Stuff You Should Know - Lab-grown meat: Order up!

Episode Date: December 19, 2012

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? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this here is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. Welcome. Bienvenue. What is that from? The producers. Oh, I don't know. Cabaret. Is that from something? Yeah.

I think maybe cabaret. I've never seen it. I don't know. I just was saying welcome in different languages. 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 sweaty during that one. Oh, really? Got me all worked up. So now we can talk about lab-grown meat. What a great one-two punch. Jerry's just giggling. We are talking lab-grown meat, man. Yeah. We're talking about possibly the future of humanity or what the future of humanity will eat. And this has kind of been a big thing ever since 2001, which we'll get to in a second. Let's flash forward by flashing back to 2008 when PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment

of Animals, posted a $1 million reward to the first researcher that could come up with lab-grown, a.k.a. in vitro, a.k.a. cultured meat. That was commercially viable, meaning it was for sale in 10 states by June 30, 2012. That didn't happen. No, it didn't happen. But PETA is very excited because they said that in October 2012, 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 Forgax. Yeah, that's a funny name, but he is one of the leaders in the lab-grown meat industry. He's basically one of two. There is a Bill Gates and a Steve Jobs in the in vitro meat team. And Gabor Forgax, I take it, is the Steve Jobs. Yeah, he's from the University of

Missouri, and he's a tissue engineering specialist, and he is a company called Modern Meadows. Great name. 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 in a winky, you know? Right. Like RoboCal? Yeah. Was that another one? No, I just made it. Oh, see, that's awful. That's great. I channeled my inner John Strickland. That's very good. I just pictured Strickland like just sticking his head in the door and saying, RoboCal. So anyway, Modern Meadows is his 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. And apparently, it may not have been Forgax. It could have been, I don't know, but Forgax definitely did a taste test himself earlier in 2011. 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, yeah, it's kind of weird. It's like, I guess if you were like hawking hot dogs or something, you would eat them in public. Sure. So that's not that odd, as it seems at first blush. It sounds a little bit of a carnival barker feel to that, though. They say that every great scientist is one part BF Skinner, one part PT Barnum. Oh, yeah. Well, that's what Principal Skinner said. Oh, really? Yeah, on

The Simpsons. Yeah, no. That's good. That's good saying, though. I like it. Yeah. The other, the Bill Gates, or was that the Bill Gates? I think Forgax is Steve Jobs. Okay. So the Bill Gates is Marky Post from Nightcourt, from TV's Nightcourt. Oh, no, Mark Post from Maastricht University, which is in the Netherlands. Right. It's like these two universities get their researchers swapped. Seriously. Mark Post is in the Netherlands and Gabor Forgax is in University of Missouri. That's so weird. It is weird. 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 stuff, they're coming up with two very different

means to the same end. Okay. 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's speed dial, I bet. Right. And they're supposedly only about 30 groups working on this right now. But 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 Forgax 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. Yeah. 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. In 1931, before he was a prime minister, Churchill predicted that by 1981, 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. Right. And he was off roughly by 20 years. Not bad. No. And he may have met like mass produced, like we'd be doing that by then 50 years. In 2001, 20 years after his prediction, or the deadline of his prediction, a guy from Toro College, I've never heard of them.

I don't know, New York Toro College, T-O-U-R-O. Never heard of it either. Well, his name is Morris Benjaminson. His dad's name is Benjamin. He came up with this idea to take goldfish muscle, cut fresh out of alive goldfish. Yeah. It's pretty bad for the goldfish. Sure. And then thrown into a vat of nutrient-rich fetal bovine serum, which is wow. I wonder why he's goldfish. That's what I don't get. Why didn't he use like tilapia or something someone might want to eat? I don't know. Maybe that was the only thing that was handy. There was an office goldfish. He brought it in in his little plastic bag. Yeah. Wow. And instead of eating it live for his

fraternity prank, he grew some more. He actually grew 14% more of what he put into this fetal bovine serum. Yep. These cells divided. Yep. They were live, which is big, but the serum coaxed it into continuing to divide and again formed 14% more mass than was originally introduced. More mass or did you write this? No, this is Patrick Keiger. As Patrick puts it, 14% worth of additional flesh on the chunks. Yeah. I like your, I like mass better than flesh on the chunks. Flesh on the chunks is good. That's a good band name. Yes, it is. 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. Makes great sense. And no one would eat it. I would have tried it. I would have too. 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. Conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And on the prime example, okay. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way

better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey guys, it is Bobby bones from the Bobby cast Nashville's most listened to music podcast in depth interviews with your favorite country artists. They tell stories behind the biggest songs in country music and share personal stories that you won't hear anywhere else. Reba, Chris Stapleton, Luke Combs, Dan and Shay, Kelsey ballerini and more long form and all from the comfort of my own home. So it gets a little more laid back. I also talked with the biggest songwriters and producers in Nashville find out about the process and how it goes from

