MSP73 [] The Case for Clean Meat

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The word that delights some and disgusts others. I probably only have to say the words juicy burger. The harvour you hit hard on the show and switched to your favorite food delivery app. Assuming your back and the food is steaming, have you been considered to have dirt in your hand ears?

Matt has, but I've still no idea what he's talking about. You're not supposed to marinate your steaks in the street, you know, Matt? But that's where all the flavour is, or at least that's what I keep being told about authentic street food. Anyway, as they say, if it's good enough for the flies.

Okay, this would be a very strange show if it was actually all about food hygiene. Although, of course, that is one of the issues, things like chlorine washing to disinfect meat. Not just because it's fallen on the floor, but because the meat itself is contaminated. Now, that's actually become something of a Brexit issue in the UK because chlorine washing is outlawed under EU rules, but would likely be central to any trade deal with the US to allow US meat imports into the country.

But what we're talking about today is actually the bigger picture of meat and other related animal products. We're talking about technology and diet in a broader sense. Well, yeah, this is not an entirely novel subject for MSP. Meat is a subject we've talked about quite frequently on the show over the years, especially when it comes to the things that we are now classifying or classing as clean meat.

Maybe you should tell us a bit more about clean meat in general. Well, you're asking me to pander to people who don't hang on my every word. I'm not really enjoying this post-jeth world that I'm finding myself in. I'm hoping his attitude, readjustment is almost complete because frankly, you're just far too high maintenance.

Can we get back to clean meat, please? Look, we've covered laboratory-grown meat on the show a number of times. In general, when I bring it up, it's met with a chorus of revulsion. In fact, I get more tweet feedback when we do a food show than anything else.

And you can find Matt on Twitter at culturepup. You're just playing me. When we've talked about lab-grown meat in the past, listeners have found it a bit icky. And that's something that seems to be a global phenomenon.

People are okay with bopping a lamb on the head with a hammer, but the idea of flesh and muscle tissue growing in an industrial vat somehow grosses them out. Because to some, I think it just doesn't sound very clean. Well, when was the last time you saw a cow showering after footsull? We have very different standards of personal hygiene.

We're using clean in the green sense and in the cruelty-free sense. So we're looking at technologies that are enabling us to transition into a world where we can produce enough meat to satisfy demand with people's needs without chopping down all our forests and turning them into pasture lands. And of course, filling the atmosphere with me saying, people do like me. I'm not even going to go into the health side of things because, yes, people do like meat.

That's something that people can explore for themselves. But we've built up this mythology that human beings are, by default, meat eaters. Cats are meat eaters. If you put a cat on a vegan diet, what you end up with is a seriously annoyed and very malnourished cat.

And I don't know how many of our listeners have experienced a seriously annoyed cat. Imagine your life being nothing more than an endless scroll of Donald Trump's tweets. And you're not even close to how miserable an angry cat can make you. OK, we've established that we're clearly not cats.

Correct, because we're omnivores. We can manage perfectly well without eating tens or hundreds of kilos of meat per person per year. You've stopped short of saying we don't need meat. No, because we're adaptable.

As long as you have a balanced diet... Equivalent potato chips. The potato is the source of all nutrition, as long as you fry it. Humans can get along quite healthily with all manner of dietary input.

It's one of the strengths that's allowed us to colonize some of the most extreme landscapes on Earth. You can't just go and pull a cauliflower out of the ground in the middle of the Siberian winter. And avocado toast is a little thing on the ground in the middle of the desert. So despite those extremities, you still find pockets of human civilization in the craziest places.

Now, before we look at some of the technologies that are transforming global meat production, the things I have to say on this show, why is there such a pressing need to change the way we feel our backs? It's actually not just meat production, it's animal products in general. No one is sadder to say than I am, that my beloved cheese is also a serial offender. Dairy is something that we're going to have a look at today as well.

So, first of all, let's have a look at China. We're not going to start China bashing today, are we? No, not at all. In fact, we're looking at something that's truly remarkable.

