Lab-grown meat: Order up!

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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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

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,

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 still a big turn off. So his 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 feature produces, it's like, oh, well,

ask you're not to go bonkers for this. Well, apparently 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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. 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. 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 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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.

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 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, 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, 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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,

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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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.

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

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. Does it, how stuff works, dot com, m