The Blog of Dato' Dr Anuar Md Nor

In a recent blog we highlighted meat from plants. The high-fashion industry is also embracing plant-based materials, as explained in an article written by Richard Grassie in the FT Weekend magazine on December 15th, 2018.  

Leading this revolution is manwear brand, Brave GentleMen. Its founder, Joshua Katcher, created the company in 2008 with a passion for high-end clothing that does not use animal products- not just animal skins and fur, but also silk (which can involve boiling and gassing 6,600 silkworm  larvae per kg of silk), down (which is often plucked from live geese and ducks) and wool (where processes can include anaesthetic-free castration, and mulesing-the removal of skin from the rear quarters of a merino sheep to prevent fly strike).

In 2015, Brave GentleMen opened its first store in Brooklyn,New York, US. For double-breasted coats, it used 100 per cent recycled polycotton blends diverted from  plastic waste stream and spun into yarn. The coats are lined with vegan “future silk” produced from a variety of polyesters, including plastic bottles.    

Joshua Hatcher reported that he is looking forward to a day that he can use laboratory-grown leather in his collections. He said he is in talks with some bio-fabrication start-ups, deciding with to work with. Materials grown in the laboratory would offer a big solution to a great many problems. Laboratory-grown as well as fungi- and plant-based d materials such as mushrooms and pineapple are the future.

Californian technology company, Bolt Threads, is a leading innovator in laboratory-made leather and silk. After studying natural silk proteins, originally from spiders, it inserted genes into yeast and used fermentation process to produce an animal-free silk, which is spun into fibres. This method resulted in the company’s first commercial product in 2017, the limited edition Bolt spun tie.

The company has also produced the first consumer synthetic leather called Mylo, created by studying mycelium, the root structure of mushrooms, to give a mushroom-based leather-like material in a laboratory.

A number of other brands are also offering new alternatives to traditional animal products. Interesting innovations can be found among companies, many of them brands, using fibres from trees, fruits and fungi. One company, Pinatex, created a material from pineapple-leaf fibre. Apple cores, discarded by agribusiness industries, are used by Italian footwear company, Nemanti, for a range that includes a monkstrap weekend shoe.

Conclusion

Visionaries like Joshua Katcher and others have been leading the efforts to use plant-based materials for use in the high-fashion industry.According to the 2017 Pulse of the Fashion Industry report, leather, wool, silk and cotton are the top four materials whose production most damages the environment

We hope, as Joshua Katcher noted, one day all leather will be animal-free. For a long time, animals have been suffering to give us the high-fashion look and feel.

Note: We wish to thank the companies mentioned in the article for permission to use the images. 

Introduction

Tim Harford in his book, Fifty Things that Made the Modern History,listed the S-bend as one crucial invention . He noted that in 1800’s, as London’s population  expanded in number, the city’s system for disposing of human waste became woefully inadequate. The main system used then was cesspits, which were prone to leaking, overflowing and generating significant odour. A number of inventors came out with solutions to address this human waste problem. One prominent inventor was Alexander Cummings, who was known for mastery of precision mechanics. However, his well-known invention was a pipe with a curve in it.

In 1775, Cummings patented the S-bend. This became the missing part to create the flushing toilet, which led to public sanitation as we know it today, according to Tim Harford. Previously, flushing toilet was a failure due to the problem of smell: the pipe that connected the toilet to the sewer,allowing urine and human waste to be flushed away, would also let  sewer odours waft back-up, unless an airtight seal could be developed.

Cumming’s solution was simple: bend the pipe. Water settled in the “dip”, stopping smells  coming up;flushing the toilet replenished the water. His design had a sliding valve in the outlet above the tap. The design is still used today.  

We all should be thankful to Cummings for giving us the personal convenience in managing our daily needs.  We noted the modern toilet only touched our live in the early 1970s. Before that we used rivers, small streams, small ponds and open space. Many times, especially in early mornings, there were many people lining up the river in our village. Personal convenience vastly improved when the Malaysian government provided subsidies to Malaysian families to build outdoor toilets using bucket of water to flush the toilet. What a total relief for all of us, especially for women folk.

Now, we have modern indoor toilet in our house. We spend a lot of time sitting on it while surfing the internet, read book or magazine and even answer emails.

A Lot of People Still Do Not Have Toilets

Yet, there are more than 2.3 billion of people still without basic sanitation according to Guy Hutton, a senior adviser for water, sanitation and hygiene with UNICEF, when he was quoted in the Staronline, a Malaysian newspaper on 6.11.2018.

In addition, according to WHO, more than half of the volume of human waste escapes into the environment untreated.

