DairyNZ Farmers Forum with Sue Edmonds

Recently, I attended a conference entitled Protein Tech, which covered the unknown world of ‘alternative proteins’, and where and whether New Zealand should be leaping into it.

Apparently veganism is becoming the ‘proper’ diet for the millennial generation, while the baby boomers plod on with their animal meat and cow milk. But like everything else, some want a ‘bob each way’ and call themselves flexitarians. This generally means vegan all week and expensive cuts of meat in the weekends.

However, a number of billionaires are in favour and the likes of Bill Gates are pouring money into the research.

So what do these alternative proteins consist of? Apparently proteins exist in a wide variety of plants, insects and their larvae, fungi, and something weird called ‘heme’ which is cultivated in yeast. Turns out the Impossible Burgers required a Genetically-Modified yeast, so I don’t see our Government getting enthused any time soon.

And with some you can create non-animal meat, and others in the form of so-called ‘milk’ are already on our supermarket shelves created from almonds, soy, coconut and rice. The United States and the European Union are already demanding that these be called something else, so there’s probably some new noun names on their way.

There are NZ organisations already looking at new forms of protein, including Landcare which is studying mushrooms and other fungi, plus the potential to farm huhu grubs, with getting Maori involved on their extensive land holdings.

But do all these proteins contain all the animal created amino acids etc which we know are in our usual red meat and milk? Apparently there are nine which are indispensable for humans and some need to pass through an animal gut to reach us.

Like the rest of the world, we are eating less red, and more white meat from pork and chicken, and some of the ‘milks’ have very much lower levels, apart from soy. We already have sheep being milked in NZ, and apparently their milk has much more protein than milk from goat and cow. But almond, coconut and rice milk have been deemed to have so little they are ‘not suitable as a complete milk replacement for children under five years old’ by Food Standards Australia New Zealand.

Unfortunately, science funding in NZ is ‘competitive’ rather than ‘collaborative’ which is going to make getting our act together over the best way to move probably a bit difficult.  So DairyNZ and Beef+LambNZ aren’t panicking yet, although the threat isn’t going to fade completely from NZ.

We are already telling the world that our meat and milk are ‘pure’ and ‘safe’ and supposedly sustainable. This will ensure a lot of our current markets still want to buy from us. But maybe we should also be stressing those animal-produced amino acids and how much of the alternative greens we need to eat to make up for them. Remember being told about the essential iron in red meat, and the oodles of calcium in milk. What we weren’t told then, and probably the millennials don’t realise now, is the necessity of having animals tramping over our pastures and some crops, and what the soil life needs from them to do their specialist duties to make that pasture grow.

My personal concern over growing masses more crops instead of animals is the soil life will be regularly disturbed, and the current overuse of chemical fertilisers and pesticides will get even worse. The 800,000 tonnes of urea, and the copious use of glyphosate are destroying the natural methods of soil and plant procreation now. We could end up unable to grow either plants or animals. What do we eat then?