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There’s lots of buzz around lab-grown meat right now, and you may be thinking, “What is this stuff?”
On this episode, I am joined by Paul Wood, AO (Officer of the Order of Australia), who is going to give us a crash course on lab-grown meat, including the process of growing meat from cells, all in inputs involved, actual cost behind production, and the final product results.
Paul takes the emotion, ethics, and politics out of the issue by focusing only on the business and technology aspects. Through his analysis, he has come to one conclusion – it won’t work – at least in its current form. There is a lot of work and tech advancement needed to produce cell-based meat at a level to make good on the lofty promise of feeding the world. Succinctly put, the technology works, but the business models don’t.
As an immunologist with decades of experience in vaccinations and large-scale fermentation, Paul has an in-depth understanding of what it takes for these tech companies to produce food-grade products and the challenges they are up against.
Join us for Lab Meat 101 as we discuss:
- Paul’s background as an immunologist
- The basics of growing cells into meat
- The often ignored costs of production
- How the labs are sterilized
- Intellectual property and scaling
- The potential market for cell-based meat
- The companies that are currently producing this “food”
- A true lifecycle analysis
- Food sovereignty
- And last but not least, nutrition
And check out Paul’s article: Eight Key Questions about Lab-Grown Meat.
Rather watch this episode on YouTube? Check it out here: Episode 265: Paul Wood, AO
Resources:
Connect with Paul:
LinkedIn: Paul Wood, AO
Episode Credits:
Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers and James Connolly. Our producer is Emily Soape. And, of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Global Food Justice Alliance members, and listeners.
If you believe in making sure that people all over the world should have access to nutritious food, please join my mission through my non-profit, the Global Food Justice Alliance. All sustaining members get early access to ad-free podcasts plus free downloads, and you’ll be helping get healthy protein like meat, fish, and eggs to food-insecure kids. That’s sustainabledish.com/join.
And if you’re looking for a guide to get your diet back on track so you feel your very best, plus learn more about meat’s role in a healthy, sustainable, and ethical food system, check out Sustainavore. This is my signature course to help you eat for your health, the planet, and your values. For more information, head to sustainavore.com and sign up!
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Transcript:
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’m Diana Rodgers, a real food registered dietitian, author, and sustainability advocate. I co-host this podcast with James Connolly who was a producer on my film Sacred Cow. I also founded the Global Food Justice Alliance, an initiative advocating for the inclusion of animal-source foods like meat, dairy, and eggs for a more nutritious, sustainable, and equitable worldwide food system. You can check it out and join me at global food justice.org. Thanks again for listening. And now, onto our show.
Diana Rodgers, RD (Sustainavore Ad)
If you’re looking for a guide to help you get your diet back on track to help you feel your very best, and to learn more about meat’s role in a healthy, and sustainable, and ethical food system, then I highly recommend you take my Sustainavore course. I’ve condensed all of my knowledge in human nutrition and agriculture and have made it accessible to everyone in eight easy modules. There are quizzes, tips, and motivational emails to keep you on your journey. It also comes with a free cookbook and other great bonuses. So, eat for your health, the planet, and your values. Head to sustainavore.com today and check it out.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome to the Sustainable Dish podcast today. I have with me Paul Wood, who I had the honor of co-speaking with down in Australia not too long ago. It is morning for him right now. He is in Adelaide. Is that correct, Paul?
Paul Wood, AO
Melbourne.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Melbourne. Sorry about that. And so, we’re going to talk all about lab meat. And we’ve never really covered this in-depth on the podcast. So I am so excited to dig in. Welcome. Good morning, Paul.
Paul Wood, AO
Good morning, and nice to be with you today.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah. So, uh, before we jump in, can you give folks a little bit about your background and how you got into all this?
