“Meat, an important source of protein and other nutrients in human diets, is one of the major drivers of global environmental change in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, land and water use, animal welfare, human health and directions of breeding. Novel alternatives, including novel meat proxies (cultured meat, plant-based meat alternatives), insects and novel protein sources (like algae) receive increasing attention. But plausible socio-technological pathways for their further development have not yet been compared in an integrative, interdisciplinary perspective.”

“High levels of transformation and processing limit the environmental sustainability gains of cultured meat, highly processed plant-based meat alternatives, algae- and insect-based food. At the same time, a high degree of societal coordination is needed to enable the potentially disruptive level of technological, organisational and institutional innovations needed to make these novel alternatives viable. Widespread expectations that solutions require break-through novelties or high-tech alternatives imply a neglect of existing and viable alternatives.”

“Our integrative analysis suggests that the priority given to meat alternatives with limited sustainability potential does not just raise questions of technological optimisation of production systems, but is also a second-order problem of the framing of search directions.”

Read more: Meat alternatives; an integrative comparison, Cor van de Weele et al., Trends in Food Science and Technology, April 2019. Image: Presentation of the world’s first cultured hamburger being baked at a news conference in London on 5 August 2013. World Economic Forum (CC BY 3.0)

Livestock at waste management park in Bobbili, India

Lowly as it may seem, Bobbili prides itself on its zero-waste zone with a comprehensive recycling system that ensures nothing goes to the landfill. Their unique solution involves door-to-door collection of household waste strictly separated as dry and wet, and the 2010 ban on plastic. The spotlight of the scheme is the Municipal Solid Waste Park – a 8.5-acre site comprising a bio-compost yard handling 2.5 to 3 tonnes of organic waste a day. The most innovative part is the utilisation of livestock.

A 2012 report by India’s Regional Centre for Urban and Environmental Studies states that “animals are the part of the solution, not the problem. The livestock’s potential contribution in solving environmental problems is equally large. The livestock contribute to tackle our environmental degradation by a variety of ways.”

By 2012 the park kept 4 chickens, 21 ducks, 6 pigs and other animals for different functions. Chickens are benefited from the insects in the waste, whilst pigs would gulp the food waste collected from hotels. Ducks take care of the leftovers collected from the fish market. Dogs are in charge of domestic leftovers. The ‘park farm’ is probably the first in the world to implement animal feed on a municipal level.

Solid Waste Management Park in Bobbili, India

The animal farm takes its inspiration from the history of feeding animals with organic waste. Dogs, especially domesticated ones, are effective in taking care of meat scraps. As a common practice in traditional pig farming, pigs often consume the leftovers, rather than energy and cost-intensive crops. Ducks and chickens respectively favour kitchen scraps and milling by-products. Given the extraordinary effectiveness of earthworms to decompose vegetable and food wastes, vermicompost is another key of this living waste management system.

Besides the fact that landfill relief means avoided methane emission, animal waste can be a sustainable source of natural fertiliser whose cost and carbon footprint are way lower than artificial ones. More importantly, because the system doesn’t involve complex technologies, it can be easilly implemented – though in a smaller scale – on household levels. Just by keeping dogs and resuming the tradition of backyard chicken, we can easily reduce kitchen scraps and contribute to a significant cut in food waste.

This is a guest post by Ren Wan, a writer and sustainability advocate who is based in Hong Kong. She runs JupYeah, an online swapping platform, is a managing editor for WestEast Magazine, and blogs at Loccomama. Ren previously wrote about Furoshiki, a square cloth that with different wrapping techniques can basically transport anything.

“Hoping to cultivate a better understanding of where the food on our plates comes from, Tomm Velthuis designed a toy farm highlighting the unsustainable reality of the meat industry.

The wooden set, called Playing Food, comes complete with 200 pigs, the enormous amounts of food required to fatten them up, the trees that must be cleared for feed crops, and the acid rain caused by the pigs’ manure. It’s factory farming packaged as an ‘innocent’ childhood toy.”

See more pictures at Tomm’s blog. The farm is on display at mEATing-kill your darlings, an art event about our relationship with meat and animals in Tilburg, the Netherlands. See also: Can I see your Meat License?

Since 2008, he has worked towards the development of a new kind of law which would require active citizen engagement with the act of animal slaughter implicit in meat production.

The draft of the Meat Licencing Act states that:

It is against the law to purchase or consume meat, without an appropriate license.

People wishing to purchase or consume meat, are required, by law, to obtain an appropriate licence.

It is through a specific and supervised engagement in the act of killing an animal, that citizens will obtain their meat license.

Launching 1st November 2013, at mEATing in Tilburg Netherlands, Meat License Legal documents are available in limited edition of 100 to any individual who has legally demonstrated their own specific and personal engagement with acts of killing. Dutch chef and photographer, Sascha Landshoff (assisted by Philip Schuette) became the first individual to obtain the Meat Licence.

Don’t miss mEATing – kill your darlings if you are in the Netherlands. It is a provocative event that questions our relationship with meat and animals. mEATing runs until November 30.

“Insects as a sustainable feed ingredient in pig and poultry diets – a feasibility study” (PDF), Livestock Research, Wageningen University, October 2012. Previously: Mass Insect Farming / Edible Insects and Insecticides.

Julieta Ramos-Elorduy in “Ecological implications of minilivestock“, red. Maurizio Paoletti, 2005.

See also: “Edible forest insects: humans bite back!!” (.pdf 4MB), Patrick Durst, Dennis Johnson, Robin Leslie, Kenichi Shono, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 2010. Summary at the edible forest insects FAO-website. Previously: mass insect-farming.

“Edible insects are rich in proteins, minerals and vitamins and are being actively promoted by the United Nations as the secret weapon in averting a worldwide famine. According to a recent UN report: Edible insects constitute high-quality food for humans, livestock, poultry and fish. Because insects are cold-blooded, they have a high [pro rata] food conversion rate—crickets need six times less feed than cattle, four times less than sheep, and twice less than pigs and broiler chickens to produce the same amount of protein. Only a few countries “farm” insects, and the UN is now spending millions of dollars to investigate mass insect production.”

Read more. Illustration by Nicole Antrobus. See also: Edible Insects and Insecticides / Insects as a Sustainable Feed Ingredient in Pig and Poultry Diets.