’re fascinated by (and holding on to).
Fermentation & Protein
And another reading tip, right up that same alley (we got us a little alternative-alternative protein special going, haven’t we). In this article in Forbes, author Brian Kateman discusses next-level plant-based protein — meaning using fermentation to create animal protein without using any animal cells in the process. Sounds mind blowing? That’s because it is.
BTW, shown in that photo above is Bond Pet Foods’ prototype chicken protein, made with fermentation processes.
That wraps up this week’s edition of the Weekly Debrief, definitely a nerdy science edition this time.
As always, thanks for reading and have a great Sunday. Read you next week!
Yours truly,
Eric Mirbach
(Editor in Chief)
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