January 20, 2018 • 26 mins
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
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's s
Y s K Selectum choosing Uh the episode on lab
grown meat. It first aired in December two, twelve, UM,
and it's good to check in on these things. We've
made some progress in the field, true, but we still
have a very long way to go before there's a
lab grown slab of meat in every pot in every
(00:22):
house in America. So let's step it up, people. Uh,
and also keep an ear out for goodbre four Gas.
Such an excellent name. It actually rivals Ganto genev as
the possible future name for my horse. Uh. Enjoy. Welcome
to Stuff You Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
(00:51):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me
as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Um. This
here is Stuff should Know the podcast. Welcome bien venue,
Bill Coleman. What is that from the producers? I don't know.
(01:11):
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 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
(01:34):
grown meat. What a great one to punch. Jerry's giggling.
We are talking lab grown meat, man, We're talking about
possibly the future of 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
(01:55):
get to a second. Let's flash forward by flashing back
to two thousand eight when Peter the People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals and 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
(02:18):
and within in ten states by June twenty thousand twelve.
That didn't happen. No, it didn't happen. But Peter is
very excited because they said in 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?
(02:39):
I believe it was a guy named Gabor four gacks. Yeah,
that's a funny name, but he is one of the
leaders in the lab grown meat. He's basically one of two.
There is a Bill Gates and the Steve Jobs in
the in vitro meat game and Gibor four Gacks. I
take it as the Steve Jobs. Yeah. He's from the
(03:01):
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 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.
(03:21):
Yeah is that another one? No, I just made it.
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, like just sticking his head in the door
and saying a robo cow. Um. So anyway, Modern Meadows
is his company, and their aim is to get this
stuff tasty enough and cheap enough to make it a
(03:44):
viable solution for either people who want to eat meat
but have reasons to not, or to help solve the
impending hunger crisis. Not impending it's kind of already here. Uh.
And apparently it may not have been four gack, so
it could have been. I don't know, but four gas
definitely did a taste test himself earlier in two In
(04:06):
two thousand eleven, Um he went to a ted Med
conference and talked about his synthetic meat and then eight
some on stage, which is kind of weird because it's like, 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
(04:27):
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 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
(04:47):
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 You Diversity um
which is in the Netherlands. Right, It's like these two
universities get their researchers swapped smart Post is in the
Netherlands and get more four gases and when University Missouri
(05:12):
maybe they did an exchange program or something. So Post
is a vascular physiologist and he and they say that
they're not competing. No, And if you look at their
their stuff, they're coming up with two very different means
to the same end eventually. But who knows, maybe their friends.
I would imagine that's a pretty small community, the synthetic
(05:34):
meat community. Yeah, they're probably on each other speed dial,
I bet right. 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 impact a breakthrough, a
real breakthrough. And by breakthrough, it was like you were
saying four gacks said like, you have to get it cheap,
you have to get it tasty, and then you have
(05:55):
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, 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
(06:17):
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 by quote, we shall escape the absurdity
of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the
breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a
suitable medium. And he was off roughly by twenty years man,
(06:41):
you know, and he may have met like mass produced,
like we'd be doing that by then in fifty years
in two thousand one, twenty years after his prediction, UM
or the deadline of his prediction. UM A guy from
UM two or O College. I've never heard of them,
New York Toro College, t U r oh never heard
(07:03):
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. Yeah, it was pretty bad for
the goldfish, and then thrown into a vat of nutrient
rich fetal bovine serum, which is wow. I wonder why
(07:27):
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 goals. She brought it
into his little plastic bag and instead of eating it
live for his fraternity prank, he grew some more. He
actually grew fourteen percent more. Yeah, um of what was
(07:49):
what he put into this fetal bovine serum? The cells divided, yep,
they he They were live, which is big, but the
serum coaxed it in, continuing to divid ed and again
formed four more mass than was originally introduced, more mass
or did you write this? No? This is Patrick Kiger,
as Patrick puts it, worth of additional flesh on the chunks. Yeah,
(08:14):
I like your like mass better than flesh on the chunks.
