TORONTO, Feb. 14, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- “We are happy to see recent technological developments that bode well for ecological health, human health, food security, and compassion for animals,” says Barry MacKay, Animal Protection Party’s General Manager.
It was announced on February 5th that Health Canada has sent a “letter of no objection” to Remilk, a company specializing in food technology. Remilk has produced a product that, biologically, contains the same nutriment and flavour as the milk that comes out of a cow but can be made minus cholesterol, lactose, and growth hormones, all of which can contribute to serious human health concerns. While able to produce cheese, yogurt, milk, and ice cream indistinguishable from that derived from lactating cows, the new product does not require cattle. In 2018, Science published the findings of research that determined meat and dairy provide just 18 percent of our caloric intake but use up about 83 percent of global farmland (including that given over to crops used to feed livestock) and is responsible for 60 percent of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The report’s lead researcher, Joseph Poore of Oxford, said: “A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use.” But not everyone wants to be vegan, and so Remilk, with Canada’s blessing, will be able to allow us to have traditional food minus all the problems associated with its traditional means of production.
MacKay observes, “This all stands in contrast to a recent decision in Italy to ban development of cultured meat, a product not yet marketable, but which also conveys the positive properties of meat removed from the body of a dead animal, but with reduction or elimination of the negative aspects associated with food derived from carcasses as they relate to the environment, human health, and animal welfare.”
If we want an increasingly problematical future to look brighter, we have to look to new ways of doing things. Adaptation is not merely the key to species survival, it is the only means by which survival can occur.
Barry MacKay, General Manager, barry@animalprotectionparty.ca
