Interesting that the author focuses on protein rather than calories.
If it's protein, and not calories, that are going to be an issue in PRC, I suspect the people in PRC will be ordered by their government to consume chicken instead of pork. one chicken per week per man is plenty to supplant a rice- or wheat-based diet, along with some vegetables. Chicken production can also be scaled rapidly, albeit if done quickly there will probably be outbreaks of avian flu.
Chicken is an amazing source of protein, given what range of inputs they can feed on, and how quickly they can be slaughtered after hatching (6-8 weeks, typically).
Whilst I've seen plenty of emotive videos over the years showing chickens' capacity for socialisation, empathy and intelligence, I as equally find it hard to have too much sympathy for them in their function as food for humans, given most of them barely make it two months into the world.
I say this as someone who, whilst loving her utterly after her birth, had occasional abstract thoughts about how entirely unconscious and parasitic my daughter was for a few months. It got me thinking. Whilst I now find my heart softened utterly by so much more than I did, my heart also hardened when thinking about sentient chickens as food.
Calories are generally cheap. Protein is dear. When the ocean ecosystem collapses under the strain of acidification by dissolved CO2, efforts to control access to protein will trigger wars.
Meat is non-essential, nutritionally, given beans and B-12, but materially reducing access to it is politically destabilizing.
Presumably shifting market prices of protein sources will change consumption patterns. But if people are priced out of eating as much meat as they’re used to, it breaks the mental model of continuously improving living standards, which might have political knock on effects.
Right, that's been going on in the US for the last 20 years but it's a frog-slowly-boiled situation. Nobody really knows why so many people are unhappy but they are.
Imagine if all that had happened over a year or two. The BLM protests would probably look quaint by comparison.
Do you mean that as a counterpoint to the parent? These products seem to generally be targeting wealthier consumers. I wonder if China did face a shortage of animal protein, they could avoid some of the political unrest by marketing plant-based alternatives as being more desirable, like these US companies are trying to do (with reasonable success, it seems).
If it's protein, and not calories, that are going to be an issue in PRC, I suspect the people in PRC will be ordered by their government to consume chicken instead of pork. one chicken per week per man is plenty to supplant a rice- or wheat-based diet, along with some vegetables. Chicken production can also be scaled rapidly, albeit if done quickly there will probably be outbreaks of avian flu.