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(Fake) Chicken Anyone?

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Lab-Grown Chicken — The Latest Silicon Valley Mess to Clean Up?

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola 
  • January 10, 2024
lab grown chicken

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • Upside Foods, a leader in the fake meat market and one of two companies allowed to sell cultured meat in the U.S., has failed to scale up its production to produce meaningful amounts of synthetic meat
  • Plagued by contamination issues, Upside had problems with rodent DNA found in one of its chicken cell lines
  • While parading its expensive stainless-steel bioreactors for the press, Upside is actually growing only small amounts of fake meat bits inside small, single-use plastic bottles
  • Fake meat, presented as a solution to save the environment, may end up being worse for the planet than real meat
  • Lab-grown meat is often made using animal components, so it’s not really animal-free, and when Upside tested its fake meat for heavy metals, some samples contained 20 times more lead than conventional ground chicken

Silicon Valley is banking on cultured meat taking off, providing animal-free “meat” to satisfy the carnivorous appetites of the world’s more than 8 billion people — most of whom eat meat. But what started out with grandiose fanfare and backing from billionaire investors like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos1 is falling flat.

The dream of creating cultured “chicken” breasts or animal-free “beef” fillets is turning out to be nothing more than a fairy tale. Upside Foods, a leader in the fake meat market and one of two companies allowed to sell cultured meat in the U.S.,2 has resorted instead to “growing just minuscule numbers of chicken skin-type cells in small plastic bottles, then scraping them out gram by gram to compress and mold them into a single forkful of flesh.”3

It’s not only unappetizing. Even if it succeeds, fake meat, presented as a solution to save the environment, may end up being worse for the planet than real meat, while presenting consumers with another highly processed food product that may further devastate human health.

What Happens When Silicon Valley Gets Mixed Up in Food Production?

Putting faith in Silicon Valley to produce wholesome food was the first mistake in the race to create cultured food. While regenerative farmers raising grass fed cows and free-range chickens work in concert with nature to provide food in the form humans have thrived on since the beginning of time, Silicon Valley does just the opposite.

In a process completely removed from nature, venture-backed startups are using precision fermentation based on genetically engineered microbes to create synthetic food products in a lab. At Upside, which has received backing from Richard Branson, Kimbal Musk and even meat giants Tyson Foods and Cargill,4 stainless steel bioreactors are paraded as a measure of progress at media events, but it’s nothing more than careful PR.

Inside reports from employees, uncovered by The Wall Street Journal, claim that the bioreactors are plagued by contamination and rodent DNA was once found in a chicken cell line.5 Illustrating the contradiction that is the fake meat industry, the “sustainable” lab-grown chicken is in actuality being grown in two-liter plastic bottles — hundreds of which are required to product a few fillets.6

In the U.S., a limited amount of Upside’s lab-grown chicken is available as part of a tasting menu at Bar Crenn in San Francisco. But even Bloomberg reported this “sustainable” solution makes no sense:7

“The company is growing them in small, single-use plastic bottles, in amounts so piddling that a single night at Bar Crenn, a ‘certified plastic-free’ establishment, according to its website, could require the use of more than a hundred such bottles.”

Upside’s Expensive Fake Chicken Bits Aren’t Made From Muscle Cells

To make fake meat, cell lines taken from a living organism. They’re then manipulated to grow quickly and consistently. While myoblasts are the type of cells that grow into muscle meat, they’re the most difficult for fake meat companies to grow and “immortalize.”

“A regular cell extracted from an animal, known as a primary cell, won’t replicate forever. Eventually it stops, entering a phase known as senescence. If a company wants to grow significant amounts of meat and doesn’t want to have to keep taking cells from live animals or embryos, it needs to turn primary cells into immortal ones,” Bloomberg reports.8

Because myoblasts are difficult to immortalize, fibroblasts, which grow easily, are often used in cultured meat products. “But when it comes to food, they’re not what most people would consider delectable. They can develop into fat and other cells, but they’re most known for their role in making connective tissue, like cartilage or what’s found in skin,” according to Bloomberg’s report.9

Adipocytes, or fat cells, are also sometimes used, often mixed with plant proteins. In a dossier for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Upside named genetically engineered immortalized fibroblasts and a naturally immortalized myoblast cell line as options for its fake meat. But Samir Qurashi, a former Upside employee, shared doubts the company had a myoblast cell line capable of being used in production.

“It’s next to near impossible,” he told Bloomberg, and, indeed, the fake meat Upside is serving at upscale Bar Crenn is made from fibroblasts, the type that typically forms connective tissue. Further, according to Bloomberg:10

“The chicken doesn’t even include immortalized cells; it’s made of primary fibroblast cells that at some point will stop replicating and at best grow only into connective tissue. This means that to make more chicken, scientists will eventually have to go back to an embryo and remove more cells, a process that, even when it works, also kills the embryo. (Bar Crenn didn’t provide comment.)

It’s an admission that has left experts both confused and amused. “I scratch my head,” says David Kaplan, director of the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture. “Why would you ever use primary cells?”

The Myth of Animal-Free Meat

One of the foundational principles behind cultured meat is the ability to produce food without killing animals. But fake meat is often made using animal components, negating this principle.

Normally, cells grow in a structure in your body. The cell lines being grown in labs are grown in a thin film or growth medium. In the body, the growth medium is your blood, Dutch investigative journalist Elze van Hamelen reports,11 a complex substance that laboratories try to replicate using fetal bovine serum (FBS) — blood taken from living calf fetuses.

