ThyssenKrupp and DIL
On the 28th of June, iGEM Düsseldorf met with representatives of Thyssenkrupp and the German Institute for Food Technology (DIL) in their facility in the city of Hagen. We presented our SynMylk project and the general future of synthetically produced food.
Thyssenkrupp offered to help with our goal, the most sustainable milk possible, by using their innovative technology of 'high pressure pasteurization' (HPP). This hyperbaric treatment of foods uses pressure at a level of 600 MPa (6000 bar) that corresponds roughly to the weight of 3 jumbo jets acting on an area of the size of a smartphone. The processing happens at room temperature and is suitable for liquids and foods containing water. It eliminates pathogens through movement of water that the product contains, which would be the case for our synthetic milk.
First of all, the product in its final packaging (eg. bioplastic) needs to be loaded in a special basket that is conveyed into the high-pressure vessel, before secondly the vessel will fill up with the reusable water and pumps build-up the pressure. After the pressure has been decreased and the water has been drained off, the finished product can be unloaded from the vessel.
After learning about the physics of food processing by the DIL and a live demonstration of HPP on organic milk, we were certain that this technique will greatly add to our vision of revolutionizing the dairy industry with three major advantages.
Firstly, this method is more energy efficient, since there is no heat required in contrast to the conventional approach. This means our production will be more eco-friendly. Secondly, it is more efficient in eliminating pathogens, contributing to a longer shelf life. This leads to less food waste by consumers - a great problem of our generation. Furthermore, it makes our product more attractive to retailers, beating competitors with less logistic expenses and an improved order to volume ratio (less orders, more volume). Again, less transports lead to less emissions. Lastly, this technique avoids thermal degradation of proteins, vitamins and minerals. Therefore it has a better retention of flavour and nutritional value, reducing input and costs to replicate commercial milk.
The representatives had a positive outlook on our project and will provide us with their facilities for running tests when the first product is obtained.
Interview with a Farmer
In order to receive the greatest possible feedback for our project, we not only talked to the industry, but also to an old-established farmer. Heinz W. is from a family that has always been involved in agriculture and its transformation. He was kind enough to conduct an extremely interesting interview with us. It showed us that our CraftMylk Collection is the solution to various problems, but that traditional milk provides a livelihood for many people of the traditional agriculture that cannot simply be ignored. We consider an approach where conventional agriculture maintains its livelihoods by us providing our product at a consistently low price, therefore farmers would no longer need to respond to price reductions and could offer their milk with animal welfare at a fair price. Our survey and business evaluation shows that a large part of society would also consume milk from dairy farmers at a higher price.
1. Question: We want to produce synthetic milk. This does not mean that the milk is genetically modified afterwards, but that the components correspond 1:1 to the animal original. Only the organisms that produce them have been optimised by us. What do you think?
Cow's milk has been used by people for more than 10,500 years. After trying again and again to produce milk artificially, it seems to be a difficult task.
2. Question: According to all accounts, dairy farmers are forced by the industry, especially by discounters, to cut prices. Smaller farms in particular can therefore hardly cover their expenses for e.g. feed, machine maintenance and building work. Do you think the price of fair cow's milk can be stabilized if our milk offers cheaper production means?
The agricultural situation is precarious. Most farmers would surely like to give their animals much more attention and the number of people who are willing to pay for this additional effort is not particularly low. But the majority of farmers have to obey the dictatorship of market and corporations. I do not have an overview of the production costs of artificially produced milk and the economic consequences it would have. All in all, it must be considered that tens of thousands of people in Germany alone make a living from milk production and processing.
3. Question: Problems nowadays include burning rainforests, the contrast of starvation of poor and the increasing weight in developed countries, and the daily bread becoming the daily meat. Will today's agriculture still be sustainable in the future?
Feeding the constantly growing world population is the challenge of our time. The climate change makes the situation even worse. In industrialized countries, the area that can be used for agriculture is shrinking from year to year. Agriculture must and will change to meet these challenges.