It's a convergence of nutrition and technology that has had an enormous impact on the population of China and contributed significantly to the well-being and the growing well-being of its citizens. And that brings us back to those basics and economics that I throw out on the show occasionally. These things aren't zero-sum gains. There are costs and side effects related to the way we arrive at that state of well-being.

I'm interested to see how you can balance this one now. Delicately, and like a water dancer. Over 60 to 70 years now, China's dairy herds have grown from around 120,000 cows. I think that was about 1947 to 13 million today.

China has gone from a country that produced and consumed almost no milk to the world's third largest dairy producer. China's citizens now eat around 30 kilograms of dairy products per person per year. Now, I know that sounds like a lot, but the US consumes almost 300 kilos per person, which is, I mean, that is astonishing. That's nearly a kilo of dairy products per person per day.

I've seen some Americans that could probably do that. Anyway, but I think the US exports a lot of its dairy output, right? But even still, I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if the next series of Stranger Things contains a cheese-based life form. Barbara reappears as a block of Monterey Jack.

China's government is using dairy as a strategic tool in the growth and development of its nation. And dairy has been one of the tools in the arsenal to address nutritional inequalities across the country. So like any country that is rapidly developing, there are these huge distortion effects. On the one hand, you have meat and dairy as markers of societal progress and wealth and affluence.

People are wealthy enough to afford to buy animal produce. But on the other hand, it's being used as a tool to literally enrich the lives of China's poorest citizens. Presumably the technology aspect of this is that China is spearheaded the development of the world's most important. And it's been implemented the development of lactose free milk.

Well, I wondered when you were going to go there. And no, that's not the story of China at all. But there is a scientific aspect. It's relatively simple and straightforward, and it relates completely to human biology.

So while many East Asians do suffer from a lactose deficiency, which prevents them from tolerating milk, all babies are born with the ability to consume lactose because we need mother's milk. So as long as you continue feeding the milk to those children, in other words, you know, you just don't stop. The body retains some ability to produce lactase and to allow you to process lactose. So you don't need lactose free milk.

You just have to keep giving milk to kids with lactase deficiency. That's human technology, mate. It's a bit boring. But it's very, very cheap.

One of the things that was encouraged in the 1980s in China was that smallholders would keep small herds of cows to produce milk as a way to supplement their income. Over the years, more industrial-scale dairy production has become the norm in the country, but smallholders are still a very important part of that market. And they now have the option to move their herds into what the Chinese call cow hotels, whether actually experts and technicians that can help them to make the most of their moves. Most of their moves.

The most of their moves. Okay, that's the upside. Of course, the clearly has to be a downside. What is it?

Well, China is set to triple its dairy production and consumption over the next 30 years, and we're seeing a similar pattern across the developing world. So as incomes increase, populations move from majority plant-based diets towards diets that contain more animal-derived nutrition. And for starters, dairy is very resource-inefficient. It's estimated that it takes around, I didn't know this.

It takes around 1,000 liters of water to produce one liter of milk. I mean, that's even worse than the balance for producing meat. And cows, of course, are not environmentally friendly. Animals globally livestock accounts for around 15% of greenhouse gas emissions, of which around two-thirds of those are from our cow friends.

Cow friends, eh? Well, I'm beginning to think you're a bit of a bigger when it comes to animals. You know, you can eat a sheep, but it can't be your friend. I don't see the difference.

Anyway, China is already importing around 60% of the world's production of soybean, largely to process inter-feed, to give to dairy stock. To meet just its own demands, China will have to devote around 30% more land to dairy production, and we would likely see an increase in cattle-based emissions of greenhouse gases of around 35%. So once you start to build that picture and factor in the world's growing populations and income levels, the resources needed to produce beef or lamb or milk or cheese in those required quantities are just going to become unsustainable, especially when it's claimed that the solution, the production of culture meat, would occupy around 1% of the land currently devoted to create the same output of meat. Okay, after the break, Matt, in his carriage, mixing meat, here on NSP.

Big, friendly, matcha, BFM, 89.9, the business station. BFM, 89.9, the business station. This is NSP, I'm in the studio with Culture Pops, Matt Armitage. Before the break, we told you that Matt would be making his own meat here on the show.