Paul Wood, AO
Sure. So I trained originally, as immunologist, PhD in immunology, work with an organization and so called CSIRO. So worked in vaccine – vaccines in the animal health space, eventually moved across the industry with a company called CSL as that they sold their animal health division to Pfizer eventually ended up in the US in Kalamazoo, Michigan, as head of discovery for Pfizer Animal Health, which is now Zoetis. So the largest animal health company in the world. Through that journey, I learned a lot about obviously, you know, large-scale fermentation. You know, we use cells, primarily to make vaccines. But you know, more recently, we use them to make monoclonal antibodies as well. So, you know, I knew a fair bit about the sort of tech. So it’s probably what got me into this area, because when I first saw the reports, I think around 2019, there was a rethink X report that said that, you know, by 2030, we won’t need cattle, because of all this new technology will grow, grow meat in the lab, will synthesize proteins, etc. And knowing about the tech, I just thought, to be honest, that, you know, to use a highly technical term, this was crap, you know. This was, you know, this is a really expensive tech. And so that got me into sort of digging into it, reading a lot more about it, and then starting to commentate on it. And at times, it’s almost a full-time job now, because there’s so much hype out there. So I don’t come at it from any philosophical point of view that I’m an anti-sort of alternative foods or to the pros, I just look at it from a technology from a manufacturing point of view. And to me, the cost is the biggest problem, you know, the, you know, I sort of… one of the things I say is the technology works, the business models don’t. And, you know, I can talk a bit about what it is if you like for your audience.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, I think that, you know, there’s a lot of confusion out there among the general public. My audience certainly is a little more educated than the general public about the health benefits of real meat that, you know, it’s certainly I mean, I wrote in my book with Robb Wolf, that it just didn’t make sense from like a physics perspective to be engineering this stuff in a lab, all the chemicals that might be needed in order to stop pathogens from growing. I had a lot of concerns with Robb in the book. And that’s really before the stuff was approved by the FDA, which some people may not know, but we now have a lab meat that is approved for food service, so they don’t have to put the nutrition facts on the label as of right now, but yeah, let’s teach us like we’re eighth graders give us Lab Meat 101.
Paul Wood, AO
Okay. So the principle here is that rather than having to slaughter an animal, I take a biopsy from that animal. Now, if I take a biopsy of muscle, I’ve actually got multiple mammal cell types there. So the first thing I need to do is I need to culture up that tissue and I need to isolate the different cell types. So they’ll be muscle cells there. There’ll be blood cells, fibroblasts, fat cells, so depending on what I want to grow, so the first bit of it is just you know, growing out a particular cell type that you want. Then that can take a bit of time and then selecting it and so that it’ll grow in a culture media which is essentially traditionally, it’s a complex media, but it kind of contains about 10% fetal calf serum. Now, obviously, as we’ll talk about later that people have tried to replace the fetal calf serum but the principle is that it’s a very complex medium, you know, mammalian cells are slow to grow. So they double in roughly about 24 hours, whereas the bacterium, for instance, is in an hour. So this sort of gives you an idea of the doubling time.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And for those of us who have never worked in a lab, will you explain even medium.
Paul Wood, AO
Okay, so that it’s the culture media that we… so we grow these cells in… generally, we grow them in suspension, or we grow them in roller bottles, if they’re adherent, and so, and then eventually, you can scale it up so that you grow them in larger tanks, you know, so it’s the life you know, it’s if you think about cells in our body, they’re bathed in serum, you know, in the medium, you know, the cells have to be close to a source of nutrients. And in the lab, we call that culture media. Yeah, that’s what we culture the cells in.
Diana Rodgers, RD
So what is that? Sorry to interrupt, I might interrupt you a lot. My understanding is that it also takes massive amounts of some kind of food source as well as the serum, right?
Paul Wood, AO
Yeah, look, you have to obviously have to have amino acids in there, you have to have sugars in there. So you need the basic building blocks that cells require in your media. I mean, one of the things that I’m so surprised about it, media is expensive. And we can you know, go into the sort of details. But I think the early report from GFI said that, you know, media would be about 90% of the cost. Now, I knew straightaway, they didn’t know what they’re talking about. Because from a manufacturing point of view, it’s generally about 20, or 30% of your cost, all they were doing is ignoring all the other costs, you know, the facilities, you run a very sophisticated facilities. So the depreciation on that what we call the depreciation on the capital, actually is a major part of your final costs. Now, none of these groups really build that into their cost of goods. And that’s why, you know, that at times, they’re rather meaningless. So that’s sort of one of the things that I just stumped me from the start is that we can do it, but it’s really expensive, you know, the equipment we use, the facilities we use. Just to give you an idea, you know, the media use mammalian cells love it, but also bacteria and fungus, etc. I mean, this is like chocolate mousse to these. So you actually have to have super clean rooms. So you filter all the air coming in. Because you know, the air around us, it’s got all these fungal spores in it. If they get into your culture, you know, you’re gone. You can’t put antibiotics in this media. You know, when I was in the lab, we always put a sprinkle of antibiotics into our media, when we’re growing ourselves to avoid contamination, you can’t do that. Obviously, if it’s, well, it’s not going to be food grade. So I can’t actually end up having growing out a product that contains antibiotics in the media. So that won’t be allowed.
Diana Rodgers, RD
I see. I just assumed that they were going to have to use massive amounts of antibiotics. But you’re telling me that wouldn’t be… they wouldn’t be allowed?
