Last summer you unveiled the world's first lab-grown – or "in vitro" hamburger. How did it feel when you had it fried up, and you gave it to the first person to test? What if they had spat it out and said: "Ugh, this is awful"?
Well, yes. We'd selected food critics who said they wanted to taste synthetic meat at some point. But still, they are food critics, so they have to live up to their own standards. So, it was a nerve-racking moment. I felt they were pretty polite.
It's a paradox, isn't it? When I said to my sister: "I am going to interview a scientist who's created artificial meat," she went: "Ugh". And I said: "Yeah, because slaughtering animals to eat sounds so much more appetising."
Exactly. Part of the process is that we are thinking more and more about what meat is. If something comes out of the laboratory and you analyse it under the microscope and it's exactly the same, why wouldn't we consider it just as meat?
Could it be that people think – because you haven't bashed it over the head and slit its throat – that it can't have that same degree of deliciousness?
Right. People find it hard to think about these terms in the absence of any real alternative. I think [lab-grown meat] will change our attitude to animal welfare. Those issues are there today but we ignore them because we don't have an alternative. If we had an alternative, we could no longer ignore them. It will change our whole attitude towards meat, I think.
So do you think there is as much of a philosophical hurdle to overcome as a technological one?
Absolutely. We actually have philosophers on our team. You have to. If nobody wants to accept it, and nobody wants to eat it, then what's the point?
It was unveiled at the press conference that your anonymous donor was Sergey Brin. How did he get involved?
He approached me. Well, his investment company approached me. They identified this as a programme that they wanted to support – the idea of culturing beef. Mostly, from an animal-welfare perspective. That was the personal motivation to do this. Then they looked around the world for who is doing this, and they approached a couple of people including me.
- Interview with Professor Mark Post
Well, yes. We'd selected food critics who said they wanted to taste synthetic meat at some point. But still, they are food critics, so they have to live up to their own standards. So, it was a nerve-racking moment. I felt they were pretty polite.
It's a paradox, isn't it? When I said to my sister: "I am going to interview a scientist who's created artificial meat," she went: "Ugh". And I said: "Yeah, because slaughtering animals to eat sounds so much more appetising."
Exactly. Part of the process is that we are thinking more and more about what meat is. If something comes out of the laboratory and you analyse it under the microscope and it's exactly the same, why wouldn't we consider it just as meat?
Could it be that people think – because you haven't bashed it over the head and slit its throat – that it can't have that same degree of deliciousness?
Right. People find it hard to think about these terms in the absence of any real alternative. I think [lab-grown meat] will change our attitude to animal welfare. Those issues are there today but we ignore them because we don't have an alternative. If we had an alternative, we could no longer ignore them. It will change our whole attitude towards meat, I think.
So do you think there is as much of a philosophical hurdle to overcome as a technological one?
Absolutely. We actually have philosophers on our team. You have to. If nobody wants to accept it, and nobody wants to eat it, then what's the point?
It was unveiled at the press conference that your anonymous donor was Sergey Brin. How did he get involved?
He approached me. Well, his investment company approached me. They identified this as a programme that they wanted to support – the idea of culturing beef. Mostly, from an animal-welfare perspective. That was the personal motivation to do this. Then they looked around the world for who is doing this, and they approached a couple of people including me.
- Interview with Professor Mark Post
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