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Imagine the inside of a laboratory.
Men and women in white lab coats bend over long tables.
One woman is working over a small plastic dish.
She takes a small container of liquid and empties it into the dish.
Then, she squeezes several drops of a different liquid from a long tube.
She seals the dish, and places it in a container with several more dishes.
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Six weeks pass.
The dishes sit in their container.
But inside the dishes, something is happening.
Slowly, a red substance starts to grow.
By the end of the six weeks, it fills the dish.
It looks like a hamburger!
But does it taste like one?
The woman returns to the laboratory and chooses one dish.
She brings it into a kitchen and places the substance on a hot pan.
Once it is brown, she puts it between two pieces of bread.
Then, she takes a big bite!
This may seem like something from a futuristic film.
But the woman has just taken her first bite of lab-grown, or in vitro, meat.
Many people think this new technology
can help solve many problems in the world of meat production.
But will people really eat it?
Today’s Spotlight is on in vitro meat.
Many people around the world love meat.
People eat pigs, chicken, cows, goats, and many other animals.
Meat is an important part of the world’s diet.
For some, meals with meat are important to who they are.
Many regional foods depend on meat for their uniqueness.
But there is also a big problem with meat.
Raising animals takes up a lot of space, food, and water.
And the global population is increasing.
As more people come to live on the earth, they will demand more meat.
But the earth may not have enough space to keep these animals.
Raising livestock animals also has a serious effect on climate change.
Some animals, like cows, goats, and sheep, have special stomachs.
These stomachs allow them to eat foods that are very hard to digest, like grasses and leaves.
But digesting these foods produces a lot of methane gas.
Methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas.
It traps 20 times more heat than carbon dioxide.
And the global meat industry is responsible for 30 percent of the world’s methane production!
If the world continues to produce meat like this, it could be very bad for the environment.
For some people, growing meat in laboratories may be the solution to this problem.
Meat grown with this method is usually called cultured meat, lab-grown meat, or in vitro meat.
To make in vitro meat, all a scientist needs is a few cells from an animal’s muscle.
They put these cells in a special environment.
Then, they add nutrients, and chemicals called hormones.
These chemicals cause the cells to grow.
The process does require some things from animals.
But a few cells from a cow could grow thousands of pounds of beef.
It is much more efficient than raising livestock and it does not produce methane.
Liz Specht is the director of science and technology at the Good Food Institute.
She spoke to the website GEN.
“Cultured meat could address all the problems related to industrial meat production.
It addresses environmental impacts and concerns about treating animals well.
It stops the risks of getting diseases from animals.
It can do all this while making sure there is a production system
to meet the growth in demand for animal protein.”
For people like Specht, in vitro meat could solve many of our problems.
But the technology for in vitro meat is still very new.
And it is still very expensive.
Mark Post is a Dutch scientist.
He was the first person to make a lab-grown hamburger in 2013.
It was made from cow cells.
The hamburger was very expensive to make.
It cost 325,000 dollars!
And it took three months to grow.
Today, the process is much faster.
Good Meats is a company that has started growing in vitro chicken.
Their chicken only takes two weeks to produce.
But a meal of this chicken will cost about 17 dollars.
The process also may not be as environmentally friendly as people thought.
Growing in vitro meat uses a lot of energy.
Some of this energy will come from burning fossil fuels.
This releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere.
And it lasts in the atmosphere longer than methane.
So, many people say it is worse for the planet in the long-term.
Growing in vitro meat may also cause a lot of waste.
This is because cell cultures must be sterile.
They must be free of any bacteria.
Otherwise, other things will grow, and ruin the meat.
These sterile containers also create a lot of plastic waste.
And there is already a problem of too much plastic waste in the environment.
But the biggest question about in vitro meat might be: will people eat it?
Many people do not trust food grown in a lab.
In vitro meat may seem unnatural.
Or people might fear that it will somehow affect their bodies in a bad way.
And in vitro meat also does not taste like meat from animals.
It does not have fat, only muscle.
Fat must be added later, and the taste is still not quite the same.
Still, in vitro meat is coming.
Today, it is available in very few places.
But dozens of companies are working on their meat growing methods.
Companies have invested billions of dollars in this research.
And many people believe that it is the protein of the future.
Josh Tetrick is the CEO of Eat Just, which grows in vitro chicken.
He told the website CNET
“I want tens of thousands of restaurants to have cultured meat on their menu.
Then, at some point,
I want them to ask their chefs, ‘why do we have conventional chicken on the menu, too?’”
Would you eat in vitro meat?
Why, or why not?
You can leave a comment on our website at www.spotlightenglish.com.
You can also find us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
The writer of this program was Dan Christmann.
The producer was Michio Ozaki.
The voices you heard were from United Kingdom and the United States.
All quotes were adapted for this program and voiced by Spotlight.
This program is called: The Future of Meat.
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