Turning industrial carbon emissions into animal feed

Researchers have discovered a way to turn industrial carbon emissions into animal feed.

Uk biotech company, Deep Branch, has secured £2.2m worth of funding to scale up the production of a new sustainable protein.

The protein is made by using microbes to transform industrial  CO2 emissions into a novel protein source for animal feed, called Proton.

The protein has a nutritional profile that is comparable with fishmeal, the gold-standard protein source used in aquafeed.

Working with power company Drax, as well as a group of industry leaders, this latest funding will enable Deep Branch to scale up the production and enable animal feed manufacturers to test the new protein.

Peter Rowe, CEO of Deep Branch, said: ‘In the UK, and in Europe, poultry and farmed fish are usually fed on fishmeal and soy, which is mainly imported from South America and has a huge environmental impact.

‘We are developing a new, sustainable way of producing animal feed, which reduces CO2 emissions by more than 90%, compared to the currently used protein sources.

‘Setting up the pilot plant represents an important next step in finding the perfect recipe for Proton that meets the requirements of feed producers.’

‘We’ll be undertaking further trials with BioMar and AB Agri, two leading animal feed companies that support the salmon and poultry farming industries.’

In related news, if 10% of the population switched to plant-based alternatives 176 million tonnes of CO2 emissions could be avoided, according to a study conducted by Blue Horizon and PwC.

In 2018, global consumption of meat reached 285 million tonnes, this required 280 million hectares of land, it used almost 87 billion m3 of water and accounted for at least 1.7 gigatonnes of CO2 emissions.

Worldwide, around 38% of habitable land is used for industrial animal agriculture, this is equivalent to the size of the United States, Russia, China and India combined