:00:03. > :00:13.have the wrong priorities. There you go. Now on BBC News, it's time for
:00:13. > :00:18.
:00:18. > :00:21.In what has been billed as a world first, fast food grown in laboratory
:00:21. > :00:26.has been served up in London recently. Professor Mark Post says
:00:26. > :00:29.is in the trade burger could leave the answer to our unsustainable
:00:29. > :00:34.appetite for meat and help ease the burden on the environment. There is
:00:35. > :00:38.a need for more meat. The World Health Organisation estimates annual
:00:39. > :00:43.growth production will have to double by 2050. We'll meet grown
:00:43. > :00:53.from stem cells and a scientist 's lab retreat ever make it to our
:00:53. > :01:14.
:01:14. > :01:22.have been working on this for a long time but this week he tested it for
:01:22. > :01:26.the first time. Before the presentation, F samples of it.
:01:26. > :01:31.is it like? It is like meat. It is not exactly the same yet because it
:01:31. > :01:39.does not have any facts in its. is not taste like animal meat yet?
:01:39. > :01:47.It does, but without the facts. The fact adds to the taste. What does it
:01:47. > :01:54.let like when it is in a petri-dish? It looks like the meat fibres but
:01:54. > :02:00.without colour. We added colour, organic colours. Read the treat and
:02:00. > :02:05.saffron. We can fix the colour but it takes a bit longer. The meat you
:02:05. > :02:11.produce in the laps are tiny little strips. You're not yet producing
:02:11. > :02:16.slabs of meat. That is correct. Slabs of meat cannot be made at this
:02:16. > :02:22.stage. The technology is bad but it will need to be implemented to make
:02:22. > :02:27.it ekes lap and that is more complex than the small slivers of meat.
:02:27. > :02:32.of the British newspapers are calling it a Frankenberg. We will
:02:32. > :02:38.get to those in a minute. How did you do it? You start with a single
:02:38. > :02:45.stem cell from an adult animal. start with a little piece of meat
:02:45. > :02:51.from a cow. It has themselves in it waiting to repair tissue in case of
:02:51. > :02:57.injury. We use the property of those cells to create meat. How would this
:02:57. > :03:02.happen? The cells divide and multiply. Normally our skeletal
:03:02. > :03:10.muscles to not do that but these repair cells do. We use the property
:03:10. > :03:15.to make one sell up to 40 billion cells. Because these are designated
:03:15. > :03:20.to become muscle cells, we can easily create a condition for them
:03:20. > :03:28.to make muscle fibres, small muscle fibres. Every 1 million cell makes
:03:28. > :03:34.one muscle fibre. If we have 20,000 of those. It sounds as, that they
:03:35. > :03:42.have to exercise. Muscle needs to be exercised for it to bulk up and
:03:42. > :03:46.produce protein. They do that by themselves. If we give them the
:03:46. > :03:50.right conditions, they will start to contract and build up tension. That
:03:51. > :03:57.is the primary stimulus. And you don't have two stimulator marked
:03:57. > :04:05.officially to do that. Not quite. It improves if we do artificially
:04:05. > :04:13.stimulate them but from an energy efficiency point of view, not really
:04:14. > :04:19.beneficial. And there are 60 Ian cells in a single burger. 40-60.How
:04:19. > :04:24.long does it take in the latter, with that. In our lab, it takes
:04:24. > :04:28.three months, which is already faster than a cow. If you have
:04:28. > :04:38.sufficient capacity to grow the cells at the same time, you can get
:04:38. > :04:38.
:04:38. > :04:43.it down to about eight weeks. than a cow. Starting with a single
:04:43. > :04:51.stem cell, how much meat could you produce? Theoretically, you can make
:04:51. > :04:58.ten tonnes of meat. 10,000 kg? Theoretically. Is the technology
:04:58. > :05:04.they are to do it? It is but you just have to optimise it in the lap
:05:04. > :05:06.or the factory to make that happen. What would it look like? An Olympic
:05:06. > :05:14.size swimming pool full of artificially created meat? Pretty
:05:14. > :05:22.much. And for a town like London, it would have about 1200 of those
:05:22. > :05:27.Olympic sized sprinkles for a year, to feed the town for a year. At the
:05:27. > :05:31.moment, you can only make little granules of meat. Anything thicker,
:05:31. > :05:36.the cells beneath the surface begin to die because they can't get
:05:36. > :05:45.oxygen. How do you overcome that? The same way our body does, by
:05:45. > :05:49.treating blood vessels and flowing nutrients with oxygen so that you
:05:49. > :05:54.can get into every look and cranny of the tissue. You have to
:05:54. > :06:04.artificially correct blood vessels as well? Yes. That was actually
:06:04. > :06:04.
