Anti Growth inhibition tech allows food to be grown cheaper

[mr friendly guy]

business wire

New Immune-inhibition Tech Grows Meat Faster at Lower Cost

TAINAN, Taiwan--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A Taiwanese professor has developed a novel immune-inhibition technology that can shorten animals’ growth period and reduce farmers’ cost – an innovation that may provide a solution to the world’s food shortage problem.

“If the world produces one billion pigs annually with the immune-inhibition technology, 170 million tons of corn will be saved to feed approximately 570 million people for a year, helping to solve the problem of food shortage”

The technology developed by Tzong-Yueh Chen, a professor from the Institute of Biotechnology at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), promotes animal growth in such a way that meat will appear on the market earlier at a lower cost.

“The ultimate goal of technology is to solve world problem. Tzong-Yueh Chen’s research team has proved that groupers and even pork can be produced faster with lesser feed at a lower cost, an achievement that will benefit both the human beings and the Earth,” said president Hwung-Hweng Hwung.

This immune-inhibition technology produces specific antibodies and binds them to growth inhibition proteins found in fish, so the proteins will become deactivated and the growth rate in fish will accelerate.

In a 12-week field experiment, Chen’s research team used the technology on one pond of groupers and the traditional method on another pond for comparison. The results show that the groupers raised in the former pond grew to over 25.2cm and weighted 274g, while the groupers raised in the latter pond grew to 24.9cm and weighted 252g.

According to Chen, it takes an ordinary grouper farm 14 months to produce a marketable 600g grouper at a prime cost of NT$40. With the newly-developed technology, his team only needs 11 months to produce a 600g grouper at a prime cost of NT$10.

“Taking 20,000 groupers as an example, not only an extra NT$200,000 profit will be made but also a 3-month period will be spared,” said Chen.

In addition, his novel technology can be used on domestic animals such as pigs, as farmers need only 3kg of feed to grow 1kg of meat. Otherwise, 4kg of feed will be needed to achieve the same target.

“If the world produces one billion pigs annually with the immune-inhibition technology, 170 million tons of corn will be saved to feed approximately 570 million people for a year, helping to solve the problem of food shortage,” said Chen.

Contacts

National Cheng Kung University
Crystal Chen, +886-6-275-7575 Ext. 50042
News Center
Fax: +886-6-238-9919
crystal@mail.ncku.edu.tw

Will this do for meats what Norman Borlaugh did for plants? If this works it could significantly help with food production, methane emissions from cows (since they grow faster, they will end up living shorter before we eat them) and help keep costs of production down. While ultimately it doesn't seem as "sexy" as the newest igadget or super cool military hardware, if this works I believe this will create more benefit than either.

My only fear is that people will interpret this as a green light to increase population even more, and eat more meat, rather than seeing this as a way to help us minimise our impact on the environment.

[Singular Intellect]

I suspect this will be just a stepping stone to completely synthetic meat production technology that will provide a vastly more abundant, humane and safer source of meat products.

[Tasoth]

While I'm curious as to the stress this puts on the animals, this is also good news if we ever decide to simply vat grow steak.

[Zaune]

I suspect this will be just a stepping stone to completely synthetic meat production technology that will provide a vastly more abundant, humane and safer source of meat products.

That strikes me as... well, "premature" is putting it mildly. Not only do we have no idea how much it will cost to mass-produce this new food supplement, we don't yet know if eating meat or fish that's been treated with it will have any adverse side effects. I'm not saying it isn't a potentially very useful development, but dramatic new scientific discoveries that look like they're the perfect solution nearly always have a catch somewhere.

[Simon_Jester]

In fairness to the guy, "stepping stone" technologies aren't necessarily all that useful in themselves.

Otto Lilienthal's gliders were a major stepping stone to the development of powered, heavier-than-air flying machines. That didn't mean they were particularly long-ranged, heavy-lift, or for that matter survivable; one of the things did crash and kill him, after all. Lilienthal still gets a lot of credit for it.

But yeah, I doubt we'll see steak-inna-vat for another thirty or forty years or so, if then- there's got to be enough extra bugs to work out to take a long lifetime to solve.

[Broomstick]

I'd also expect massive push-back from the "afraid of frankenfood" crowd.

This will reduce profits for the producers of pig-feed (or any other produced animal feed). It is not automatic that increased savings in animal feed will directly translate into food for humans.

And, of course, you have to wonder about side effects.

[LaCroix]

It is organic, so it won't survive cooking. Pork, fish and chicken should be fine.

For sure you should be wary to feed speed-grown steaks to children. (Except you do want them to grow up really fast - seems the redneck nutrition plan will get some credibility boost if that happens...)

[mr friendly guy]

I'd also expect massive push-back from the "afraid of frankenfood" crowd.

This will reduce profits for the producers of pig-feed (or any other produced animal feed). It is not automatic that increased savings in animal feed will directly translate into food for humans.

While these people might exert influence in the developed nations, I am not sure how much they can muster in developing nations, ie ones with the largest population and which will benefit more from this tech. For example I know that IIRC Greenpeace managed to convince one of the African nations not to take in GM food, however in a counter example China seems to happily ignore their rantings.

[Broomstick]

But are the third world nations going to be able to afford this super-grow stuff?

[mr friendly guy]

Hard to say, but I note this new tech if it works as advertised will save costs. So presumably the farmer just needs to make the initial investment. I imagine the richer developing nations like China and India who are arguably the ones who will benefit more, will also be the ones who are better placed to afford this new technology.

[Highlord Laan]

So we can fast-grow meat, clone meat, and chemically engineer meat from human feces. Science is awesome.

[Singular Intellect]

But yeah, I doubt we'll see steak-inna-vat for another thirty or forty years or so, if then- there's got to be enough extra bugs to work out to take a long lifetime to solve.

Where did you get 'thirty or forty' years from?

[mr friendly guy]

So we can fast-grow meat, clone meat, and chemically engineer meat from human feces. Science is awesome.

Just wait till we get to soylent green. Just kidding.

[Korto]

I have a real concern that if used on actual animals, there'll be side-effects severe enough to be animal cruelty. We now have chickens who grow so fast and so large their legs can't support them. I unfortunately would expect more similar problems.
Ideally, we'll develop vat-meat. While it may not (possibly) taste as good, due to the lack of exercise, or limited diet, or whatever, it may create a plentiful source of cheap meat. One day.