What if the points did matter

Albert Einstein frequently dismissed his genius, saying the secret to his success was simply staying with problems longer than his contemporaries. And in this ADHD-fueled world indeed a byproduct of technology, too , that can seem like the impasse on the road. They already have. Friedrich has long been advocating for government funding and support of cultivated meat—just like the government props up the conventional meat and dairy industries.

The need for that shift is becoming increasingly urgent. Livestock production and fishing are wreaking havoc on, well, everything. Traditional protein production is destroying ecosystems, poisoning air and waterways, overconsuming resources, and linked to some of the biggest health and labor crises in history.

The group is agnostic in its efforts to displace animal agriculture. Pivoting into plant-based is easy. That industry also continues to innovate. Plant-based has not plateaued—quite the opposite. At least, when it comes to reaching price parity sooner.

One of the key parallels The Counter draws to cultivated meat is achievements and challenges in pharma tech. While demand for fur has dropped in recent years, other animal-based textiles, such as cashmere , are on the uptick. While there are a growing number of initiatives in place angled at making the wool and cashmere industries more sustainable, the farming boom is putting pressure on local ecosystems, threatening species like the elusive snow leopard as a result.

It is meat, after all, not kale. One of the biggest challenges is the use of FBS—fetal bovine serum—the main source of food for the cells. It poses ethical questions, certainly, but it also puts a roadblock in the sustainability mantra touted by the industry at large.

To access the fetal tissue, cows must be impregnated and then slaughtered to produce it. This keeps livestock fully tethered to the cultivated meat production chain. Through a sustainability lens, that would seem to be the case. Companies are working on more ethical, sustainable, and affordable solutions, though.

A recent article in The Spoon highlighted several startups in the space working to produce alternatives to FBS. He says we have to look at all possibilities, certainly the common practices in conventional livestock production.

How will they influence the allergenicity of the final product if derived from common allergens such as soy, corn, crustaceans, fungi or insects? How will insect or crustacean-derived scaffolding affect Kosher or halal certification?

In an interview with Green Queen earlier this year, Schweizer also questioned the monies coming into the cultivated meat industry. He also pointed out that placing our food system under the purview of nascent technology is risky, especially if that comes at the expense of other food system solutions. The bigger the cultivated meat factory, the more difficult it is to ensure secure environments. But compare that to the challenge of keeping more than 55 billion land animals relatively disease-free before slaughter—foodborne illnesses are not uncommon, the result often of sick animals in a supply chain designed for speed, not precision.

If we can say our animal-based food system, for all of its risks, is mostly safe, it would seem sterilized food labs would be even safer, even at their worst. This is about animal agriculture and what it has done and will continue to do to the planet. The U. It seems the door is too wide open to turn back now, at any rate. To borrow from an ironically appropriate adage: there are many ways to skin a cat. Jill Ettinger is the co-founder of Ethos, a digital and e-commerce platform focused on personal and planetary sustainability through a luxury lens.

Does It Matter? Jill Ettinger 38 posts. You might also like. Fermentation-Based Alt Protein. There were no prizes or money at stake. And yet, over a decade after the original American incarnation of the show on ABC was cancelled, one brave soul has gone back to find out who was awarded the most points, and thus truly won, the first eight seasons of Whose Line? In the exhaustive video below, YouTube user 12Medbe Network has collected each and every instance of Drew Carey awarding points to the cast of Whose Line?

Not only is it a fun trip down memory lane for fans of the show, but it also gives us the answer to a question no one has been asking: Who really won? At the end of a segment, Carey would often give everyone 1, points as a matter of course. But occasionally, he would spice things up a bit and randomly award a half a point, 10, points or more than a million points.

The end of the video shows the total point tally for each and every guest that ever appeared on the show, along with other people and groups who received points the camera crew, the audience, Canada, etc.

Unsurprisingly, Colin Mochrie and Ryan Stiles — the two guests who appeared on virtually every episode — sit at the top of the list with over one trillion points a piece.