Lab-grown meat: Order up!

Since Winston Churchill predicted we'd grow meat in a lab by 1981, researchers have considered doing just that. And thanks to the current work of about 30 groups, we may be only years away from mass-produced artificial meat. But will anyone eat it?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark with me as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
and um this here is stuff you should know the podcast. Welcome,

(00:25):
bien venue, Bill Coleman. What is that from the producers?
I don't know. Cabaret? Is that from something? Yeah? I
think maybe cabaret. I've never seen it. I don't know.
I just just saying welcome in different languages. Um so
you're feeling good right now. I'm feeling better now that

(00:45):
we have gotten the Condom podcast out of the way.
I was a little bit uh sweaty oh yeah during
that one. Got me all worked up. Um So now
we can talk about lab grown meat. What a great
one two punch, Jerry just giggling. We are talking lab
grown meete man. We're talking about possibly the future of

(01:05):
humanity or what the future of humanity will eat. Um.
And this has kind of been a big thing ever
since two thousand one, which we'll get to a second.
Let's flash forward by flashing back to two eight when
Peter the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and

(01:26):
posted a one million dollar reward to the first researcher
that could come up with lab grown a K in
vitro a K a cultured meat that was commercially viable,
meaning it was for sale and within in ten states
by June two thousand twelve. That didn't happen. No, it

(01:47):
didn't happen. But Peter is very excited because they said
that October the first taste test of in vitro hamburger
took place. And I think we know who that was,
don't we? Was that the man? I believe it was
a guy named Gabor four Gas. Yeah, that's a funny name,
but he is one of the leaders in the lab

(02:10):
grown meat He's basically one of two. Yeah, there is
a Bill Gates and the Steve Jobs in the in
vitro meat game and Gibor four Ghacks. I take it
as the Steve Jobs. Yeah. He's from the University of
Missouri and he's a tissue engineering specialist and he has
a company called Modern Meadows. Great name, it's a It's

(02:32):
one of the better company names I've heard of in
my life. Yeah, it really fits. It's not too clever,
you know. I hate the ones that are too like
not a winkie you know, like robo cow. Yeah, is
that another one? No, I just made it up. Oh see,
that's awful. That's great. I channel my inner John Strickling.
That's very good. Um, this is I just pictured Strickling

(02:53):
like just sticking his head in the door and saying
a robo cow. Um. So anyway, Modern Meadows is his
kind company, and their aim is to get this stuff
tasty enough and cheap enough to make it a viable
solution for either people who want to eat meat but
have reasons to not, or to help solve the impending

(03:15):
hunger crisis. Not impending, it's kind of already here right. Uh.
And apparently it may not have been four gacks. It
could have been. I don't know, but four Gacks definitely
did a taste test himself earlier in two In two
thousand eleven, um, he went to a ted Med conference
and talked about his synthetic meat and then ate some
on stage, which is kind of weird because it's like,

(03:39):
but yeah, it's kind of weird. It's like, I mean,
I guess if you were like hawking hot dogs or something,
you would eat them in public. So that's not that odd.
And it seems at first blush. It's a little sounds
a little bit of a carnival barker, uh feel to
that though. They say that every great scientist is one
part BF Skinner, one part P. T. Barnum. Yeah, well

(03:59):
that's a principal Skinner said, oh yeah on the Simpsons. Yeah,
that's good. That's good saying though, like it. Yeah, um,
the other the Bill Gates or was that the Bill Gates?
I think four Gacks is Steve Jobs. Okay, so the
Bill Gates is Marquis Post from Night Court from TV's
Night Court. Oh no, Mark Post from my strict university UM,

(04:22):
which is in the Netherlands. Right, It's like these two
universities get their researchers swapped. Serious Mark Post is in
the Netherlands and get more. Four Gas is in the
University of Missouri. So maybe they did an exchange program
or something. So Post is a vascular physiologist and he
and they said that they're not competing, no, And if

(04:44):
you look at their their stuff, they're coming up with
two very different means to the same end eventually. But
who knows. Maybe they're friends. I would imagine that's a
pretty small community, the synthetic meat community. Yeah, they're probably
on each other speed dial, I bet, and they're supposedly
only about thirty groups working on this right now. But
what's what's mind boggling is just how much of an