Paul Wood, AO
No, no, that from a regulatory point of view, they wouldn’t be allowed to put antibiotics into the media, because it’s going to end up in the final product. So they’ve got to grow super clean. So you have to filter all the air, all the water has to be has to be sterilized. All the tanks have to be sterilized. If you look at the say pictures of the upside, which you know, which has one of the larger facilities, it looks like a modern pharmaceutical facility, lots of stainless steel, lots of people in protective clothing, and that protective clothing is to protect the cells from us. So you’ve got bonnets on your head and booties and clothes, gloves. It’s all about protecting the cells from us infecting them. So that’s the sort of facilities that we need. Early on, people said look, we won’t need all that fancy stuff you guys use in the pharmaceutical industry. We’ll use… we’ll grow it in standard, you know, meat factories. Well, it’s just not possible. It’s just not possible. And we know already through talking to people that contamination is one of the problems that people are having, you know, it’s not a worry in the sense you’ll probably get that contaminant in the final product because to be honest, if you get fungus or bacteria, you know straight away because your whole meat goes cloudy and it smells. So you know, it generally is overwhelming contamination, because to grow up the cells to any large volume is probably going to be about a 90 day process.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And so to try to keep it sterile for 90 whole days, and of course, there’s gonna have to be people in and out of the room.
Paul Wood, AO
Yeah, generally you pump things in and out, but you still have to intervene, because the basic rules is just scale tenfold. So if I start with a liter, once that’s grown up, I take that leader, I put it into 10 liters, I take the 10 liters and 100. So there are scaling steps. I can’t take one mil of cells and put it in 1000 liters of media. The cells sort of will just stop growing, I mean, because these are living cells, they communicate with each other. So that’s the sort of rule one intense scaling, that takes place. The other thing you have to do generally is immortalize your cells, because if they’re primary cells, so like a standard muscle cell, then that muscle cell will stop growing after about 50 divisions. So that’s why you generally don’t use primary cells. So we use the term transform the cells, so we transform the cells so that they’ll grow on a continuous basis. Depending on how you do that, some regulatory authorities will have some issues, because if you start going in and genetically manipulating the cells, then you go into a different regulatory bucket, you know, so people aren’t doing that, although some companies claim that’s going to be their particular IP, they’re going to be able to edit the cells, genetically edit the cells. So let’s go back to the start again, yeah, I’m jumping around a bit. But um, so I’ve got my cell showed early on the concept was, I’m going to take muscle cells, okay, I’m grow that. I’m going to grow them up. And then at the end stage, I’m going to differentiate them to muscle fibers, and I’m going to produce meat. Now, the reality is, most people aren’t doing that, because they found that that’s actually a very tricky step that differentiation. So they’re just growing up a single cell suspension, making a cell paste. And then using that paste by blending it with plant based products to make a product. Some people have found and muscle cells are a bit more difficult. So some people are growing fibroblasts. Fibroblasts are the connective tissue, is generally the bits of gristle that you might cut off a steak, a nice steak, but they’re growing up fibroblasts. Now, why did they do that? Well, because they’re faster to grow, they grow a little faster. I call them the weeds of the cell system, you know, they’re the things that generally, if you have a mixed cell, bunch of cells, the fibroblasts will overgrow your culture. So they’re using them because they’re convenient. But my question is, is that actually meat? I mean, it’s no longer a muscle cell. Some people are growing fat cells, because we know that a lot of the tastes molecules are in fat. And again, it’s really around cost because you could possibly use only 5% of those cells blended in with something else. And people say I have a hint of meat, you know. So there’s, a lot of things have changed since the original concept. You know, this muscle cell will grow and reproduce meat. The other thing in the end is, it is only one cell type. I mean, you know, a piece of steak is a complex three dimensional structure, not only cells, but a whole lot of vitamins and minerals. And again, you’re going to have to supplement some of those things like B12. There isn’t going to be any B12 In your media unless you put it in there. Because the B12 in our meat doesn’t come from the meat it comes… it’s absorbed from, you know, made from bacteria in the gut. So there’s some interesting things on nutrition. It’s why, you know, we get to see really nutritional profiles on these products. So that’s the original concept. Now we’re up to a situation where there’s, there’s over 150 companies, there’s over $3 billion dollars being invested in in this space, where as you mentioned, we’re seeing the first products come through. So the first jurisdiction that had a product for market was Singapore in 2020. So they… this was Eat Just. They released a chicken nugget. So 70% chicken cells, 30% plant and it sells for $20 a chicken nugget. And it really hasn’t changed in price since then. Now, you know, that’s where I get in and start ask the question $20 a chicken nugget? You know, it’s I’ll pay you know $50 for a nice steak, you know, nice wagyu steak, I’m probably going to pay more than $50 for a nice wagyu steak, but I’m not paying $50 for a chicken nugget or a hamburger, or a sausage, you know, which is what these products are gonna go into. So you’re gonna use expensive technology, and then you can make commodity products. You know, that just doesn’t make business sense.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, you said a bunch of things, I made a bunch of notes. I did have a conversation with someone from Eat Just who was pushing back and saying, but we haven’t scaled yet. Of course, it’s expensive. The technology hasn’t scaled yet. But in order to scale, they’ve got to overcome mountains of issues, including consumer perception around this idea, and what to call it and all those things. But I want to go back to a couple things you mentioned when you said IP, and so that’s really at the heart of all of this, but can you explain IP -intellectual property, and what these kind of greedy tech guys is really what they are.