“It’s really gruesome how this is harvested,” she says,12 pointing out that this contradicts the narrative that lab-grown meats are made without animals. FBS is often used to grow cultured cells because of the proteins and vitamins it contains. A 2013 study stated, “In many common culture media, the sole source of micronutrients is fetal bovine serum (FBS) …”13

When lab-grown chicken made by U.S. startup Eat Just debuted in Singapore in 2020 — marking the first cultured meat to be sold at a restaurant14 — it was produced using FBS. Upside stated in 2021 that it had developed a way to grow fake meat without animal components, yet its first chicken filets still depended on animal compounds.15

In fact, part of Qurashi’s role at Upside was to harvest cells from crustaceans, a process that killed them. As reported by Bloomberg, “Qurashi had the extremely challenging task of procuring cells from live crustaceans — a job that always led to their untimely demise, costing two or three animals their life each week. ‘Literally, people cried when they saw me,’ Qurashi says of his colleagues.”16

In order to develop synthetic “blood” instead, precision fermentation and artificial hormones may be used. Micronutrients and minerals must also be sourced, making the process “insanely expensive,” van Hamelen says.17

Use of FBS-free medium may cause cultured meat to cost over $20,000 per kilogram.18 A report from the Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit group behind the alternative protein industry,19 suggested that if the cost of FBS-free mediums could be reduced, it would drive down the cost of cultured meat by 90%. This, however, is unlikely.

“[T]he report provides no evidence to explain why these micronutrient costs will fall,” Joe Fassler, The Counter’s deputy editor, wrote in an in-depth exposé about the actual science behind lab-grown meat.”20

Fake Chicken Contains More Lead Than Real Chicken

Adding to the controversy over lab-grown meat, when Upside tested its fake meat products for heavy metals, some samples contained 20 times more lead than conventional ground chicken, along with about eight times more cholesterol compared to conventional chicken.21

There are other concerns as well. Writing in Frontiers in Nutrition, it’s speculated that “with this high level of cell multiplication, some dysregulation is likely as happens in cancer cells. Likewise, the control of its nutritional composition is still unclear, especially for micronutrients and iron.”22

Synthetic dairy products, including milk made from genetically engineered yeast, is also raising concerns about the health risks of fake food. Along with missing important micronutrients that are abundant in real milk, fake milk contains compounds that have never before existed in the human diet. One analysis revealed 92 mysterious, unknown compounds in fake milk that don’t exist in real milk.23

The Environment Also Suffers From Lab-Grown Meat

The other myth that’s part of the fake meat narrative is that it’s better for the environment than real meat. Even with the use of renewable energy factored in, lab-grown chicken would have the same carbon footprint as conventional chicken, according to a report by CE Delft.24 When global average energy mixes were used, lab-grown meat had a higher carbon footprint than pork and chicken.

A preprint study from University of California, Davis researchers also found that the environmental impact of lab-grown meat is “likely to be orders of magnitude higher than median beef production,”25 again highlighting the myth that fake foods are more sustainable than real foods, especially when they’re produced regeneratively.

The reality is that fake foods are far from sustainable. John Fagan, Ph.D., a molecular biologist who worked with the U.S. National Institutes of Health for 8.5 years, explains:26

“The reality is that many of the carbon footprint calculations have been done starting with the fermentation process and going forward, but where did the high fructose corn syrup come from that is the primary energy component that goes into these fermentations?

… And you look at that industrial agriculture and you add that carbon footprint on to what they have been using in their calculations and suddenly it goes way in the wrong direction. And so we can’t even use the sustainability arguments to justify what’s being done. It just doesn’t work.”

This Is About Controlling the Food Supply

Sustainability, animal rights and human health are all buzzwords being floated around fake meat. But this isn’t about saving the planet or animals, and it’s certainly not about making people healthier. The reason why Silicon Valley is willing to invest billions into fake food is because it knows that whoever controls the food supply controls the population.

The globalists are trying to replace animal husbandry with lab-grown meat, which will allow private companies to effectively control the entire food supply. Just as was the case with GMOs, raising awareness about the dangers of fake meat is important, especially in this early and aggressively expanding phase.

Tell your social circle that to save the planet and support your health, it’s necessary to skip all the fake meat and dairy alternatives and opt for real food instead. When you shop for food, know your farmer and look for regenerative, biodynamic and/or grass fed farming methods, which are what we need to support a healthy, autonomous population.

from:    https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2024/01/10/lab-grown-chicken.aspx?ui=f460707c057231d228aac22d51b97f2a8dcffa7b857ec065e5a5bfbcfab498ac&sd=20211017&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art2HL&cid=20240110_HL2&foDate=true&mid=DM1515011&rid=2015258319

Fake Meat — Fake Hype

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Fake meat sales plummet amid falling demand

‘It’s less digestible than real meat, and certainly less nutritious’

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August 10, 2023

Fake meat giant Beyond Meat’s revenue plunged over 30% for the second quarter compared to last year as consumers turn to real meat.

The California-based company also slashed its annual sales forecast from $375m–$415m to $360m–$380m “in light of greater than expected consumer and category headwinds and their anticipated impact on net revenues,” according to The Telegraph. Last year, the company was forced to cut a fifth of its workforce as its stock dropped nearly 80%.

