Podcast episode on lab-grown meat
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EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
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Hi, I'm Joseph Peer Grossi, and I'm Kevin Jang. Today we're gonna talk about artificial meat. Well back in February in Vancouver, Professor Mark Post, he's a physiologist from the University of Maastricht over in Holland, said that he was developing a new envy tro meat, that he could grow in the laboratory, and he was hoping that by October of this year he would be ableto bring out a hamburger. So why would anybody want to grow meat in a lab while Mark Post thinks that we can feed more people and reduce the environmental impact of livestock production in one fell swoop? So, Kevin, I think this is really unnecessary. I think that there are better alternatives than growing our meat in a Petri dish. I mean, couldn't you get the same effect from just eating less meat? Well, I don't think there's any way to stop people from wanting to eat meat. It's something that's just biologically programmed into us, that desire for meat. It's driven our brain development, social development of migration patterns and just thinking that telling people well, you guys should stop eating me, I think, is pretty unreasonable. Well, we're not necessarily going and telling people You need to eat less meat right now. But look, there's a pretty high environmental cost to meet. I mean, you know, you have tow grow plants to feed the animal, and you have to have land in order to raise the animal. And if the price of meat really reflects a lot of those costs, and it does become in a way somewhat prohibitive and people will eat less meat well, Mark Post would say that we can reduce the environmental cost of meat. We can actually ah severely lower the environmental impact of livestock and kind of the wasted agriculture that goes into livestock production with artificial meat. I'm hearing what you're saying correctly and you say, if we raise the price of meat that would lower demand and lower some of the environmental impact, Well, that seems kind of slightly Darwinian, in a sense, when that just mean that poor people can't eat meat in a way, I think it's kind of like there's no need. Historically, most cultures have a pretty plant based diet. I mean, there's meat in there, but it's pretty reduced. It's not the main event in a lot of these meals. Meat, in terms of being a focus of a meal, has really been something that's been more modern. And I think if we look a lot of traditional cuisine in a lot of places, it's pretty plant based, you know, you know, cultures have definitely eating less meat than they do today. But people also ate a lot less salt and a lot less sugar. These air things that while they might not, in the strictest sense of the word, be necessary to our diet in the quantities that we have them today, there's something that everyone wants. There's a reason there's salt in every convenience store in every grocery store in the world. Basically, there's a reason why Coca Cola and Pepsi, or some of the biggest companies in the world. It's because people have an innate desire for things like sugar for salt for meat. And there's no way of preventing people from wanting those things. It's in our biology, so when you think about giving people access to something that they want, if we can do it cheaply and efficiently without damaging the environment, if we can feed more people and increase their quality of life Because, let's face it, meat is, you know, one of the key characteristics of quality to the life for a lot of cultures. So why wouldn't we want to do this? I get your point. And by the way, I should add a disclaimer here. I myself am not vegetarian. I do enjoy meat, but, you know, at the same time, I could definitely reduce the amount of meat. There is my diet. I'm not saying that everybody has to be vegetarians. I'm just saying, you know, coming back a little bit could really do a lot the same thing. And, sure, the sort of in vitro meat that we're talking about here, it could accomplish a lot of these things. You're talking about lowering the environmental cost of actually having this meeting, increasing the amount of food there is for people. But are they gonna eat it? I mean, after all, comes out of a Petri dish. I wouldn't eat it as it stands right now, but if they can get this technology to the point where you can't distinguish artificial meat from real meat, I personally don't see any reason why people without access to meet would not want to eat this. This just feels like a technology that needs to be pursued to something that we need to have as an option in case we need it. Would you eat it in the future when it was perfect? Yeah, Yeah. If it was indistinguishable from real meat, I see no reason why I wouldn't want to eat it. I think there's a certain element of discussed there, and I'm not entirely sure yet if I would actually give it a try. Yeah, there's definitely an ick factor to it. But I think in the future, when the population of the world increases the cost of livestock production, to feed these people is just gonna be so enormous that we need alternatives. And I just feel like this is something we need to at least research. Well, either way, it's Ah, it's November, right now that we're recording this, there's no hamburger yet, but well, maybe, uh, maybe there will be some time soon. Either way, it's happening. So we'll see. I suppose when? When it's when it's ready. Well, I guess that's a wrap for us. I once again am Joseph Peer Grossi. And I'm Kevin Jang. All right, good eating