Paul Wood, AO
Yeah, look, you know, I probably will use it like, I’ve, you know, spent my time in the pharmaceutical industry. Intellectual property is very important part of tech, you know, but in this context, it’s not particularly sophisticated. I mean, people are playing around with different cell types, different media, different fermenters. It’s mostly around production. And it doesn’t make for very good intellectual property. So when I look at these companies, there’s a lot of them, but there’s not a lot of differentiation. So their intellectual property, I think, will be not very protectable You know, it’s one thing to have a new drug, you know, what we call a new API, I can protect it. I can define it. But if I just have a little tweak in my media, you know and someone else’s? How do I protect that? You know, so, I think, because we’re raising money from venture capital people, they love to see, talk about IP and think they’re gonna get protection, but I haven’t seen much IP in this space that I would give too much credit to. So and I think they’ve got bigger problems than that, you know, the scaling is the scaling, let’s just talk about scale, because it’s so important. Because people say are we scaled, the largest facility currently built is the Upside facility. And they say that – they call it a pilot facility. And they say that that can produce 50,000 pounds of product a year. Let’s break that down. So that’s about 1000 pounds of product a week. Now, you know, that’s about three dressed carcasses. So that’s what a single butcher would do in a day, you know, a minimum, you know, sort of thing. So they’re talking about that as that as their scale, when in reality, to real meat, or meat production, it’s nothing at all. Now, the interesting thing is, Upside is one of the ones who got a license in June of this year. They got a license through USDA to sell their product. Now, what are they selling? They are with all that facility, they are able to supply a single restaurant, one day a month, for one service at 16 servings of 25 grams per serve. I mean, it’s a farcical situation, that you’ve got a license and you’re launching a product and you can’t supply. And what we found out is that they’re sophisticated facility with these limiters they haven’t been able to get it to work. So they’re back to using good old fashioned plastic roller bottles. And that’s why they are able to supply product. So scaling is an issue even when you’ve got a facility. So that’s the other thing is the amount of material. I mean, the estimates that to a decent size facility is gonna cost you in the vicinity of 400 to 500 million us to build a decent sized facility. Right? So firstly, you got to get that capital. But then that’s why I say that the depreciation will be a big part of your cost. Your media, I mean, best case scenario, I’m probably going to use about 10 to 20 liters of that media for per kilogram of product to produce. So let’s think about about that. 10 to 20 litres per kilogram of sort of wet cells. Just yesterday on LinkedIn, a company was touting their serum-free media And that’s now available to grow pig cells. Let’s get $1,000 a litre.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Wow.
