Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

by Peter H. Diamandis

In 1932 Winston Churchill said, “Fifty years hence, we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.” As it turns out, it took a few extra decades for biotechnologists to deliver on Churchill’s promise, but more and more, it looks like it was worth the wait. Cultured meat (or in-vitro meat, as some prefer) is meat grown from stem cells. The process was pioneered by NASA in the late 1990s, as the agency suspected this might be a good way to feed astronauts on long space flights. By 2000, goldfish cells were being used to create edible muscle protein, and research began in earnest. By 2007, there had been enough progress that a collection of international scientists formed the In Vitro Meat Consortium to promote large-scale cultured meat production. The following year, an economic analysis presented at the In Vitro Meat Symposium in Norway showed that meat grown in giant tanks known as bioreactors could be cost competitive with European beef prices, and the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) created a $1 million incentive prize to move things along. By 2009, scientists in the Netherlands had succeeded in turning pig cells into pork inside a petri dish. More work has been done since then, and while we’re still a decade away from bringing this technology to market, we are definitely heading in that direction.