Beyond Meat, founded in 2009 to “fight climate change,” counts globalist billionaire Bill Gates as one of its investors. It has since supplied its plant-based fake meat to McDonalds, Dunkin’ Donuts, Taco Bell, Walmart and PepsiCo. In 2013, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) named Beyond Meat “Company of the Year” and the company has been endorsed by several Hollywood celebrities.

Frontline News reported last year that Beyond Meat was distributing its fake Beyond Burger to 1,600 supermarkets throughout Germany as the country moves to reduce livestock to “fight climate change.”

Beyond Meat is not the only player in the fake meat industry. It primarily competes with Impossible Foods, which also provides plant-based meat, and Upside Foods, which provides lab-grown meat. All three companies are backed by Gates, who has clarified that government regulation may be needed to force people to transition to fake meat.

“I don’t think the poorest 80 countries will be eating synthetic meat,” Gates told the MIT Technology Review. “I do think all rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef. You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they’re going to make it taste even better over time. Eventually, that green premium is modest enough that you can sort of change the [behavior of] people or use regulation to totally shift the demand.”

But nutrition experts have been warning against fake meat. Nutritionist and Sacred Cow: The Case for (Better Meat) author Diana Rodgers says lab-grown meat, such as that sold by Upside Foods, is still not as healthy as McDonalds.

“I’d rather eat my shoe than lab-grown meat,” Rodgers stated.

British investigative food journalist Joanna Blythman warns against even plant-based meat, which she says sometimes contain up to 30 artificial ingredients.

“Artificial plant-based proteins tend to be loaded with ‘anti-nutrients’ – compounds that make it harder for our guts to absorb beneficial macro and micronutrients,” Blythman wrote in an article for the Daily Mail. “Essentially, it’s less digestible than real meat, and certainly less nutritious.”

While Gates and his World Economic Forum (WEF) colleagues hope to significantly reduce meat consumption by 2030 and, ideally, phase it out completely by 2050, Blythman says the global real meat industry is forecasted to rise up to 7% annually.

There are also significant concerns about fake meat’s purported contribution to the climate. Plants require fertilizer, processing and shipping, too, and lab-grown meat is also expected to be environmentally taxing.

A preprint study published in April by University of California, Davis researchers found that if fake meat becomes as widely accepted as globalists would like, it could be extremely harmful to the climate.

The researchers found that the production process for fake meat emits 246 to 1,508 kg of carbon dioxide per kilogram of fake meat, while retail meat production produces only about 60 kg of CO2 per kilogram. According to the scientists’ estimates, producing fake meat is 4 to 25 times worse for the climate than real beef.

“Currently, animal cell-based meat products are being produced at a small scale and at an economic loss, however companies are intending to industrialize and scale-up production,” the scientists opine in the study.

“Results indicate that the environmental impact of near-term animal cell-based meat production is likely to be orders of magnitude higher than median beef production if a highly refined growth medium is utilised,” they concluded.

from:    https://frontline.news/post/fake-meat-sales-plummet-amid-falling-demand

“Cultivated” Is Not Necessarily Great

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U.S. approves chicken made from cultivated cells, the nation’s first ‘lab-grown’ meat

The Agriculture Department gave the green light to Upside Foods and Good Meat, which had been racing to be the first in the U.S. to sell meat that doesn’t come from slaughtered animals.
Image: Chef Zach Tyndall prepares Good Meat's cultivated chicken at the Eat Just office in Alameda, Calif., on June 14, 2023.

Chef Zach Tyndall prepares Good Meat’s cultivated chicken at the Eat Just office in Alameda, Calif., on June 14. Jeff Chiu / AP

 / Source: Associated Press
By Associated Press

For the first time, U.S. regulators on Wednesday approved the sale of chicken made from animal cells, allowing two California companies to offer “lab-grown” meat to the nation’s restaurant tables and eventually, supermarket shelves.

The Agriculture Department gave the green light to Upside Foods and Good Meat, firms that had been racing to be the first in the U.S. to sell meat that doesn’t come from slaughtered animals — what’s now being referred to as “cell-cultivated” or “cultured” meat as it emerges from the laboratory and arrives on dinner plates.

The move launches a new era of meat production aimed at eliminating harm to animals and drastically reducing the environmental impacts of grazing, growing feed for animals and animal waste.

Company experiments with lab-grown meat to keep up with future of meat demand

NOV. 23, 202103:34

instead of all of that land and all of that water that’s used to feed all of these animals that are slaughtered, we can do it in a different way,” said Josh Tetrick, co-founder and chief executive of Eat Just, which operates Good Meat.

The companies received approvals for federal inspections required to sell meat and poultry in the U.S. The action came months after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration deemed that products from both companies are safe to eat. A manufacturing company called Joinn Biologics, which works with Good Meat, was also cleared to make the products.

Cultivated meat is grown in steel tanks, using cells that come from a living animal, a fertilized egg or a special bank of stored cells. In Upside’s case, it comes out in large sheets that are then formed into shapes like chicken cutlets and sausages. Good Meat, which already sells cultivated meat in Singapore, the first country to allow it, turns masses of chicken cells into cutlets, nuggets, shredded meat and satays.

But don’t look for this novel meat in U.S. grocery stores anytime soon. Cultivated chicken is much more expensive than meat from whole, farmed birds and cannot yet be produced on the scale of traditional meat, said Ricardo San Martin, director of the Alt:Meat Lab at University of California Berkeley.