Paul Wood, AO
Now that’s you know, these people keep telling me we’ve made all these improvements, we’ve got our cost of goods down. And here they are, we’ve made this serum-free media, and it’s yours for a bargain price $1,000 a liter. Now look, people can do it cheaper than that. But that’s the sort of thing that I look at. And I just scratch my head and think I just don’t know how many of these people really understand the business of fermentation.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Right? I mean, it really does feel like they want to believe that this can happen so badly. It’s almost like a cult-like religion with their belief structure that, you know, the tech is going to save us. And we have to get this right. And it’s just a matter of time. And, you know, and this is the story that has to happen in order for the investments to come in, in order to build these facilities. Right. So…
Paul Wood, AO
I think you’re right, I think a lot of it is belief, because I’ve debated some of these people in forums. And you know, at the end of it, they’ve said, Look, I can’t argue with Paul’s assessment of the technology. I just hope it works. And my answer is, hope is not a good strategy. I mean, I’m a tech guy. I love the tech, and we can do a lot with it, I mean, but making food out of it, you know, particularly commodity food, you know, is really difficult. And some of the companies… there’s a company out there saying, Look, you know, our solution is rather than have serum, you know, from a dead animal, then we will actually have a farm of animals, and we’ll just bleed those animals. And use that serum. You know, I’ve been debating this group recently. And it’s supported by a group of vegan investors. But again, it just doesn’t make business sense. Because if I wanted to do that, the animals that are slaughtered every day, I just collect the blood from before they’re slaughtered. You know, I don’t have to set up a factory and that they, you know, we know what’s going to happen to these animals, they’re going to be appropriately sorted out, collect the blood beforehand. So from a business point of view, it’s just crazy stuff. When I pointed out to them that we don’t make cows pregnant to deliberately collect the fetuses. You know, fetal cow serum is a byproduct of slaughtering of animals, you know, if an animal turns up in the works, and you see it, you collect the serum from that, because it’s liquid gold, and you know, it’s an important byproduct, but it’s not a primary product. And they didn’t even know that, you know, they were out there saying, Oh, we’re gonna save all these cows lives. And I said, No, you’re not, you know, and then you touched on consumers, which I think is a really good one, because I look at it and go, Okay, so at the end, I still gotta sell, you know, whether it’s muscle, fibroblasts, or it’s a real tissue. That’s not going to go to vegans. Vegans aren’t gonna… they’ve already said, No, I’m not having any animal part, you know, parts. I’m not consuming. I’m not using. Even vegetarians. They’re not… vegetarians are not looking for the taste of meat. So then they say, oh, yeah, but we’ve got these flexitarians, which is, to be honest, it’s a made up term. No one describes themselves as flexitarian. Yeah, yeah, I’ll have the flexitarian meal on the menu. Yeah, it’s just a made up term. But it’s just people who try different things, but they don’t stick. So it’s not a market you can rely on. And that’s I think a few people got caught out by that. So I’m not sure about who the market is for these products. And in the end, the biggest competition will be plant-based products. Someone who’s looking to say, I don’t want to eat meat. I had the plant-based burger. Well, there’s the cell-base burger, you know, I mean, that’s going to be the competition rather than a piece of meat. So I think they’re vastly overestimating the market. I mean, the plant-based people did this, and it’s really hurt them. You know, we know that plant-based sales have really flattened and in some cases fallen. So after all this effort on plant-based, I think in the US, they are there about 1.3% of the market share. So, cell-based, yeah, so I was just looking at it as a business. I look at as a business, you I look at the tech expensive, I look at the market, that’s pretty doubtful. I asked, like, who would get into this other than the true believers?
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Diana Rodgers, RD
Right. Yeah. And you mentioned too, that you know, it’s complicated to develop the different types of cells and everything and so if they could make a steak, I mean, I would assume that in order to have the texture of a ribeye, this muscle would need to be exercised in some way or moved or I don’t know. But so they’re really just limited to ground burger, sausage, that type of thing.
Paul Wood, AO
There is one company that’s making a steak out of Israel, and they make a steak. It’s four millimeters thick. So cooking, it would be very interesting. I think you’re probably going to get the well done meat version with it pretty quickly. But again, you know, what they do is they take a scaffold, you know, when I talk about a scaffold, it’s basically generally some plant-based, edible plant based material, you know, and then they put different cell types in there, put a bit of muscle cell or put a bit of fat cell, and then you grow that up. You know, and that’s why it’s only four…
Diana Rodgers, RD
So, they take like an empty piece of like coral or sponge or something.
Paul Wood, AO
Yeah something like that.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And then they seed it with the different cells. You know, interestingly, that’s the company that was the major donor to… the major, major sponsor of Food Tank, when I went to Egypt last year to the UN climate change talks. That was the company that had pumped all this money into Food Tank, which touts itself, as you know, the future of sustainable food.