4. Question: From your point of view, how is agriculture doing today? Do we need alternatives to calm the market?
Agriculture is in general not doing well, economically. Because of the enormous economic and social importance of food for the population, the respective federal government has to report to the 'Bundestag' yearly. Every year there is an intense discussion about further developments and opportunities. Every alternative is worth discussing in detail and checking its implementation.
5. Question: What do you think of the widely used label 'No genetic engineering'? Would it be important to you, to not abuse this label?
In my opinion, the label is not very meaningful, because it does not completely document the facts. Labels that protect against misuse are important to me.
6. Question: More and more items are produced synthetically and sold outside of the EU. The market for vegan products is also growing. Do you think there is too much pressure on farmers?
The fair production of agricultural products is not possible without subsidies. The population must be prepared to financially support the use of the countryside for food production and maintenance, also in order to preserve biodiversity. If this is done, there will be no (additional) pressure on farmers.
7. What would you change?
That cannot be answered in a few words. This social challenge requires the expertise, full commitment and vision of scientists and politicians. Further a constant competition that leads to innovation-pressure, to solve future problems in this field.
8. Would you drink our milk?
Yes.
Survey
As every company needs valuable feedback, there is no market where the consumers opinion and feedback could matter more than in the market of (Future-)food.
To understand the valuable point-of-view of as many people as we could reach, we conducted a survey about our project over the span of 3 months. We promoted it on social media and on events taking place in our city, like the Night of Science, and tried to get as many participants of different socio-demographic groups as possible. At this point, we would like to say Thank you to the 233 participants! Your opinion is very appreciated and crucial for us.
In the survey we asked general and more specific questions. We asked for the country of origin, the age, the level of education and if the participants were iGEM associated. Further we asked, what the opinion of the participants was about genetically engineering, synthetic biology, importance of environment and climate change, the environmental impact of different products, the estimated impact of livestock, the importance of eco-friendliness of products, if the participants payed attention to non-GMO labels when buying groceries and how often they consume cow's milk.
To start, 94 % of the 233 participants were European with a total of 15 European countries. The other 6 % were from 6 non-European countries. Of all 233 participants, 85 % belonged to the age group of 14-30 years and only 4.2 % had an education lower than O-levels (junior high school) (Fig. 1).
Even though 80.7 % of the participants were not iGEM associated, the sympathy for genetic engineering remained high. 68.2 % liked genetic engineering and even 70.8 % liked synthetic biology. Therefore, you can say, that the majority of participants has sympathy for the field of genetic engineering (Fig. 2).
Further, the importance of climate change is very important: 86.7 % assigned a high value of importance to it. While 88,8% think plastic has a high environmental impact, followed by emissions with 86.3 %, only 27.5 % of participants voted for dairy products and industrial livestock. That’s less than half as much as for meat products (57.1 %) (Fig. 3).
The impact of livestock had a mid-high level of impact for participants with 70 % voting for level 3 and 4. Also the importance of eco-friendliness had a mid-high value with 63 % on level 3-4 (Fig. 4).
Further it’s noticeable that 74.2 % do not pay attention to the non-GMO label when shopping (Fig. 5).
66.5 % of participants consume cow’s milk at least weekly and more than the half of them daily (37.3 %). Of the 12.4 % never drinking cow’s milk, 27.6 % gave the reasons of being vegan and the environmental impact of cow’s milk. 44.8 % of the participants are lactose intolerant and/or have other allergies. With SynMylk we could change all these points of traditional cow’s milk, making it possible for them to consume milk. Subsequently 59.7 % would drink milk made by GMOs and additional 25.3 % could be convinced or would try it at least. The remaining 15.1 % would not drink it because of health and nutrition concerns and/or taste. As we have the same ingredients, nutritional value (and even the option for more) and taste, we could convince the critics. Only 2 people (3.4 %) had concerns about GMOs and safety, and as we filter all the components, they do not need to fear those (Fig. 6).
