A little difficult to parse your argument. It is the lack of implementation of the cheap solution that you are worried about and raising as a problem.
Do not worry.
When enough pressure is applied on the farmers thanks to people like you , the solution (seaweed) we have found will be implemented. We have already done the difficult part and found a solution to the problem.
And I am sure that all of the fat people (myself included) are thrilled that a thermodynamic approach to weight loss is a proven solution, despite the fact that I have not had much success applying it.
I am also strongly reassured that XSS is a solved problem when using content security, and climate change has been solved by mass reforestation efforts.
The difficult part of a technical solution is not inventing it (although those are rightfully hard problems); the real challenge is in driving adoption of the solution.
The industry will push back on this solution for a broad range of reasons:
1. Cost - what is the cost of both the supplement and the labour required to administer it, or the differential on unfortified vs. fortified feeds.
2. Marketing - how will you communicate to folks that they should do this?
3. Customer Satisfication - does the supplement meaningfully affect any of the metrics for customer satisfaction (flavour, texture, etc of the meat).
4. Availability - retooling and spinning up the aquaculture required to produce the supplements
5. Viability - what is the ecological impact of the proposed seaweed solution, and is it a net positive.
I spent a chunk of my career as a researcher, developing protoypes and proof of concept stuff. One of the greatest things of that time in my career was developing something to 80% and throwing it over the fence, which let me ignore all of that hard work and call my project a win. One of the worst things is that out of that multi-year period of experimentation almost none of the work I did actually yielded unique products or improvements (although the tools I built did drive improvements to address issues and flaws found).
Assuming that you did the research, your work was definitely successful in finding a solution. You have not solved the problem, and the hard work is very much ahead.
You are certainly putting in a lot of effort in this discussion and I thank you for that. I would prefer a discussion done in good faith however.
I say that only as it seems you have added paragraphs in all of your previous comments to retroactively protect yourself from points I later raised in my replies and you also seem to have deleted your paragraph that enough seaweed was not being produced and so you believe the problem is not solved.
Seaweed production is in line with current demand. When the market places enough pressure on Farmers to adopt the solution then seaweed production will naturally increase. Seaweed is one of the easiest and fastest growing organisms in the world.
Your most recent arguments regarding Marketing etc being a problem. You are scraping the barrel now looking for problems.
I haven't added or edited anything but spelling errors. It was another commenter who raised concern about scaling production, my point was that the viability of this as method for methane reduction also needed to determine if the aquaculture needed to produce the seaweed would be a net benefit from a climate change perspective.
The aquaculture needed to produce seaweed has to be a net benefit now?
Net zero is not satanic enough?
It is odd that you are so
hellbent on finding additional problems and moving the goalposts on this. When billions of people in the world are starving.
Seaweed is one of the the easiest and fastest growing organisms in the world and there have been many threads here pushing for it to even be used as food for humans.
> The aquaculture needed to produce seaweed has to be a net benefit now?
No. The concern is about the overall impact of the aquaculture required to scale this seaweed feed supplements production to have a meaningful impact on the methane production from livestock. If you ramp up seaweed production, and reduce methane, but the overall process (aquaculture, processing, distribution) produces anything but than a net negative in GHG emissions, then the only value of the process is greenwashing cattle ranching.
I am not hellbent on finding additional problems, the point is that a lab based solution doesn't solve the problem, and most of your comments have ignored the very real market realities. I would also wager that your opinions are not necessarily grounded in reality - I chatted with my brother, who was a pig farmer for nearly two decades and is still involved in agriculture in both farming and ranching, and my cousin who runs a very large ranch in Manitoba. Some of the concerns I brought up in my previous point about market pushback are summaries of the questions and concerns they raised, although they both thought it was really interesting because they are both especially interested in sustainable farming practices.
Switching gears because you moved the goalposts, nothing I have said has anything to do with starvation or hunger. Since you brought it up, it is almost absolutely certain that building technology that mitigates, partially or wholly, the environmental impact of cattle farms actually exacerbates world hunger. The simple reason that is that the labour and resources that go into producing meat for human consumption would produce significantly more human consumable calories if we shifted those to plant based alternatives (up to and including feeding people seaweed).
Do not worry.
When enough pressure is applied on the farmers thanks to people like you , the solution (seaweed) we have found will be implemented. We have already done the difficult part and found a solution to the problem.