(05:06):
impact a breakthrough, a real breakthrough. And by breakthrough, it
was like you were saying four Gas said like, you
have to get it cheap, and you have to get
it tasty, and then you have to get the public
to eat it. But how much of a real breakthrough
that would be. If someone were able to do that,
it would be tremendous, okay, and potentially solve a lot
of problems that are impending. So this idea is not new,

(05:29):
the idea of creating lab grown meat. The Churchill thing, Yeah,
you don't think that's exactly what we're talking about, Oh,
I guess so. Plus it's Winston Churchill. He's like one
of the coolest people of all time, that's true. Before
he was a prime minister, Churchill predicted that quote, we
shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in

(05:53):
order to eat the breast or wing by growing these
parts separately under a suitable medium. And he was off
roughly by twenty years, you know, and he may have
meant like mass produced, like we'd be doing that by then.
Fifty years in two thousand one, twenty years after his prediction,
UM or the deadline of his prediction. UM a guy

(06:16):
from um to O College. I've never heard of them.
I don't know New York Toro College t O U
r oh. I never heard of it either. Well. His
name is Morris Benjaminson. His dad's name is Benjamin Uh.
He came up with this idea to take gold fish
goldfish muscle cut fresh out of a live goldfish, which

(06:39):
is pretty bad for the goldfish, and then thrown into
a vat of nutrient rich fetal bovine serum, which is Wow.
I wonder why use goldfish? That's what I don't get.
Why didn't he use like talapia or something someone might
want to eat. I don't know. Maybe that was the
only thing that was handy. There was an office gold
he brought it into his little plastic bag. Wow, and

(07:01):
instead of eating it live for his fraternity prank, he
grew some more. He actually grew fourteen percent more. Yeah. Um,
of what was what he put into this fetal bovine serum?
The cells divided, yep, they they were live, which is big,
but the serum coaxed it and continuing to divide and

(07:22):
again formed four percent more mass than was originally introduced.
More mass or did you write this, No, this is
Patrick Kiger, As Patrick puts it, fourteen percent worth of
additional flesh on the chunks. Yeah, I like your like
mass better than flesh on the chunks. Flesh on the
chunks is good name. Yes. So this guy has this

(07:45):
bit and he's like, holy cow, it worked, let's eat it.
So he tried to. He started to fry it up
with a bit of lemon olive oil and garlic and pepper. Right, yeah,
it makes great sense, and no one would eat I
would have tried it. I would have to. Actually, I
don't know if I would have tried the gold fish,
if it would have been something else. The goldfish is

(08:06):
still a big turn off. So his initial thought was

(08:39):
this could be great for astronauts, um, if they could
eat goldfish or I guess fake meat out in space.
That was his original thought was astronaut used. Isn't that
what everybody thinks Whenever you think of something made in
the lab that normally feature produces, it's like, oh, well,
ask you're not to go bonkers for this. Well, apparently

(09:01):
Benjamin said had the same idea like you said. But
as news of this got out, Um Peter and other
animal rights organizations were like, whoa, whoa, wait, what did
you just do? We are full supporters of this idea,
because again People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the
American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. When

(09:25):
you eat a steak, when you eat um, pork or
bacon or ham, all these things come from an animals,
often lovable animal, but people still like to eat them.
People still get nutrients from So if you take the
idea that an animal, a live, sentient animal, suffered and

(09:47):
died so that you could eat it and still eat it, man,
that's like, that's the bonanza right there, for at least
for people who object to eating meat for out of
cruelty and still want to eat meat objecting on the
grounds of cruelty to write to eating me um. In
two thousand eight in Norway, they had a conference first

(10:09):
time ever on test duo meat, and they released a
study saying, you know what, we could potentially manufacture the
stuff for five thousand dollars a ton which would make
it competitive on an economic basis with real meat, um
by which is right now, they're about thirty different research
teams working on this. But like we said, I get

