Culture Clash? What cultured meat could mean for UK farming

Headlines It may one day be possible to substitute meat grown through cell culture imperceptibly for meat from livestock. Farmers’ concerns about cultured meat go beyond the impact on their bottom line, including that it is: ■ Uncertain: there are still too many unanswered questions. ■ Unreliable: unbiased data is hard to come by. ■ Unrealistic: work is needed to map how new supply chains could work in practice. ■ Unintended: having many potential knock-on effects. ■ Unfair: questioning who benefits from this further industrialisation of our food system. ■ Unnatural: in contrast to the ‘real’ food the farmers produced. Factors such as business diversification, tenure, assets and contractual relationships affect farmers’ resilience or precarity to this potentially disruptive technology. Yet, under the right circumstances, cultured meat could present opportunities for some UK farmers: ■ Sharpening their competitive edge for selling high-value ‘real meat’. ■ Developing potential new markets such as supplying animal cells or raw materials. ■ Generating income from processing crop or animal by-products as ingredients. ■ Harnessing private investment to produce cultured meat on their own farm. ■ Developing new, fairer supply-chain relationships. Initial analysis suggests that using crop and animal by-products as amino acid sources for cultured meat production could reduce its cost and environmental footprint, while farm-scale production would cost about 30% more than factory-scale. While some farmers were interested in exploring these possibilities further, caring for livestock remained central to their identity. Moving beyond a polarised debate would benefit the cultured meat industry, but it may also benefit farming. Advocates of cultured meat can support this through more inclusive communication: acknowledging uncertainties, celebrating farmer innovation and working with honest brokers. The cultured meat industry and farmers could build common ground through: ■ Joint research and innovation, particularly into waste valorisation and on-farm production. ■ Developing practical partnerships and mechanisms for continued dialogue, such as a platform for interested farmers to connect with cultured meat businesses and a short guide to cultured meat for farmers. ■ Investors expecting cultured meat companies to include farmers in their Environmental, Social and Governance commitments to support a ‘just transition’

Black tea liquor ultrafiltration:effect of ethanol pre-treatment upon fouling and cleaning characteristics

Belgium Herbarium image of Meise Botanic Garden

The effect of ethanol pre-treatment upon the mechanical, structural and surface modification of ultrafiltration membranes

The in situ ethanol pre-treatment of commercially available polysulfone (PSU) ultrafiltration(UF) membranes resulted in a 3-fold increase in the pure water flux values achieved.Techniques that lead to an increase in flux are of both academic and commercial interest. It ispostulated that the mechanisms for performance improvement can be attributed to swelling ofmembrane skin-layers, as demonstrated by changes in thickness measurements, and consideration ofpolymer solubility parameters, giving a degree of polymer plasticisation. The modification isaccompanied by a hydrophobicity increase – this parameter is linked to a greater fouling tendency.Increases in hydrophobicity contrast with the usual effect of ethanol contact, by enhancing the removalof membrane preservatives and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP); a common pore-forming agent.Mechanical property changes were not readily detected, whilst the apparently unaltered sub-layermasked more subtle changes occurring within the dense skin-layer. Directing analysis specifically atthe skin layer using colloidal AFM probes allowed a decoupling of changes against the support,showing that the elastic modulus was reduced as a consequence of PVP removal and plasticisation.Moreover, regional elasticity probing allowed observation of spatial inhomogeneities in elasticity;occurring due to the removal of the previously unevenly distributed PVP and leading to pitting.Consequently, the effects of pre-treatment with ethanol are shown to offer advantages by maximisingthe performance of commercial membranes, though such methods must be used with caution.Elasticity changes that occur may be detrimental to performance if carried out at high transmembranepressures, where compaction could be assisted

Black tea liquor ultrafiltration:effect of ethanol pre-treatment upon fouling and cleaning characteristics

tThis paper reports on the use of polymeric ultrafiltration (UF) membrane ethanol pre-treatment as a strategy toimprove filtration performance in terms of both flux increase, and membrane water flux recovery following cleaning.A 4-fold pure water flux (PWF) increase was observed for a 100 kDa polysulfone membrane. Marked increases inpermeate flux were recorded for ethanol treated UF membranes over a range of molecular weight cut-off values.Ethanol treatment also aided fluxes over multiple foul-clean cycles, and enabled the enhanced transmission ofpolyphenols during UF for the clarification of black tea liquor. Following tea fouling and NaOH cleaning repetitions,PWF values of treated membranes were returned to values of >150% of the untreated virgin membrane PWF over4/5 consecutive cycles, indicating that the ethanol pre-treatment strategy adopted had a prolonged effect uponsubsequent performance