WEBVTT 00:00:00.350 --> 00:00:06.160 Veganism is all about reducing the harm we cause to sentient beings to the best of our ability. 00:00:06.160 --> 00:00:10.340 This is why we don’t eat animal products. It’s impossible to take the body 00:00:10.340 --> 00:00:16.720 part or secretion of a living being without exploitation and pain. Or is it? 00:00:16.720 --> 00:00:21.440 If meat and other animal products could be made without harming animals, 00:00:21.440 --> 00:00:25.160 would there finally be such a thing as vegan meat? 00:00:29.680 --> 00:00:34.060 Hi it's Emily from Bite Size Vegan and welcome to another vegan nugget. 00:00:34.060 --> 00:00:38.140 When it comes to lab grown meat, there are vegans on both sides of the debate. 00:00:38.140 --> 00:00:42.600 With the potential for massive reductions in the environmental impact of animal agriculture 00:00:42.600 --> 00:00:46.780 and an end to the suffering and death of trillions of animals every year, 00:00:46.780 --> 00:00:51.479 why wouldn’t every vegan be championing the cause for test tube meat? 00:00:51.479 --> 00:00:56.249 Well like most topics I set out to cover, cultured meat production is far more complicated 00:00:56.249 --> 00:01:00.149 than it may first appear. We’re going to cover some of the pros and cons of cellular 00:01:00.149 --> 00:01:04.619 agriculture and why it's a hot button within the vegan community. 00:01:04.619 --> 00:01:08.890 As always, I’ll be barely scratching the surface and will provide links to citations, 00:01:08.890 --> 00:01:12.750 further resources, and a full bibliography on the blog post for this video 00:01:12.750 --> 00:01:14.560 linked in the description. 00:01:14.570 --> 00:01:18.990 The concept of growing and maintaining muscle outside of the body is not new. 00:01:18.990 --> 00:01:25.159 Starting in 1912, biologist Alexis Carrel kept cells from an embryonic chicken heart beating in a nutrient 00:01:25.159 --> 00:01:31.450 bath in his laboratory for more than 20 years. In 1931, Winston Churchill wrote in a predictive 00:01:31.450 --> 00:01:37.090 essay optimistically entitled Fifty Years Hence that, “We shall escape the absurdity 00:01:37.090 --> 00:01:41.560 of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts 00:01:41.560 --> 00:01:43.850 separately under a suitable medium.” 00:01:43.850 --> 00:01:49.570 Over the decades from NASA-backed fish fillets made of goldfish cells to the 2013 taste test 00:01:49.570 --> 00:01:56.159 of the first ever lab-grown burger, the cultured meat, well, culture, continues to grow. 00:01:56.159 --> 00:01:56.850 [See a brief but thorough timeline in the ‘In-Vitro Meat” section of this essay] 00:01:56.850 --> 00:02:01.549 The advantages of this method of meat creation are obvious. Despite the efforts, hopes and 00:02:01.549 --> 00:02:06.399 dreams of vegans and activists alike, the global demand for meat is on the rise 00:02:06.399 --> 00:02:08.800 with India and China leading the charge. 00:02:08.800 --> 00:02:14.590 With animal agriculture contributing as much as 51% of global greenhouse gas emissions, 00:02:14.590 --> 00:02:19.140 using a third of the earth’s fresh water, up to 45 percent of the Earth’s land, causing 00:02:19.140 --> 00:02:24.150 91 percent of Amazon rainforest destruction and serving as a leading cause of species 00:02:24.150 --> 00:02:28.510 extinction, ocean dead zones, and habitat destruction, the environmental implications 00:02:28.510 --> 00:02:31.210 alone could be staggering. 00:02:31.210 --> 00:02:38.080 A 2011 study concluded that, “cultured meat involves approximately 7–45% lower energy use... 00:02:38.080 --> 00:02:46.760 78–96% lower GHG emissions, 99% lower land use, and 82–96% lower water use 00:02:46.760 --> 00:02:51.130 depending on the product compared.” While these numbers sound promising, the study was 00:02:51.130 --> 00:02:56.560 largely criticized for basing its numbers on a not-yet-proven method of cultured meat growth. 00:02:56.560 --> 00:03:00.000 While still theoretical, a 2014 study accounting for 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:04.180 other potential production methods found that energy use for cultured meat actually 00:03:04.190 --> 00:03:09.230 exceeded current levels for beef production, but had significantly lower greenhouse gas 00:03:09.230 --> 00:03:14.310 emissions and land usage and was only higher than poultry in water usage. 