Flesh on the chunks is good. It's a band name. Yes,
So this guy has this bit and he's like, holy cow,
it worked, let's eat it. So he tried to. He
started to fried up with a bit of lemon olive
oil and garlic and pepper, right yeah, it makes great sense,
(08:37):
and no one would eat it. I would have tried it.
I would have to. Actually, I don't know if I
would have tried goldfish, if it would have been something else,
the goldfish is still a big turn off. So his
(09:16):
initial thought was 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 nature produces, it's like, oh, well,
astronauts will go bonkers for this. Well, apparently Benjamin said
(09:40):
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 Americans Society for
(10:00):
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. When 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,
(10:21):
a live, sentient animal, suffered and died so that you
could eat it and still eat it. Man. That's like,
that's the bonanza right there. It is for at least
for people who object to eating meat for out of
cruelty and still want to eat meat, object on the
grounds of cruelty to write to eating meat. Um. In
(10:45):
two thousand and eight in Norway they had a conference
the first time ever on testued 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 are about thirty different
(11:05):
research teams working on this. But like we said, I
get the feeling that post in igor what was his name?
Good four gags are definitely a deleting edge. Um. And
I did a little calculating here, Chuck, if if you
don't mind, I found how much it costs in Illinois
in two thousand seven to raise a pound of beef
(11:28):
and it was something like sixty five cents a pound, right, which, um,
that's how much it costs to raise it Right about now,
it's about two eight eight a pound for ground beef retail.
It'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
(11:51):
of the envelope kind of stuff. Um, if if you
took that five thousand dollars a ton um in vitro
meat figure and that's how much it costom 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
(12:14):
paying that much for filet, right, Uh well, yeah, if
this were marketed correctly, it would seem even cooler than filet,
and people see it tasted good. 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,
(12:36):
there's probably a handful of people in the world who
could differentiate the taste of kobe beef from other beef. Yeah, exactly.
Even like really renowned restaurants are serving what they call
kobe beef for a lot of money. It's not Kobaby
is messed up it 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
(12:57):
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,
but in lobster, one of those where they usually don't
say market price on the menu, isn't usually like just
straight up 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
(13:18):
was high. I wonder if you could come in with
some numbers and say, no, no, no, that's not market price.
Apparently you can argue with just about anybody really. Yeah,
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 of lobsters, Like we don't want them to
go to waste. Julie of stuff to blow your mind. No,
(13:42):
Julie Smith, Oh okay, yeah, a producer, Yeah you have
TV um. Yes, 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 little there's synthetic lobster. It's actually cod right. Oh
(14:02):
the that' sementation crab meat. Yeah, that's not synthetic though,
it's imitation. Yeah, imitation a big difference. Alright. 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
(14:23):
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. 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
(14:43):
is because it's missing a lot of essential ingredients to meat,
like blood, blood uh fat, yeah, blood veins, And it's
sent as muscle cells, but muscle fibers are 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,
(15:06):
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 why I was
thinking about it. I think I wanted a steak because
I was thinking about a steak and I thought too
hard and all of a sudden realized what a steak was. Um.
(15:27):
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 ideas that modern meadows using is to
use a three D printer to spray what they call
(15:47):
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 hear about Japan's photo booth. They they're
opening the world's first three D printing photo booth. So
you go in and you come out with like a
(16:08):
little statue of you or you and your your lady
and yeah, yeah, I would do that totally. I don't know,
but I would guess a lot. It's sort of like
in vitro meat. Alright, So what are the other hurdles here? Um,
it's tricky, like you said, it's it's a a mix
(16:29):
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 just
(16:49):
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 grand Yeah,
but he's looking for a celebrity chef to cook it.