The companies plan to serve the new food first in exclusive restaurants: Upside has partnered with a San Francisco restaurant called Bar Crenn, while Good Meat dishes will be served at a Washington, D.C., restaurant run by chef and owner Jose Andrés.

Company officials are quick to note the products are meat, not substitutes like the Impossible Burger or offerings from Beyond Meat, which are made from plant proteins and other ingredients.

Globally, more than 150 companies are focusing on meat from cells, not only chicken but pork, lamb, fish and beef, which scientists say has the biggest impact on the environment.

Upside, based in Berkeley, operates a 70,000-square-foot building in nearby Emeryville. On a recent Tuesday, visitors entered a gleaming commercial kitchen where chef Jess Weaver was sauteeing a cultivated chicken filet in a white wine butter sauce with tomatoes, capers and green onions.

The finished chicken breast product was slightly paler than the grocery store version. Otherwise it looked, cooked, smelled and tasted like any other pan-fried poultry.

“The most common response we get is, ‘Oh, it tastes like chicken,’” said Amy Chen, Upside’s chief operating officer.

Good Meat, based in Alameda, operates a 100,000-square-foot plant, where chef Zach Tyndall dished up a smoked chicken salad on a sunny June afternoon. He followed it with a chicken “thigh” served on a bed of potato puree with a mushroom-vegetable demi-glace and tiny purple cauliflower florets. The Good Meat chicken product will come pre-cooked, requiring only heating to use in a range of dishes.

Chen acknowledged that many consumers are skeptical, even squeamish, about the thought of eating chicken grown from cells.

“We call it the ‘ick factor,’” she said.

Image: A scientist works in a cellular agriculture lab at Eat Just in Alameda, Calif., on June 14, 2023.
A scientist works in a cellular agriculture lab at Eat Just in Alameda, Calif., on June 14. Jeff Chiu / AP

The sentiment was echoed in a recent poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Half of U.S. adults said that they are unlikely to try meat grown using cells from animals. When asked to choose from a list of reasons for their reluctance, most who said they’d be unlikely to try it said “it just sounds weird.” About half said they don’t think it would be safe.

But once people understand how the meat is made, they’re more accepting, Chen said. And once they taste it, they’re usually sold.

“It is the meat that you’ve always known and loved,” she said.

Cultivated meat begins with cells. Upside experts take cells from live animals, choosing those most likely to taste good and to reproduce quickly and consistently, forming high-quality meat, Chen said. Good Meat products are created from a master cell bank formed from a commercially available chicken cell line.

Once the cell lines are selected, they’re combined with a broth-like mixture that includes the amino acids, fatty acids, sugars, salts, vitamins and other elements cells need to grow. Inside the tanks, called cultivators, the cells grow, proliferating quickly. At Upside, muscle and connective tissue cells grow together, forming large sheets. After about three weeks, the sheets of poultry cells are removed from the tanks and formed into cutlets, sausages or other foods. Good Meat cells grow into large masses, which are shaped into a range of meat products.

Both firms emphasized that initial production will be limited. The Emeryville facility can produce up to 50,000 pounds of cultivated meat products a year, though the goal is to expand to 400,000 pounds per year, Upside officials said. Good Meat officials wouldn’t estimate a production goal.

By comparison, the U.S. produces about 50 billion pounds of chicken per year.

It could take a few years before consumers see the products in more restaurants and seven to 10 years before they hit the wider market, said Sebastian Bohn, who specializes in cell-based foods at CRB, a Missouri firm that designs and builds facilities for pharmaceutical, biotech and food companies.

Cost will be another sticking point. Neither Upside nor Good Meat officials would reveal the price of a single chicken cutlet, saying only that it’s been reduced by orders of magnitude since the firms began offering demonstrations. Eventually, the price is expected to mirror high-end organic chicken, which sells for up to $20 per pound.

San Martin said he’s concerned that cultivated meat may wind up being an alternative to traditional meat for rich people, but will do little for the environment if it remains a niche product.

“If some high-end or affluent people want to eat this instead of a chicken, it’s good,” he said. “Will that mean you will feed chicken to poor people? I honestly don’t see it.”

Tetrick said he shares critics’ concerns about the challenges of producing an affordable, novel meat product for the world. But he emphasized that traditional meat production is so damaging to the planet it requires an alternative — preferably one that doesn’t require giving up meat all together.

“I miss meat,” said Tetrick, who grew up in Alabama eating chicken wings and barbecue. “There should be a different way that people can enjoy chicken and beef and pork with their families.”