00:03:14.310 --> 00:03:19.580 The reality is that the actual environmental impact of cultured meat remains unknown because 00:03:19.580 --> 00:03:24.850 it’s still in such an experimental phase. The ground meat grown for 2013’s seminal 00:03:24.850 --> 00:03:30.480 burger was a relatively simple creation of pure protein. It lacked any of the fat and 00:03:30.480 --> 00:03:35.570 blood that give meat its flavor or the firmness of once-active muscle tissue. In order to 00:03:35.570 --> 00:03:40.990 create meat products of more substance, the muscle, which is what meat is after all, has 00:03:40.990 --> 00:03:46.630 to be exercised and provided with artificial blood flow, oxygen, digestion and nutrition. 00:03:46.630 --> 00:03:51.510 Some scientists speculate that this increased energy demand may negate any reduction in 00:03:51.510 --> 00:03:53.940 land usage and agricultural input. 00:03:53.940 --> 00:03:58.630 Basically, when it comes to the environmental benefits, it’s still too early to know. 00:03:58.630 --> 00:04:02.030 So what about the other main benefit: an end to the suffering and death 00:04:02.030 --> 00:04:04.550 of trillions of beings every year? 00:04:04.550 --> 00:04:11.700 Here is where cultured meat has the potential to shine. Maybe. Eventually. There are several 00:04:11.710 --> 00:04:16.070 significant hurdles to overcome before lab-grown meat can be called anything near 00:04:16.070 --> 00:04:21.580 "cruelty and animal-free.” The major issues on the ethics end are establishing self-renewing 00:04:21.590 --> 00:04:26.570 stem cells and finding plant-based materials for the growth medium and scaffolding. 00:04:26.570 --> 00:04:30.520 To understand what that means, I’ll give a very simplified version of in-vitro meat 00:04:30.520 --> 00:04:35.850 production. Initially, cells are taken via biopsy from a living animal and deposited 00:04:35.850 --> 00:04:40.260 into a growth medium where they proliferate and grow. Eventually, in order to produce 00:04:40.260 --> 00:04:43.260 meat products with more structure than the ground patty, 00:04:43.260 --> 00:04:46.200 they will need a form of scaffolding to hold their shape. 00:04:46.200 --> 00:04:51.270 The first ethical issues arise when considering the long-term viability of the initial harvested 00:04:51.270 --> 00:04:56.430 cells. Professor Mark Post, the man behind the famous taste-tested burger, has said that, 00:04:56.430 --> 00:05:00.590 “the most efficient way of taking the process forward would still involve slaughter,” 00:05:00.590 --> 00:05:04.950 with a “limited herd of donor animals” kept for stock. Others in the movement envision 00:05:04.950 --> 00:05:09.680 the establishment of a self-renewing stem cell line, meaning only an initial biopsy 00:05:09.680 --> 00:05:13.970 would be required at which point the cell line would replicate indefinitely. 00:05:13.970 --> 00:05:18.920 Yet another concern is that, given humanity’s love of the new, different and exotic, we 00:05:18.920 --> 00:05:23.190 may start breeding specialty animals for cell harvesting, which would still require the 00:05:23.190 --> 00:05:26.910 confinement and reproductive control of sentient beings. 00:05:26.910 --> 00:05:31.780 As a side-note, Post’s famous burger was made with egg powder to enhance the taste, 00:05:31.780 --> 00:05:37.500 introducing another level of animal suffering. This is by no means, however, a necessary practice. 00:05:37.500 --> 00:05:41.780 The second major ethical issue and one that isn’t widely addressed in most of the news 00:05:41.780 --> 00:05:46.440 reports on cultured meat, is the growth medium into which the cells are deposited. 00:05:46.440 --> 00:05:51.620 At the moment, the most widely used medium is bovine fetal serum. Fetal serum from an array of 00:05:51.620 --> 00:05:56.820 animals is commonly employed in a wide range of experiments, including those for tampons, 00:05:56.820 --> 00:05:59.860 which I covered in my “Are Tampons Vegan?” video. 00:05:59.860 --> 00:06:05.060 The harvesting of bovine fetal serum is far from transparent. One study reached out to 00:06:05.060 --> 00:06:11.180 388 harvesting entities with only 4% responding with any kind of methodology data. 00:06:11.180 --> 00:06:15.740 Five sources explicitly declared their harvesting methods to be confidential. 