WEBVTT

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In 2019, humanity received a warning:

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30 of the world's leading scientists
released the results

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of a massive three-year study
into global agriculture

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and declared that meat production
is destroying our planet

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and jeopardizing global health.

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One of the study's authors explained

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that "humanity now poses a threat
to the stability of the planet ...

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[This requires] nothing less than
a new global agricultural revolution."

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As somebody who's spent
the last two decades

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advocating a shift away
from industrial meat production,

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I wanted to believe that this clarion call
was going to make a difference.

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The thing is, I've seen this sort of thing
again and again and again for decades.

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Here's 2018 from the journal "Nature,"

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2017 from "Bioscience Journal,"

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2016 from the National
Academy of Sciences.

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The main point of these studies
tends to be climate change.

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But antibiotic resistance
represents just as big of a threat.

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We are feeding massive doses
of antibiotics to farm animals.

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These antibiotics are then
mutating into superbugs

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that threaten to render
antibiotics obsolete

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within all of our lifetimes.

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You want a scare?

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Google: "the end of working antibiotics."

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I'm going to get one thing out of the way:

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I am not here to tell anybody what to eat.

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Individual action is great,

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but antibiotic resistance
and climate change --

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they require more.

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Besides, convincing the world
to eat less meat hasn't worked.

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For 50 years, environmentalists,
global health experts and animal activists

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have been begging the public
to eat less meat.

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And yet, per capita meat consumption

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is as high as it's been
in recorded history.

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The average North American last year
ate more than 200 pounds of meat.

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And I didn't eat any.

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(Laughter)

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Which means somebody out there
ate 400 pounds of meat.

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(Laughter)

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On our current trajectory,

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we're going to need to be producing
70 to 100 percent more meat by 2050.

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This requires a global solution.

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What we need to do is we need to produce
the meat that people love,

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but we need to produce it
in a whole new way.

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I've got a couple of ideas.

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Idea number one:
let's grow meat from plants.

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Instead of growing plants,
feeding them to animals,

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and all of that inefficiency,

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let's grow those plants,
let's biomimic meat with them,

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let's make plant-based meat.

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Idea number two: for actual animal meat,

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let's grow it directly from cells.

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Instead of growing live animals,
let's grow the cells directly.

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It takes six weeks to grow
a chicken to slaughter weight.

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Grow the cells directly,
you can get that same growth

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in six days.

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This is what that looks like at scale.

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It's your friendly
neighborhood meat brewery.

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(Laughter)

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I want to make two points about this.

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The first one is, we believe we can do it.

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In recent years, some companies
have been producing meat from plants

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that consumers cannot distinguish
from actual animal meat,

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and there are now dozens of companies
growing actual animal meat

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directly from cells.

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This plant-based and cell-based meat

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gives consumers everything
that they love about meat --

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the taste, the texture and so on --

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but with no need for antibiotics

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and with a fraction of the adverse
impact on the climate.

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And because these two technologies
are so much more efficient,

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at production scale

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these products will be cheaper.

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But one quick point about that --

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it's not going to be easy.

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These plant-based companies have spent
small fortunes on their burgers,

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and cell-based meat has not yet
been commercialized at all.

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So we're going to need all hands on deck

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to make these the global meat industry.

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For starters, we need
the present meat industry.

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We don't want to disrupt
the meat industry,

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we want to transform it.

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We need their economies of scale,

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their global supply chain,
their marketing expertise

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and their massive consumer base.

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We also need governments.

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Governments spend tens of billions
of dollars every single year

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on research and development

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focused on global health
and the environment.

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They should be putting some of that money
into optimizing and perfecting

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the production of plant-based
and cell-based meat.

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Look, tens of thousands of people
died from antibiotic-resistant superbugs

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in North America just last year.

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By 2050, that number is going to be
10 million per year globally.

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And climate change represents
an existential threat

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to huge portions of our global family,

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including some of the poorest people
on the face of the planet.

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Climate change, antibiotic resistance --
these are global emergencies.

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Meat production is exacerbating
these emergencies on a global scale.

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But we are not going
to decrease meat consumption

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unless we give consumers alternatives

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that cost the same or less
and that taste the same or better.

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We have the solution.

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Let's make meat from plants.
Let's grow it directly from cells.

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It's past time that we mobilize
the resources that are necessary

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to create the next global
agricultural revolution.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)