audio (11).

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Speaker1: [00:00:03] I was 12 years old when I came face to face with the paradox of
meat. I was at my friend's birthday party. There was a lot of fun music, celebration and
games in the front of the house, so I ran into the backyard looking for more fun. And
what I stumbled upon shocked me. There were people slaughtering frightened animals
for the birthday feast. This was a strange feeling. As a 12 year old kid, seeing intense
suffering in the back and sheer joy in the front, juxtaposing a birthday with a death day
all in the same instance was too much to handle. The 12 year old me broke down into
tears. I know this is a common experience for many of you, and probably many of your
children. We all know at some level that the meat that we eat today has a really
troubling story behind it. We know that billions of animals are raised in painful,
overcrowded conditions and not in the idyllic pastures that we'd like to believe in. We
know that climate change is caused in a leading cause for it, in fact, is meat production.
We also know that factory farming is responsible for spread of incredibly scary
diseases, and also to the rising antibiotic resistance. But despite all of this, you probably
will continue to eat meat. In fact, the world is going to eat twice the amount of meat in
the first half of this century than when we started. So despite all of this, why? Why is the
question do we really have a solution for it? I'm not sure yet.

Speaker1: [00:01:53] What? I'll tell you why. This is a complex question to answer,
because meat is the most incredibly delicious food that we've gotten used to. No
disrespect to salads or beans. It's been part of our culture, traditions, and religion for
hundreds, if not thousands of years. We love the product, not so much the process. So
we've learned to ignore the conflict by simply turning a blind eye. And I think this is the
central conflict that a conflicted carnivore deals with. So is there a way out for a
conflicted carnivore? I believe there is. In fact, I am betting on it. About eight years ago,
I quit my job as a cardiologist and moved my family across the country to start a team
solely focused on working on solving this problem. I co-founded a company called
Upside Foods to work on a crazy idea called Cultivated Meat. It's based on a simple
principle that all the meat we eat comes from a bunch of animal cells. So we asked the
question, could we just grow the animal cells directly into meat without having to raise
the animal? And it turns out that this idea was rooted in science fiction for many, many
decades. And I want to show you and illustrate to you how we can do this with chicken.
So let's start off with a chicken or an egg. What we do is we take a small sample of cells
from the egg or the chicken, and we identify the cells that are high quality and continue
to grow outside the animal into chicken meat.

Speaker1: [00:03:32] Once we have the right cells, we save them for later or when we
want to make chicken, we pull them out in a small sample just like the one that will fit in
a while. Like this. Inside this vial, you could expect to see millions of cells just like the
ones you're seeing on the slide. Now remember the life of a chicken started with a
single cell that grew and multiplied into millions and billions of cells. So we take these
cells and put them in a cultivator. You might ask, what is a cultivator? A cultivator is
nothing but a clean vessel that provides a safe and nurturing and warm environment for
the cells to grow into chicken meat. They can come in a small size, like the size of a
water bottle, or they could be as tall as 1 to 2 stories. Steel clean, gleaming tanks like
the one you're seeing behind me. Once we grow this meat for about two weeks, we are
ready to harvest it and shape it into the products that we love wholecut products or cut
products. And it's common to mix some of these products with plant based fibers to add
texture. This can be done with beef, salmon, duck, or any species that you can imagine.
And once we have the cells we want, we do not have to go back to the animal. In fact,
the cells we've been using to grow chicken, we've taken them from an egg in 2018. And
for six years we haven't had to go back to the animal again.

Speaker1: [00:05:06] It's a kinder way to make meat, but it's also kinder to the
environment. A number of studies are showing, for instance, for cultivated beef, when
grown at scale, using renewable energy has a 90% lower greenhouse gas emissions,
90% lower land use, and lower pollution. It's also cleaner in the absence of animal
waste or the need to use antibiotics that increase the risk of infections, whether it's E
coli or salmonella. We can have really clean conditions for manufacturing. Now, I think
you're certainly thinking that this is science fiction, for sure. This is crazy. But eight
years ago when I started Upstate Foods, a number of people laughed at me and our
team. Let me show you the rapid progress that's happened in the last eight years. In
2016, we showed the world the first cultivated beef meatball and followed that up in
2017 by showing the first ever cultivated duck or chicken. This proved science. This was
proof of science for multiple species over a few years. So what's next? The most
important thing next was to prove safety. We started working with the top two regulators
in the United States, the FDA and the USDA. And over multiple years, and after
thorough examinations of our process, we got the green light to release our products
into the market less than a year ago in July 2023. I have to tell you, the next part of this
is the consumer. You might ask, how does it taste the faces of these people? Hardcore
meat eaters and vegetarians alike will tell you the story that this is delicious.