Mercifully, this studio has a no ribs rule, so we'll skip straight to the solutions instead. One of the stories I remember from a few years ago was the $300,000 burger, right? Yeah, and that's really what brought this culture meat movement into the public eye, although we'll cover that story in a second. This part of the show isn't just about meats and technologies that replicate those cells, it's also about plant-based products and other alternatives to farm to meat.

Because nothing stimulates the appetite, your way to telling you about the lab, to table provenance of your replicated cells in pepper source. And that's one of the great ironies. Farm to table is a fantastic trend. Produce whether it's animal or plant-based is locally sourced, so it doesn't need to fly around the world three or four times before it reaches your plate.

You get a guarantee that the animals were raised in a loving, caring home, but still, that animal was probably expecting to live out its days, munching happily in its field. It wasn't expecting to be staring up at you through a honey glaze. So I don't understand why people get so upset about the idea of making meat in a pot. Surely that's just the farm to table version of agate.

I think people are going to want to know. Are you a vegetarian? Cards on the table, no. And I do have a confession to make.

Preparing the notes for this show, I ate a large and extremely delicious piece of halloumi. And as I've said on the show before, I have made a conscious decision to reduce my meat consumption over the last couple of years. That's for a number of reasons. I wanted to reduce the impact of my own diet on the planet.

Also, I found I feel physically better when I only eat meat a couple of times a week. And the less meat I eat, the less I seem to crave it. Of course, none of that's scientific. It's just something that seems to work for me.

Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist and darling of the alt-right intelligentsia, claims to exist on a diet of nothing but beef. And there we agree to differ. My wife is a pescatarian. She's had long periods where she's been fully vegetarian.

She's been vegan as well. I have more of an ethical problem eating fish than I do with eating meat, but that's an issue for another show. That's interesting. We won't go there.

But I have found that being fully vegetarian doesn't work for me, possibly because I'm too lazy to balance my diet properly. Hence the comment about the potato chips, is it wrong? Yes, I've been watching clips of one of President Trump's economic advisers advocating a return to the gold standard. I would use another commodity.

I'd have the world's major currencies pegged to Pringles. And you could genuinely eat your way through a fortune. I'm a bit worried that I don't think this show's going to get any better folks. Still, we've got a soldier on.

You were promising a story about that expensive burger. Yeah, when we talk about cultured meat, in some ways it feels like we've come a huge way. And that might be true in terms of the technological side and the advances. In terms of the ways the meat is cultured and grown, we have moved on.

Production has been scaled up and costs have fallen tremendously. But we don't seem to have moved very far in terms of that public perception and the levels of acceptance. There's still this sense that cultured meat is less real than a chicken nugget. And you think part of that rests with those first public taste tests?

Maybe, because even though journalists were able to eat a tiny part of the one burger patty that researchers at Master at University were able to produce, it still seemed like a science fiction fantasy. Ignoring the comments about taste, the burger at that media session back in 2013, cost, as you mentioned at the top of the show, $300,000 to produce just for that one burger. So obviously it was viewed as a novelty and a not particularly tasty experiment. And after that, the journalists and the public just went back to their normal lives.

So where's the impetus coming from? There are a lot of influential lobbying groups like the Good Food Institute, which are advocating for the adoption and development of plant-based and cellular-based food products. In fact, Bruce Friedrich, the founder of the Good Food Institute, is one of this year's fellows at Ted, home of the Ted Talks. So I think we can expect to see more content and more exposure of innovation in this sector in our newsfeeds this year.

You mentioned plant-based food as well, you mean vegetables? Well, vegetables get a bad rep for being boring, but we're actually looking at something a little more high-tech. A rising challenge has come from processed plant-based foods, especially in this all-important burger sector. So companies like Impossible Foods are now competing head-to-head with meat-based burgers.

And it's a sector that's experiencing a year-on-year increase in demand of around 17%. So that's some seriously large money to be chasing. Now, I might be putting my head on the line here, but to be fair, a lot of veggie burgers mostly deserve their bad reputation. Yeah, many of them should have been declared hate crimes, especially from the people forced to consume their dry and grumbly mix of processed peas and corn.