Associated Press
from:    https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/us-approves-chicken-made-cultivated-cells-nations-first-lab-grown-meat-rcna90439

More Gene Rouletter

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Pig Beans — The Latest GMO Frankenfood

Analysis by Dr. Joseph MercolaFact Checked

July 13, 2023

pig beans gmo frankenfood

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • One of the latest GMO Frankenfoods is Piggy Sooy, a soybean genetically engineered to contain pig protein. One or more undisclosed pig genes are spliced into conventional soya to create a soybean with 26.6% animal protein
  • Moolec, the U.K.-based company that developed Piggy Sooy, is also working on developing a pea plant that produces beef protein. The company claims these transgenic hybrids will provide similar taste, texture and nutritional value as meat, without the high cost of cultured or lab-grown meat alternatives
  • June 21, 2023, the U.S. Department of Agriculture authorized the sale of cell-cultivated chicken from Good Meat and Upside Foods. Both plan on rolling out their synthetic chicken to “high-end” restaurants across the U.S. first, while they scale up production
  • Researchers have discovered that CRISPR-Cas gene editing wreaks havoc in the plant genome, causing several hundred unintended genetic changes to occur simultaneously “in a catastrophic event” that ripples across large parts of the genome
  • Because these changes are impossible to predict, gene edited plants cannot be assumed safe without extensive testing

As expected, more and ever-wilder transgenic foods are being produced. Among the latest is Piggy Sooy, a soybean genetically engineered to contain pig protein.1,2 According to Moolec, the U.K.-based company that developed this latest Frankenfood, pig genes were spliced into conventional soya to create a soybean with 26.6% animal protein.

The exact pig genes used is a trade secret. As a result of this genetic engineering, the interior flesh of the soybean is also a rosy flesh color. The company is also working on developing a pea plant that produces beef protein. Moolec claims these transgenic hybrids will provide similar taste, texture and nutritional value as meat, without the high cost of cultured or lab-grown meat alternatives. According to New Atlas:3

“Farmers will raise the plants via conventional agricultural practices. Once the beans have been harvested and processed — again, via conventional techniques — their proteins will go into meat substitutes and other products …

As is the case with lab-grown pork, it is hoped that commercial adoption of Piggy Sooy could ultimately eliminate the raising and slaughtering of pigs, along with the associated ethical and environmental concerns.

‘Moolec has developed a unique, successful, and patentable platform for the expression of highly valuable proteins in the seeds of economically important crops such as soybeans,’ says the company’s chief science officer, Amit Dhingra.

‘This achievement opens up a precedent for the entire scientific community that is looking to achieve high levels of protein expression in seeds via molecular farming.’ There’s currently no word on when foods containing the proteins may be available to consumers.”

US Authorizes Cultured Chicken

Lab-grown chicken is also heading toward our plates. June 21, 2023, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) authorized the sale of cell-cultivated chicken — meaning chicken meat grown from stem cells in a bioreactor — from Good Meat and Upside Foods.4,5

Both plan on rolling out their synthetic chicken to “high-end” restaurants across the U.S. first, while they scale up production. In addition to these two, more than 100 other companies are also working on different iterations of cultured meat, from cell-based ground beef and 3-D printed steak and fish (see video above), to synthetic foie gras and cultured seafood.

If you care about your health, I have but one recommendation. Stay clear of all these lab-grown concoctions. I don’t even want to call them food. There’s simply no telling how they may affect your health, and no one is studying it either. It could be decades before the effects become evident, and by then it may be far too late to roll things back.

On the one hand, the know-how of how to grow and raise real food might be lost. On the other, we might lose the ability to grow real food because there won’t be any unadulterated seeds left to work with unless we break open the doomsday seed vault at the North Pole.6

Gene Editing Causes Chaos in the Genome

As reported by GMWatch in June 2023, researchers have discovered7 that CRISPR-Cas gene editing ends up wreaking havoc in the plant genome:8

“Recent scientific findings have revealed chromothripsis-like effects after the application of CRISPR/Cas gene editing in the genome of tomatoes … Chromothripsis refers to a phenomenon in which often several hundred genetic changes occur simultaneously in a catastrophic event. Many sections of the genetic material can be swapped, recombined, or even lost if this occurs …”

Importantly, the same catastrophic cascades of gene swaps, recombination and loss also occurs in mammalian and human cells in response to gene editing. Actually, that’s been known for some time.

This is the first time they’ve found that CRISPRthripsis occurs in gene edited plants as well, and the unintended genetic alterations not only occur far more frequently than previously suspected, but they also occur across large parts of the genome.

Gene Edited Plants Cannot Be Regarded as Safe

As explained by Test Biotech:9

“… when both strands of DNA are cut, as is typically the case with the CRISPR/Cas, the ends of the chromosomes can lose contact with each other. If the repair of the break in the chromosomes fails, the severed ends can be lost, restructured or incorporated elsewhere.

Chromothripsis otherwise seems to be relatively rare in plants. CRISPR/Cas applications can frequently result also in changes at genomic sites that are particularly well-protected by natural repair mechanisms. The risks cannot generally be estimated, so they must be investigated thoroughly in each and every case …

The recent findings shed new light on the alleged ‘precision’ of gene scissors: although the new technology can be used to target and cut precise locations in the genome, the consequences of ‘cutting’ the genome are to some extent unpredictable and uncontrollable.

Plants obtained from new genetic engineering (New GE) cannot, therefore, be regarded as safe per se, and need to be thoroughly investigated for risks. Without exact genomic analyses, chromothripsis can be easily overlooked. It is, for example, not unlikely that it also occurred in plants obtained from New GE that were already deregulated in the US.”

Precision in Gene Editing Is Overrated

Those in favor of gene editing frequently stress the fact that it’s far more precise than natural breeding, the insinuation being that precision assures we only get the desired changes, nothing more and nothing less. But that’s clearly not true.

