 There are many problems with the current beet production that we will soon encounter actually, so if you think about a quarter Pounder hamburger, which is a quarter pound of beef then seven pounds of grain go into them 50 gallons of water fresh water already alluded to go into that 70 square feet of land and About thousand BTU of energy. That's a lot of resources that go into a simple simple hamburger That's all because we feed cows and the cows then feed us But the intermediate the cow is a very very inefficient animal in terms of converting the vegetables that they eat in the vegetable Proteins into animal edible protein to such an extent that we currently are already using 70% of all our arable land to produce meat And we could use that land for other purposes in addition It's increasingly known that our livestock industry is a big emitter of greenhouse gases allegedly the same as our transport industry So those cows and I since I know these numbers I look at cows in the pasture and I think about these clouds of methane that come out of it So there are pressing reasons to Start thinking about an alternative way of producing meat and that's not only because we go from 7 to 9 billion people or 10 But also because a meat consumption is pretty much Related to the gross domestic product of a country and as the gross domestic product of some countries in particular India and China is going up meat consumption will increase So this is the human trophic level. It's where we are in the food chain if it's one It's a plant if it's two it's an animal that eats plants if it's three It's an animal that eats animals that eats plants and we are at 2.3 Meaning that 30% of all our proteins come from animals that eat plants So we are 2.3 and then India and China went up for the last 30 years and are gradually creeping up to that 2.3 indicating and then here is the Correlation between the human trophic level and the gross domestic product and you see there is perfect correlation Whenever countries become richer middle-class incomes rise in numbers people will start to eat meat The story of human evolution is one that is intimately tied to meat Once we started cooking meat then we could get lots of energy and that energy enabled us to have big brains and Become physically anatomically human Hunters and gatherers all over the world are very sad if for a few days at a time the hunters come back empty-handed They camp becomes quiet the dancing stops and then somebody catches some meat They bring the prey into the camp or nowadays into somebody's back garden with a barbecue Everybody gets excited to come and share the meat. It is ritually cut and passed out to people We are a species designed to love meat Feeding the world is a complex problem I think people don't yet realize what an impact meat consumption has on the planet 18% of our greenhouse gas emissions come from meat production We're also using something like 1500 gallons of water to produce just one pound of meat Meat takes up about 70% of our arable lands There's no question that if we were able to shift more of our land into Intensive fruit and vegetable production We'd be able to feed a lot more people a lot healthier diet with the global population Growing from 7 billion to 9 billion people by 2050 the demand for meat will double We can't just continue doing what we've been doing Unless we make some changes in how we produce meat on this planet. We're in for a terrible reckoning Meat consumption was part of the human species. It's been fantastically beneficial for us And now by some horrendous irony it's become part of a system that threatens our species We have to do something about it So these guys much more eloquently than I can Express the need to do something and of course we can all become vegetarians it looks actually very appetizing and Some of you are experienced that and not only some of you but two billion people on this planet are vegetarian Mostly unvoluntarily and they live happy lives. They live creative lives procreative lives. So there's nothing wrong We don't need animal proteins. That's just a myth that we need them. We don't need them. However, we like the product We are According to Richard Brangham a species designed to love me and that specially resonates with me I know all the problems with meat eating, but I am a meat eater and I will continue eating meat So that's why it is also particularly in my own interest to create a product that Has the same quality and it's actually exactly the same but is derived in a different way So what's the other option since about? 2000 we know that all our muscle cells have stem cells in them They are sitting there waiting to repair tissue in case of injury what you can do is you can take them out and Take a biopsy from a cow get a small piece of muscle out of it one centimeter long One millimeter in diameter that already has a couple of hundred of those stem cells very very high in Density of stem cells. So if you take that under the microscope and you separate the muscle cells from the fat cells Then you can also isolate these stem cells They can replicate and they couldn't replicate to the extent that from that one piece of muscle We can produce 10,000 kilos of beef. So that means that you can Basically reduce the total herd of cows in the world from half a billion to let's say 30,000 so the replicative capacity is tremendous and since these are designated stem cells muscle stem cells they will start to produce muscle tissue when we provide the right conditions and So first what they should do they should merge because a muscle cell is structure of a lot of other cells So they should merge and if we starve them they start to merge then An interesting thing needs to occur they need to start to perform labor There's labor as we all know exercise will increase the muscle mass will increase protein mass and protein is what we're interested in Muscle is always attached to tendons It always builds up tension and that tension