Kind of drum up business and gabore um fo gas Right,
(17:11):
that's his last name, four gack four gack Um. He
was saying his modern Meadows stuff would be between umte
a d eighty bucks a pound, right, which like you said,
is competitive with Kobe. Yeah. And and that's four Gacks
sees this as he I don't think he sees it
as like, hey, this is gonna be the everyday solution.
(17:31):
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 building,
(17:52):
a hamburger building like a pork top or something like that. Right.
He was saying, probably the first stuff that we're gonna
see is going to be like flower and he pointed
out in this one CNN article we read like you
don't eat flour 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 instead of taking
(18:17):
a chicken and chopping it up and then using it
in that pete. 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,
one of which is uh not, the least of which
(18:39):
is that lab grown meat would have about seventy eight
fewer greenhouse gasses, less land obviously, eighty two to ninety
six percent less water, and eight of the world's greenhouse
emissions come from the livestock sector right now. And you
know from what well, gas and and gas yeah, two
(19:03):
types of gas. Yeah, like we have a methane problem
from cow poop and gas and then all the gas
used to you know, obviously take care of the industry.
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 acent efficiency. Because what do you do
in chuck when you like, feed something something? Right, you take, um,
(19:28):
you take the energy found in a plant and feed
it to an animals. It's energy transfer, but you lose apparently,
and you're thinking, um, with lab grown meat, the energy
efficiency will be like, that's awesome, and some of the
other costs. To grow a pound of beef regular beef
necessitates gallons of water, twelve pounds of grain, thirty five
(19:50):
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 standing for meeting meat because of
the animal cruelty aspect um. You have a lot of
people saying it's just socially irresponsible to eat meat. Um.
And then you have people who, um, well, I guess
(20:12):
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 going to appeal
to hurt at all, there no, no, no, um. But
you were saying like that this this the environment or
ecological consumption that it takes to create a pound of meat.
Apparently they think that meat production is going to have
(20:34):
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 they're thinking
that meat is going to get in higher demand. Not
enough land right like right now, I think it's said
(20:55):
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
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 ye until this is but as the price
(21:17):
of meat rises, the economic sensibility of lab grown meat
will become more viable. Yeah, you know true, because I mean,
right now, one of the things is so cost prohibitive
aside from the fact that it looks like calamari and
it tastes plan Yeah, they said it potentially could be
healthier to UM. Jason Matheny, director of New Harvest. It's
(21:39):
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,
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,
you gotta have fat, and then you just got to
(22:00):
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
the big lesson is to not call it something like
soil and green modern meadows is perfect. Yeah. I wonder
(22:20):
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
see what it tasted like. But I don't know. It
sounds kind of gross to me. I would. I would try,
But a lot of people say that eating meat is gross. Year.
(22:42):
So before you send in those emails, let me cut
you off. I understand that. Good go and chuck uh.
(23:15):
If you want to learn more about 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 them top navigation bar. Innovations is one of
the channels that we have to click on that or
you can just search for lab Grown meet in the
(23:36):
handy search part how stuff works. And I said handy
search part, which means it's time for listener mail, Josh
when we call this mentor ship email. UM, Hi guys,
my name is Colin and I've been listening to you
guys since the biking 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
(23:59):
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 can pile 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
(24:20):
dictionary 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 thanks
to you. Keep on doing what you're doing. It's great.
(24:41):
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, and
so all you need to do is ask, yeah, way
did you go? Well, you have to ask any excel
at school because of us. Yes, and he says, feel
free to mention my name if you find this worth
mentioning in. Yes, I did say, y'all because I'm from
text Is and everyone from Texas is required to inform
(25:03):
everyone else that they're from Texas. That's true, is it? Oh? Yeah,
all right, well Colin from Texas. Good luck with your mentorship, buddy.