Precision does not guarantee safety, because hundreds of unintended genetic changes can occur from a single alteration, and unintended genetic rearrangements and/or the disruption of gene expression, in turn, can result in:

  • Alterations in the biochemical composition of the plant (or animal tissue)
  • Production of novel toxins
  • Production of novel allergens

Europe Seeks to Deregulate CRISPR Edited Plants

At present, the U.S. has no specific regulations for gene edited plants. The same regulations that apply for conventional crops apply for GMOs.10

That said, in late May 2023, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a final rule on “Pesticides and Exemptions of Certain Plant-Incorporated Protectants (PIPs) Derived from Newer Technologies,”11,12 which now requires GMO developers to submit data showing that plants that have been gene edited to resist pests are harmless to other components of the ecosystem, don’t contain pesticide levels beyond those found in conventional crops, and won’t cause negative health effects in consumers.

For years, Europe has had rather stringent restrictions on GMO plants, but they’re now seeking to deregulate as well. As reported by Test Biotech:13

“Attempts are currently being made in Europe to largely deregulate plants obtained from CRISPR/Cas applications. According to leaked documents, the EU Commission plans to give companies permission to release New GE plants into the environment and to market their products after only a short period of notification.

Similar to the USA, the proposed criteria exempting them from mandatory risk assessment would not require any investigation of unintended genetic changes, e.g. chromothripsis.

The new regulation would not only be applicable to plants used in agriculture, but also would allow the release of wild plants with no in-depth risk assessment. Testbiotech is warning that the planned deregulation and large scale releases of New GE organisms could threaten natural resources needed by future generations.”

Lab-Made Meats Are Ultraprocessed Junk Food

Between genetically altered produce and lab-created meats, we’re getting close to not having many real, unadulterated whole food options left. Importantly, many meat alternatives fall into the category of ultraprocessed foods, which we already have far too much of.

In 2018, Friends of the Earth (FOE), a grassroots environmental group, released a report that posed critical questions about the trend toward synthetic biology. In it, they stressed the highly processed nature of these products:14

“Various ‘processing aids’ are employed to make some of these products, including organisms (like genetically engineered bacteria, yeast and algae) that produce proteins, and chemicals to extract proteins.

For example, chemicals like hexane are used to extract components of a food, like proteins (from peas, soy, corn etc.) or compounds (from genetically engineered bacteria) to make xanthan gum … disclosure of these ingredients is not required.

Other processing aids (e.g. bacteria, yeast, algae), including those that are genetically engineered to produce proteins, are also not currently required to be disclosed on package labeling. The lack of transparency makes it difficult to assess the inputs and impact of their use.”

Can We End the Tyranny of Ultraprocessed Food?

In a June 2023 Wired article, Dr. Chris Van Tulleken, an expert in infectious diseases and author of “Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … and Why Can’t We Stop?” made a heartfelt plea to policymakers and doctors to protect public health by leading the fight for real food:15

“Diet-related disease — which includes obesity, heart attack, strokes, cancer, and dementia — is the leading cause of early death in the UK. Driving it is a set of industrially processed products … known formally as ultraprocessed food (UPF).

This type of food is usually wrapped in plastic and has additives that you won’t find in a typical kitchen. In the US and the UK, we get on average 60% of our calories from UPF products like pizza, bread, breakfast cereals, biscuits, and nutritional drinks …

UPF is a byproduct of a complicated financial system that involves repurposing waste from animal food into human food.

To solve this problem, the first thing we need to do is include in the official UK guidance about nutrition the information that ultraprocessed foods are associated with weight gain and diet-related diseases, and that the recommendation for people is to avoid these foods.”

Unfortunately, while an admirable call to action, I don’t foresee governments issuing guidance to avoid ultraprocessed foods anytime soon, seeing how many countries, especially the U.S., are all-in on transitioning the entire food system to one that is wholly, or close to wholly, made up of genetically engineered and processed fare.

It’s part of the technocratic takeover known as The Great Reset. By replacing real animal foods with patented lab-made alternatives, globalists will have unprecedented power to control the world’s population. It’ll also grant them greater control over people’s health.

It’s well-known that the consumption of ultraprocessed food contributes to disease,16 and the benefactor of ill health is Big Pharma. The processed food industry has spent many decades driving chronic illness that is then treated with drugs rather than a better diet.

We’re now looking at more ultraprocessed foods being rolled out in the name of combating climate change, so don’t hinge your hopes on legislators. The financial and geopolitical forces against them are enormous. No, I believe the real power resides with each and every one of us. We need to ensure real food still has a place in the marketplace by spending our money on it and leaving all the processed and genetically engineered food on the store shelves.

from:    https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/07/13/pig-beans-gmo-frankenfood.aspx?ui=f460707c057231d228aac22d51b97f2a8dcffa7b857ec065e5a5bfbcfab498ac&sd=20211017&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1HL&cid=20230713&mid=DM1432461&rid=1854576364

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Executive Order Lays Foundation for Lab-Created Foods

Analysis by Dr. Joseph MercolaFact Checked

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • September 12, 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an “Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe and Secure American Bioeconomy.” This executive order makes biotechnology a national priority across agencies and branches of government. Similar legislation has been introduced in the U.K.
  • In late March 2023, Biden expanded on this premise in a “Bold Goals for U.S. Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing” report. According to this plan, the food industry is now to be led by biotech, and the “improvements” we can look forward to are more lab-grown meats and bioengineered plant foods
  • Rather than investing taxpayer dollars in regenerative agriculture, which is what could really solve our problems, government is instead backing a whole new industry of fake foods, from lab-grown meats to large-scale insect production
  • Two cell-based lab-grown meat companies have now received the green light to produce and sell fake chicken in the U.S.
  • Meanwhile, a Food Hazards Identification report by the British Food standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland, published in March 2023, warns there are “considerable gaps in knowledge” when it comes to cell-based meat production, and many potential hazards