Coming to an end only 12.9 % would not consume bioengineered milk from GMOs if it even was more eco friendly. That is a great outlook for us.
All in all it is possible to say, that in the surveyed group, age and education considered, most people think positive about genetic engineering and synthetic biology, they are aware of the importance of climate change and know which products cause a huge impact on this. Due to this they think eco-friendliness is important when buying products and non-GMO labels are not of importance for them when buying something. However, they still consume a lot of milk, but would like to use an alternative, what our synthetic milk could deliver to them. Based on this survey we can say, that there could be a market and acceptance for our product in the public.
Video Conference with the CEO of “LegenDairy Foods”
Most people are aware of the climate change and its causes, such as the industrial livestock farming of cattle. Due to this a lot of companies have been founded to do research on food alternatives, that do not pollute our environment any further, and publish their results afterwards to make a higher impact.
One of these companies is LegenDairy Foods. LegenDairy Foods is a startup company from Berlin, founded in October 2018. They are working in the area of development, production and marketing of Future Food and dietary supplements. As SynMylk will be part of this field, we contacted them and had a qualitative conversation.
Firstly we presented our project to them. Especially the production of proteins was interesting for both sides. The CEO of LegenDairy Food, Raffael Wohlgensinger, presented their work and informed us they were currently working on synthesizing milk proteins, like casein, too. It turned out that they want to achieve the synthesis in yeast, as yeast is known to be suitable for production and secretion of those proteins.
Since already two startups are aiming to create milk proteins in yeast we have refrained from doing the same thing. Therefore and for the purpose of finding the best working organism for milk protein production we switched to production with secreting sequences in Bacillus subtilis to be able to directly remove our product from the culture medium.
Not only scientific problems and experiences were discussed, but also important marketing aspects like the current market situation and outreach possibilities. Later on, we built a great relationship with Legendairy food, where we exchanged knowledge and experience like our survey.
As we have learned, LegenDairy Foods is currently working on the production of a synthetic milk and is in the process of producing the most important proteins in milk - just like us. Due to this we have been encouraged in our path of creating a wholesome milk replacement, since there is a huge demanding market for it.
Panel Discussion
A big attraction for our iGEM German Meetup was the panel discussion with the topic “Ethics or Success”. The discussion took place on the fifth of July and was available for the registered iGEM teams and also for the public.
We invited five experts to hold the panel discussion. Our first guest was Dr. Mark Benecke, who was able to combine the topic of this discussion with his work as a forensic scientist. He is also Chairman of “die PARTEI” (the party) in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and so he could show the audience the view of the politics about the topic Synthetic Biology and Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO). He is as well dedicated in animal welfare and ethics and tries to disprove untrue scientific claims with facts.
Additionally, we invited Dr. Lutz Schmitt from the institute for Biochemistry and Dr. Matias Zurbriggen from the Institute for Synthetic Biology to show the scientific part of the discussion. They were also able to show how ethics and success can be combined and used for a better world.
From the institute of Philosophy, we invited Dr. Amrei Bahr, who was able to present the importance of ethical discussion in the natural sciences, but also pointed out the positive impact of Synthetic Biology for the future.
Finally, Susanne Günther joined our panel discussion. She is an expert for agriculture and has studied philosophy. For the discussion she was a great completion for questions like how GMOs can be used for the food production and which complications we have to overcome.
The main part of the discussion was very interactive and after a short introductory discussion among the panelists, the majority of questions for the panel discussion came from the audience. Focal points were the possibilities and risks of the CRISPR/Cas system, the problems of the education in Germany and how big companies can utilize their position in the economy. This panel discussion was intensive for the experts, because of the great number of guests they did not get any break from the questions.
All in all, the panel discussion was a big success and we could see that the topic, which is relevant for every person and not only for scientists, need to be discussed even more intense to make the public aware of it. We are also happy to report that beside the iGEM teams, many other students from our University joined the discussion and brought many questions with them.