00:06:15.740 --> 00:06:21.300 Of those that did respond, the typical procedure for fetal serum harvesting was “by cardiac puncture" 00:06:21.300 --> 00:06:25.660 meaning a needle directly into the beating heart of the fetal cow. They specify 00:06:25.669 --> 00:06:30.080 that, “Fetuses should be at least 3 months old; otherwise the heart is too small for 00:06:30.080 --> 00:06:32.590 puncture.” The general process is as follows: 00:06:32.590 --> 00:06:37.139 “At the time of slaughter, the cow is found to be pregnant during evisceration (removal 00:06:37.139 --> 00:06:41.860 of the internal organs in the thorax and abdomen during processing of the slaughtered cow) 00:06:41.860 --> 00:06:46.110 … The calf is removed quickly from the uterus [and] a cardiac puncture is performed by inserting 00:06:46.110 --> 00:06:51.300 a needle between the ribs directly into the heart of the unanaesthesised fetus and blood 00:06:51.300 --> 00:06:56.090 is extracted.” This bleeding process can take up to 35 minutes to complete while the 00:06:56.090 --> 00:07:01.180 calf remains alive. Afterwards, “the fetus is processed for animal feed and extraction 00:07:01.180 --> 00:07:05.180 of specific substances like fats and proteins, among other things.” 00:07:05.180 --> 00:07:09.360 The study continued with a detailed debate as to whether the fetal cows can feel this 00:07:09.360 --> 00:07:14.770 procedure and their possible slow death from anoxia, meaning lack of oxygen, from placental 00:07:14.770 --> 00:07:21.360 separation, and estimated that between 1 and 2 million fetuses are harvested annually for serum. 00:07:21.360 --> 00:07:27.419 All in all, fetal serum from any animal is not, by any stretch of the imagination, cruelty-free. 00:07:27.419 --> 00:07:31.350 The good news is that the champions of the cultured meat movement seem to be invested 00:07:31.350 --> 00:07:37.580 in finding plant-based medium alternatives with both algae and mushrooms providing promising options. 00:07:37.580 --> 00:07:41.460 Fetal serum’s drawbacks don’t stop at the ethical line. There are scientific 00:07:41.460 --> 00:07:47.199 concerns as batches vary considerably in their composition. It also poses the threat of pathogen 00:07:47.199 --> 00:07:52.580 introduction, is not environmentally friendly and is cost-prohibitive. Dr. Neil Stephens 00:07:52.580 --> 00:07:56.919 of Cardiff University states that: “Everyone in the field acknowledges this as a problem 00:07:56.919 --> 00:08:02.759 … It currently undermines a lot of the arguments that people put forward in support of in vitro meat." 00:08:02.760 --> 00:08:07.640 This leads into two of the additional pros of cultured meat, both revolving around human 00:08:07.650 --> 00:08:12.150 health. Though I personally believe that health is the last worry when it comes to producing 00:08:12.150 --> 00:08:17.020 a possible alternative to mass animal slaughter, it’s worth noting that the composition of 00:08:17.020 --> 00:08:22.320 cultured meat can be altered to provide superior nutritional benefits. The level of fat and 00:08:22.320 --> 00:08:27.080 type of fat can be selectively controlled. The threat of food contamination and spread 00:08:27.080 --> 00:08:31.680 of pathogens would also be greatly reduced, as cultured meat would not involve all the 00:08:31.680 --> 00:08:36.959 biohazards of traditional slaughter. So if scientists are able to create a self-replicating 00:08:36.959 --> 00:08:41.729 cell line, thus eliminating the enslavement and potential slaughter of animals, and find 00:08:41.729 --> 00:08:47.670 a suitable plant-based growth-medium and scaffolding, thus eliminating the cruelty of fetal serum 00:08:47.670 --> 00:08:53.910 and other animal byproducts, what objections remain against going after this concept in full force? 00:08:54.360 --> 00:09:00.880 Two of the largest are cost and what’s best described as “the ick factor.” Surveys 00:09:00.889 --> 00:09:05.540 involving every range of dietary practice seem to indicate that the majority of people 00:09:05.540 --> 00:09:10.170 are put off by the concept of lab-grown meat. Interestingly enough, those people with the 00:09:10.170 --> 00:09:14.930 highest rates of meat consumption appear to be the most sensitive to disgust. 00:09:14.930 --> 00:09:20.290 Of course cultured meat proponents emphasize that “lab-grown” is a bit of a misnomer. 00:09:20.290 --> 00:09:24.350 While in the testing stages, the meat is grown in laboratories. However, were it to go to 00:09:24.350 --> 00:09:28.550 commercial production, it would be made in factories just like all of our packaged food 00:09:28.550 --> 00:09:33.600 items, and some could argue, would be more natural than other chemical concoctions the 00:09:33.600 --> 00:09:35.800 public readily consumes. [see blog for an illustration of potential production methods]. 