September 12, 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an “Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe and Secure American Bioeconomy.”1

This executive order makes biotechnology a national priority across agencies and branches of government. As noted in this order, biotechnology will also be used to “improve” food security, sustainability, and agricultural innovation in the U.S.:

“The Secretary of Agriculture, in consultation with the heads of appropriate agencies as determined by the Secretary, shall submit a report assessing how to use biotechnology and biomanufacturing for food and agriculture innovation, including by improving sustainability and land conservation; increasing food quality and nutrition; increasing and protecting agricultural yields; protecting against plant and animal pests and diseases; and cultivating alternative food sources.”

Support of Bioengineered Fake Food Is Now White House Policy

In late March 2023, Biden expanded on this premise in a “Bold Goals for U.S. Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing” report.2 According to this plan, the food industry is now to be led by biotech, and the “improvements” we can look forward to are more lab-grown meats and bioengineered plant foods.

In the featured video above, I discuss this rapidly advancing trend, and the true geopolitical incentives behind it, because the U.S. is not alone in moving in this direction. A similar plan is detailed in the U.K.’s Genetic Technology and Precision Breeding Act of 2023.3 Specific goals highlighted in Biden’s “Bold Goals” report include:4

•Increasing agricultural productivity by 28% in the next decade

•Reducing food waste by 50% by 2030

•Reducing methane emissions from agriculture by 30% by 2030 by:

1.Capturing biogases from manure management systems

2.Reducing methane emissions from ruminant livestock

3.Reducing methane emissions from food waste in landfills

As reported by Food Dive:5

“While advocates and some companies have been working to reduce methane emissions from food, cut down on food waste, increase capacity for producing alternative proteins and use bioengineering to make healthier and hardier crops and animals, goals like these have never before come from the White House …

The federal government is providing more evidence that it intends to do more than just talk about big goals. A day before the report came out, FDA gave its second tacit approval to a company using biotechnology to grow meat from cells in bioreactors.

While neither … is creating meat for consumers yet, this action shows that the federal government is moving toward making cultivated meat a reality.”

Government Supports a Failed Strategy

Among the many problems with this plan is the fact that taxpayers will now be paying for government’s funding of private corporations involved in the fake food industry. The end result is predictable. What we’ll have is a repeat of what happened with farm subsidies.

Rather than subsidizing the most nutritious foods, government farm subsidies go almost exclusively to large monoculture farms growing genetically engineered corn, soy and other basic ingredients used in processed foods. As a result, the processed food industry has grown on our dime while public health has deteriorated.

The same thing will happen here. Instead of investing in regenerative agriculture, which is what could really solve our problems, government is backing a whole new industry of fake foods, from lab-grown meats to large-scale insect production.

Cultivated Meats Get Green-Light

At present, two cell-based lab-grown meat companies have received the green light to produce and sell fake chicken in the U.S. The first, Upside Foods (previously Memphis Meats), received FDA approval for its cell-based lab-grown chicken in November 2022.6 According to the FDA’s November 14, 2022, memo:7

“We have no questions at this time about UPSIDE’s conclusion that foods comprised of or containing cultured chicken cell material resulting from the production process … are as safe as comparable foods produced by other methods.”

Dr. Uma Valeti, CEO and founder of Upside Foods, called the approval “a watershed moment in the history of food” and a “major step toward a new era in meat production.” The company has a 53,000-square-foot facility in the San Francisco Bay Area capable of producing 400,000 pounds of fake meat per year.

In March 2023, Eat Just — which has been selling its lab-grown chicken in Singapore since 2020 — also received FDA approval. The company is currently building a commercial-scale facility in the U.S. that will house 10 250,000-liter bioreactors.8 Vítor Espírito Santo, senior director of Eat Just’s cellular agriculture division, told Food Dive:9

“The Singapore approval was a big, big deal. But it’s undeniable that the U.S., the FDA approval, is something that we were looking forward [to] for many years, and I think it’s a big game changer for the industry.

We have two countries now. Hopefully now this keeps happening in more and more jurisdictions, and cultivated meat can become a reality worldwide.”

Safety Data Is Sorely Lacking

While the U.S. government is moving full speed ahead with approvals for lab-grown meats, a Food Hazards Identification report10 by the British Food standards Agency (FSA) and Food Standards Scotland, published in March 2023, warns there are “considerable gaps in knowledge” when it comes to cell-based meat production. As reported by Food Safety News March 24, 2023:11

“The purpose of the report was to identify hazards in the cultivated meat production process to help inform the FSA risk assessment process for authorization. It was also important that products do not pose any microbiological or chemical concerns. The research was based on a review of scientific literature in 2020.

There was little or no data on the final analytical composition of products, key toxicology data, nutrition profiles, product stability, allergy risk, and any recorded adverse effects when consumed by animals or humans …

The FSA report found there are several stages of development for producing cultured meat and at each one, different chemicals, biologics, media formulations, additives, and supplements are used. The contamination risk of each input needs to be assessed, as any undesirable components that remain in the final product need to be at an acceptable exposure level or be food-grade and safe.”