:06:04. > :06:10.might written all scientific career, making artificial blood vessels. Or
:06:10. > :06:20.making cells for bypass grafting. That is a lot of scepticism about
:06:20. > :06:23.
:06:23. > :06:26.this. One Dutch person said, he was at go back to use embryonic stem
:06:26. > :06:33.cells at some point if he wants to make this commercially viable. Is
:06:33. > :06:39.that true? We do a lot of collaboration with Hank and we
:06:39. > :06:43.admire each other's work. This is one point where we disagree. You
:06:43. > :06:50.could use embryonic stem cells but there are issues with that, ethical
:06:50. > :06:54.issues. They grow slow and we are not able to grow them from a cow or
:06:54. > :06:58.peek at the moment. He is working very hard on that and I hope he
:06:58. > :07:04.succeeds. In the meantime, we have the cells in our skeletal muscle
:07:04. > :07:11.that are stem cells but we will need to harvest them more often from a
:07:11. > :07:18.cow to produce the meat. If you take one stem cell, it can make 10,000 kg
:07:18. > :07:25.of meat out of it. But you will still need Cowles. I happen to think
:07:25. > :07:35.that is an advantage. These cells divide and divide and multiply. Do
:07:35. > :07:40.they divide indefinitely? Is there a limit? There is with the adult stem
:07:40. > :07:45.cells are limit to how often they divide. We have them up to 50
:07:45. > :07:49.divisions which is how you come up with the number of 10,000 kg.
:07:49. > :07:56.Embryonic stem cells can divide for a much longer time. The advantage of
:07:56. > :08:03.a embryonic stem cell. Let's talk about whether this might be the
:08:03. > :08:08.future of food. You envision it laboratories, giant test tubes. Is
:08:08. > :08:13.that the way we are heading in the food industry? I think it is the way
:08:13. > :08:17.we might be heading. This is presented as an alternative for
:08:17. > :08:27.clearly unsustainable meat production through livestock. You
:08:27. > :08:27.
:08:27. > :08:31.can scale it up by Olympic sized swimming pools and you can groom
:08:31. > :08:38.each in a sustainable way without the ethical issue without
:08:38. > :08:44.environmental issues. Will it replace livestock? Not entirely
:08:44. > :08:50.because we will still need donor animals to supply the cells. And if
:08:51. > :08:57.you want keep livestock, you can, but you have to be a word that they
:08:57. > :09:05.are a burden for the environment. Can this be done on a small scale?
:09:05. > :09:10.In kitchens? I have been proposing to avert the fear or distrust. You
:09:10. > :09:15.could do this in the comfort of your kitchen but you need to know two
:09:15. > :09:21.months in advance what you are going to eat. Is it fair to call it meat?
:09:21. > :09:26.Eventually, it is going to be meat. It is just great outside of the cow.
:09:26. > :09:30.It is exactly the same composition and material. Eventually, it will
:09:30. > :09:38.look and feel and taste exactly the same. A lot depends on your being
:09:38. > :09:42.able to do this to a very large scale. Let me quote something from a
:09:42. > :09:47.biologist from UCLA. Whenever I hear about industrial scale as they
:09:47. > :09:50.cure, my scepticism alarm start going off. Cell cultures were the
:09:50. > :09:55.most expensive and resource intensive techniques in modern
:09:55. > :09:58.biology. Keeping cells warm and healthy and well fed and free of
:09:58. > :10:03.contamination takes incredible labour and energy, even when scaled
:10:03. > :10:08.to the 10,000 litre fact that people are talking about. We have a machine
:10:08. > :10:14.to do this. It is called a cow. Why do you need to produce a VAT?
