TED 2019: the $ 50 lab burger processing food

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Impossible foods

Bruce Friedrich has been a vegetarian for 30 years, but has recently regained a taste for meat.

The hamburgers that he ate were described by Bill Gates as "the future of food" – lab-grown meat from animal cells.

Mr Friedrich was at the TED conference (technology, entertainment and design) to explain how laboratory meat can feed an ever-growing population and solve environmental problems.

Beyond Meat was also in Vancouver to give delegates an overview of its herbal meat substitute.

Beyond meat, with Silicon Valley's Impossible Foods, already offer plant-based meat substitutes, but dozens of companies are experimenting with the development of meat products that take live animal cells and "grow" meat.

Mr Friedrich thinks that the general public will have his first taste of cell-based meat in 2020, but that at least in the beginning he will have to pay a premium of around 50 USD (£ 38).

The founder of the Good Food Institute, an organization that supports the creation of herbal and cell meat, has become one of this year's TED Scholars.

His think tank invested $ 2.8 million (£ 2.1 million) in 14 projects that develop ways to produce meat and turn it into mbad production – in the hope of getting a price tag down.

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TED / Ryan Lash

Cultivated meat, or clean meat, as it is sometimes called because of its low impact on the environment, has the capacity to transform agriculture, Mr Friedrich told the BBC.

"We grow a huge amount of crops just to feed the animals on the farm.For a nine-calorie chicken, we take out a calorie.This is an extremely inefficient way of creating food," he said. -he declares.

"And it is estimated that we must provide between 70% and 100% of meat in addition to 2050".

The demands of a constantly growing population, coupled with the environmental impact of intensive agriculture, are forcing farmers to look for other ways to produce meat, he said. declared.

"We are not going to change human nature, we just have to change the meat," Friedrich said.

& # 39; Not another vegetarian burger & # 39;

And this new age of synthetic meat has little to do with vegetarianism.

"We hear vegetarians say that they do not want to eat these products and we say, joking in part, that we really do not care what vegetarians think about it," he said.

"This is not yet another veggie burger."

A "farm" of clean meat will be very different – more like a brewery than a farm – and will not require any animals, Friedrich said.

"Animal cells would be immortalized in cell banks," he said.

"That would require 99% less land, which means farmers can move away from the farming theory of" getting fat or going out ".

"There would always be farm sanctuaries where animals could live their lives."

Traditional crops such as millet could return and farmers could work "more in tune with the soil".

This may seem like an idealized vision of the future for some, but already the meat substitutes are selling in droves.

A vegan sausage roll launched in the British bakery Greggs in January caused a wave of headlines and soaring profits for the company.

Meanwhile, Burger King is testing its Impossible Whopper at 59 restaurants in the United States and plans to roll it out across the country.

Burger King's new vegetarian hamburger is made by Impossible Foods, which develops herbal products that mimic the taste and texture of real meat.

Its "secret" ingredient is heme, a molecule containing iron that some attribute to giving the meat its "meaty" taste.

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My first taste of meeting

Before I went to the TED conference in Vancouver, I made a detour to a restaurant called Meet in the famous Gastown neighborhood. This is one of the many restaurants serving Beyond Meat burgers.

As a pescadarian who had not eaten meat for 20 years, it was a new challenge. At the first inspection, the "meat" had the texture of the real thing, but it was hard to tell if it was really fleshy, because of the amount of filling in the burger.

The restaurant was filled with diners, all of whom seemed to enjoy the herbal meat.

Later, at TED, I caught up with the company behind the hamburger and had another taste of their product, this time just a naked burger with no sauce or salad mix.

This does not have the taste of Quorn – the meat-based alternative I know best – but it also does not have the same taste as my meaty memory.

It has been good, but, as Mr Friedrich points out, I am not the target audience. At what point will meat eaters be convinced, I am not so sure.

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Currently, Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are developing meat of plant origin, but dozens of companies are also working on laboratory meat in Europe, the United States, China, Japan and Israel.

And regulators are starting to understand that they have to play a role, Friedrich said.

In March, the US Food and Drug Administration, in collaboration with the US Department of Agriculture, developed a memorandum of understanding on the regulation of this nascent industry, on a competitive footing. Equality with more traditional food products.

In countries with food security problems or those, like India and China, which have to feed large populations, Mr Friedrich predicts that regulators will roll out the red carpet to companies offering meat in the laboratory.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has designated cellular agriculture as one of five food technologies that can bring real change to developing countries.

But not everyone will join the revolution.

The UK's Vegan Society told the BBC: "We sympathize with the development of clean meat because it could eliminate animal suffering and reduce environmental impacts badociated with livestock.

"We welcome any reduction in animal suffering, but we can not support a clean meat because animals are still used in its production – although these products include animal-born starter cells, they do not are not vegan. "