The “toilet” problem has attracted the attention of Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda. The Bill and Melinda Foundation spent US$200 million over seven years funding sanitation research, developing some 20 novel toilets and sludge processing designs and convert bodily waste into clean water and fertilizer.

Conclusion

The S-bend and flushing toilet have improved the quality of lives of billion of people worldwide. However, a significant number of the world’s population is still inaccessible to basic sanitation. Thanks, we have philanthropists like Bill Gates and Melinda who saw the need to solve this basic human sanitation.We are afraid that one day, these people have no more open space to bury their waste!        

Introduction

Beyond Meat Inc., a company producing plant-based meat has submitted an application for an initial public offering (IPO) in the US.   We have reviewed its prospectus and noted what makes Beyond Meat burger unique.

Overview 

Beyond Meat is one the fastest growing food companies in the US, offering a portfolio of revolutionary plant-based meat. It builds meat directly from plant, an innovation that enables consumers to experience the taste, texture and other sensory attributes of popular animal-based products while enjoying the nutritional benefits of eating plant-based meat products.

Its products are designed to appeal to a broad range of customers, including those who typically eat animal-based meat, which is worth US$1.4 trillion globally. According to the company, it had developed three plant-based product platforms that align with the largest meat categories: beef, pork and poultry. It creates plant-based products using proprietary scientific processes that determine the architecture of the animal-based meat the company seeks to replicate and then assemble it using plant-derived amino acids, lipids, trace minerals and water. The company is focusing to improve its products so that they are, to the human sensory system, indistinguishable  from their animal-based counterparts.

Its flagship product is The Beyond Burger, the world’s first 100 per cent plant –based burger merchandised in the meat case of US grocery stores. The Beyond Burger is designed to look, cook and taste like traditional ground beef. The products are currently available is about 28,000 points of distribution primarily in the US as well as several other countries.

Unique Approach to market its Products     

Instead of marketing and merchandising The Beyond Burger to vegans and vegetarians (who represent less than 5 per cent of the US population), it requests that its products to be sold in the meat case at grocery stores where meat-loving customers are accustomed to shopping for their proteins. The marketing approach has helped drive greater brand awareness with its customers.

The Beyond Burger is now carried by approximately 11,000 grocery stores in the US. Its products are also now carried by 11,000 restaurants.

The Market for Meat

The company notes that the meat industry is large and global. This meat industry is comprised of fresh and packaged animal-based meat for human consumption. According to data from Fitch Solution Macro Research, the meat industry is the largest category in food and in 2017 generated estimated sales across retail and foodservice channels of about US$270 billion in the US and about US$1,400 million globally.

The company believes that consumer awareness of the perceived negative health, environmental and animal-welfare impacts of animal-based consumption has resulted in a surge in demand for viable plant-based protein alternatives. In the US, the current size of the non-dairy milk category is equivalent to approximately 13 per cent of the size of the milk category. According to Mintel report, the non-dairy milk category in the US was estimated to be US$2.0 million in 2017. The success of the plant-based dairy industry was based on a strategy of creating plant-based dairy products that tasted better than previous non-dairy substitutes, packaged and merchandised adjacent to their dairy equivalent.

The company is applying the same strategy to the plant-based meat category. It expects to grow to be at least the same proportion of the approximately US$ 270 billion meat category in the US, which over time would represent a category size of US$35 billion in the US.

Financials

The company reported that it had experienced net losses since its inception in 2009. In the years ended December 31^st, 2016 and 2017, it incurred net losses of US$25.1 million and US$30.4 million, respectively. In the same period, the company recorded revenue of US$16.18 million in 2016 and US$32.58 million, respectively.

The company would be raising additional capital through an IPO.

Conclusion

We support the efforts of the company to develop plant-based meat that tastes better than the meat from animals. The new wealthy consumers in Malaysia, China and Indonesia (with the exception of India) are consuming more meat steaks and burgers, which are imported from Australia, Brazil and the US. This need to supply more animal meat is putting pressure on existing pastures and grasslands for rearing of cattle. Scientists have reported that the raising of cattle for meat and milk would lead to emission of methane to the atmosphere.

We hope in the near future, patrons in high-end restaurants in Asia would be eating plant-based meat without realizing it.

Quick Data on Cattle Inventory     

Based on data published by http://beef2live.com, according to the FAO, the world has 1,468 million head of cattle. Brazil has the largest cattle inventory at 211. 76 million, followed by India with 189 million, China with 113.5 million, the US with 89.3 million, Ethiopia at 54 million, Argentina with 51.1 million and Sudan with 41.9 million. About 104 countries have a cattle inventory in excess of 1 million heads.