And uh, I think it's a marketing he said, and
drop us the line. Let's so 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. Huh sure, And you
(25:25):
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
(25:47):
can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast,
you can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
you Should Know, and you can send us a good
old fashioned email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how Stuff Works dot com. H
Hey, everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's s
Y s K Selectum choosing Uh the episode on lab
grown meat. It first aired in December two, twelve, UM,
and it's good to check in on these things. We've
made some progress in the field, true, but we still
have a very long way to go before there's a
lab grown slab of meat in every pot in every
(00:22):
house in America. So let's step it up, people. Uh,
and also keep an ear out for goodbre four Gas.
Such an excellent name. It actually rivals Ganto genev as
the possible future name for my horse. Uh. Enjoy. Welcome
to Stuff You Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
(00:51):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me
as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Um. This
here is Stuff should Know the podcast. Welcome bien venue,
Bill Coleman. What is that from the producers? I don't know.
(01:11):
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 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
(01:34):
grown meat. What a great one to punch. Jerry's giggling.
We are talking lab grown meat, man, We're talking about
possibly the future of 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
(01:55):
get to a second. Let's flash forward by flashing back
to two thousand eight when Peter the People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals and 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
(02:18):
and within in ten states by June twenty thousand twelve.
That didn't happen. No, it didn't happen. But Peter is
very excited because they said in 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?
(02:39):
I believe it was a guy named Gabor four gacks. Yeah,
that's a funny name, but he is one of the
leaders in the lab grown meat. He's basically one of two.
There is a Bill Gates and the Steve Jobs in
the in vitro meat game and Gibor four Gacks. I
take it as the Steve Jobs. Yeah. He's from the
(03:01):
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 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.
(03:21):
Yeah is that another one? No, I just made it.
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, like just sticking his head in the door
and saying a robo cow. Um. So anyway, Modern Meadows
is his company, and their aim is to get this
stuff tasty enough and cheap enough to make it a
(03:44):
viable solution for either people who want to eat meat
but have reasons to not, or to help solve the
impending hunger crisis. Not impending it's kind of already here. Uh.
And apparently it may not have been four gack, so
it could have been. I don't know, but four gas
definitely did a taste test himself earlier in two In
(04:06):
two thousand eleven, Um he went to a ted Med
conference and talked about his synthetic meat and then eight
some on stage, which is kind of weird because it's like, 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
(04:27):
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 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
(04:47):
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 You Diversity um
which is in the Netherlands. Right, It's like these two
universities get their researchers swapped smart Post is in the
Netherlands and get more four gases and when University Missouri
(05:12):
maybe they did an exchange program or something. So Post
is a vascular physiologist and he and they say that
they're not competing. No, And if you look at their
their stuff, they're coming up with two very different means
to the same end eventually. But who knows, maybe their friends.
I would imagine that's a pretty small community, the synthetic
(05:34):
meat community. Yeah, they're probably on each other speed dial,
I bet right. 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 impact a breakthrough, a
real breakthrough. And by breakthrough, it was like you were
saying four gacks said like, you have to get it cheap,
you have to get it tasty, and then you have
(05:55):
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, 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
(06:17):
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 by quote, we shall escape the absurdity
of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the
breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a
suitable medium. And he was off roughly by twenty years man,
(06:41):
you know, and he may have met like mass produced,
like we'd be doing that by then in fifty years
in two thousand one, twenty years after his prediction, UM
or the deadline of his prediction. UM A guy from
UM two or O College. I've never heard of them,
New York Toro College, t U r oh never heard
(07:03):
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. Yeah, it was pretty bad for
the goldfish, and then thrown into a vat of nutrient
rich fetal bovine serum, which is wow. I wonder why
(07:27):
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 goals. She brought it
into his little plastic bag and instead of eating it
live for his fraternity prank, he grew some more. He
actually grew fourteen percent more. Yeah, um of what was
(07:49):
what he put into this fetal bovine serum? The cells divided, yep,
they he They were live, which is big, but the
serum coaxed it in, continuing to divid ed and again
formed four more mass than was originally introduced, more mass
or did you write this? No? This is Patrick Kiger,
as Patrick puts it, worth of additional flesh on the chunks. Yeah,
(08:14):
I like your like mass better than flesh on the chunks.
