Welcome to Spotlight Advanced. I'm Bruce Gulland and I'm a Liar's Wade. Spotlight
uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand
no matter where in the world they live. Imagine the inside of a laboratory.
Men and women in white lab coats bend over long tables. One woman
is working over a small plastic dish. She takes a small container of liquid
and empties it into the dish. Then she squeezes several drops of a different
liquid from a long tube. She seals the dish and places it in a
container with several more dishes. Six weeks pass The dishes sit in their container,
but inside the dishes something is happening. Slowly, a red substance starts
to grow. By the end of the six weeks, it fills the dish.
It looks like a hamburger, but does it taste like one. The
woman returns to the laboratory and chooses one dish. She brings it into a
kitchen and places the substance on a hot pan. Once it is brown,
she puts it between two pieces of bread. Then she takes a big bite.
This may seem like something from a futuristic film, but the woman has
just taken her first bite of lab grown or in vitro meat. Many people
think this new technology can help solve many problems in the world of meat production,
but will people really eat it? Today? Spotlight is on in vitro
meat. Many people around the world love meat. People eat pigs, chicken,
cows, goats, and many other animals. Meat is an important part
of the world's diet. For some, meals with meat are important to who
they are. Many regional foods depend on meat for their uniqueness. But there
is also a big problem with meat. Raising animals takes up a lot of
space, food, and water, and the global population is increasing. As
more people come to live on the earth, they will demand more meat,
but the earth may not have enough space to keep these animals. Raising livestock
animals also has a serious effect on climate change. Some animals, like cows,
goats, and sheep, have special stomachs. These stomachs allow them to
eat foods that are very hard to digest, like grasses and leaves, But
digesting these foods produces a lot of methane gas. Methane is a very powerful
greenhouse gas. It traps twenty times more heat than carbon dioxide, and the
global meat industry is responsible for thirty percent of the world's methane production. If
the world continues to produce meat like this, it could be very bad for
the environment. For some people, growing meat in laboratories may be the solution
to this problem. Meat grown with this method is usually called cultured meat,
lap grown meat, or in vitro meat. To make in vitro meat,
all a scientist needs is a few cells from an animal's muscle. They these
cells in a special environment, then they add nutrients and chemicals called hormones.
These chemicals cause the cells to grow. The process does require some things from
animals, but a few cells from a cow could grow thousands of pounds of
beef. It is much more efficient than raising livestock, and it does not
produce methane. Liz spect is the director of Science and Technology at the Good
Food Institute. She spoke to the website gen Cultured meat could address all of
the problems related to industrial meat production. It addresses environmental impacts and concerns about
treating animals well. It starts the risks of getting diseases from animals. It
can do all this while making sure there is a production system to meet the
growth in demand for animal protein. For people like spect in vitro meat could
solve many of our problems, but the technology for in vitro meat is still
very new and it is still very expensive. Mark Post is a Dutch scientist.
He was the first person to make a lab grown hamburger in twenty thirteen.
It was made from cow cells. The hamburger was very expensive to make.
It cost three hundred and twenty five thousand dollars and it took three months
to grow. Today, the process is much faster. Good Meats is a
company that has started growing in vitro chicken. Their chicken only takes two weeks
to produce, but a meal of this chicken will cost about seventeen dollars.
The process also may not be as environmentally friendly as people thought. Growing in
vitro meat uses a lot of energy. Some of this energy will come from
burning fossil fuels. This releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide traps
heat in the atmosphere and it lasts in the atmosphere longer than methane, so
many people say it is worse for the planet. In the long term growing
in vitro meat may also cause a lot of waste. This is because cell
cultures must be sterile. They must be free of any bacteria, otherwise other
things will grow and ruin the meat. These sterile containers also create a lot
of plastic waste, and there is already a problem of too much plastic waste
in the environment. But the biggest question about in vitro meat might be will
people eat it. Many people do not trust food grown in a lab.
In vitro meat may seem unnatural, or people might fear that it will somehow
affect their bodies in a bad way. And in vitro meat also does not
taste like meat from animals. It does not have fat, only muscle.
Fat must be added later, and the taste is still not quite the same.
Still, in vitro meat is coming today. It is available in very
few places, but dozens of companies are working on their meat growing methods.
Companies have invested billions of dollars in this research, and many people believe that
it is the protein of the future. Josh Tetric is the CEO of eat
Just which grows in vitro chicken. He told the website C net. I
want tens of thousands of restaurants to have cultured meat on their menu. Then
at some point I want them to ask their chefs why do we have conventional
chicken on the menu too? Would you eat in vitro meat? Why or
why not? You can leave a comment on our website at www dot Spotlight
English dot com. You can also find us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram
and Twitter. The writer of this program was Dan Chrisman. The producer was
Mitio Ozaki. The voices you heard were from the United Kingdom and the United
States. All quotes were adapted for this program and voiced by Spotlight. This
program is called the Future of Meat. Visit our website to download our free
official app for Android and Apple devices. We hope you can join us again
for the next Spotlight program. Goodbye,