Is meat no longer murder?

The UK’s worst outbreak of avian or bird flu has led to a lockdown of all captive birds in the UK and there is concern that the availability of Christmas turkeys could be under threat.

Half of the free-range turkeys produced for Christmas – some 600,000 birds have been culled or died. Bird flu is likely to add to food prices, as the supply of chicken could inevitably be impacted and lead to higher prices. Further food inflation is not good news.

The United Nations has recently estimated that the world’s population has just passed eight billion. This is just 11 years after it passed seven billion This begs the question, how are we going to feed everyone? Is part of the answer, meat grown in a laboratory? Scientists claim that lab grown meat could lead to massive savings in carbon emissions and water usage with no need to feed and look after animals.

The US safety agency, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has recently given approval for cell-cultured chicken for human consumption, after doing ‘careful evaluation.’ Upside Foods, a producer of cultured meat, called it ‘a watershed moment in the history of food. However, before selling to US consumers its production facilities will require clearance from the US Department of Agriculture.

There are already a number of companies globally that are looking to make artificial ‘clean meat.’ For example, Eat Just, a plant-based competitor of Upside Foods was the first to receive approval for such a product in 2020 in Singapore. Its cultured meat nuggets are grown in a lab.

Plant- based burgers, such as the Impossible Burger, are already starting to gain traction in the market and now Impossible Whoppers are available in most of Burger King’s outlets in the US.

The big question is how will US consumers react to lab grown meat compared with plant-based ‘meat’? Finger Lickin’ cell-cultured Chicken, just doesn’t have that ring to it. Whether you are comfortable with the science or not, we can hopefully all agree that we have to do something to address population growth and global climate change.

What have we been watching?

Market attention continued to focus upon events in China. The authorities reacted to ongoing mass protests by flooding the streets with even more police officers. Hopes that China will continue to ease policy to reduce the impact of ‘zero-covid’ on its population initially helped Asian equities although China’s top security body called for a crackdown on protesters. However, China has signalled a shift in its covid stance as it moves to ease some restrictions. The other big news last week was from the US, where investors latched onto one element of Federal Reserve (Fed) Chair Jerome Powell’s comments ‘The time for moderating the pace of rate increases may come as soon as the December meeting.’

The fundamental problem China has is the low rate of vaccination take-up amongst its elderly population compared with the West. In addition, its zero–covid policy and lack of mixing also means that the population may not have built up a measure of natural immunity. Last week, China announced that it would ’accelerate the increase in the vaccination for people over the age of 80 and continue to increase the vaccination rate for people aged 60-79.’ Perhaps light at the end of the tunnel for the Chinese population and a move to counter protests? Given China’s resources it should be able to ramp up mass vaccination quickly and when enough of the older population are vaccinated start to ease lockdown restrictions. However, China has also not yet approved mRNA vaccines for public use that can protect against the Omicron variant, while its Sinovac vaccine was thought to be about 70% effective against the original Covid-19 variants compared with 90% for Moderna/Pfizer.

China’s Political and Legal Affairs Commission, the country’s top security body has said ‘it is necessary to crack down on infiltration and sabotage activities by hostile forces in accordance with the law.’ However, China has signalled a shift in its Covid stance as it moves to ease some virus restrictions. A community in Beijing with cases with mild symptoms has been allowed to isolate at home while in Shanghai and Guangzhou, that have seen rising cases and protests, restrictions have been lifted. An adviser to the Communist Party commented on Twitter that China was now ‘speeding up to cast aside large-scale lockdowns.’

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Putin was using winter as a weapon of war in Ukraine. Some 7.4million refugees are estimated to have fled Ukraine between February and September and Stoltenberg expects many more to follow as infrastructure continues to be hit. ‘This is a war – a brutal war.’

In the UK, property prices fell at the fastest pace since mid-2020 on the back of increasing borrowing costs, Nationwide data showed. House prices were down by 1.4% in November.

In Europe, headline inflation dropped back to 10% in November reflecting the recent moves in energy prices, but core CPI edged up to 6.6% with food prices continuing to rise. The Eurozone manufacturing PMI activity indicator was revised lower on weaker readings across major economies of the block including Germany, France and Spain.

In the US, investors latched onto comments from Fed Chair Jerome Powell as highlighted above. However, he cautioned that the shifting dynamics within the US labour market could keep inflation higher for longer and require an extended period of restrictive policy. With this in mind it was notable that the monthly US employment data released after Powell’s comments showed a still robust jobs market, with the headline job numbers stronger than forecast and the level of wages growth continuing to climb.

China’s official PMI activity indicators hit seven-month lows in November in both the manufacturing and service sectors albeit this was expected given the ongoing zero-covid restrictions.

Brent oil rallied to $86 on speculation about a potential OPEC+ policy response to the recent weakness. The subsequent meeting over the weekend saw them retain their current output targets. Commodities markets elsewhere generally continued to strengthen on Chinese developments, and the scope for increasing demand as covid measures are eased.

Finally, following our recent ‘Robots as a service’ – Dulux owner Akzo Nobel has acquired a minority stake in a French start-up which has developed a robot that can spray paint large surfaces through a mainly manually operated process. Akzo Nobel is concerned by a big scarcity of painters and decorators especially in the UK. Between robot lawn mowers and robot decorators we really risk becoming a nation of sofa surfers!

Read Last Week’s Alpha Bites – Renewable Energy – I’m a big fan

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Is meat no longer murder?

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