Speaker 1: If you're like me, you've been hearing a lot about cultivated meat. Meat that's produced from animal cells without actually having to kill the animal. And it seems to check all the boxes. It's better for the environment, it's better on your wallet and it's cruelty free. So I'm on a mission to find out more then. I can't believe bees are gonna be a burger that I'm going to be eating
Speaker 2: From the first animal cell all the way to the final. Chicken breast can all be produced under [00:00:30] one roof. This is what we think the future of meat and poultry and seafood production will be like.
Speaker 3: You're now one of probably the first couple hundred people in the world who's even cultivated beef.
Speaker 1: So cool. The fact that you can manipulate and edit this to exactly what you need, this is gonna revolutionize the food industry and I think the future of food. So my first stop is upside foods.
Speaker 4: Upside foods is the first company to receive FDA approval for [00:01:00] their cultivated chicken, meaning that their chicken is safe to eat. But safe to eat doesn't mean ready to sell. So you probably won't see it on your grocery store shelves anytime soon. But it's a good first step towards a future with cultivated meat.
Speaker 5: So here we have the upside cultivated chicken filet.
Speaker 1: It looks exactly like a normal piece of raw chicken. I can see the texture. It's shiny. I can't wait to see how it cooks. Ooh, [00:01:30] it certainly sounds the
Speaker 5: Same. It's gonna start shrinking like you would expect. Meat fibers too. So that contraction is really indicative of there being like animal protein and there's not something you necessarily get from plant-based. And then as I push down here, you can see that resistance and that bounce back of the muscle. And then when we flip it, you'll be able to see that nice
Speaker 1: Cru. I like caramelization. It's browning.
Speaker 5: And all of that is coming from this mayard reaction that's happening here, which is the browning of proteins. And that's what really gives you that meaty flavor. Meat, aroma, meaty taste.
Speaker 4: It only took upside foods three [00:02:00] weeks to grow this cultivated chicken breast I'm eating today. Compare that to the three months it takes for a full chicken to be raised and slaughtered. And the same production process can be applied to beef or pork. It takes two years for a young steer to be sent for slaughter. A pig needs nine to 12 months. That accelerated timeline means cultured meat production uses less resources like water feed, electricity, and transportation to produce similar farmers products.
Speaker 2: In the past we used to think meat is equal to animal. In the future, we'll think meat is equal to animal cell and there'll [00:02:30] be a larger variety of animal cell diversity we'll have than we'll have from animals. We think about low resource use, less greenhouse gas emissions, and all of that is minimized or eliminated in the cultivated meat process.
Speaker 5: There you go. Upside chicken.
Speaker 1: Amazing. Thank you. I can smell
Speaker 4: The notes
Speaker 1: And the caramelization and the kind of like the T of the browning.
Speaker 4: Before I taste cultured meat, [00:03:00] let's talk about what cultured meat is and why there's a sudden interest in producing lab grown meat. According to the epa, a single cow can produce as much as 250 pounds of methane gas in a single year. Researchers found that 37% of methane emissions from human activity are the direct result of our livestock and agricultural practices. Cultured or cultivated meat is animal meat that is produced directly from animal cells. Stem cells to be exact stem cells have the ability to become any type of cell and [00:03:30] regenerate indefinitely under the right conditions. So this extraction only needs to happen once because after the cells are transferred to storage, they will continue to regenerate forever.
Speaker 1: My mind is blown right now, like the texture is perfect. The juiciness is there like it is. Tender is the flavor profile is it's chicken. It's chicken. I can see the stringiness. It's pulling apart [00:04:00] very nicely. Like so flaky, so tender. I will eat this whole thing if you need me to <laugh>. Okay. I know a lot of people say things taste like chicken, but this actually does.
Speaker 4: But upside foods isn't alone in trying to create lab grown meat for market. The Good Food Institute a think tank working in alternative protein innovation estimates that there are more than 150 companies working on lab grown meat products with 2.6 billion in investments.
Speaker 1: Just to be clear, [00:04:30] cultured meat is not a meat substitute. If you're vegan, vegetarian, or are avoiding meat for religious reasons,
Speaker 4: Stakeholder foods. Another cultivated meat company is pioneering a technique that combines 3D printing technology with cultured meat where you can literally 3D print your own steak.
Speaker 1: Yes, I am ready for the meat of the future. What steak do I want? Do I want an entree coat? A pacaa, A sirloin. All right. We are gonna choose entree coat, which goes to take five to 10 minutes to print. I like a little bit leaner, so I'm gonna do 30% [00:05:00] fat portion, send it to print. The machine is printing between muscle cells and fat cells for the ideal marbling for my steak. And it's wild to see
Speaker 4: Though. The machine says the steak is going to be ready in about five minutes. It actually takes about two to three weeks for the steak to mature before we can eat it. The cells inside the 3D printed steak [00:05:30] need time to grow muscle fibers for it to stay intact.
