Team:UM Macau/Implementation
Implementation
Preface
Beer is popular in our daily life. Beer consumers are often concerned about the risk of getting gout from excessive drinking. While for both brewery and beer consumers, the shelf-life of the beer is also an important factor to consider and flavor stability is one of the biggest shelf-life concerns in beer. From the questionnaire we released, according to the 164 respondents, 51.8% of them like to drink beer. But 13% of those who like to drink beer can not drink it because of health concerns. And in another question where "10" means "very familiar with the high content of purine in beer would lead to the rise of uric acid content in the blood, thereby increasing the risk of gout", and "0" means "not at all familiar", the average score we got from our respondents is 5.64. This indicates that people are quite aware of the gout problem caused by excessive beer drinking. Moreover, 81.71% of all the respondents are concerned about the taste when choosing a beer.
Figure 1
Target Users
Our target users are the people who consume beer and beer industry practitioners. Our modified yeast with the genes of interest can produce beer with low purine content to decrease the risk of suffering from gout. Also, the beer is antioxidative to keep the taste with an extended storage time.
Nowadays, the consumption of beer covers a wide range of age groups, no matter in a party or other social events, beer is indispensable. According to the Macau SAR government, bars in Macau spent more than USD29 million on purchases of alcohol in 2019. The relatively high purine content in the beer would lead people to gout. The more the beer intake, the higher risk of suffering. Healthy beer will play an important role in these situations. Therefore, the people who consume beer are our target users.
The will of the people is vital to the beer industry. The beer industry will try to make beer with characteristics people prefer for better marketing. Thus, people’s demand for beer with good flavor and healthier will promote the beer industry to have corresponding actions. That’s why the beer industry practitioners are also our target users. Moreover, the storage time of the beer is also a factor that the beer industry concerns about. The longer the beer can be stored, the less it will be lost as it deteriorates while storing for sale.
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Figure 2: Macau local brewery |
Figure 3: Macau Bar |
Safety Concern
Biological leakage is a major concern for our products. If our project is successful and permitted to real industrial production, we will remove our genetically modified yeast by filtration before our products are packed and sealed. The complete removal of the modified yeast will prevent them from being released to the environment.
For the food safety aspect, according to the content of the food safety risk assessment released by the Macau government, our products need to pass the food safety risk assessment before production and selling. Food safety risk assessment refers to the scientific assessment of the possibility and risk degree of biological, chemical, and physical hazards in food causing adverse effects on human health. It consists of four steps: determining the hazards in food (hazard identification), analyzing the characteristics of hazards (hazard characterization), estimating the level of hazards in population intake (exposure assessment), and analyzing the characteristics of food risks (risk characterization).
Challenge
The beer we are making is a product of gene-modified organisms, which might be a new word for some customers. There is one question in our questionnaire, "10" means "very familiar with gene editing", and "0" means "not at all familiar with gene editing". Respondents need to choose the corresponding score according to their own situation. The 164 people surveyed scored an average of 3.21, indicating a relatively low level of knowledge about gene editing. People may not try something that they are not familiar with. Therefore, the strangeness and apprehension of gene-modified organisms’ products are one of the main challenges in marketing our products to target users. Besides letting the target users know the benefits of our beer, dispelling their concerns about genetically modified organisms (GMO) products is also a challenge we need to face so that our products can have a better development.