(10:30):
the feeling that post in igor what was his name,
good boar good four gags are definitely the leting edge. Um.
And I did a little calculating here, Chuck, if if
you don't mind, I found how much it cost in
Illinois in two thousand seven to raise a pound of
beef and it was something like sixty five cents a pound, right, which, Um,

(10:56):
that's how much it costs to raise it right about now,
it's about eight a pound for ground beef retail. That's
like a markup of like four point five times for
chuck or for or are we just talking? I'm just okay, yeah,
I'm just this is just rough back of the envelope
kind of stuff. Um. If if you took that five

(11:18):
thousand dollars a ton um in vitro meat figure and
that's how much a custom manufacturer, and then also did
that same four point five time mark up, you come
to about eleven dollars a pound, which is pretty competitive. Yeah,
because I mean think about it, you're paying that much
for filet, right. Uh, well, yeah, if this were marketed correctly,

(11:42):
it would seem even cooler than filet, and people see
it tasted kid. Yeah, And people pay a lot of
money for Kobe beef most times are not even getting
kobe beef. You know about that whole thing, right, It's
it's a big a lot of times it's a big scam.
I could see that because I mean, who knows, there's
probably a handful of people in the world could differentiate
the taste of kobe beef from other beef. Yeah, exactly,

(12:04):
even like really renowned restaurants are serving what they call
Kobe beef for a lot of money. It's not kobeb
is messed up. It is messed up. That's like a lobster. Lobster,
the price of lobster is like in the basement right
now in restaurants are still charging as much as ever
for it and making tons of money, and but the
lobster men are just getting like the short end of
the stick because there's a huge supply of them right now. Yeah,

(12:26):
but in lobster, one of those where they usually don't
say market price on the menu, isn't usually like just
straight up whatever it'll say market price even if it does,
and they're still charging you a bunch like what market
price used to be when the price of lobster actually
was high. I wonder if you could come in with
some numbers and say no, no no, no, that's not market price.
Apparently you can argue with just about anybody really. Yeah,

(12:48):
and and often when you know, our buddy Julie was
in Maine. She vacations in Maine some and she said
they're like given her lobsters on her last trip, like
here's twenty lobsters, Like we don't want them to go
to waste, Julie of stuff. Blow your mind, no, Julie
Smith O okay yeah our producer, Yeah you have TV um. Yes,

(13:10):
it's because there's like a huge boom in the lobster population. Yeah. Man,
I love a lobster roll. Boy. We got really off
track here, all right, see a little there's synthetic lobster.
It's actually cod right. Oh, the that's imitation crab meat. Yeah,
that's not synthetic though, it's imitation. Yeah, imitation, big difference. Alright.

(13:33):
So um, the Dutch team headed by Marquis Posts, they
are using cow stem cells to create this meat, So
they culture the stem cell little petrie dishes, put it
in a small container um to produce muscle cells. Sounds
kind of gross, and they form little small pieces of
muscle about two centimeters long, centimeter wide, and a millimeter thick.

(13:57):
And they say that it looks a little more like
calamari than any kind of a hamburger. And the taste
initially is pretty bland, right, And the reason the taste
is bland is because it's missing a lot of essential
ingredients to meat, like blood blood uh, fat, blood veins,
and it's such as muscle cells. But muscle fibers are

(14:17):
you're eating? And do you know that it was only
within the last couple of months that I realized meat
steak is muscle mass. That told me that you were
shocked back then, And I was like, what do you
think it was? I I hadn't really thought of it.
I thought it was its own thing, like there's fat
muscle meat and then steak. Yeah, like that's really what
I thought. And then I suddenly just I don't know

(14:40):
why I was thinking about it. I think I wanted
a steak, so I was thinking about a steak, and
I thought too hard and all of a sudden realized
what a steak was. Um. But yeah, so it's but
it's not just this muscle, it's muscle fibers, it's fat,
it's blood. It's like all this stuff comes together and
they're gonna have to really lick that before they can
make the stuff commercially viable. Absolutely. Um. One of the

(15:02):
ideas that modern meadows using is to use a three
D printer to spray what they call bio inc which
is muscle cells and stuff like that to build up
you know, they like spray many layers of the stuff
to build it up into like more viable meat option,
which is pretty cool. Three D printers pretty awesome to

