Dairy

Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil has surged to its highest level since 2008, the country’s space agency (Inpe) reports. A total of 11,088 sq km (4,281 sq miles) of rainforest were destroyed from August 2019 to July 2020. This is a 9.5% increase from the previous year. The Amazon is a vital carbon store that slows down the pace of global warming. Scientists say it has suffered losses at an accelerated rate since Jair Bolsonaro took office in January 2019. The Brazilian president has encouraged agriculture and mining activities in the world’s largest rainforest.

In Denmark, all the farmed minks in the country — some 17 million of them — have been destroyed after mutant coronavirus strains were detected in animals on many farms. Spillover — the transmission of animal disease to people — happens all the time. But the far greater threat to human health doesn’t come from spillovers in the wild. It comes from the way we farm and market animals. You have to ask yourself, when will we learn?

Alternative protein company Change Foods has raised $875,000 in an oversubscribed pre-seed round of funding, surpassing its initial target of $600,000. Green Queen Media was first to break the news. Participating in the round were Twitter’s Asia-Pacific VP Maya Hari, abillionveg founder Vikas Garg, game developer Tom Crago, and existing investors Newstead and Klar.

Nearly all soya is used by the farming sector as a livestock feed for chickens, pigs and other animals. The biggest users are chicken producers; soya makes up around a quarter of the diet of birds. It has been the cheapest source of protein poultry available to farmers since the ban on meat and bonemeal after BSE. Soya remains key to producing fast-growing, low-priced chickens.

Frustrated at the range of dairy alternatives currently on-shelf, a French start-up has developed a plant-based milk made from faba protein and algae. “Its advantages in comparison to conventional dairy are almost outrageous,” Update Foods CEO Clémence Landeau tells FoodNavigator.