Flesh on the chunks is good. It's a band name. Yes,
So this guy has this bit and he's like, holy cow,
it worked, let's eat it. So he tried to. He
started to fried up with a bit of lemon olive
oil and garlic and pepper, right yeah, it makes great sense,
(08:37):
and no one would eat it. I would have tried it.
I would have to. Actually, I don't know if I
would have tried goldfish, if it would have been something else,
the goldfish is still a big turn off. So his
(09:16):
initial thought was 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 nature produces, it's like, oh, well,
astronauts will go bonkers for this. Well, apparently Benjamin said
(09:40):
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 Americans Society for
(10:00):
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. When 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,
(10:21):
a live, sentient animal, suffered and died so that you
could eat it and still eat it. Man. That's like,
that's the bonanza right there. It is for at least
for people who object to eating meat for out of
cruelty and still want to eat meat, object on the
grounds of cruelty to write to eating meat. Um. In
(10:45):
two thousand and eight in Norway they had a conference
the first time ever on testued 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 are about thirty different
(11:05):
research teams working on this. But like we said, I
get the feeling that post in igor what was his name?
Good four gags are definitely a deleting edge. Um. And
I did a little calculating here, Chuck, if if you
don't mind, I found how much it costs in Illinois
in two thousand seven to raise a pound of beef
(11:28):
and it was something like sixty five cents a pound, right, which, um,
that's how much it costs to raise it Right about now,
it's about two eight eight a pound for ground beef retail.
It'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
(11:51):
of the envelope kind of stuff. Um, if if you
took that five thousand dollars a ton um in vitro
meat figure and that's how much it costom 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
(12:14):
paying that much for filet, right, Uh well, yeah, if
this were marketed correctly, it would seem even cooler than filet,
and people see it tasted good. 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,
(12:36):
there's probably a handful of people in the world who
could differentiate the taste of kobe beef from other beef. Yeah, exactly.
Even like really renowned restaurants are serving what they call
kobe beef for a lot of money. It's not Kobaby
is messed up it 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
(12:57):
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,
but in lobster, one of those where they usually don't
say market price on the menu, isn't usually like just
straight up 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
(13:18):
was high. I wonder if you could come in with
some numbers and say, no, no, no, that's not market price.
Apparently you can argue with just about anybody really. Yeah,
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 of lobsters, Like we don't want them to
go to waste. Julie of stuff to blow your mind. No,
(13:42):
Julie Smith, Oh okay, yeah, a producer, Yeah you have
TV um. Yes, 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 little there's synthetic lobster. It's actually cod right. Oh
(14:02):
the that' sementation crab meat. Yeah, that's not synthetic though,
it's imitation. Yeah, imitation a big difference. Alright. 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
(14:23):
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. 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
(14:43):
is because it's missing a lot of essential ingredients to meat,
like blood, blood uh fat, yeah, blood veins, And it's
sent as muscle cells, but muscle fibers are 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,
(15:06):
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 why I was
thinking about it. I think I wanted a steak because
I was thinking about a steak and I thought too
hard and all of a sudden realized what a steak was. Um.
(15:27):
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 ideas that modern meadows using is to
use a three D printer to spray what they call
(15:47):
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 hear about Japan's photo booth. They they're
opening the world's first three D printing photo booth. So
you go in and you come out with like a
(16:08):
little statue of you or you and your your lady
and yeah, yeah, I would do that totally. I don't know,
but I would guess a lot. It's sort of like
in vitro meat. Alright, So what are the other hurdles here? Um,
it's tricky, like you said, it's it's a a mix
(16:29):
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 just
(16:49):
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 grand Yeah,
but he's looking for a celebrity chef to cook it.
