The endeavors of New Harvest have been praised in the most recent 2013-2014 State of the Future Report, released March 20, 2014 in Washington, DC.
Topics presented included the increasing problem of climate change and water consumption, in which the efforts and importance of New Harvest and the cultured meat industry was noted.
Jerome Glenn, CEO of The Millennium Project explained how climate change continues to worsen; yet we are continuously understating its severity. In addition, he made remarks about the global water situation, as the water table continues to fall in all continents. China was used as an example, as many people are pulled into forced migration due to water unavailability.
Glenn also mentioned that a hamburger requires 2400L of water to produce and a leather shoe requires an outstanding 8000L of water to produce.
At this point, New Harvest and the importance of developing cultured animal products was brought forward as a solution to both problems. On a global scale, New Harvest is developing new ways to produce and conserve water. Glenn mentioned the 2013 event in which the first cell cultured hamburger was revealed in London, England. He suggests that moving forward with this industry is ideal to maintain our freshwater resources. He also mentions that the concept of biofabricated tissue can also be used in other applications besides meat (like cultured leather) to reduce water consumption.
Here is the full video (New Harvest is mentioned at 18:00, onwards)
Thanks to Carolyn Mattick for finding this mention and letting us know about it, thanks to Abirna Kadambamoorthy for writing this blog post, and thanks to Maya Kaul for blogging it!