And I'm sorry, but the last thing I want to see in any of my food is peas, or sweet corn, or carrots. And in a sign of the growing influence of these companies, companies like Impossible are conducting tests with fast food giants. They're in around 50 of Burger King's outlets selling their plant-based burgers alongside... Real burgers.

I was going to say big Macs, but they're whoppers, aren't they? No, from a technology standpoint as well, it's actually a really exciting sector, much more exciting than the shrinking bezels on our smartphone. I'm not sure if this is a gauge of actual popularity, given the horrors that these fellas often sink the money into, but the venture capital sector seems to be pretty excited about funding cellular-based meat replacements. Yeah, a company called Motive Ingredients broke all the records in the food technology sector when they raised $90 million in series A funding in February of this year.

Now, we used to Silicon Valley hype, as you were saying, and silly money, chasing silly ideas, but Motive is certainly a serious venture. It's a spinoff from a company called Gingvo BioWorks, which is something of a giant in the field of synthetic biology, and that company's backers include folks like Bill Gates and Richard Branson. So it makes the company the largest player in a field that is now being called cellular agriculture. Now, no one wants to rush it.

We need to know that these cell-derived meat products are safe, right? But a $300,000 burger is no use to anybody. When are we going to see results that are affordable and widely available? Well, of course, that's now the $90 million question, and of course nobody really knows.

I'll quote from the good food institutes Bruce Friedrichker, an article I got from the BBC. He thinks we'll get a first taste of cell-based meat in around 2020. It will still be a premium product, and we can expect prices to be around the $50 USD mark. That's a lot for a burger.

Well, at late there's been a growth in absolutely phenomenally expensive premium burgers, and $50 is no longer outside the norm. I know it sounds insane. In fact, some fancy restaurants in the States have priced their burgers at up to $3,000, which is obviously just nonsense. Which I guess brings us back to the question of demand.

Is there any indication that the market will support products at this kind of price? Even the plant-based meat alternatives marketed by companies like Impossible Food are more expensive than their animal equivalent. So the vegetarian burgers, trialing at Burger King, are more expensive than the meat burgers. But as I said, demand in that sector is said to be increasing at around 17% a year, and certainly meat producers seem to be running scared of the competition.

They're removed by a number of countries, or farming lobbies in a number of countries, to prevent plant-based burgers being shelved next to your normal meat-based burgers, because they say the competition is unfair. Right. Given what we're discussing about China and countries in the developing world, is there a taste for these meat alternatives? Well, the evidence does seem to be pointing in that direction.

A study called a survey of consumer perceptions of plant-based and clean meat in the USA, India and China. You know, it's no wonder no one reads these damn things. Call it, I don't know, real news fake meat or something a bit more clickbaity. The study was published in the Journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems back in February this year, and interestingly it found that consumers in China and India were actually very receptive to the idea of laboratory-based or cellular-based meats, probably much more so than most European consumers.

Given the price tag, you might not expect huge demand in those countries. Well, in a Guardian piece that was written by one of these studies peer reviewers, he admits that it was largely middle-class consumers that were targeted in the countries for the study. But that's still within the kind of expected global profile of consumers for these products when they first come to market. It's those economies of scale and that expansion of popularity that will allow the prices, let me do that again.

It's those economies of scale and that expansion of popularity that will allow the prices to come down, so that the foods can be accessible to everyone. Even in the hell-raising red meat loving United States of America, the study found that 53% of Americans were okay substituting cultured meat for traditional meat if the prices were equal. Now, I know that all of this is literally a lot to swallow, but in a world of environmental consciousness, health, well-being, it's no longer enough to say that your food was well-treated and ethically sourced, especially if there's a kind of and more sustainable alternative, even if that alternative comes out of the pot. You can also check out CulturePop.com for transcripts of these shows, and of course, you can also find out how to bring a bit of maths blaming to your company.

This was MSPE on BFM 89.99. Thank you for listening to this podcast. To find more great interviews, go to bfm.my or find us on iTunes, and we'll see you at BFM 89.9 at the Business Station.