Speaker1: [00:06:48] In fact, our favorite quote is from the Washington Post, where the
James Beard Award winning writer wrote that this was the most chickeny chicken he's
tasted in a long time. All right. So speaking of delicious, our chef here has been busy
cooking some of the products that I want to show to you. Let me show or illustrate how
this could work in your life. Imagine a week. It starts off with a Sunday, and your kids
want you to cook breakfast. And their favorite breakfast is a breakfast sausage. Let me
show you how that could look. Thank you. David. Okay. For instance, there's a
cultivated chicken breakfast sausage. It's delicious. It's juicy. I want to eat it right now.
But there's more. I want you to think about Wednesday. You're on a work trip, and you
want to get a quick power lunch. Imagine this. A protein packed chicken salad that has
delicious golden brown chicken on it. And I want to eat this too. But there's more. Now
it's Friday. End of the week, thank God. And you want to go to a really relaxing and
romantic dinner with your partner. And. And you want to impress your partner by taking
your partner to the restaurant closest to you and asking for the best thing on the menu
that shows what a great person you are. And we have that for you too. Thank you
David. So this is a delicious chicken breast. Tender and juicy and cooked in front of you,
sizzling on the plate. And your partner takes a bite. And says.

Speaker2: [00:08:36]

Speaker1: [00:08:38] The most chickeny chicken I've ever had. All right, so what comes
next? This industry is growing rapidly. I'm really thrilled to see there is about 170
companies in this space in every continent except Antarctica. And multiple research
organizations like the Good Food Institute are working on making this available and
building training programs at the universities. We've got multiple countries giving
regulatory approvals the United States, Singapore, Israel and soon to be also Australia.
We've got $3 billion being put to work. And here this South Korea has just started a free
economic zone to encourage cultivated meat to be commercialized rapidly. And China
has added this to their five year plan. There are a number of companies across the
world ready to bring delicious products to the market. And just look at this. There could
be wholecut products, there could be steaks, there could be beloved foods like hot
dogs, burgers or sushi. Folks, there is a global race and never in history has an idea of
this magnitude moved from an idea stage to this level of interest in a span of less than a
decade. So what comes next? The next step is proof of scale. We have to work and see
if the industry can scale to meet the size of the problem we're trying to go after. This
means we'll have to build much larger, bigger, more efficient manufacturing facilities and
supply chains. We have already lowered the cost by 100 fold, but teams across the
world are working relentlessly to lower the cost even further.

Speaker1: [00:10:22] This is an example of our production facility that was built in
California during Covid, where we've been producing cultivated meat regularly for the
last 12 to 18 months, and improving operations and designs to make it a blueprint for
much larger production facilities. And we've released all of this across openly for the
world to see, and I think more and more of this is needed. So what are the challenges
exist. Timelines are hard to predict. Regulatory approvals are hard to predict. But I
believe multiple companies will be available in restaurants serving their products in the
next few years and the next 5 to 10 years. These should be available widely in retail.
Continuing to lower costs further does not come easily. There is also hurdles related to
making meat that is not just less bad, but I'm really excited about walking the path of
making meat that is more good. For example, as a cardiologist, nothing gets me more
excited than opening the path of me to be more tastier and healthier. Imagine steak with
a nutritional profile of a salmon. I think that's the future that I'm very excited about. But
our challenges are not just technological or Our manufacturing challenges are funding
challenges. There are also social and political challenges. Florida just banned and
criminalized cultivated meat production last month.

Speaker1: [00:11:46] Alabama is doing it as of October this year and Italy earlier this
year. All in an attempt to protect an age old industry from competition. But I truly believe
people, businesses and communities in these places will benefit from cultivated meat as
well as the rest of the world. So this is no idealistic fantasy. Throughout history,
transformative innovations have always triumphed over deep, entrenched opposition,
reshaping societies for the better. This is no different. It is the indomitable spirit of the
people in the arena that will be foundational to push this innovations through. But we
can't do it alone. We'll need a lot of people cheerleaders, politicians, crossing party
lines, people, businesses, investors and incumbent industry. Joining this work because
investing in a critical idea like this cultivated meat for the future to keep all the foods we
love on the table, as well as opening enormous economic, ethical and environmental
opportunity is right in front of us. I'll leave you with one closing thought. I truly believe
that cultivated meat offers this rare opportunity to bring people of every stripe together
under the big tent, those who love meat and those who object to the slaughter of
animals, those who prize innovation and those who prize tradition, those who love
choice and those who value life. It's our chance. If you can forgive the joke to have our
chicken and eat it too. Thank you very much.

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