Paul Wood, AO
Yeah. And so they’re using, they’re using 3D printing, you know, so they’ve added another technology. And I don’t know how you scale 3D printing. I was on a podcast – not a podcast, a webinar recently with the CEO of Avila. And I thought we were gonna go head to head on the tech, and he didn’t even mention technology, because I don’t know that he wanted to go head to head with me on the tech. He just talked about all the wonderful things that they’re going to do to create new food types and save animals, you know, so it’s all that sort of marketing piece. I’m all for marketing. But there’s so much hype in this space. You know, I like to get down and say, Let’s just talk the tech for the moment. Let’s talk about the cells you’re using, let’s talk about the media, the fermentation tanks, you know, I want to understand if you guys think you can do this really cheaply, you know, and if you think about commodity products. They’re gonna have to produce at around about the $10 per kilogram, you know, and I think that’s just not feasible. I mean, my best estimate would be saying, with everything working well, of all the things they talked about, they might get to the $100 a kilogram. They might get to that. That’s bearing in mind, the product at the end, will still be a blended product with your plant-based material. But yeah, that does not put you in the commodity market. So I’m saying, you know, if everything went your way, you’re still not in the market. So I don’t get it. I mean, if all your tech worked, you know, all your cost reductions, we’re going to use media that’s going to be cheaper. You know, the comment is that, you know, they say, I will get our media dollar cost down to less than $1, a liter. Look, the water will cost you that, I mean, it’s not just water out of a tap. It’s very clean water, deionized, distilled sterile. I mean, you know, you’d be lucky to produce your water at $1, a liter, let alone your media. You know, once you take the serum out, then I have to add back a whole lot of growth factors, which I now produce, using that other continuing technology, precision fermentation. When I was a student, we called it recombinant protein production. So that we got tech to do that. But again, that’s not cheap either. So I’ve got to produce a whole lot of growth factors and proteins, and I put that back into substitute from a serum.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Let’s talk a little bit about the energy and potentially the chemicals, like the sterilization processes that just with heat, or is this a chemical sterilization product? What’s the gray water footprint of these? I mean, I know that there was a study that came out of UC Davis, that projected that lab meat would be four to 25 times higher in CO2 emissions than typical meat. But you know, there hasn’t really been any sort of lifecycle assessment to really look at every single piece of this puzzle. But yeah, so let’s talk about the sterilization process and the energy process.
Paul Wood, AO
All right, so the sterilization. So most of that when you get up to a reasonable size tank, most of these people are lab scale, okay. So they’re using disposable plastics, which in itself is not a good thing. So they’re using a lot of disposable plastics at the moment at the sort of scale that are at you know, three liters, five liters. I talked about roller bottles, they’re exactly that. They’re a bottle that rolls and the cells, the media just rolls over the cells. So that’s what we call roller bottles. So at scale, yes, I’ve now got generally a stainless steel tank. To sterilize it, we generally use steam. So you have to use a lot of water to create your steam, so we steam sterilize them. But the other thing that happens is when you have growing cells, and that, after a while protein builds up on the walls of the tanks, and you generally have to chemically strip them. So you use strong acids or alkaline solutions, you generally have to neutralize those before you discharge them. But you’re using a reasonable amount of chemicals. To do that. I mean, none of this ends up in the final product itself.
Diana Rodgers, RD
But you know, partly it goes into the environment.
Paul Wood, AO
For sure it goes into the environment. Absolutely. So they are going to have an issue with that and none of them are really estimating the true amount. So just touch on those lifecycle analysis, because nothing’s been scaled. All people are doing is making a whole lot of assumptions, generally not particularly good assumptions, and building out an analysis that says one thing or the other. So firstly, you know, if you get in and do a look at the science of lifecycle analysis, it says, you can’t really do a lifecycle analysis until you at reasonable scale. So all they reflect is the assumptions that are in there. However, what they do agree on is that the energy will be quite high. So they generally agree that the energy costs will be about five fold. 500% more than conventional meat production. And that comparison I might add is to intensive meat production. A feedlot not to grow up pasture fed, you know. I’m from Australia, most of our beef is pasture fed. We don’t use a lot of energy at all. So when I compare it to an intensive feedlot, I’m still 500% more energy. So their answer to that is Oh, that’s okay. Because we will use renewable energy sources. And therefore, we will come down underneath now. Let’s take Singapore, the country that that has licensed the product already. In their grid, they have less than 4% renewable energy in their grid. So there isn’t renewable energy to actually do that with. That’s the same case in many other places. So it’s a bit of a red herring. And that’s just energy. That’s not let alone water. Yeah, look, the footprint, the amount of land used, will be less. But I can tell you in Australia, we got plenty of land, you know, like, that’s not really a problem. So I think the energy will be the major things, we’ve seen that with this sort of vertical farming. You know, that was really a lot of excitement. But then when energy costs doubled and tripled, most of those, a lot of those facilities have now been shut down, because they never factored into their model to see the energy cost, or the energy prices we’re having to pay today.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Those labs, oh, my gosh! Those vertical farms. I mean, I wrote about this in like, I can’t remember when my blog post was. 2013? I thought it was so funny how they didn’t even cut the top off these containers to try to allow sunlight in. They were 100% relying on artificial light. And they were saying oh, well, we’re saving all this energy by not trucking in lettuce. But when you looked at the studies, it was actually much better for emissions, to be shipping lettuce and then trying to grow. You know, and the other thing about lettuce is that it’s not a nutrient dense food to begin with. It’s basically crunchy water. And so you know, saving the planet with crunchy water grown in critical care facilities, which is basically what these vertical farms are. You know, I don’t know why people aren’t understanding that lab meat is the same thing.
