I'm on a mission to live a more sustainable life so far I've looked to
the future of my fridge but now it's time to dig a little bit deeper and look
specifically at meat
it looks like meat and apparently it tastes like meat but instead of grazing
open pastures this stuff was grown in a lab cultured meat could be produced with
up to 96 percent lower greenhouse gas emissions 45% less lucid energy 99
percent lower land use and 96 percent less water than making conventional meat
the world's first cultured burger was created here back in 2013 and they are
changing the shape of the future first a small biopsy is taken from the muscle of
an animal in the case of our hamburger it's a cow technicians will then dissect
the tissue and extract Myo satellite cells which are muscle stem cells these
are cultured by placing them in a growth solution containing amino acids and
carbohydrates and are allowed to grow just as they would inside an animal the
trillions of newly grown muscle cells naturally merge to form my own tubes
tiny muscle fibers which have been placed in ring of gel that acts a bit
like scaffolding for the developing tissue the muscle cells natural
inclination to be tracked causes them to start 40 in bulk and will eventually
grow into smooth that can be layered together molded into
a hamburger there are some people who will find the idea of making meat in a
laboratory a little bit of Frankenstein like to sci-fi for them to handle yeah
what do you think to that yeah of course it's it's totally new so people would
think different things then and ask now here so yeah I think they just need to
try then to see if they like it it's it's like real meat has anyone tasted it
yeah a few people how expensive those burgers that must have been the most
expensive burger ever meant yes yeah 250,000 euros for one hamburger and like
maybe four six seven people based from it two hundred and fifty thousand euros
yeah but one burger and seven people got to try it yeah around that so do they
have a ketchup tomato sauce I'm taking us on a hamburger made like a hamburger
on that I'm Brad that okay does the process require genetic modification at
all no no no no we don't do any genetic modification okay we just want to have
the stem cell from the muscle and we let it do what it can do and that's it
Wow and thank you so much for letting us see this no problem would you eat it
yeah would you well cultured meat truly is fascinating but part of me wonders if
it's ethical we talked to Professor Julien's a burlesque about his paper on
this
they're number of problems currently with in vitro meat firstly the cost it's
about nine times more expensive at the moment secondly their safety the the
meat has to be grown from stem cells on a fetal layer and theoretically there
are problems with infection it could also change the way we view animals and
our relationship with animals it could instrumentalize further the
view that animals are just there to produce meat and and lastly
philosophically it raises this deep issue that it will radically reduce the
number of animals there won't be twenty billion domesticated animals they'll be
far fewer it could you know further industrialize the whole process of meat
production a little bit like the pharmaceutical industry is
industrialized the production of medicinal substances it could also have
massive advantages to climate change and use of resources it could be much more
efficient than factory farming and thirdly it could be much better for
human beings because it's more efficient you could feed more humans and
potentially you could make the product much healthier than current meat
alternatives well that certainly gives us some food for thought as to what the
future of lab-grown meat might look like here they've just got a tiny hamburger
patty that I didn't get to try but does it stop there
the next nature network in Amsterdam have done a lot of research into this so
much so they've even written a cultured meat cookbook I don't know how I feel
about this yet but I'm going to find out
you have taken that idea of cultured meat and you've gone that one step
further and you're thinking about the possibilities what could that mean in
the future why deliberately indeed because when I stepped into this space
I saw scientists working on while growing meat without having to slaughter
an animal and it's more sustainable more animal friendly it's it's promising but
they were making the same burgers and sausage that we already know they scare
in front of us some of the result of the meet the future project took me through
some of these and I'm going to start with this one in this is the knitted
meat indeed the knitted meat if it's too difficult to 3d print an entire steak
but you could make thin threads and yeah you might have this future habit in the
kitchen that you are knitting the meat and then you can knit your yeah mistake
I want to talk about these two here so this is supposed to be bowling well you
we envision that you would 3d print a bone marrow egg which done also you put
in a soup and it gives this nice meaty flavor into your soup this one is
similar but also different these are the bone utensils if you eat meat and you
know some to eat from the bone it's this primitive feeling of eating meat
okay there's the other kind of yeah what's the what's the idea behind it
these are the celebrity cubes so here the idea is that yes you can make meat
from cells of a pig a chicken a cow okay but human cells you can technically you
can do it so if Justin Bieber Lady gaga Usain Bolt if they're willing to donate
some cells we could grow them into a nice snack that's terrifying the thought
that actually technically we could do that
yes culture human meat yes because it has this association with cannibalism
yeah that we don't want to go there no but then again yeah yeah you're not
hurting anyone you just get take take a few cells and
then it grows so I think also this shows that the new technology forces us to
take our position again to have a new philosophical position towards yeah
what's the ethics what's the new morality with the new technology
but perhaps there's a much simpler solution I'm visiting the center of
alternative technology in Wales to meet an Owen and discuss meat alternatives do
you think for us to live a sustainable future we have to cut meat out maybe we
are eating too much meat maybe we don't need to eat meat stop eating meat all
together but we can just eat less meat okay a little bit like in the 50s where
meat was a treat and you had it for a Sunday roast yeah you have beans yes why
why are there great alternatives to me because they are so versatile I mean
look at it on a nutritious level as well yes so they are high in protein but also
fiber yeah so they will help fill you up and they're a good source of carbs good
source of complex carbohydrates and what about growing them is that something
that anyone can do yes absolutely yeah easy-peasy why could I do it in a
windowsill could I grow them yes you can grow them because there are varieties
that favor is short and you've got varieties that will go up a wall so you
take your pick you know versatile and there's gonna be
a being out there for you absolutely what do we have here well it looks like
we've got a hummus which is most likely made from far for beans fava bean hummus
okay and this I think is a is a guacamole made out of peas yes not your
usual mushy peas no okay right I'm gonna taste this see how it is very good and
what you've got here is a chili with what looks like butter beans but it's
served on a bed of quinoa now this quinoa is also grown here in
the UK if you think you're feeling sustainably
and you're gonna cut meat because you want to eat more sustainably then it's a
good idea to also become a little bit of a locavore which means that you dry need
local a lot local for a locavore what is this one here well that is a
pudding it's a chocolate mousse and fluffiness in there
it's been created by using the cooking water of the bob latta vein that is
flaps really that's really good how so this actually this is a pudding that's
quite high in protein as well there in that case yeah and the old calorie I
would imagine if I could replace all the meat in my diet with that chocolate
pudding I'd be happy that's my favorite alternative so there you go we've won
you over
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