:10:14. > :10:22.cow is inefficient. It has 15% conversion of vegetable proteins
:10:22. > :10:27.into animal protein. It is clearly inefficient. Currently, the cell
:10:27. > :10:31.culture technologies are also inefficient. But there are many,
:10:31. > :10:34.many strides forward to make it more efficient. And we have much more
:10:34. > :10:42.variability and much more control over the whole process to eventually
:10:42. > :10:48.make it more efficient. Doctor Robert Spyro says that this idea is
:10:48. > :10:51.a fantasy promoted by scientists who neglect the social and emotional
:10:51. > :11:01.meaning of food. This is the big danger, flying in the face of public
:11:01. > :11:03.
:11:03. > :11:09.sentiment. I am not sure where the emotion comes from if you convert it
:11:09. > :11:15.that into various areas. We are already familiar with high-tech
:11:15. > :11:21.foods, fast foods, artificially made foods, and we started doing that
:11:21. > :11:26.13,000 years ago when we domesticated grasses and made
:11:26. > :11:31.something that was natural into something that was much more like an
:11:31. > :11:41.efficient way of producing crops will stop and we built our societies
:11:41. > :11:42.
:11:42. > :11:52.on that. So we on moving step-by-step towards more
:11:52. > :11:53.
:11:53. > :11:59.technological foods. The idea of having a dominion of the
:11:59. > :12:06.nature seems to so often lead to catastrophe. Right. Again, you have
:12:06. > :12:13.to analyse whether fear is coming from. My sense is that it comes from
:12:13. > :12:19.basically this trust towards large companies, human intervention in
:12:19. > :12:23.general. Mistakes are being made, malpractices are out there. You
:12:23. > :12:27.should separate that from the technology because if you can do
:12:27. > :12:31.this in your home and like you make renting a home, you can avert those
:12:31. > :12:37.issues. This is not a very permissive environment to be doing
:12:37. > :12:44.this in, but it leak in Europe. The GM company has pulled out of Europe
:12:44. > :12:51.because they can not get the licences. It is because of the
:12:51. > :13:00.entrenched nature of public scepticism. I am not sure what the
:13:00. > :13:04.entrenched nature of public scepticism... The public realises
:13:04. > :13:07.the issues with current meat production and there is scepticism
:13:07. > :13:14.towards current meat production, which seems natural, but we all know
:13:14. > :13:17.that it is not. This is about public perception as much as anything. GM
:13:17. > :13:21.got off to a very bad start in Britain as well as Europe, and it
:13:21. > :13:27.never really recovered. It has been hanging in there for years and years
:13:27. > :13:32.and in the end, they have given up. Let us make this very clear. This is
:13:32. > :13:39.not GM food. This is just using the same cells and letting them do their
:13:39. > :13:43.thing but not in a car but in a laboratory or in a factory. -- not
:13:43. > :13:46.in an animal. And it does not have the potential risks of GM that it
:13:46. > :13:48.disturbs the natural balance in an animal. And it does not have the
:13:48. > :13:51.potential risks of GM that it disturbs the natural balancing
:13:51. > :14:00.ecosystems because it is not our air in an ecosystem, it is taken out of
:14:00. > :14:04.it. So, it does not carry the same risks as GM. Many believe this flies
:14:04. > :14:08.in the face of entrenched public sentiment. Phil Hadley says this is
:14:08. > :14:11.the antithesis of the direction the consumer is going in. Its chemical
:14:11. > :14:19.and synthetic at a time when people are seeking out natural product,
:14:19. > :14:25.where they know the history and where it came from. Right. And yet
:14:25. > :14:33.ended ended with 68% of Britons wanting to
:14:33. > :14:39.try this. So, I think, yeah, might be a trend towards organic and
:14:39. > :14:46.natural but that is not a large-scale consumption of meat.
:14:46. > :14:50.People want cheap meat. They want readily available... They do not
:14:50. > :14:53.want meat they do not trust. The recent horse meat scandal all over
:14:53. > :14:59.Europe confirmed that strongly and led to a decrease in meat
:14:59. > :15:05.consumption over Europe. Right. And that is Europe. There are different
:15:05. > :15:07.regions all over the globe. When you mention that the World Health
:15:07. > :15:12.Organisation predicts a global growing of meet demand, possibly
:15:12. > :15:18.doubling, that will not happen in Europe, it will happen in areas
:15:18. > :15:21.where the middle class is rising like in China, India, South America
:15:21. > :15:27.and possibly Africa. That is where the growing meat demand is
:15:27. > :15:31.happening. You distinguish yourself explicitly from the GM experiment at
:15:31. > :15:34.the moment but there is something that you share with them and that is
:15:34. > :15:44.the scepticism about the promise. Joanna Brightman writes that when GM
:15:44. > :15:44.
