A WORLD OF POSSIBILITIES

GROWING ANIMAL PROTEINS
INSIDE OF PLANTS

In February of 2024, The Conservatory Group joined forces with new research being developed at Yonsei University in Seoul transforming rice into a protein-rich hybrid food. Beef-rice research is part of an emerging trend to grow animal proteins inside of plants. Molecular farming has also been successful in making potatoes into a food that can produce egg proteins.

Although beef rice might sound like a form of genetically modified food, this remarkable hybrid rice does not alter the DNA in plants or animals.  Instead, the process is a type of cell-cultured or lab-grown meat but with the beef grown inside rice.  Where beef production usually takes one to three years and rice 95 to 250 days, the cell culturing process takes less than 10 days.  The rice can be inexpensively commercialized.

The hybrid grain has a low carbon footprint because there is no need to farm animals for protein. While the stem cells used for the process are extracted from live animals, they can proliferate indefinitely and don't require animal slaughter. The rice contains 12,000 milligrams of protein per 100 grams – three times more protein than standard rice.  The protein content of the hybrid rice continues to be augmented and the technology is being transferred to wheat.

Why is beef-rice important?

Habitat loss and land degradation driven primarily by our food system are a threat to wildlife, our climate and ecosystems.  The industrial animal livestock sector is by far the largest driver of biodiversity loss and livestock farming is the leading driver of deforestation, with clearing of forests for land for cattle accounting for 42 percent of all deforestation.  The production of farmed animals and the feed for them now occupies 80 percent of the world’s agricultural land yet provides just 17% of humans’ global calorie supply. 

Multilateral development banks like the World Bank Group have made a series of commitments to protect nature, yet despite this the five biggest MDBs invested over $4.6 billion in factory farming between 2011 and 2021 and have shown no signs of reducing their spending since.

Multilateral banks need to stop funding the factory farms that are fueling biodiversity and climate breakdown and governments need to shift finance towards more sustainable forms of food production.   New sources of protein are a unique opportunity to feed our rapidly growing global population while protecting the Earth’s ecosystems.