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Restaurant Daily News 5 7 Tuesday, May 22, 2018 Warming Planet Threatens Food Supply By Lorrie Baumann Climate change is real – the uncertainty among scientists is no longer about whether the Earth is warming but about what's going to happen as a result. Climate change is considered to be a threat to livestock production worldwide due to potential impacts on the quality of feed and forage crops, water availability, livestock diseases and the effects of heat on animal metabolism that could mean smaller animals that are more expensive to raise. "Among climate scientists, there's a very strong consensus that not only is the climate changing but that the changes we are seeing go beyond what could be expected through natural activity alone," said James Hurrell, Director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, Colorado. "I think it is a very serious issue that we have to take into account in our planning in many different ways." Scientists have been discussing the effects of human activity on our planet's climate since as far back as 1896, when Swedish physical chemist Svante August Arrhenius began publishing papers dis- cussing his theories about the importance of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and the potential for industrially produced CO 2 to warm the atmosphere. In 1958, oceanographer Charles David Keeling noted increases in atmospheric CO 2 , documenting that CO 2 concentrations have increased nearly 40 percent since preindustrial times. "We know that it's due to human activity by measuring the the isotopic signature of the CO 2 ," Hurrell said. "This is not a topic we're discussing about something that's going to happen in the future. We are witnessing this. We are beginning to experience the impacts.... It's us. The changes we are seeing are going beyond the realm of natural changes." Scientists around the world are in widespread agreement that climate change is occurring, it's having effects on the planet that can be observed, and it's primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. The amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is at its highest concentra- tion in at least 800,000 years, according to analyses of air bubbles that were frozen into the ice at polar ice caps that long ago. While CO 2 levels do fluctuate naturally, particularly during ice ages, they hadn't exceeded 300 parts of CO 2 per million parts of air until recently. The current level is nearly 400 parts per million. "We've experienced 10,000 years of normal change just in the last century. By the end of this century, we could be almost 900 parts per million if we kept on with business as usual," Hurrell said. "This is something that's new, and the question is how is the plan- et going to respond to such a rapid change in greenhouse gases." As the climate changes, animal sci- entists are expecting it to affect livestock animals and the grasslands that provide their forage. One easily understood effect is that as the temperature goes up, animals need to drink more water. Livestock watering already accounts for about 8 per- cent of human water use around the world, and the expected increase in tem- perature has been predicted to increase animal water consumption by a factor of two to three. Temperature creates other stresses on livestock that can result in reduced feed intake and alterations in physiological functions that dictate how well they'll gain weight and how well they'll reproduce. Texas A&M PhD student Jeff Martin has been studying bison fossils and what they can tell us about how the size of the animals is affected by tem- perature differences in their environ- ment. Bison have lived in North America for about 200,000 years, and measurements of their bones indicate that bison living in cooler climates tend to be larger than those living in warmer areas, partly because bison require spe- cific temperatures to optimize their ability to digest the grasses they eat, according to Martin. In addition, calves developing in utero feel the effects of climate even before they're born, as their mothers' bodies combat heat stress. This causes the calves to be smaller at the time that they're weaned, and these changes may stay with them throughout their lives. "Artificial selec- tion practiced by ranchers would affect this, but these animals that you're try- ing to get bigger might not be able to sustain that growth. Energy to dissipate heat has a cost," Martin said. "It may not even matter what you try to do as you select to get bigger and better." "As temperatures get higher, the bison get smaller," Martin said. For every degree of global temperature increase, bison lose about 129 pounds per animal. "What we can predict now is a smaller bison throughout North America," he said. The United States livestock indus- try is already losing between $1.69 and $2.36 billion due to heat stress, with about half of this occurring in the dairy industry. Since the best milkers are the most sensitive to heat stress, when heat stress goes up, milk production declines. This is true in goats and sheep as well as in cows. Poultry is also susceptible to heat stress, which reduces body weight gain, feed intake and carcass weight. Heat stress on laying hens compromises egg production by causing reduced feed intake and interrupted ovulation. Even that doesn't take into account the expected effects of climate change on the feed that's available to these animals. Increases in the amount of carbon dioxide in the air are expected to affect how the plants grow in fields, with different