Speaker 6: The process today, that meat is produced or cow, for example, it takes two years to grow it. Uh, in these two years, a lot of emissions are extracted to the air. The cow drinks a lot of water, it eats a lot of crop, and then it's shipped from one place to another place and then slaughtered in the cultured meat way. It takes us a few weeks to produce a steak with more than 90% less water. So it's much more efficient and much more sustainable to create, uh, [00:06:00] meat. In this way,
Speaker 4: I was able to taste stakeholder's. Hybrid meat product, which combines plant-based ingredients with cultivated beef cells that give it that unique meat flavor.
Speaker 1: Pleasantly surprised
Speaker 7: By the texture.
Speaker 1: It's got a ground beat. Consistency. I know it's plant protein with animal fat infused in. I can taste the beef. It totally mimics the real thing. And I would buy this. I would eat this. I'm eating it now. This is a thumbs up from me.
Speaker 4: [00:06:30] See seeing cultured chicken cultured beef, even a 3D printed steak. But how is cultured meat really produced? It all starts in the lab. I headed to sci-fi foods to see their cultivated meat lab where animal cells are stored in cryo-preservation, ready to be grown into cultured meat.
Speaker 7: Okay, so you're gonna have to put a face shield on. Perfect. And that's just gonna ready to go protect your face from any potential for splashing [00:07:00] of liquid nitrogen.
Speaker 4: Sci-fi foods stores their cultured meat cells in cell lines collections of stem cells that are stored at negative 162 degrees Celsius.
Speaker 7: So the nice thing about our cell lines is that we can freeze them, uh, essentially in suspended animation, and then they are able to stay at that low temperature for a very long time. Substantially, indefinitely. And then, um, when we're ready to work with them, we can actually pull them out of cold storage.
Speaker 4: Scientists use a needle and a biopsy like procedure to harvest stem cells from the muscle [00:07:30] or fat tissue of the animal. According to the companies, the animals are put under anesthesia or sedated to minimize pain and prevent stress. That's not only more humane because animals are no longer slaughtered, but it also removes the need for animals to be raised by huge factory farms. According to the Humane Society, factory Farms account for more than 99% of livestock production in the us.
Speaker 7: Go ahead and open the hatch. Yes. Now you can reach in there and grab one of the racks and just pull it up. [00:08:00] Oh
Speaker 1: My gosh. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Cool. Right. That is actually full of hundreds and hundreds of cells in individual cryo tubes.
Speaker 1: Each one of these boxes has
Speaker 7: 96 um, samples of cells. Oh
Speaker 1: Yeah. My gosh.
Speaker 7: So then we can just put it back into the liquid nitrogen to keep those guys nice and cold. Close the hatch and put them back to bed as it were. Tuck 'em in.
Speaker 1: Stay safe.
Speaker 7: Would you like to look at some cells? I'd
Speaker 1: Love to.
Speaker 4: The cells are at the beginning stages of regeneration in the sci-fi [00:08:30] foods lab. Scientists will manipulate the cells, altering their structure to produce a specific quality in the final product, like more fat cells for flavor or faster growth for more efficient process. I sat down with Joshua March, the c e o of Sci-Fi Foods to discuss the environmental problems. Cultured meat production and consumption can help solve.
Speaker 3: Beef unfortunately is one of the biggest contributors to climate change. It's responsible for a huge amount of methane emissions. It's one of the most potent greenhouse gases. It's also responsible for a huge amount of deforestation. [00:09:00] What I see is what we're doing in cultivated meat is kind of electrifying the cow, right? We're basically figuring out how to grow real beef, but without any of those land use issues, without any of the methane emissions. The only thing we need really is kind of electricity and energy input. And obviously we can power that renewably. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. All right. Well, we should eat a burger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 8: Thank you.
Speaker 1: You're
Speaker 3: Welcome. Cheers. Woo.
Speaker 1: [00:09:30] That was really good.
Speaker 3: Kids like a burger. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: Texture is, there is juicy. I don't think if you would have also made a regular beef burger. I don't think I could tell the difference. And it doesn't taste like any of the plant-based burgers that I've had either.
Speaker 3: It's the biggest thing that the cells do. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, when you add that real cultivated beef, it completely masks any kind of plant notes and it just tastes like beef.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. This is revolutionary. That's it [00:10:00] for our cultivated meat journey. Thanks so much for joining me. And when next you see the future of food or cultivated meat on the market, give it a
Speaker 8: Shot.