Paul Wood, AO
Well, it’s interesting, again, you know, back to this debate in Singapore, earlier this year, one of the other people on the panel was a board member of each us. So, you know, we did the appropriate thing and setting up the talk, we exchanged notes so that there was no surprises. So I made, let them know that I’d be talking about the lifecycle analysis work. So he stepped in quickly and said, Look, you know, it’s early days, so we shouldn’t take any notice of any of those lifecycle analysis. And my response was, so if we got no data, why are you still claiming all these things? Because if you look at if you look at their websites, they’ll tell you all the things they’re going to save. Now, he’s just said, we don’t have any data. So look, it’s, you know, you actually see the figures are generally the same from everyone. Everyone’s you know, reading from the same hymn book, you know, I’m gonna save this amount of land and this amount of water and this amount of energy. Energy, you’re not going to save, we know that, you know, at all, you’re going to be more in energy intensive, particularly to pasture fed, which is, if you go on a global basis is the majority of of meat is pasture raised. Water, look, I think that’s still an open. They’re generally just calculating the amount of water in their media, and they’re not actually calculating the amount of water they’ll need to clean tanks, to clean facility, to produce steam, you know, so the water amounts are going to be quite significant.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And that does get factored into the water footprint for beef. Because there is a gray water that’s called gray water footprint. So that is 100% factored in, so they should know better.
Paul Wood, AO
Yeah, but look, again, you know, if you’re trying to make a particular story, you’re not going to worry too much about the facts. Okay. Marketing 101. You know, you heard sort of like, yeah. So I think the sustainability questions are still very open. The customer base, I think, is very doubtful. The tech works. Let’s meet the first thing, the tech actually works. We use it today. But it’s expensive. The facilities are expensive. The staff aren’t the sort of people that I hire in a meat works, they don’t get sort of 10 or $15 an hour, you know. These are generally all university trained people. I don’t need as many of them. But, you know, they are highly skilled people. As I said, the facilities have to be very, very clean, positive pressure. So what I mean there is, you keep the room, whenever you open a door that the air flows out. You have to keep those fungus and bacteria out. Everyone’s in hoods and gowns and things like that. I suggest just go on online and have a look at upsides facility. Yeah, it’s a bit of modern pharmaceutical facility which they can’t run. And, you know, and that’s the other issue. Some of these investors are what they call impact investors, you know, and they’re doing it because they say, we’re going to change, you know, we’re going to be more sustainable. Now, when I point out all these things, I said, Look, you’re not more sustainable. The products you’re getting out are going to high end restaurants. That’s exactly what’s happened. If you don’t move outside of that, you’re not transforming anything. So you’re not in impact. So that’s the… one of the things I’m questioning some of the investment communities. How can you say this is an impact investment when you look at the scenarios?
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yes, I mean, it’s not increasing food sovereignty at all. It puts the power of food production into these tech companies that are responsible to their investors. It’s not making more jobs for farmers. It’s taking power out of farmers hands, it could potentially destroy rural communities that depend on livestock grazing. And, you know, we need livestock grazing on grasslands in order to keep grasslands healthy. And you know, people are not understanding that, you know, saving land doesn’t, you know, there’s a difference. Marginal land needs grazing animals, it’s not like you could do anything else with it.
Paul Wood, AO
Well, let’s get to what am I… my pet hates. When I hear some of these pitches, you know, they say, look, there’s going to be your nine to 10 billion people in the world. We need more protein, you know, they start off with that. Well, we know exactly where those people are going to be. They’re going to be in Nigeria and Indonesia, Bangladesh, you know, we know where they’re, not – in New York, London, Sydney, Tokyo. So we need to know who those people are going to be. And then if you look at the food systems there, 90% is made produced by smallholder farmers, you know, just with a couple of animals. They don’t need expensive tech. The other thing about it is that all this tech is actually coming out of developed country, so the tanks and the and the media in that. So what would that do? Even if they could afford it, what would it do? It would actually destroy their sovereignty, their food sovereignty, they would be more dependent. They would be importing more. So it just makes no sense for the people that are increasing population. We know where they go, where they’re going to be. This tech makes no sense for them, because it would actually destroy their sovereignty.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Exactly. 100% I am so glad that you articulated all of that. Is there anything else you want to add? You know, should we should we be bonding together and…
Paul Wood, AO
I mean, you heard me talking, you know, this year, I suppose my message to farmers at the end is, you know, like, don’t sell your farm, you know. Like this tech isn’t going to actually challenge… I’m all for tech. I’m a tech guy. But yeah, you’ve got to fit it into a business model. And we’re talking about food here. So it’s gotten to be nutritious. We don’t know that yet. We haven’t talked about nutrition because largely, we don’t have any nutritional profiles. Yeah, look, they can add things back. They can add the B12. They can add the vitamins and things like that. But we don’t know about bioavailability. I mean, we know the important thing about meat and milk is the, you know, the bioavailability, because of how those molecules are bound and how they are protected and how they’re absorbed. We don’t know that here. So, so just saying that I added them all back. That’s not enough. We’re gonna so in the long run, we don’t know about nutrition. It’s expensive tech, it’s not targeting at that growing population, you know, it’s not the solution for them. It gives middle class, Western society, a potentially another products, but a…
Diana Rodgers, RD
A luxury product.
