Protein technology to devastate US livestock industry by 2030? Think tank report predicts mass disruption

19 Sep 2019 --- Disruption in the protein market could cause the US livestock industry to be on the verge of bankruptcy by 2030, following a predicted 70 percent drop in demand for cow products. The bold claims are according to independent think tank RethinkX, whose report “Rethinking Food and Agriculture 2020-2030” forecasts that proteins will be five times cheaper by 2030 and 10 times cheaper by 2035 than existing animal proteins. The report aims to focus decision-makers’ attention on the scale, speed and impact of modern food disruption and highlights how approval processes for new food products will be critical.

A major prediction in the report is that the dairy industry will collapse once modern food technologies have replaced the proteins in a bottle of milk – just 3.3 percent of its content. New innovations are already addressing this, with Perfect Day launching a vegan ice cream made with flora-based dairy protein and New Culture raising US$3.5 million in seed round funding for its fermented dairy-free cheese. Specifically, 2021-23 will be when adoption accelerates exponentially, with the disruption set to play out in various ways instead of solely relying on the direct, one-for-one substitution of end products.

However, Arla Foods does not agree with the extent of the report's claims. “We do not expect cows to be replaced with steel tanks in the future, as milk is a matrix composed of a large number of nutritional ingredients that can be difficult to develop sustainably in laboratories, while animal proteins are more complex and contain several important bioactive components than artificially produced proteins,” Lars Dalsgaard, Senior Vice President Product & Innovation at Arla Foods tells FoodIngredientsFirst.

Nonetheless, cutting-edge technology is contributing to the “deepest, fastest, most consequential disruption in food and agricultural production since the first domestication of plants and animals ten thousand years ago,” with the current system set to be replaced by a Food-as-Software model, notes the study.

This will involve food being engineered by scientists at a molecular level and uploaded to databases that can be accessed by food designers anywhere in the world. This high-tech approach has been seen with Redefine Meat’s 3D plant-based meat printing system. 

The think tank says this Food-as-Software model will be more stable and resilient as it will be unaffected by seasonality, weather, drought, disease and other natural, economic and political factors. Additionally, the industry will move from a centralized system dependent on scarce resources to a distributed system based on abundant resources, notes the report.

The report predicts that the dairy industry will collapse once modern food technologies have replaced milk proteins.

The report also says that modern foods will be nutritious, tastier and more convenient than current offerings, with much greater variety. This could, it says, have an impact on health in terms of conditions such as heart disease, obesity, cancer and diabetes that are estimated to cost US$1.7 trillion every year.

Meanwhile, from an environmental standpoint, net greenhouse gas emissions from the sector may fall by 45 percent by 2030. “Other issues such as international deforestation, species extinction, water scarcity and aquatic pollution from animal waste, hormones and antibiotics will be ameliorated as well. By 2035, lands previously used to produce animal foods in the US could become a major carbon sink,” says the report.

This comes at a time of increasing concern over the rapid onset of climate change and its impact on global food systems and production.

The cost of modern foods and other precision fermentation products will be between 50-80 percent lower than the animal products they replace. Ultimately, the average US family will save over US$1,200 a year in food costs, accounting for a national saving of US$100 billion. However, half of the 1.2 million jobs in US beef and dairy production and their associated industries will be lost by 2030, reaching 90 percent by 2035, it says.

Industry under threat?
The report also claims that US beef and dairy production volumes are expected to decline by over 50 percent by 2030 and by nearly 90 percent by 2035. Specifically, by 2030 the market by volume for ground beef will have shrunk by 70 percent, the steak market by 30 percent, and the dairy market by almost 90 percent. This will mean that by 2035, around 60 percent of the land currently being used for livestock and feed production will be freed for other uses – representing one-quarter of the continental US. 

The study is built on the Seba Technology Disruption Framework and the cost curves are based on limited data given the early stage of the application of these technologies in food markets. RethinkX notes that the analyses should be seen as a “first pass” that will be updated as new evidence emerges.

In terms of policy, the report notes that if the US does not support the modern food industry, other countries such as China will capitalize on the health, wealth and jobs associated with the changes. Although some decisions could be driven by economic, social and environmental considerations, others may be influenced by “incumbent industries seeking to delay or derail the disruption. They may also be influenced by mainstream analysis, although decisions made based on such analysis tend to make economies and societies poorer by locking them into assets, technologies and skill sets that are uncompetitive, expensive and obsolete,” reads the report. 

These predictions come as increasing numbers of major players in the meat sector move into the plant-based space. Tyson Foods recently launched a new Raised & Rooted brand to keep pace with shifting consumer preferences and in direct competition with the likes of Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat. Cargill also invested an additional US$75 million investment in Puris, the largest North American producer of pea protein and a key supplier to Beyond Meat. Meanwhile, Arla Foods is set to collaborate with start-up Mycorena to propel a fungi-based alternative protein. 

“Arla Foods’ farmers owners are among the best in the world to produce sustainable dairy products, and we believe that these will continue to be an important part of a nutritious diet in the future. Many alternatives are currently being researched, and one of them is artificial proteins. At Arla, we are following the trend because we believe that alternatives such as artificially produced proteins can be a good complement to dairy products at a time when the world's population is growing and the need for food is increasing,” Dalsgaard concludes.

FoodIngredientsFirst has contacted Tyson Foods for further comment.

By Katherine Durrell