1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,940 Nearly 90 percent of Americans eat meat as a part of their diet. 2 00:00:04,400 --> 00:00:09,880 But earlier this year, the Agriculture Department approved production of what's known as cultivated meat. 3 00:00:10,220 --> 00:00:12,040 That is chicken grown in a lab. 4 00:00:12,340 --> 00:00:17,220 That approval clears the way for companies to begin selling poultry produced from animal cells 5 00:00:17,220 --> 00:00:20,100 rather than animals bred in factory farms and killed. 6 00:00:20,620 --> 00:00:23,880 William Brangham gives us a taste of what the future could hold. 7 00:00:23,880 --> 00:00:26,900 At the Good Meat plant in Alameda, California, 8 00:00:27,340 --> 00:00:34,060 chef Nate Park is putting the finishing touches on a dish that is seemingly pulled right out of science fiction. 9 00:00:34,500 --> 00:00:35,720 A lot of people don't know what this is. 10 00:00:36,180 --> 00:00:39,700 So there's a tendency to maybe back away because they don't know what it is. 11 00:00:39,760 --> 00:00:43,400 But I think once they understand what it is and that it's just chicken and that it's delicious, 12 00:00:44,180 --> 00:00:46,100 it'll be very easy for everyone to get on board. 13 00:00:46,580 --> 00:00:52,700 Getting people comfortable with the idea of cultivated chicken is at the heart of operations here at Good Meat. 14 00:00:52,700 --> 00:00:56,320 It's one of two companies now federally approved to make it. 15 00:00:56,900 --> 00:00:58,800 We want to slice it in front of you. 16 00:00:59,020 --> 00:01:01,760 We want you to see what it is that you're going to get on the plate. 17 00:01:02,460 --> 00:01:06,540 Grilled, sliced and served with heirloom beans and a sweet potato puree. 18 00:01:07,180 --> 00:01:10,180 If you had said nothing about this, I would just think this was a lovely meal. 19 00:01:10,660 --> 00:01:11,240 Thank you. 20 00:01:11,780 --> 00:01:14,980 It tastes, as the saying goes, like chicken. 21 00:01:15,860 --> 00:01:16,320 It's chicken. 22 00:01:17,720 --> 00:01:18,640 And delicious. 23 00:01:18,640 --> 00:01:25,580 But long before I enjoyed it for lunch today, that chicken meat could only be seen here, 24 00:01:25,920 --> 00:01:31,140 inside this bioprocessing lab, as tiny microscopic stem cells. 25 00:01:31,820 --> 00:01:35,040 They're all taken from real chickens without harming them. 26 00:01:35,620 --> 00:01:41,020 The cells are then constantly stirred, kept warm, and nourished so that they'll multiply 27 00:01:41,020 --> 00:01:44,020 inside these massive bioreactors. 28 00:01:44,020 --> 00:01:52,300 It's all part of a lengthy process designed to mirror how actual animals grow. 29 00:01:52,940 --> 00:01:55,880 Cultivated meat has been talked about for over 100 years. 30 00:01:56,400 --> 00:02:01,380 Josh Tetrick is the co-founder and CEO of Eat Just, which operates Good Meat. 31 00:02:01,720 --> 00:02:05,100 What is the rationale for cultivated meat? 32 00:02:05,100 --> 00:02:08,400 First and foremost, we just got to accept people love meat. 33 00:02:09,360 --> 00:02:15,120 And it's difficult, really difficult, to get people to stop eating meat and choose beans 34 00:02:15,120 --> 00:02:18,100 or some other plant-based source, which would be better for them. 35 00:02:18,920 --> 00:02:20,680 So how do you get at that? 36 00:02:21,060 --> 00:02:27,100 And I think the answer is you make real meat in exactly the same taste and texture that people 37 00:02:27,100 --> 00:02:30,860 are used to, but you make it in a way that doesn't require billions of animals. 38 00:02:30,860 --> 00:02:37,800 Global food production is responsible for roughly a third of all the man-made greenhouse gases 39 00:02:37,800 --> 00:02:39,980 that are dangerously heating the planet. 40 00:02:40,840 --> 00:02:45,860 And meat production is the major driver of that impact, with the majority of the world's 41 00:02:45,860 --> 00:02:50,800 croplands and forests being used to grow food for the animals we then eat. 42 00:02:51,620 --> 00:02:56,000 If we're going to solve the climate problem, we definitely need to move from fossil fuels to 43 00:02:56,000 --> 00:03:03,040 renewable energy, and we also definitely need to move from intensive animal farming that is 44 00:03:03,040 --> 00:03:07,200 eating up a third of our planet today to an entirely different approach.