:15:44. > :15:48.crops are first developed, their creators promised an era of green
:15:48. > :15:53.innovation and... If you cannot make this commercially viable, if the
:15:53. > :16:00.meat you produce at the end costs twice as much as the meat grown
:16:00. > :16:04.inefficiently in an animal, you will not sell it. That is correct. And so
:16:04. > :16:08.there are a couple of boundary conditions we require to meet in
:16:08. > :16:12.order to be successful. One is that it has to be the same price or even
:16:12. > :16:16.cheaper than regular meat. And for sure, that price will increase
:16:16. > :16:23.because we are not capable of producing sufficient meat through
:16:23. > :16:27.livestock as demand increases. That is one. Second, it must be meat.
:16:27. > :16:31.Have not talked about that but there is some innate craving in civil
:16:31. > :16:39.meat. Three to 5% of the population is vegetarian. That is not
:16:39. > :16:48.increasing. We have to consider that people will keep eating meat. And
:16:49. > :16:54.third, of course, it has to be made readily available and in an
:16:54. > :16:58.environment and friendly and ethical way. And you believe this can be
:16:58. > :17:02.fairly and accurately labelled as meat? I have problems with labelling
:17:02. > :17:08.it as something else because in the end, it is exactly the same product,
:17:08. > :17:12.so why would you call it something else? There are dangers in trying to
:17:12. > :17:18.remove livestock herds. They are important for the ecosystem. They
:17:18. > :17:25.eat grass we cannot eat, grass, for example, and they pass on the
:17:25. > :17:31.nutrients from the grass through the meat. What you create will still
:17:31. > :17:38.need those nutrients. It will have to come from somewhere, possibly
:17:38. > :17:41.allergy. Anything that can provide a amino acid, sugars, fatty acids, to
:17:41. > :17:46.feed these cells. There are options. There are regional differences in
:17:46. > :17:52.some areas of the world. Cattle may be very efficient and remain
:17:52. > :17:58.efficient because they eat grasses that nobody else in. -- nobody else
:17:58. > :18:01.will eat. But the majority of meat production in industrialised society
:18:01. > :18:06.is very artificial, in large farms, with artificially produced feed for
:18:06. > :18:10.those animals. The chief scientist for the agricultural development
:18:10. > :18:14.board told us that he thought land used for meat production in the UK
:18:14. > :18:19.was very efficient and he wants to know if your manufactured meat is
:18:19. > :18:28.more energy efficient per kilogram than traditional methods of
:18:28. > :18:32.producing meat are. How energy-efficient is it going to be?
:18:32. > :18:38.We don't know yet but a life cycle analysis to predict that has been
:18:38. > :18:46.done at the University of Oxford. And she has calculated that this
:18:46. > :18:52.would reduce the amount of land by 90% and energy by 90%. If you use
:18:52. > :18:56.saltwater allergy to produce the amino acids and sugars for this meat
:18:56. > :19:01.to grow. There is another sense in which it seems to be going in the
:19:01. > :19:06.wrong direction. In Europe and North America, we eat too much meat, more
:19:06. > :19:13.than is good for us already. Should not public energy be focused on us
:19:13. > :19:15.cutting down our meat consumption? fully agree with that but it is an
:19:15. > :19:19.issue that should be separated from the issues that we now have with
:19:19. > :19:26.feeding the global population not only in Europe but across the world.
:19:26. > :19:30.And globally, the world health organisation predicts that meat
:19:31. > :19:36.demand is going to increase. We can stress here and possibly put into
:19:36. > :19:41.effect that people will eat less meat. We have vegetarians and other
:19:41. > :19:45.movements going in that direction. Although meat consumption in the
:19:45. > :19:50.industrialised world is not going down as fast as we would wish. But
:19:50. > :19:56.globally, it is going to increase and that is what we have to face.
