Dr. Uma Valeti and Dr. Lisa Dyson join Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech.

Finding alternatives to meat, and not just vegan options

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Finding alternatives to meat, and not just vegan options


you know, there's just been an explosion of alternative proteins on the market, alternative meat. Um but you two are taking a very different approach to what's already out there. Um let's start with you. What, why are you, why are you really taking a different path than what's already on the market and walk us through that because we are real meat. So the simple answer is not an alternative were growing meat directly from animal cells. So we'll take cells from cows, pigs, chicken and tuna, and we grow them outside the animal. So you're getting real meat to the choice of eating what we've loved for thousands of years, but without the downsides of meat production. So in a natural we're trying to make me a force for good and eating meat an act of care. So that's the origin for the company. So why this why this approach rather than plant based, which is what we see right now. I think choice, really simple, simple answer is live as a human. We've evolved for thousands of years eating meat. And there's a certain uh experience we have when we eat meat, there's a certain nutrition we get when we eat meat. And I think the idea of what's the center of plate for nearly every culture in the world to be replaced by an alternative. We just don't fundamentally believe that's going to happen. And in order to have ability to feed 10 billion people, we need to help meat alternatives, which will be plants, algae, may Syria, or um, conventional meat, which is animal race on the hoof. And you want to have the choice of continuing to be able to put meat on the table for generations to come. And that's the ability for cultivated meat on the field. We are, is called cultivated meat. And if we can do that and be able to put meat on the table, any type of meat, poultry, seafood, what it does is it lets us grow meat with substantially less resources As well as the ability to be a food safety food security solution in the long term, because the natural resources are significantly lower and the time it takes to produce is about 10 fold to 100 for less than what it takes to grow an animal before it goes to slaughter. So let's just talk about nomenclature for science cultivated meat. That's the one, is that kind of the industry standard that everyone's decided on. It is becoming the industry standard. But keep in mind this field did not exist five years ago. Um, upside foods for the first company in the space came out instead, we want to grow meat from animal cells. Nearly everybody rolls up at that point. And then here we are five years since where we started showing multiple prototypes of beef, duck, chicken and other companies have sprouted in the field. Initially it was called lab grown meat or in vitro meat or Petri dish meat. I mean lots of names, you know, evolve a decade or so in research, but ultimately it's at the stage where it's being grown in production facilities like breweries And nearly every food that we eat that comes off the shelf. It's going to go through some food company's lab for testing. So we just don't think that nomenclature is right. So the industry has coalesced in the last 18 months and comes together the position saying cultivated meat representative, we're growing cells, its cultivation, it's a new generation of agriculture. So that's where the field is going now. So lisa are you plant based cultivated or something different? We're air based. Okay, so explain what does that mean? So, so we make meat and we make protein from elements of the air and the approach that we're taking, it's very similar to fermentation. Um but it's fermentation redefined or re imagine so that you make it actually carbon negative When you do fermentation today. Co two is actually a byproduct. It actually comes out of your fermentation vessel. But we're doing it so that it's a carbon negative process from cradle to plate. Uh And so that's allowing us to take this this innovative way of producing protein uh to make the first ever carbon negative meat. And so if you look at you look at the way that meets made today, you look at a cow, it takes two years to make a cow. That's insane. We have to figure out a new way to do this or, you know, specifically to get to a stake. It takes two years to make a stake. Uh, and it takes a lot of water. A lot of land 2019 saw record uh, fires in the Amazon just to make room for cattle grazing. And so we need alternatives. And so we're uh, you know, you know, commercializing the most sustainable way to make protein on the planet. If you look at the carbon footprint is carbon negative, you look at the water utilization. If you compare it to a soy, it's gonna take a farm the size of texas to give you the same amount of protein as you get from air protein farm, the size of walt Disney world, so significant land reduction, significant water reduction. And then with this new, innovative way of making a protein, we apply culinary techniques and we end up with air based meat.