Kind of drum up business and gabore um fo gas Right,
(17:11):
that's his last name, four gack four gack Um. He
was saying his modern Meadows stuff would be between umte
a d eighty bucks a pound, right, which like you said,
is competitive with Kobe. Yeah. And and that's four Gacks
sees this as he I don't think he sees it
as like, hey, this is gonna be the everyday solution.
(17:31):
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 building,
(17:52):
a hamburger building like a pork top or something like that. Right.
He was saying, probably the first stuff that we're gonna
see is going to be like flower and he pointed
out in this one CNN article we read like you
don't eat flour 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 instead of taking
(18:17):
a chicken and chopping it up and then using it
in that pete. 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,
one of which is uh not, the least of which
(18:39):
is that lab grown meat would have about seventy eight
fewer greenhouse gasses, less land obviously, eighty two to ninety
six percent less water, and eight of the world's greenhouse
emissions come from the livestock sector right now. And you
know from what well, gas and and gas yeah, two
(19:03):
types of gas. Yeah, like we have a methane problem
from cow poop and gas and then all the gas
used to you know, obviously take care of the industry.
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 acent efficiency. Because what do you do
in chuck when you like, feed something something? Right, you take, um,
(19:28):
you take the energy found in a plant and feed
it to an animals. It's energy transfer, but you lose apparently,
and you're thinking, um, with lab grown meat, the energy
efficiency will be like, that's awesome, and some of the
other costs. To grow a pound of beef regular beef
necessitates gallons of water, twelve pounds of grain, thirty five
(19:50):
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 standing for meeting meat because of
the animal cruelty aspect um. You have a lot of
people saying it's just socially irresponsible to eat meat. Um.
And then you have people who, um, well, I guess
(20:12):
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 going to appeal
to hurt at all, there no, no, no, um. But
you were saying like that this this the environment or
ecological consumption that it takes to create a pound of meat.
Apparently they think that meat production is going to have
(20:34):
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 they're thinking
that meat is going to get in higher demand. Not
enough land right like right now, I think it's said
(20:55):
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
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 ye until this is but as the price
(21:17):
of meat rises, the economic sensibility of lab grown meat
will become more viable. Yeah, you know true, because I mean,
right now, one of the things is so cost prohibitive
aside from the fact that it looks like calamari and
it tastes plan Yeah, they said it potentially could be
healthier to UM. Jason Matheny, director of New Harvest. It's
(21:39):
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,
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,
you gotta have fat, and then you just got to
(22:00):
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
the big lesson is to not call it something like
soil and green modern meadows is perfect. Yeah. I wonder
(22:20):
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
see what it tasted like. But I don't know. It
sounds kind of gross to me. I would. I would try,
But a lot of people say that eating meat is gross. Year.
(22:42):
So before you send in those emails, let me cut
you off. I understand that. Good go and chuck uh.
(23:15):
If you want to learn more about 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 them top navigation bar. Innovations is one of
the channels that we have to click on that or
you can just search for lab Grown meet in the
(23:36):
handy search part how stuff works. And I said handy
search part, which means it's time for listener mail, Josh
when we call this mentor ship email. UM, Hi guys,
my name is Colin and I've been listening to you
guys since the biking 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
(23:59):
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 can pile 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
(24:20):
dictionary 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 thanks
to you. Keep on doing what you're doing. It's great.
(24:41):
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, and
so all you need to do is ask, yeah, way
did you go? Well, you have to ask any excel
at school because of us. Yes, and he says, feel
free to mention my name if you find this worth
mentioning in. Yes, I did say, y'all because I'm from
text Is and everyone from Texas is required to inform
(25:03):
everyone else that they're from Texas. That's true, is it? Oh? Yeah,
all right, well Colin from Texas. Good luck with your mentorship, buddy.
And uh, I think it's a marketing he said, and
drop us the line. Let's so 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. Huh sure, And you
(25:25):
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
(25:47):
can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast,
you can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
you Should Know, and you can send us a good
old fashioned email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
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