(15:23):
hear about Japan's photo booth. They're opening the world's first
three D printing photo booth. So you go in and
you come out with like a little statue of you
or you and your your lady and yeah, yeah, I
would do that totally. One that cost I don't know,
but I would guess a lot. It's sort of like
in vitro meat. All right, So what are the other

(15:46):
hurdles here? Um, it's tricky, Like you said, it's it's
a a mix of fuel and salt, and minerals and hormones,
and this is just to grow the cells that are
healthy enough to survive. Like that's not even talking about
getting it to look like a steak or a hamburger patty,
because like you said, it's not just you know, it's
very complex a group of stuff in there. It's not

(16:11):
just like muscle and that's it. And uh, it's extremely
expensive right now. I think we were kind of touched upon.
But Mark Posts said that his his hamburger, the first
one that he would ever make, would cost about grande.
But he's looking for a celebrity chef to cook it.
Kind of drum up business and gabor Um fo gas right,

(16:32):
that's his last name, four gack four gack um. He
was saying his Modern Meadows stuff would be between umt
a d eighty bucks a pound, right, which like you said,
is competitive with Kobe. Yeah, and and that's four Gaxs
sees this as he I don't think he sees it
as like, hey, this is gonna be the everyday solution.

(16:53):
He sees it as a niche industry. Um. He also
said that his first product is more likely going to
be leather because it's not as regulated and it's a
little easier to accept us for the public at large. Um.
He also was saying that as far as creating food goes,
like we are imaginations immediately jumped to building a steak,

(17:14):
building a hamburger, building like a pork chop or something
like that. Right. He was saying, probably the first stuff
that we're gonna see is gonna be like flower And
he pointed out in this one CNN article we read
like you don't eat flour for flowers and like everything
that you eat. Um. And he was saying, like, this
will be stuff to create meatballs with or pete. It's like,

(17:37):
instead of taking a chicken and chopping it up and
then using it in that pett a, you would, you know,
use it although more as an ingredient rather than like
the steak on the plate. Exactly, at least for now
makes sense. Um. This could potentially be a great thing
for many reasons, uh, one of which is uh not,

(17:59):
the least of which is that lab grown meat would
have about seventy eight for your greenhouse gasses less land obviously,
eighty two to ninety six percent less water, and eight
percent of the world's greenhouse emissions come from the livestock
sector right now. And you know from what well, gas

(18:20):
and and gas, yeah, two types of gas. Yeah, like
have a methane problem from cow poop and gas and
then all the gas used to you know, obviously take
care of the industry. And plus it's also just a
lot more energy efficient. We use a hundred grams of
grain to produce fifteen grams of meat. That's a fifteen

(18:42):
percent efficiency, because what are you doing, chuck, when you
like feed something something, right, you take um, you take
the energy found in a plant and feed it to
an animals's energy transfer, but you lose apparently you're thinking um,
with lab grown meat, the energy fficiency will be like,
that's awesome. And some of the other costs. To grow

(19:04):
a pound of beef regular beef necessitatesallons of water, twelve
pounds of grain, thirty five pounds of top soil, and
the equivalent energy wise of one gallon of gas to
grow a pound of meat just one pound of ground beef. Right,
So you've got a lot of people abstinding for meeting
meat because of the animal cruelty aspect um. You have

(19:25):
a lot of people saying it's just socially irresponsible to
eat meat um, and then you have people who, um, well,
I guess that's it, right, that's the only reason people
don't eat me. Uh yeah, well people like my wife
who don't like the taste. Okay, well this is not
gonna appeal to hur at all. They're no, no, no, um.
But you were saying like that these this the environment

(19:48):
or ecological consumption that it takes to create a pound
of meat. Apparently they think that meat production is going
to have to um double in the next forty years
because of increasing incomes around the world. Typically, when your
GDP goes up, your consumption of meat goes through the roof,
and China and India are on the way up, and

(20:09):
they're thinking that meat is going to get in higher demand.
Not enough land, Like right now, I think it said
seventy of dry land on the earth is used for
either grazing or some factor of livestock. So like, what
are you gonna do there's not that much more land