Examples of Potential Hazards

Video Link

Potential problem areas identified by the FSA include:12,13

Contaminated reagents, air or water baths Poorly cleaned or maintained equipment
Failing to follow cleaning protocols when culturing cells Failing to follow good laboratory practices (GLP) and/or good manufacturing practices (GMP)
Use of antibiotics, fungicides and/or chemicals that are toxic to humans in the production Consumption of viruses used in the manufacturing process
Cross-contamination of one cell line into another due to concomitant use of multiple cell lines Other cross-contamination risks, such as “poor maintenance of equipment, poor cleaning regimes, incorrect storage of cells, working with multiple cell lines in one area, using the wrong cells and incorrect labeling”
New diseases and/or allergic reactions to new proteins due to using cell lines of animals not common in the local diet Nutritional deficiencies, “as the nutrition profile could be different from what it is replacing”

As noted in the report:14

“There are many stages of development for producing cultured meat … from taking a cell line from a small vial or biopsy and increasing the culture volume stepwise in stages (proliferation), until a commercial sized bioreactor can be seeded, to differentiating the cells to final desired cell type.

Then [they are] maturing them, usually on a scaffold, to increase the protein content, and then detaching/grinding the cells with/from their scaffold to produce a final product that can be used to make meat like cells. At each stage, different chemicals, biologics, media formulations, additives and supplements are used to ensure a successful culture.”

Contamination can occur at any of these steps. Each additive also poses potential risks, both known and unknown, as various byproducts are created in the process. In the video above, I review some of the many potential dangers associated with fake meats.

Considering the multistep processing cultivated meats undergo, it’s simply not possible for it to be as safe as conventional meat, where the primary contamination risks are limited to slaughter, processing, packaging, distribution and storage. With fake meats, hazardous contamination can occur at any point during manufacturing, in addition to these conventional “weak points.”

Fake Meat Is Ultraprocessed Greenwashed Junk Food

Synthetic meat is the epitome of ultraprocessed food,15 and it seems naïve to think it won’t have health effects similar to other ultraprocessed junk foods. Obesity,16 Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer and depression are but a few examples of conditions known to be promoted and exacerbated by a processed food diet.17,18,19,20,21

Synthetic foods will likely be an even bigger driver or chronic ill health and early death. Ultraprocessed foods are also completely counterproductive to environmentally “green” and sustainable goals.

For example, ultraprocessed foods already account for 17% to 39% of total diet-related energy use, 36% to 45% of total diet-related biodiversity loss and up to one-third of total diet-related greenhouse gas emissions.22 So, how is expanding the manufacturing and consumption of even more ultraprocessed foods going to lower greenhouse gas emissions? As noted in a September 2022 Journal of Cleaner Production paper:23

“Ultraprocessed foods are fundamentally unsustainable products; they have been associated with poor health and social outcomes and require finite environmental resources for their production … are responsible for significant diet-related energy, [and] greenhouse gas emissions.”

And, for all the lip service paid to “equity,” increasing consumption of processed foods will actually worsen economic inequalities, as it redirects money away from small farmers and independent homesteaders to transnational corporations that rely on underpaid workers.

Be Part of the Solution

Video Link

Ultimately, the answer to food safety and food security lies not in a biotech-centered food system that is controlled from the top down, but rather in a decentralized system that connects communities with farmers who grow real food in sustainable ways and distribute that food locally.

Strategies that can get us there were covered in the Children’s Health Defense’s March 4, 2023, Attack on Food symposium (video above). Food Sovereignty was primarily covered in Session 3, which begins at three hours and 45 minutes.

For example, Dr. John Day and Beverly Johannson shared tips on how to grow your own food and preserve the food you grow. Other helpful strategies include buying food from local farmers and farmers markets, and creating independent food hubs that cut out the middlemen.

The final session of the symposium dealt with larger societal solutions to fight back against the war on food. U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie highlighted core vulnerabilities in the U.S. food supply, which fell apart during the pandemic when farmers had to euthanize animals because they couldn’t get them processed.

Four meatpackers control 85% of the meat that’s processed in the U.S. One of them is owned by China, one by Brazil and the other two are multinational corporations. Food prices are going up while farmers are going broke. In 2017, Massie introduced the Processing Revival and Intrastate Meat Exemption (PRIME) Act,24 but the bill hasn’t moved since its introduction in the House.

The PRIME Act would allow farmers to sell meat processed at smaller slaughtering facilities and allow states to set their own meat processing standards, because small slaughterhouses do not have an inspector on staff — a requirement that only large facilities can easily fulfill — they’re banned from selling their meat. The PRIME Act would lift this regulation without sacrificing safety, as random USDA inspections could still occur.

“If a farmer wants to sell pork, beef or lamb to a consumer, as long as that consumer and that farmer and that processor are all in the same state, they’re not crossing state lines, they keep the federal government out of that transaction,” he said.

Massey has also introduced legislation to protect access to raw milk (HR 4835, the Interstate Milk Freedom Act of 202125).26 The bill was introduced at the end of July 2021, as an amendment to the 2018 Farm bill. Contact your representatives and urge them to support these bills.

From:    https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/04/04/executive-order-lab-created-foods.aspx?ui=f460707c057231d228aac22d51b97f2a8dcffa7b857ec065e5a5bfbcfab498ac&sd=20211017&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1ReadMore&cid=20230404_HL2&cid=DM1375902&bid=1763913246