Juggling Dynamite

Reports from the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-20, suggest that strains of the HINI virus morphed into less virulent forms that circulate today as seasonal flu.  Coming up to two years since its first detection in November 2019, COVID-19 mutations are, so far, intensifying, not weakening.

Today comes news that China has locked down a city of 4.5 million people in the southeastern province of Fujian in an attempt to once again halt a delta outbreak and maintain its strict zero-tolerance approach to Covid-19.

With 58% of the world population, and 98% of people in low-income countries still lacking a first vaccine shot, this plague is not nearly done with the world’s inhabitants or economy.

What will the #Covid19 pandemic look like in the next 6 months? “It’s not going to leave much left unburned,” says epidemiologist Michael Osterholm @CIDRAP who compares it to a #coronavirus forest fire.  Here is a direct video link.

A startup that makes cultured mozzarella and ricotta cheeses without cows has raised record funding from investors looking to tap the growing market for environmentally sustainable dairy alternatives.

Precision fermentation technology relies on microbes to create proteins that form the basis of cheeses.

“What our products contain are the actual milk proteins, but we don’t get them from a cow,” said Britta Winterberg, Formo’s co-founder and chief scientific officer. “We get them from our micro-organisms.”

For more on this evolution now unfolding in more efficient food production, see the latest ReThinkx report on food and agriculture, here’s a taste:

We are on the cusp of the deepest, fastest, most consequential disruption in food and agricultural production since the first domestication of plants and animals ten thousand years ago. This is primarily a protein disruption driven by economics. The cost of proteins will be five times cheaper by 2030 and 10 times cheaper by 2035 than existing animal proteins, before ultimately approaching the cost of sugar. They will also be superior in every key attribute – more nutritious, healthier, better tasting, and more convenient, with almost unimaginable variety. This means that, by 2030, modern food products will be higher quality and cost less than half as much to produce as the animal-derived products they replace.

Inspiring story…

The world-renowned chef & owner of Eleven Madison Park restaurant, Daniel Humm joins Rich to discuss purpose, passion, and the hows/whys behind converting his 3-Michelin star restaurant to a 100% plant-based menu.Here is a direct audio link.