being an idea in a writing room to a song that you hear on the radio. And if you're looking for new music, I share my top five new music releases on every week's episode. So if you love country music, I think you'll really enjoy this podcast. And there are so many episodes to binge literally hundreds listen to new episodes of the Bobby cast every Friday on the Nashville podcast network available on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. So, uh, his initial thought was this could be great for astronauts. If they could eat meat, goldfish or I guess fake meat out in space. That was his original thought was astronaut use. 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. Yeah. 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. Yeah. Because again, people for the ethical treatment of animals, the American society for the prevent prevention of cruelty to animals. Sure. When you eat a steak, when you eat, um, pork or bacon or ham, all these things come from an animal. It's often lovable animal, but people still like to eat them. People still get nutrients from them. 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. It is for at least for people who object to eating meat for out of a cruelty and still want to eat meat, object on the grounds of cruelty to right to eating meat. Yeah, good. Um, in 2008, though, uh, in Norway, they had a conference first time ever on test tube meat and they released a study saying, you know what, we could potentially manufacture this stuff for $5,000 a ton, uh, which would make it competitive on an economic basis with real meat. Yeah. Um, by 2012, which is right now, there are about 30 different research teams working on this, right? But like we said, I get the feeling that post in Igor, what was his name? Gabor. Gabor. Forgax. Forgax are definitely the leading edge. Um,

and I did a little calculating here, Chuck, if you don't mind. Let's hear it. I found how much it cost in Illinois in 2007 to raise a pound of beef. Okay. And it was something like 65 cents a pound, right? Which, um, that's how much it cost to raise it. Right about now, it's about 288 a pound for ground beef retail. Okay. That's like a markup of like 4.5 times. Is that for Chuck or for, or are we just talking? I'm just, okay. Yeah. Gotcha. I'm just, this is just rough back of the envelope kind of stuff. Um, if, if you took that $5,000 a ton, um, in vitro meat figure, and that's how much it cost to manufacture it, and then also did that same 4.5 time markup, you come to about $11 a pound, which is pretty competitive. Yeah. Cause 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. Sure. And people, especially if it tasted good. Yeah. And people pay a lot of money for Kobe beef. Yeah. Most times they're 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 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 Kobe beef. That is messed up. It is messed up. That's like a lobster. Lobster, the price of lobster is like

in the basement right now. Yeah. And 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 it usually like just straight up whatever. It'll say market price. Some of them. 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, that's not market price. Apparently you can argue with just about anybody. Really? Yeah. And often when. Wow. 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. Yeah. Like here's 20 lobsters. Like we don't want them to go to waste. Right. Julie of stuff below your mind? No, Julie Smith. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Our producer. Yeah. There you go. TV. Yeah. 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. So there's synthetic lobster. It's actually cod, right? Oh, the that's imitation crab meat. Yeah. That's not synthetic though. Oh, it's imitation. Yeah, imitation. Big difference. All right. So the Dutch team headed by Marquis Post, they are using cow stem cells to create this meat. So they culture the

stem cell, little petri dishes, put it in a small container 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, fat. Yeah. Blood veins. And it's not just muscle cells, but muscle fibers that you're eating. And do you know that it was only within the last like couple months that I realized meat, steak, is muscle mass? Yeah. They told me that you were shocked back then. And I was like, what'd you think it was?

I hadn't really thought of that. 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. Yeah. And all of a sudden realized what a steak was. Right. 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 of this stuff comes together. And they're going to have to really lick that before they can make this stuff commercially viable. Absolutely. One of the ideas that modern meadow is using is to use a 3D printer to spray what they call bioink, which is muscle cells and stuff like that to build up, you know,

they like spray many layers of this stuff to build it up into like more viable meat option. Which is pretty cool. 3D printers. Pretty awesome. Did you hear about Japan's photo booth? They're opening the world's first 3D printing photo booth. So you go in and you come out with like a little statue of you or you and your lady. That's cool. That's nice. Yeah. Yeah, I would do that. Oh, totally. What would that cost? I don't know, but I would guess a lot at first. Sort of like in vitro meat. All right. So what are the other hurdles here? It's tricky. Like you said, it's 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 a very complex group of stuff in there. Right. It's not just like a muscle and that's it. And it's extremely expensive right now. I think we kind of touched upon, but Mark Post said that his hamburger, the first one that he would ever make would cost about 350 grand. Yeah. But he's looking for a celebrity chef to cook it to kind of drum up business. And Gabor Fogax, right? That's his last name. Forgac. Forgac. He was saying his modern meadow stuff would be between 57 and 180 bucks a pound, right? Which like you said is competitive with Kobe. Yeah. And that's, Forgac sees this as, I don't think he sees it as like, Hey, this is going to be the everyday solution.