is actually the biggest trigger for these cells to produce the proteins that we're interested in So what we do we basically we grow them in donuts around the central column And then if you wait three weeks, they have start to build up that tension and they have moved into or Differentiated into a full-fledged muscle cell that under the microscope is not distinguishable anymore from a muscle cell that you get from a stake from Walmart So basically what we did is we grew 10,000 of those muscle fibers and produced a hamburger. We Decided this is a proof of concept. We decided to in a sort of hybrid between a cooking show and a press conference To show that to the world for two reasons one to sort of cut the discussion Hey guys, you know, this is not a myth. This is not a fantasy This can be done and second by the way It also needs to be done because we have a crisis coming up in meat production and meat consumption So this is a very small video of that presentation. We presented it appropriately in a Petri dish It was cooked by a very courageous chef remind you this was a quarter million dollar hamburger And it was eaten by two volunteers and and tasted two people From the the food critic and the food journalist community and they said it was okay For a quarter million dollar hamburger. We expected a little bit more, but it was okay And what's more importantly they said well, yes, it's definitely meat and it has the consistency of meat The taste is is okay. It's a little bit blend. There was no fat in it yet It was pure muscle and I did completely agree actually with their assessment So then you have a proof of concept, which is nice, but it's still you know, not a marketable proposition a quarter million dollars So what is required for this to make it into a product? One is we have to be able to produce it in an efficient way in a resource efficient way much more Efficient than the cow is a second It has to be internally sustainable that means that all the stuff that we put in there has to be either reusable or in Plenty quality present and third it has to be exactly the same as meat because it's not the animal protein We are looking for it's the meat product that we are looking for so how do we go about that? For that hamburger we cultured 30 billion cells if you know anything about cell culture You know that inherently it's not a very efficient process It's not a very environmentally friendly process. You need a lot of plastic But we already know that we can grow it in 25,000 liter of that's fermenters on Microcarriers that are reusable and that way we can scale up production and that scaling up is actually essential to make it Efficient so there was a initial lifecycle analysis on what would this mean for land and water and energy use it from the University of Oxford and they basically Estimated that obviously we can cut tremendously on the number on the amount of land about 90 percent amount of water Not another important 90 percent and energy about 60 70 percent depending on where in the world you are doing this So this is still preliminary, but it's a boost obviously for this particular developer. This is a busy slide And it should actually be much busier than this What we are doing in terms of sustainability One of the factors that is necessary or has been necessary in cell culture for about 130 years is That you use a blood-derived product to keep the cells alive and to keep them thriving Which is called the serum basically the blood without the cells and This happens to come from cows so When we reduce the number of cows as we propose then we won't have enough serum to grow the cells So, you know, we have to get rid of the serum as well Fortunately for a fair number of cells that has been already developed not for muscle cells and these are just 30 or so Conditions where we tested the proliferation of these cells under serum containing and serum free conditions The red arrows are all serum containing conditions But the two blue ones are serum free and they grow reasonably well on that serum free up to the point That they're almost the same as serum containing so that problem can be cracked and will eventually be cracked completely in terms of Mimicry I'm just giving a couple of examples these cells actually don't express a sufficient amount of protein called myoglobin Which is the iron carrying protein and that's because we culture them under oxygen conditions that are ambient and Turn out to be too high for muscle cells in cell culture. So What we did we reduced the oxygen concentration and then the myoglobin concentration goes up five-fold so it's a very simple intervention and it's just an example to show that by Changing the variables of this cell culture. You can actually arrive at a product that is essentially the same as Muscle tissue and that is efficiently produced We're also culturing fat tissue right now remember those tasters said well, yeah, it's it's on the dry side So now we are culturing fat tissue and it actually can be done pretty easily you use the stem cells coming from the fat tissue from the Biopsy that you take and here is our samples of those fat tissues these are Spaghetti's of fat tissue that we have created through ways by Stimulating the stem cells with naturally occurring fatty acids so that they become fat cells Then the fourth requirement is that it needs to be accepted Is it fear for the unknown? Is it lack of control of over how food is being produced? Is it natural unnatural? How do we work with these sort of qualifications? It's it's interesting to me that there is a whole culture around meat eating that supposedly drives us to eat meat and Also, but also drives us at the same time route to reject these type of alternatives The news is not that bad when we did a survey among Brits and Dutch people Whether they would want to eat this about 52% at least of the Dutch people and 60 of the English people the Brits said Yes, we would actually would eat that so it's not that bad. It's a It's