00:09:35.800 --> 00:09:41.160 Also, given what all we inject into our food animals from hormones to antibiotics, to our 00:09:41.160 --> 00:09:46.300 outright manipulation of their genes, one could ask just how natural “standard” 00:09:46.300 --> 00:09:48.580 animal products really are. 00:09:48.589 --> 00:09:52.619 While cultured meat doesn’t require the use of GMO’s, it’s possible that genetically 00:09:52.619 --> 00:09:58.079 modifying cells may allow them to reproduce faster and thus prove more economical. 00:09:58.079 --> 00:10:04.859 Speaking of cost, Mark Post’s initial burger in 2013 cost approximately ￡250,000 00:10:04.860 --> 00:10:13.600 (over $350,000) to produce. However, by 2015, Post stated that the cost is now down to ￡8.00. 00:10:13.600 --> 00:10:18.699 As with any new technology, the initial cost investments will be steep, but Post and others 00:10:18.699 --> 00:10:23.790 in the movement see cultured meat eventually attaining a competitive price to traditional 00:10:23.790 --> 00:10:27.300 products, though most likely not for at least another decade. 00:10:27.300 --> 00:10:32.410 The vegan community is most dramatically torn on either side of this issue. Some feel that 00:10:32.410 --> 00:10:37.449 any product derived from an animal remains a form of exploitation. Others believe that 00:10:37.449 --> 00:10:42.369 with the insurmountable fight against the ongoing animal holocaust and more non-vegans 00:10:42.369 --> 00:10:47.589 being born every day, we need to search for practical and viable solutions to replace 00:10:47.589 --> 00:10:49.970 humanity’s rising demand for meat. 00:10:49.970 --> 00:10:54.749 The vegans on the pro-cultured meat side I’ve come across through my research say their 00:10:54.749 --> 00:11:00.319 motivation is putting the animals’ interests above all else. They believe it’s unrealistic 00:11:00.319 --> 00:11:06.069 to expect humanity on a global scale to cease or even reduce their consumption of animals. 00:11:06.069 --> 00:11:11.309 Thus, providing an alternative that not only looks and tastes like but actually is meat 00:11:11.309 --> 00:11:16.309 could be, with the proper harvesting method and growth medium, the most immediate path 00:11:16.309 --> 00:11:21.089 to animal liberation currently available. With the concurrent rise of research into 00:11:21.089 --> 00:11:27.160 milk and egg-producing yeast and cell-culture-grown leather and other animal byproducts, could 00:11:27.160 --> 00:11:33.080 it be that the laboratory and not the picket line will be the ultimate genesis of a vegan world? 00:11:33.080 --> 00:11:36.960 I’d love to hear your thoughts on this hot debate in the comments below. If you’d like 00:11:36.970 --> 00:11:41.209 to help support Bite Size Vegan so I can keep putting in these long hours to bring you this 00:11:41.209 --> 00:11:45.329 educational resource, please check out the support links in the video description below 00:11:45.329 --> 00:11:49.769 where you can give a one-time donation or receive perks and rewards by joining the 00:11:49.769 --> 00:11:54.380 Nugget Army on Patreon. I’d like to give a special thanks my $50 and above patrons and my whole 00:11:54.389 --> 00:11:58.769 Patreon family for making this and all of my videos possible. 00:11:58.769 --> 00:12:02.509 If you enjoyed this video, please give it a thumbs-up and share it around to spark debate. 00:12:02.509 --> 00:12:06.790 If you’re new, I’d love to have you as a subscriber. I put out fresh vegan content 00:12:06.790 --> 00:12:08.950 every Monday, Wednesday, and some Fridays. 00:12:08.950 --> 00:12:12.330 Now go live vegan, put the animals first, and I’ll see you soon. 00:12:12.980 --> 00:12:18.200 I know I didn't have much time, I like tacked it on at the end there, but there are people 00:12:18.200 --> 00:12:24.300 who have made yeast that produces the milk of a cow. 00:12:24.300 --> 00:12:29.020 And yeast that produces egg whites without a chicken. 00:12:29.660 --> 00:12:32.920 That's molecularly identical. 00:12:34.960 --> 00:12:36.120 From yeast. 00:12:36.620 --> 00:12:40.940 You've got the milk yeast...and the egg yeast. 00:12:42.180 --> 00:12:44.960 Maybe we can make a meat yeast? 00:12:47.640 --> 00:12:48.600 Probably not.