He sees it as a niche industry. Right. 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 as for the public at large. 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 going to see is going to be like flour. And he pointed out in this one CNN article, we read like, you don't eat flour, but flour isn't like everything that you eat. And he was saying like, this will be stuff to create meatballs with right or pate. It's like instead of

taking a chicken and chopping it up and then using it in that pate, you would, you know, use it. Although more as an ingredient rather than like the steak on the plate. Exactly. Yeah. At least for now. Make sense. This could potentially be a great thing for many reasons. One of which is not the least of which is that lab grown meat would have about 78 to 96% fewer greenhouse gases. 99% less land, obviously. Yeah. 82 to 96% less water. And 18% of the world's greenhouse emissions come from the livestock sector right now. And you know from what? Well, gas and gas. Yeah. Exactly. Two types of gas. Yeah. Like we have a big methane problem from cow poop and gas. And then all the gas used to, you know, obviously take care of the industry

petroleum that is. Plus it's also just a lot more energy efficient. We use 100 grams of grain to produce 15 grams of meat. That's a 15% efficiency because what are you doing, Chuck, when you like feed something, something, right? Yeah. You take, you take the energy found in a plant and feed it to an animal. So it's energy transfer, but you lose 85% apparently. You're thinking with lab grown meat, the energy efficiency will be like 50%. That's awesome. Yeah. And some of the other costs to grow a pound of beef, regular beef necessitates 2,500 gallons of water, 12 pounds of grain, 35 pounds of topsoil 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

abstaining from eating meat because of the animal cruelty aspect. You have a lot of people saying it's just socially irresponsible to eat meat. Yeah. And then you have people who, well, I guess that's it, right? That's the only reason people don't eat meat. Yeah. Well, people like my wife who don't like the taste. Oh, okay. Well, this is not going to appeal to her at all there. Right. No, no, no. But you were saying like that this, this environment or ecological consumption that it takes to create a pound of meat. Apparently they think that meat production is going to have to double in the next 40 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. Well, yeah. And there's not enough land. Right. Like right now, I think it said 70% of dry land on the earth is used for either grazing or some factor of livestock. 70%. Right. So like, what are you going to 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. But as the price 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 bland. Yeah. They said it potentially could be healthier too.

Jason Mathini, director of New Harvest, is a non-profit research org and they said that it would have health advantages like because it's easier to control pathogens in a lab and fat content could be systematically controlled. Yeah. Making it healthier. Like we're going to put this layer of fat in with our 3D printer. Because you need the fat. That's where a lot of the flavor comes from. Definitely. You've got to 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 soiling green. Modern meadows is perfect. Yeah. I wonder what a post the name of his group is. I didn't see it,

Jay. I don't know. I would taste this just, you know, if they, I wouldn't pay $300,000 for a hamburger. No. But 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 it. But a lot of people say that eating meat is gross. They sure do. So before you send in those emails, let me cut you off. I understand that. Good going, Joe. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy, number one, is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes,

they can do that. And I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty, exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, guys, it is Bobby Bones from the Bobby Cast, Nashville's most listened to music podcast.

In-depth interviews with your favorite country artists. They tell stories behind the biggest songs in country music and share personal stories that you won't hear anywhere else. Reba, Chris Stapleton, Luke Combs, Dan and Shea, Kelsey Ballerini, and more long form and all from the comfort of my own home. So it gets a little more laid back. I also talked with the biggest songwriters and producers in Nashville to find out about the process and how it goes from being an idea in a writing room to a song that you hear on the radio. And if you're looking for new music, I share my top five new music releases on every week's episode. So if you love country music, I think you'll really enjoy this podcast. And there are so many

episodes to binge, literally hundreds. Listen to new episodes of the Bobby Cast every Friday on the Nashville Podcast Network, available on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you want to learn more about LabGrowMeet or any kind of things like that, you should check out the Innovations channel on HowStuffWorks. It's pretty awesome. Go to HowStuffWorks 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 LabGrowMeet in the handy search bar, HowStuffWorks. And I said handy search bar,

which means it's time for listener mail. Josh and we call this mentorship email. 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 whichever 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 size 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. 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. Haha. I've always kind of wanted a mention. There you go, Colin. That's all you need to do is ask. Yeah. Well, you have to ask and 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 are from Texas. That's true. Is it? Oh, yeah. All right. Well, Colin from Texas, good luck with your mentorship, buddy. And I think it's a marketing he said. And drop us wine. Let's know how it went. That's awesome. Yeah. Let's see. What do you want to ask for, Chuck? Oh, would you eat in vitro meat? Let's get that debate going, huh? Sure. And you know what? We're going to cover factory farming because we got a lot of, I got a lot of heat because I went off on bullfighting and a lot of vegetarians said, well, how can you go off on bullfighting and eat meat? So I'm going to make up for that by doing like a factory farming podcast.

Well, it's great. Can I do it too? You can sit in. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And you can send us a good old fashioned email to stuffpodcast at discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off the cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app,

Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Whitney Dow here cohost with Eric Alexander of reparations, the big payback podcast. In our podcast, we explore the arguments for and against reparations for black Americans. All episodes are available now on the iHeart radio app, black effect podcast network or wherever you get your podcasts. Looking to continue the story, make sure to stream our new documentary, The Big Payback, co directed by me and Whitney Dow. As we examine the attempt to make reparations for African Americans, a reality available now on the PBS app or wherever you get your films.