an intellectual exercise that we didn't present the hamburgers in front of them and have them eat it But at least they expressed interested in and they understand that's the nice thing about this product Although it may have sort of visions of futuristic very technical foods There is a good rationale behind it and people understand that very well so another interesting thing is that this is supposed to be a hot dog and People eat hot dogs You know, do I need to say more? Most people don't know what's in it Most people don't want to know how it's being produced and yet you eat it So why is that in my mind that all has to do well? It's cheap and it's for people who like it It's palatable, but it's also safe You know, you have seen a lot of people eating hot dogs and they live they stay alive Which is a miracle in and by itself that's an aspect of every new food if it's produced in a new way if it's safe or not and That will just require time to get over that and see it being eaten by a lot of other people The lack of control you can do something about that This is a technology that is simple enough so that you can do this in your kitchen Instead of having or in addition to having a vegetable garden You can have a microwave type of equipment in your kitchen where you can produce your meat For your own family. You have to know about nine weeks in advance what you want to eat So there is a downside to it But it can be done and it can be done at any other scale at a scale where you can't have control. This is pookie pookie is a pig that lives in a neighborhood of a small city It has a couple of brothers and sisters in the same farm not more It's fed by the kids of the community It the name pookie is given by the kids of the community Once in a while you poke them in the butt Takes themselves and in a barn adjacent to the farm you grow the pork for that community Then you have full control you can visit the barn on Sundays with your kids and see sort of the produce of pookie And then you have full control over how your food is being produced So yes, that can be done Okay, so the other thing I think and I alluded to it is that food is always associated with culture and with emotion and I think when we eat meat there is this aspect Well, first of all, there is the aspect of nutritional value the heme protein with the iron but there are also aspects of dominance over another species the sort of the hunting instinct in us the the romance of fire and Preparation of food and that is obviously not associated with a lab or a laboratory person so when this technology Develops and we start to eat meat that comes from different sources our whole concept of what meat is is Inevitably going to change it will no longer be a product coming from an animal that we have killed that we have hunted down That we have killed that we have showed dominance over and that we have in sort of a romantic fire experience Cooked it it becomes a very very different product with advantages and disadvantages. So you can Make this in all shapes and forms. You can be very creative about this You can make it more palatable for kids colorful in all sorts of Forms, but you can also change and that's more important to me You can also change those fatty acids that are sitting in those fat cells to be more omega-3 rich So you can create a healthier product so that at some point your physician prescribes Two weekly visits to McDonald's now The fifth requirement obviously for this to become a marketable product is that the price has to come down from those Quarter million dollar and we worked with one of the largest companies that produce stem cells for a medical application And they have a model a cell culture model in which all the costs is are involved and we entered our Data into their model. It's basically how many cells you can get from that small tissue and How many cells you can culture per milliliter of that fluid? And so they run through the model with all the different phases of cell culture and Then they arrived actually at a cost currently with the current technology no improvements whatsoever Just scaling up of $65 per kilo Which is still very very high, but it's already sort of in the realm of what the upper-end Meat industry is used to do you know by any chance what the big the most expensive hamburger is in the world right now? It's $450 it's not only the meat it comes with all sorts of other stuff, but This is not my ambition. It's not my ambition to make a product for a couple of wealthy people It's the ambition to make a bulk product to serve the world So we are ways away from it but with one giant step we get close already and I think that the technology can improve and we know where to do that to Take this cost even further down. I Have gotten used to the idea and I hope you Kind of got used to the idea that at some point in time maybe five to ten years from now we will have cultured meat as a choice in our food and Although I haven't talked about animal welfare because for me the food security and the environmental issues are more important than animal Welfare that's a personal choice, but I think for consumers the fact that we can create meat and and keep on eating meat Without having an imaginary Vegan girlfriend looking over our shoulder and sort of tapping into our conscience will be a big consumer decisive issue So the ethical issues are probably driving consumers to eventually choose for that because if you imagine that you walk Let's say ten years from now into Walmart and you have those two products that are essentially the same They're essentially the same tissue one says may may have a label very similar to smoking kills you But now you know an animal has been used for this product and the other is animal free And there's no ecotex and that sort of thing, you know, then the choice becomes really hard or maybe really easy That's my dream. That's what I wanted to share with you and I myself. I'm pretty confident that this is going to happen