(20:30):
left to just use for cattle. Well, what they would
do is the price of meat would just go up
and up and up. Yeah, it would just become more scarce.
I guess yeah, until this is but as the price
of meat rises the economic sensibility of lab grown meat
will become more viable. Yeah, you know, because I mean,
right now, one of the things that's so cost prohibitive,

(20:51):
aside from the fact that it looks like calamari and
it tastes plan Yeah, they said it potentially could be
healthier to UM. Jason Matheni, director of New Harvest. It's
a nonprofit research org, and they said that it would
have health advantages like UM because it's easier to control
pathogens and a lab and fat content could be systematically controlled,

(21:12):
making it healthier. Like we're gonna put this layer of
fat in with our three D printer because you need
the fat. That's where the lot of flavor comes from.
Definitely gotta have fat. And then you just got to
convince people once it gets cheap enough and tasty enough.
Like you said, the third hurdle is like eat fake
meat people, right, you'll like it, trust me. I think

(21:33):
the big lesson is to not call it something like
soil and green modern meadows is perfect. Yeah. I wonder
what posts the name of his group is. I didn't see,
did you. I don't know. I would taste this just
you know, if they I wouldn't pay three dollars for
a hamburger. But um, I would taste it just to

(21:53):
see what it tasted like. But I don't know. It
sounds kind of gross to me. I would would try it.
But a lot of people say that eating meat is
gross this year. So before you send in those emails,
let me cut you off. I understand that. Good, go
and chock. Uh. If you want to learn more about

(22:38):
lab grown meat or any kind of things like that,
you should check out the innovations channel on how Stuff Works.
It's pretty awesome. UM, go to how stuff Works homepage
and you will see in the top navigation bar Innovations
is one of the channels that we have. Click on that,
or you can just search for lab grown meat in
the handy search bar how stuff works And I said

(23:00):
andy search part, which means it's time for listener mail,
Josh and Canna call this mentor ship email. UM, Hi guys,
my name is Colin, and I've been listening to you
guys since the Viking episode. I've never really been diligent
with emails, but I always wanted to write in. I'm
in my senior year of high school and involved in
a class called Independent Study mentorship. This program works like

(23:20):
an internship for high school students. We're responsible for finding
a mentor in which ever career field we are interested in.
We do hands on work with our mentors, and throughout
the year we compile a portfolio that will eventually be
a binder filled not with women, but with everything we
take part in and research throughout the year. It will
end up about as thick as a good sized dictionary

(23:42):
or two. My whole reason for writing you, guys is
to thank you for doing the podcast. I've been able
to get by without research for about a dozen or
so topics for essays and projects because you guys usually
cover far more than my school curriculum does. Um. I've
even been moved up to several advanced classes. Wow, thanks
to you. Keep on doing what you're doing. It's great.

(24:03):
And if I happen to get a mention at the
end of an episode, I'd be pleasantly surprised. I've always
kind of wanted to mention. Here you go, Colin. That's
all you need to do is ask yeah, way to go? Well,
you have to ask an excel at school because of us. Yes,
And he says, feel free to mention my name if
you find this worth mentioning. And yes, I did say
y'all because I'm from Texas and everyone from Texas is

(24:23):
required to inform everyone else that they're from Texas. That's true?
Is it all right? Well Colin from Texas, good luck
with your mentorship, buddy. And uh, I think it's a
marketing he said, and drop his line. Let's know how
it went. Uh, that's awesome. Yeah. Uh, let's see what
do you want to ask for, Chuck? Oh, would you
eat in vitro meat? Let's let's get that debate going.

(24:46):
Huh sure, And you know what, We're gonna cover factory
farming because we got a lot of I got a
lot of heat because I went off on bull fighting
and a lot of vegetarian said, well, how can you
go off from bullfighting and eat meat? Um? So I'm
gonna make up for that by doing like a factory
farming podcast. Well that's great? Can I do it too?
You can sit in, You can tweet to us at

(25:11):
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Podcast at Discovery dot com for more on this and
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(25:35):
m