Good Morning
What we’re reading this week:
The Greendicator
Top Deals of the Week
German renewable energy company NeXtWind raised $750M in equity from Sandbrook, Public Sector Pension Investment Board and Investment Management Corporation of Ontario (BW)
Eco-friendly scrap metal recycling steel rebar mill Hybar raised $700M in debt / equity led by TPG Rise Climate (FN)
Verdagy, a startup building electrolyzer tech for industrial markets, raised a $73M Series B led by Temasek and Shell Ventures (FN)
‘Water intelligence’ startup Wint raised a $35M Series C led by Insight Partners (TC)
Meatable, a five-year-old, Netherlands-based company that makes cultivated pork products (i.e. made from animal cells), has raised $35 million in fresh funding led by Agronomics (TC)
Transcend, a four-year-old company based in Princeton, N.J., that uses generative design software to automate the design of water and power infrastructure projects, raised a $20 million Series B round led by Autodesk (TEU)
Incident response management platform Rootly raised a $12M Series A led by Renegade Partners (TC)
Strategic water management platform for commercial farmers GroGuru raised a $2.3M seed round led by Cove Fund and Impact Venture Capital (FN)
Bite Theory
Beef Empire vs. Climate Vampire
It reads like a cheesy, lazy Charlotte’s Web knock-off for the climate era, replacing a spider and pig with another creepy crawler and barnyard animal. Rather than fiction (such as an Okja-meets-Fantastic Mr Fox mashup), ticks are truly and increasingly combatting animal agriculture.
ARACHNIDS TEAM UP WITH COWS TO END FACTORY FARMING!
Whether the ticks or cows know what’s happening, these little bloodsuckers are thriving in the warming climate, and expanding their range, biting more people. How could this impact animal agriculture? Specifically, the lone star tick is known to carry alpha-gal, a sugar which can cause alpha-gal syndrome (AGS) in people.
About a month after the bite, AGS victims suffer from symptoms ranging “from mild to severe or even life-threatening,” especially when eating red meat, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Red meat, and other foods containing the alpha-gal sugar, get rejected by the body, inducing the syndrome’s potentially deadly symptoms.
Range of alpha-gal-carrying tick (teal and green) and above-average meat consumption (darker blue, below) for comparison
Ticks carry terrible diseases, and the limited tick media coverage rightly advises citizens on how to avoid getting bitten, and remove ticks when unfortunately identified. The CDC’s “Tick Home” (regrettable page title) provides a landing page for ample human resources on all things tick-centric: prevention, removal, and more.
How many mammals did US AGS cases spare from a cruel life of factory farming?
If we take the conservative 110,000 confirmed cases of AGS, with the average case running for only 6 years, and assume 80 pounds of beef and 60 pounds of pork spared, per AGS victim per year: the lone star tick has reduced red meat demand nearly 53 million pounds of beef, and almost 40 million pounds of pork, spread over 12 years.
Assuming a generous 440 pounds of beef per cow and 120 pounds per pig, that’s at least 120,000 cows, and 330,000 pigs whose meat was absent from market demand due to AGS. In annual terms for the US, that’s 10,000 fewer cows and 27,500 fewer pigs demanded each year. Keep in mind, the number may be far larger, with closer to “A Half-Million Americans” living with a “Tick-linked Meat Allergy”, as Emily Anthes’ New York Times health headline announces: a number 4x our assumption for caseload in the above estimate.
Tiny Vampires in Twilight for Beef
No one deserves to be bitten by a tick, but if a small bite helps weaken beef demand, a small silver lining gets passed along to society.
After various livestock-borne outbreaks over the last year, national regulators are weighing their options, amid a steady drumbeat of warnings against the public health timebomb of our current livestock lock-ups, from factory farms, to county fairs.
Just remember,
….unlike some other tick-borne diseases, alpha-gal syndrome has no treatment or cure —Dr. Johanna Salzer, as reported by Emily Anthes
Rather than wait for a tick to dictate what we can and can’t eat, we can choose to dine on a more plant-rich diet ourselves: steering society away from the next pandemic, and escalating abuse of animals.
The Closer
Cool vid
Crazy read, good stuff. You gotta get this idea over to radiolab so they can update their episode on it: https://radiolab.org/podcast/alpha-gal