Vat produced protein in the news again

The Guardian reports:

Enough protein to feed the entire world could be produced on an area of land smaller than London if we replace animal farming with factories producing micro-organisms, a campaign has said.

The Reboot Food manifesto argues that three-quarters of the world’s farmland should be rewilded instead.

That's an awful lot of farmers without a living anymore.  Is that how much they reckon is devoted to growing animals, and the food to feed animals?

Anyway, I've been interested in lab grown protein (not lab grown meat) ever since I read an article or interview about it years ago which I haven't been able to track down again.

George Monbiot is on board, which is a bit of a worry, given that my impression is that he does come with some ideas that are wildly unlikely to be implemented, such as the part of his 2006 article which included:

 Legislate for the closure of all out-of-town superstores, and their replacement with a warehouse and delivery system. Shops use a staggering amount of energy (six times as much electricity per square metre as factories, for example), and major reductions are hard to achieve: Tesco’s “state of the art” energy-saving store at Diss has managed to cut its energy use by only 20%(6). Warehouses containing the same quantity of goods use roughly 5% of the energy(7). Out-of-town shops are also hard-wired to the car – delivery vehicles use 70% less fuel(8). Timescale: fully implemented by 2012.

(He's a bit like the Green Elon Musk - instead of "we can have 100,000 colonists on Mars within 25 years" it's "we can change retail shop completely in the space of 6 years".)

Anyway, back to vat grown protein:

They say protein from precision fermentation is up to 40,900 times more land efficient than beef, making it technically feasible to produce the world’s protein on an area of land smaller than Greater London.

Some forms of precision fermentation are being deployed already in the US, including a process that can make the milk proteins responsible for the fatty, tangy taste in ice-cream usually achieved by dairy.

The Guardian columnist George Monbiot, who wrote about this potential solution in his recent book Regenesis, is supporting the campaign.

He said: “The elephant in the room at Cop27 is the cow. But thankfully this time, there really is a recipe for success. By rebooting our food systems with precision fermentation we can phase out animal agriculture while greatly increasing the amount of protein available for human consumption.”

But - I think they ought to be producing some actual product from it, and not just Quorn, which is pretty underwhelming in texture if you ask me.  

Hopefully, it is produced cheaper than animal meat too.   There has been a lot of talk recently about the falling "plant based meat" sales in the US (and I expect, Australia.)  Here's an article from the Washington Post last week.   I think what has happened is too many so-so quality manufacturers have rushed into market based on dubious marketing research and early enthusiasm for just a couple of hamburger products (Impossible and Beyond's burgers).  And as I have said before, I think both of these are very good, taste wise.  But they are both also considerably more expensive than a cheap old mince burger.    

I think plant based meat would sell better if it was cheaper than animal meat:  people could at least justify the "doesn't taste quite as good as real meat" factor by at least figuring they have saved a bit of  money.  And given that the plant based burgers are based on what seem like pretty cheap ingredients (for the most part, like pea protein powder, which I think is the basis of a lot of some gym junkies protein drinks), it does seem that they should be economical compared to the cost of feeding, transporting, killing and butchering a cow.

But they aren't.