Dishes from the lab

With Modern Meadow, an artificial meat start-up company, the biggest challenge is to convince customers to eat laboratory-made meats instead of from farms like before.

>>>Video: Artificial beef burger costs VND 7 billion

This is something that can happen in this era, when modern technology constantly surrounds us. We are constantly 'rolling out' phones, connecting with each other via Facebook, paying for online shopping, asking for the most modern medical treatments when we are sick and driving cars with longer controls. than the system used to take Apollo astronauts to the moon.

But for many people, food is a completely different matter. We want the food to be completely pure, without additives, toxic and truly natural chemicals - a term that is thought to contain many things but does not really mean anything. Genetically modified food is now giving us a lot of anxiety. According to journalists who have a lot of influence on Michael Pollan, we avoid eating anything that 'the uncle doesn't consider food'.

And according to a survey by Pew Research, only 20% of Americans want to eat meat made from laboratories.

That is the problem of Andras Forgacs. He is co-founder and managing director of Modern Meadow, a Brooklyn startup based on tissue culture techniques - also known as cell culture or biofabrication - to produce produce. less products require investment in stables, water, energy and chemicals such as raising livestock according to traditional methods.

Moreover, Forgacs said, to get products, his company will not need to slaughter cattle.

Modern Meadow is working hard to create delicious food from the lab

Tame worry from production

Other startups worry about customer reactions to foods like this. Some of these companies, such as Beyond Meat, Hampton Creek and Impossible Foods, are developing products that, according to them, are more environmentally friendly options than animal food, which is increasingly endangered in terms of resources supply. And in this process, they are facing the question of how to deal with customer reactions.

Modern Meadow's plan is to start skin farming. As explained by Forgacs, the laboratory's leather fabrication technique is much easier than making meat, less likely to face legal barriers - and most importantly - to be easily consumers. more acceptable.

'People often have deep-rooted views on food, especially with food made from new technologies,' Forgacs said. 'They rarely do so with new and often drunk materials. mesmerizing things like Gore-Tex [the exclusive waterproof yarn of WL Gore and Associates in 1969] and carbon fiber '.

Like other advanced material manufacturers, Modern Meadow hopes to contribute to improving nature. Cattle are not evolving to suit the production of shoes, bags or burgers.'We are promoting every stage of design and productivity improvement, ' Forgacs revealed.

From skin to meal

After producing the skin itself, according to Forgacs, the company's next step will be to produce meat. Of course at first it was only produced in small quantities, small-scale or non-commercial.

This first meat product is a 'thin piece of beef' , a piece of fast food from the laboratory of Modern Meadow, described by Forgacs as a 'kitchen intrusion'. Its taste is more like tortilla from corn flour than a piece of beef fillet. 'We invited 100 people to try it and now they are still alive,' funny forgacs.

In fact, most of what we eat today is a product of technology. Seeds are nourished in the laboratory, whether traditionally or genetically modified. Fields cultivated by tractors with guided GPS equipment, water and fertilizer are irrigated and measured by precision machines and food distributed through global supply chains.

Some technologies cannot control the process, making food more salty, sugar or fat than human need. Other technologies support the poor in the world. But good or bad, we can't eat without technology.'A hidden kitchen contains many technologies, Forgacs says' Microwave is a technology or a blender that is also technology'.

That reveals, Forgacs is aware of Modern Meadow's urge to bring food into a new district - and in his mind, he wants to do everything carefully. This startup was founded in 2011, currently his second collaboration with his father, Gabor Forgacs, a physicist who turned to being a biological engineer teaching at the University of Missouri. Their previous company, Organovo, designed and manufactured tissue primarily for medical research.

After Organovo, Andras Forgacs came to China, where he saw the growth of the middle class with the demand for meat.'Meat consumption has increased significantly while prices have fallen , ' he said.

Forgacs realizes that it is unfortunate that the current way to produce American-style meat is not able to provide protein for humans - and the attempt to imitate it by China does not bring any benefit.'A healthy environment in cities like Shanghai or Beijing is declining. How can people sustain the earth so it won't make it worse? '

Modern Meadow's solution is to attract investment from the Thiel Foundation, run by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel; Sequoia Capital, the fund has supported many of the world's leading technology companies; Artis Venture; Iconiq Capital; and most recently, Horizons Ventures, Li Ka-shing's venture capital fund. Horizons has invested in Hampton Creek and Impossible Foods.'He understands the problem from an Asian perspective, where there is a real problem of imbalance of supply and demand,' Forgacs commented.

Currently the Modern Meadow scale is still small, with only 15 employees and all in Brooklyn. Anyway Forgacs still hopes to invite customers to 'so everyone can come and see how the sausage is made. The slaughterhouse doesn't do that. '

'We need to have a lot of trust from our customers , ' he said. 'To get it, companies need as many circuits as possible. 'For me, the more customers understand how and what we do . the more transparent, the better the brand identity is.'

Reference: The Guardian