Iceland could help address Northern Europe’s food security issues with the scaling-up of its industrial production of Spirulina – an alternative protein source that is nutritious, sustainable and risk resilient.
Iceland could help address Northern Europe’s food security issues with the scaling-up of its industrial production of Spirulina – an alternative protein source that is nutritious, sustainable and risk resilient. Under the most ambitious of estimations, Iceland could be protein self-sufficient and capable of feeding more than six million Europeans every year, a new feasibility study suggests.
The environmental implications of humans continuing to hinge their diets on animal source foods for protein (including eggs, milk, beef, pork, poultry and fish), together with Europe’s dependency on protein-rich crop imports to meet food demand, has pushed the topic of sustainable protein self-sufficiency higher up the political agenda.
Now ‘future foods’ such as Spirulina – a blue-green algae with multiple health benefits – have been proposed as substitutions for conventional meat, with the potential to reduce environmental impacts e.g. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and freshwater withdrawals, by more than 90%.
Read more at University of Cambridge
Image: An enclosed and modular photobioreactor used to produce Spirulina. (Credit: Vaxa, Iceland)
