Lab-Grown Meat is Coming, Whether You Like it or Not

[Narrator] Would you eat this?

It's meat, but I guarantee you,

it's like no meat you've ever seen before.

That's because this stuff was grown from cells in a lab.

Clean meat is meat grown by cell culture

rather than grown by an animal.

From a scientific perspective, it's awe inspiring.

[Narrator] Lab grown, or clean meat,

is slaughter free and potentially more eco-friendly

because it uses less land, water, and energy.

At least, that's the promise.

Okay, we know what you're thinking.

That's nasty.

Ugh, doesn't sound right.

I'm not really into, like, lab made things.

It's unnatural.

It just seems off.

[Narrator] But if the scientists growing the stuff

can overcome the ick factor,

clean meat could help feed our growing population

in more ethical and sustainable ways.

People will get used to clean meat in hurry

if it tastes right, if it feels right.

If it doesn't, it's gonna be a monumental thing to overcome.

[Narrator] We visited a start up

in San Francisco called Just.

It's one of several companies trying to bring

clean meat into the mainstream.

They say they'll be ready to take a product to market

by the end of the year.

This is a big idea, that you can manufacture meat

in an entirely different way

[Narrator] The big question, of course,

is how does it taste?

We were hoping to taste it for ourselves,

but they told us it wasn't ready for public consumption.

So instead we watched as their CEO ate a clean chorizo taco.

I mean right now, I'm gonna be the judge of it.

Ultimately, the judge of this is millions

of people that are eating it.

It's really good, man.

I think the important part is does it pass the threshold,

A, of is it really good?

It does.

And B, does it pass the threshold of is this meat?

And it does.

[Narrator] For now, we'll just have

to take his word for it.

But they assured us that this is actually meat.

So how do companies grow it?

First, technicians take a small amount

of tissue from an animal, then filter it

and isolate cells that they can grow.

That means providing warmth and oxygen,

as well as feeding them salts, sugars, and proteins.

Essentially tricking the cells into thinking

that they're still inside their owner.

The cells naturally replicate as they would inside the body,

growing to something that looks more and more like food.

But while they can grow muscle, fat, and connective tissue

from these starter strains, the big challenge

is building them in a way that recreates

the meat you're used to.

Nobody's anywhere close to lab growing a steak.

There's different types of muscle cells,

connective tissue, bone, pockets that aggregate

a lot of lipids and fat.

And all that plays into the texture,

the taste, the aroma, the appearance,

the functionality of something in a pan or on a grill.

We're really far away from being able

to create this matrix of different types

of cells all doing their job.

[Narrator] Which is why you end up with something

that looks more Sloppy Joe than sirloin.

We don't want it to taste remarkable,

we just want it to taste like meat.

So if we're making chorizo,

we don't want it to taste like A5 Kobe,

we just want it to taste like chorizo.

[Narrator] Eventually, the goal for these companies

is to produce more complex structures like a rib-eye.

Or in the case of another startup

called Finless Foods, a fish filet.

We know it's a scaling up problem,

and our job is to change this into millions

and millions of tons of that.

What we do is we create non-vegan, non-vegetarian,

real fish meat, without the mercury

and without the plastic,

without the environmental devastation,

and without the animal cruelty.

This technology really comes in two pieces.

The first piece is growing these cells out in a way

that is efficient and also something

that tastes as good as possible.

Part two is taking those cells

and giving it the same structure

and feel and look of meat.

[Narrator] That might be a bigger challenge

than it seems thanks to the so-called uncanny valley effect.

In robotics, that's our discomfort with humanoids

that are close to being human, but not 100% there.

That same principle applies to meat.

The uncanny valley of meat, and with food in general,

is when you get to something that's

a highly sophisticated imitation,

but not quite there, it forces your brain

into a very small window of context

where you say, I'm convinced I'm gonna

be eating a chicken nugget.

This better behave exactly like a chicken nugget

in every way, shape, or form, or I'm gonna freak out.

Because I am very in tune with what to expect.

We are hard wired to make sure

that we're not ingesting poison.

We're hard wired to make sure that we're not

ingesting something that has been contaminated

or something's that even low in calories.

Your brain is going to pick every possible nit

that's there because that's it's job.

[Narrator] But if clean meat companies can pull it off

it could fundamentally change our relationship with meat.

For example, Just is also working

on a clean meat version of foie gras.

That's the controversial delicacy

made by force feeding a duck or a goose

until it's liver swells up to 10 times it's normal size.

A practice so controversial,

that it's been banned in California.

But this is the guilt free version.

And this is remarkable.

[Narrator] And it makes sense that

they're starting with foie gras,

since the structure is pretty simple.

And here's where it gets interesting,

because while science still needs more studies

to determine if this stuff will actually

be more eco-friendly than factory farming,

it's pretty clear that it will be better for animals.

Even some vegans are okay with the idea,

including the folks at PETA,

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

An organization that isn't known for compromising.

People are surprised that a vegan

would eat lab-grown meat, or that PETA

would support the idea of lab-grown meat.

But, you know, I think it really makes a lot of sense

when you consider that for vegans and for PETA,

you know, our mission is to eliminate animal suffering.

[Narrator] But there is at least one

big ethical hurdle for clean meat.

To culture the cells, typically you'd need

to feed them serum made from animal blood,

which is not exactly an ideal basis

for a more humane form of meat.

On top of that, serum is insanely expensive,

and so is the final product.

The first ever lab-grown burger,

which was unveiled in 2015, cost around $330,000 to grow.

At Finless Foods, they've gotten as far as croquettes,

which contain their fish, but also a whole lot of potato,

and that's largely due to cost.

When we first started this project

and we created our initial prototype,

our fish croquettes that we made back in September,

that was about $19,000 per pound.

Since then, we've come down to about $7000 per pound

and are continuing to drop it.

[Narrator] So the goal right now is to identify

a cheaper source of nutrients to feed the cells.

Back at Just, this is what that process looks like.

It's a system of robotics and AI

used to sift through a giant database of plant ingredients.

And they claim to have recently identified

plant-based nutrients for clean meat that would be

much cheaper and more ethical than using serum.

So if Just, Finless Foods, and other startups

can successfully scale up,

we'll soon have lab-grown meat that could be

more sustainable, and certainly more ethical,

than the stuff from factory farms.

As long as you're okay with it looking like this.