:19:56. > :19:59.How much work have you done on the economic viability of this project?
:19:59. > :20:03.Do we know how much this will cost if it ever goes into mass
:20:03. > :20:06.production? We have worked with companies that mass-produce stem
:20:06. > :20:13.cells for medical purposes and with the numbers we gave them from our
:20:13. > :20:18.production method, they came up with a fair price. It is still high but
:20:18. > :20:24.that is with the current technology, without any improvement. We can get
:20:24. > :20:31.it down to roughly $70 per kilogram. $70 per kilogram. That is much more
:20:31. > :20:37.expensive than meat produced Max right, but that isn't the current
:20:37. > :20:39.state of technology. And that is all very good. The first computer was $2
:20:39. > :20:46.million and had less calculating capacity than our mobile phone that
:20:46. > :20:51.you get for free with a subscription to any of the telecom companies.
:20:51. > :20:56.you have these dozens, indeed hundreds of these containers
:20:56. > :21:06.producing this meat, where does the food come from? The nutrients? The
:21:06. > :21:06.
:21:06. > :21:10.algae? The watercress Mack how do you get that there are? -- the water
:21:10. > :21:14.'s you can place these anywhere so that you can reduce the transport of
:21:14. > :21:17.materials. I would love to place the first plant at the mouth of the
:21:17. > :21:23.Mississippi where there is an allergy dead zone, where we have so
:21:23. > :21:28.much allergy in the ocean that nothing else lives there. -- algae.
:21:28. > :21:34.You can basically placed this anywhere where it is
:21:34. > :21:38.energy-efficient and better for the environment. You would need
:21:38. > :21:43.somewhere with a well-developed infrastructure, wouldn't you? You
:21:43. > :21:49.could not place it in the middle of Africa. If you can do it at home,
:21:49. > :21:53.you can do it in the middle of Africa. What is the timeline? When
:21:53. > :21:57.can we expect to see this kind of meat in everyday use on our dinner
:21:57. > :22:02.plate is 's that is difficult to predict because there are major
:22:02. > :22:05.issues we have to resolve, mostly of a technological nature. I am
:22:05. > :22:10.confident they can be solved, but in my mind, it will take ten years. If
:22:10. > :22:15.announcer believes it can boost done in three years, but we differ on
:22:15. > :22:21.that. -- my financier believes it can be done in three years but we
:22:21. > :22:27.disagree on that. And the reason why we presented it the way we did,
:22:27. > :22:30.which was unusual for science, we wanted to make the point that this
:22:30. > :22:33.was really a necessary development and it can be done and we can have
:22:33. > :22:40.shown that it can be done but we need a lot more resources, more
:22:40. > :22:44.people working on it and more money to address the issues that we still
:22:45. > :22:53.have with going from this product to a product that can enter the
:22:53. > :22:58.consumer market. And public scepticism? Well, the Guardian poll
:22:58. > :23:03.shows and also a survey we have done in the Netherlands, they show that
:23:03. > :23:08.there is a public out there ready to try it. Think that public scepticism
:23:08. > :23:11.is somewhat overrated. I think it will be accepted as when people
:23:12. > :23:15.realise there are major issues with livestock meat production. And
:23:15. > :23:19.frankly, we have not realised that there is a major issue with meat
:23:19. > :23:23.production right now and we are heading towards a crisis, if you
:23:23. > :23:30.like, if that meets demand clearly develops as the world health
:23:30. > :23:36.organisation predicts and we cannot meet that demand. Prices will go up,
:23:36. > :23:41.there will be scarcity and it will become a luxury item. Even worse, if
:23:41. > :23:51.the larger meat producing companies want to try and meet that demand, it
:23:51. > :23:51.
:23:51. > :23:55.will put pressure on our crops, which are also used to feed us. It
:23:55. > :23:59.is a serious challenge and people have to be aware of it. Once they
:24:00. > :24:04.are aware of it, they will look at alternatives. Once the price of meat
:24:04. > :24:11.doubles, they will look for alternatives. You sound
:24:11. > :24:16.fantastically optimistic. I do. It has great promise but it is still a
:24:16. > :24:25.promise, not a reality. My real wish is that a lot of people start
:24:25. > :24:30.working on this and we make this happen or find out as soon as we can