plant species reacting differently. Scientists have found that some plants grown in atmospheres with elevated carbon dioxide levels produce less protein and can pro- vide less iron and zinc. That, in turn, will change the nutrition that's available to the animals, including humans, that feed on them. We can also expect to see falling crop yields in many areas, particularly in developing regions, according to Hurrell. Weed growth is promoted and herbicides lose effectiveness as carbon dioxide levels increase, creating more problems with weeds, diseases and insects. All of this means that global warm- ing is a threat to our world food supply, although there's a lot of uncertainty about how serious a problem this is going to be, and it's very clear that some parts of the world are going to feel it more than others. While production of cereal grains is expected to increase in the world's higher latitudes as a result of increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, giving North American and Russian farmers an economic boost, food production in tropical countries is expected to decline. Globally, the poten- tial for food production is expected to increase with a temperature increase that's only about 2 to 6 or so degrees Fahrenheit, but if the temperature increases more than that, food produc- tion is expected to decline. Those num- bers will be affected by changes in weather patterns due to climate change, such as increased frequency and intensi- ty of droughts and flooding, according to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has also noted that food insecurity would be further increased by the loss of cultivat- ed land and fisheries nursery areas through coastal erosion and floodwater inundation in low-lying areas. Label Insight Attains $21 Million in New Venture Capital Funding Label Insight has raised $21 million in a Series C funding round led by Delta-v Capital alongside River Cities Capital Funds. These funds will support the com- pany's mission to help consumers under- stand what's in the products they use and consume. David Schaller, Managing Partner at Delta-v, will join the Label Insight board of directors. With the use of data science, Label Insight is powering transparency between consumer packaged goods, CPG, brands, retailers and consumers. Label Insight plans to use the new funding to fuel hiring of data science professionals, continue product development and accelerate cus- tomer growth. In the past year, the com- pany announced several new customer deals, as well as key partnerships with Nielsen, 1WorldSync and Catalina Marketing. "The breadth and versatility of our data powers many different applications across a spectrum of businesses, which sets us apart from any other player in the space," said Paul Schaut, Chief Executive Officer for Label Insight. "This infusion of capital will enable us to continue to innovate our data science capabilities and deliver new products and features to our customers, driving new avenues for growth and increased market share." The company's proprietary data sci- ence and machine learning capabilities capture product labeling information for more than 400,000 products and create more than 22,000 unique custom attributes per product, unlocking actionable insights about how products meet the varied health, wellness, lifestyle and sustainability con- cerns of consumers. Label Insight cus- tomers include more than 25 top CPG companies and 12 leading retailers. "The food industry is undergoing a revolution with consumers increasingly interested in understanding food and cos- metic ingredients and information on the sourcing of these ingredients," said Schaller. "Label Insight's unique data-as- a-service capability delivers significant value to the CPG industry by helping brands and retailers transform their busi- nesses to be more transparent, while enabling government agencies and aca- demic institutions to better understand and measure the impact of food products and ingredients on our population." "Food is critically important to a healthy life and every bite has the ability to impact our biology," said Rob Heimann, Managing Director at River Cities. "Today, Label insight is uniquely delivering a comprehensive solution to many of the largest manufacturers' and retailers' need to meet consumer demand around transparency into product ingredi- ents. As the market evolves, we think Label's solution will become an important foundation to further understanding the link between food ingredients and health." Sheep Milk Cheese from Savello Savello di Roma has perfected this 2,000-year-old traditional 100 percent sheep milk cheese with its distinctive aroma and a slightly sharp but mild taste that has improved immensely with time. It is cured with salt and aged more than 60 days in natural grottos on beech wood boards. It is white or slightly yellow in color with a smooth and even rind. Each wheel weighs in at approximately six pounds. The sheep milk used to make this cheese is produced from Mediterranean sheep that originate from ancient and traditional stock with no genetic alter- ation. These sheep live in the open air and graze on rich pasture that varies from season to season. The Roman countryside's pastures produce rich, diverse and tasty milk that makes these sheep much healthier. The production process uses both traditional techniques of centuries ago as well as modern tech- nology to make Savello Cheese an important part of a nutritionally well balanced diet. For more information, contact Savello USA at 570.822.9743 or info@savello usa.com, or go to www.savellousa.com.