Press Work
Our Team had various contributions in press to gain higher attention of people which do not know about iGEM or synthetic biology yet. We wrote and published a first article on our University website (Fig. 1), which then spread through the internet to 8 other newspages, for example Medizin-Aspekte or Food-Monitor.
This made a major german newspaper and a radio channel attentive to us. In a half-page interview in the “Westdeutsche Zeitung” we talked about synthetic milk and iGEM and landed on page 3 of the 19th september issue (Fig. 2). This is an great success for our local contribution to future science and for the reputation of genetical engineering in our country.
In a radio interview with “deutschlandfunk” we explained our project and gave some further insights into biological research (Fig. 3).
Further we were given the chance to write a scientific article on the blog of Eurofins, which was published on September 12th (Fig. 4) and can be found here.
In addition we contributed to the 7/19 Edition of the science newspaper “BIOspektrum” with a scientific article, in the section ‘careers, minds and concepts’.
Social Media
The usage of social media as a mean to engage with interested people or other iGEM teams has been successfully implemented by almost all iGEM teams over the years. We continued the social media accounts from previous Düsseldorf iGEM teams to also spread awareness about environmental issues, genetic engineering and for advertising our SynMylk project.
Our main goal was to extend our range and engage not just people familiar with science but also people without a non scientific background from all around the world. We used Instagram, Twitter and Facebook as different social media platforms.
Instagram
Instagram is a platform, where pictures or videos can be shared with followers in the feed and will be stored on the profile and “stories” that are only visible for 24 h. By posting pictures and videos from inside the lab, we were able to show the beauty of science and visualize methods to followers that are not familiar with science. In the comment sections our followers were able to ask for further information and engage in a discussion (Fig. 1).
Furthermore, we started a “GMO Wednesday”-story, where each Wednesday we introduced our followers to an everyday product created by GMOs, to highlight the positive effects genetic engineering can have on our lives and to show that those products are neither dangerous to us nor are there only a few of them on the market (Fig. 2).
Stats
During this year we were able to almost double our follower count from 510 to 920. The likes for each photo averages 73. As not every person likes a post, but might see it anyway, the reach (estimated number of unique accounts, that have seen a specific post) has to be considered as well and is on average 676, whereas the impressions (total number of times that a post has been seen) averages 1142. Compared to the stats in the previous year with an average of 58 likes, we were able to increase this number. This can be attributed to an increase in followers, but also to using popular hashtags such as #vegan, #ecofriendly and #crueltyfree as a common method to increase the reach among people without a scientific background, along with #synbio to connect with scientists in the field of synthetic biology.
Facebook
On Facebook, not just pictures and videos, but also text posts and events can be shared. However, a lot of users do not use it that frequently, which is why we did not focus as much on it. We used it to announce general information, create and share events.
We hosted two events, where we were able to reach 2.3k people and had 92 event responses.
Twitter
Twitter is a common platform for science, but not that frequented in europe. We used Instagrams cross-posting tool to tweet. The platform was very useful to get more participation in our survey as our professors that have twitter could easily retweet it. As on 19/10/13 we have a total of 437 followers. A video of our panel discussion at the german meetup had 537 viewers.
Future
For future iGEM teams we recommend to increase the amount of followers and reach by using following points:
Promega Takeover
On July 3rd, we took over the Instagram Account of the Promega corporation (promega_corporation) to give more people insight into a day of an iGEM team member. Using audiovisual content and the creative tools of instagram, we firstly introduced our team and then made a lab tour, where we spend most of our time working. It’s basically iGEMs equivalent of a YouTuber’s room tour. Further, we tried to show how versatile - and sometimes exhausting - our everyday lab life can be.
It was a great experience and pleasure to organize this event together with Promega and deliver qualitative content to their followers. In the following picture (Fig. 1) you can see the introduction post on promegas Twitter account for our takeover. After this we posted regularly over our lab work.
