For the ninth Café des Sciences, we have invited Fabian Graf, the Co-founder and CEO of the food technology startup Faitron. Mr Graf will not only go over his inspirations and entrepreneur experience but also elaborate on the interwoven state of technology and food production.

In addition to Mr Graf’s talk, guests of the lecture are welcomed to join the networking reception at the end. Mr Graf would love to answer any additional questions. Since Faitron recently launched in Hongkong, Mr Graf is looking for opinions for the mainland market. This is a great opportunity for exciting discussions.

We call it the invisible growth of technology because many people are not aware of what happens to the food industrial chain. We are currently going over food 2.0, transforming the way we eat and make food more sustainable, innovative, wholesome and responsible.

The movement of food 2.0 started for three reasons. First, the majority of diets focuses on meat, which uses up a lot of resources. For example, producing a pound of beef consumes 16 times more energy than a pound of grain and requires up to 100 times more water.

Second, animal brutality and its consequences: to make more profit, factories use all means to reduce costs and increase unit output. Animals are almost always stored in tiny spaces with bars limiting their movements, forcing them to eat, sleep, and repeat. In addition, the extensive use of various antibiotics is problematic, for it will eventually be passed on to humans. Finally, once an infectious disease breaks out, all the animals in the farm must be culled. Recently, more than 100 million pigs died to a swine fever epidemic and it is still on going.

Finally, in terms of nutrition and health care, reserches have shown that in general cases, plant proteins are healthier than red or white meat.

Above all, many startups have attempted to develop new ingredients or processing methods to replace animal proteins with plant proteins. One example is the startup Impossible Food – its impossible burger received favourable reviews for tasting like beef.

Likewise, in Switzerland, ETH Zurich is working with companies such as Nestlé to launch its future food initiatives. The aim is to train students to address the challenges of sustainable food supply by researching and developing high quality, healthy and cheap food.

 

 

Rundown

 

18:00-18:30                 Registration

 

18:30-18:35                  Welcome Speech

 

18:35-19:15                  Presentation
by Mr Fabian Graf, Co-founder and CEO OF Faitron

 

19:15-19:35                  Q&A Session

 

19:35-20:30                Networking Reception