TORONTO — Ahead of Earth Day, NotCo has leveraged AI to raise awareness of the disparity between how long animals live in nature and how long they live within the conventional food system as part of its new provocative campaign.
The images intend to educate and expose a general lack of understanding about natural animal lifespans, including that cows can live up to 49 years, pigs up to 23 years and chickens up to 13 years in the wild. By contrast, animals caught in the current food system live just a few months and in some cases, only a few days. The images will be on display at Toronto’s Dundas Square until April 22.
NotCo’s campaign comes on the heels of the company announcing it’s now a Certified B Corporation. B Corp is a global movement of companies pushing for high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability. NotCo’s B Corp Certification applies to all its products in Canada, including NotMilk, NotBurger, NotChicken, as well as products like NotMeat, NotIceCream and NotMayo in countries including the U.S., Brazil, Argentine, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Paraguay.
NotCo’s patented AI, Guiseppe, analyzes the structure of animal-derived food at a molecular level to replicate the flavour, texture, functionality and smell using only plants.
“At NotCo, we’re already collaborating with our patented AI to create remarkably delicious plant-based foods that taste identical to animal-based foods as a way to build a better future for our planet,” says Fernando Machado, global CMO for NotCo. “To further shine a light on what a better future could look like, we turned to AI again – because right now animals like cows, pigs, and chickens that are grown for food only live a fraction of their natural lifespans. We hope this sparks a larger conversation about how we can all do our part to create a better future together – for ourselves, our planet, and the animals.”
“At NotCo, we believe AI is the key to unlocking a bright new future of food because it has the ability to eliminate our reliance on animal-based food production,” says NotCo co-founder and CEO, Matias Muchnick. “We asked ourselves a simple question, ‘When was the last time we saw an old cow – have we actually ever seen one?’ The answer was no, so we turned to a different type of AI to give us an accurate look. We were astonished with what we saw and think people will be too.”