Paul Wood, AO
A luxury product, you know, and there are companies… there’s a company in Sydney called Vow, that is actually targeting that market. They’re least telling you the truth, because they’re saying we’re going to make a product for high end restaurants. There’re not calling it meat, They call their product Morsel. So they’ve actually got a smart business model, because they actually realized that this isn’t about feeding the world, this is about creating a product for rare luxury product for a high end market. And that’s actually what it is. So it’s not saving the planet, we know, we all need to be more sustainable, but that’s why we’re investing in sustainable production systems. It’s why I work in with people looking at those whether it’s genetic selection, whether it’s, you know, better pastures, you know, all those sorts of things. So healthier, if you think about Africa, you know, the work, you know, I’ve done with an organization called Gelfman is actually about keeping those animals healthy, creating vaccines for them, because that’s where their biggest losses are, is through disease. So if you can keep their animals healthy, you can cut their environmental footprint substantially. So that’s the solution that they need, you know. They do not need a tech solution that does not fit their environment.
Diana Rodgers, RD
That won’t give them… that will just take their jobs away and take their independence away. So…
Paul Wood, AO
I mean, it jobs, independence, sovereignty. I mean, we’ve seen, we’ve seen in Italy already, that the Italians have moves to ban cell based meat or cultured meat. And people say, Oh, that’s the other right wing government. I don’t get into that dialogue. I just look at it and say, let’s understand the culture of food. You know, to Italians food is, you know as Italians and the French food is so important. So they’re looking at it from a cultural point of view. And sometimes tech companies forget that food is not… its nutrition, primarily, but it’s all cultural, as well as sitting down with the family eating traditional meals. That’s what’s happening in Italy. And again, you know, to companies that are jumping into the food sector, or tech companies, you better understand this sector. You better understand the importance of food. From a nutritional point of view, from a cultural point of view, the concept of sharing a meal with family is still very much important to most cultures, you know, as I say to people, you know, if I have people over meal, I’m not sitting them down with the nice tablecloth and serving them a hamburger. You know, if I’m serving meat, I’m going to serve them, you know, a nice steak, you know, and I’m going to pay money, good money for that. But I’m not paying good money for a cell-based burger or a sausage,
Diana Rodgers, RD
Experience. A cell-based experience.
Paul Wood, AO
Yeah, yeah.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Right. Great. How can people learn more about the work that you do and…
Paul Wood, AO
Look me up on LinkedIn, Paul.Wood1508. You’ll see me arguing this thing. And I generally try to keep it respectful. You know, I try to just talk about the tech. It’s not personal for me, I’m not anti any of this, you know, alternative products. Actually, I’m actually the chair of an insect farming company, you know, another alternative protein, but that’s about recycling. So that if you Google me, you’ll see I published a number of papers, the meeting in Ireland last year. There’s a very technical paper out of that. But there’s also as I said, probably more on LinkedIn. You’ll find shorter pieces that just talk about some of these aspects. I did one recently on lifecycle analysis just to point out that it’s too early to tell, but we do know some aspects. But yeah, it’s just trying to talk about what’s real, trying to, you know, sort of cut through some of the hype.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Great. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time this morning. I know it was a little bit early for you. I appreciate it so much. I learned a ton. I’m hoping that our listeners did too. And everybody go check out Paul Wood. Thank you.
Paul Wood, AO
Hey, nice to chat. Cheers.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Thanks so much for listening today and for following my work. If you believe in making sure that people all over the world should have access to nutritious food, please join my mission through my non-profit, the Global Food Justice Alliance. Visit sustainabledish.com/join and become a sustaining member today. All sustaining members get early access to ad-free podcasts plus free downloads, and you’ll be helping get healthy protein like meat, fish, and eggs to food-insecure kids. That’s sustainabledish.com/join. And thank you.
