🐄Future meat: Imitation and clean is the new real

Among fast food chains, White Castle occupies a special place in American culture. It has been the subject of [a feature film]( and Time magazine once called its slider “the [most influential burger]( of all time.” Last week [it made history,]( as 140 locations in New York, New Jersey, and Chicago introduced a new type of vegetarian slider. It’s made from Impossible Food’s plant-based burger product, a concoction of wheat, coconut oil, potatoes, and heme—an iron-containing compound extracted from plants. The deal makes the Impossible Burger the first plant-based imitation meat patty to be sold in an American quick-serve restaurant. High-tech alternatives to meat burgers have already captured the attention of consumers. Veggie burgers made of things like black beans are already widely available, but plant-based meats that strive to look, taste, and feel just like traditional meat are only just hitting the market in a big way. Add to that the burgeoning industry of cell-cultured meat, and the meat aisle of tomorrow could look like a very different place. 🐦 [Tweet this]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( Brought to you by [Quartz Obsession] Future meat April 20, 2018 In the flesh --------------------------------------------------------------- Among fast food chains, White Castle occupies a special place in American culture. It has been the subject of [a feature film]( and Time magazine once called its slider “the [most influential burger]( of all time.” Last week [it made history,]( as 140 locations in New York, New Jersey, and Chicago introduced a new type of vegetarian slider. It’s made from Impossible Food’s plant-based burger product, a concoction of wheat, coconut oil, potatoes, and heme—an iron-containing compound extracted from plants. The deal makes the Impossible Burger the first plant-based imitation meat patty to be sold in an American quick-serve restaurant. High-tech alternatives to meat burgers have already captured the attention of consumers. Veggie burgers made of things like black beans are already widely available, but plant-based meats that strive to look, taste, and feel just like traditional meat are only just hitting the market in a big way. Add to that the burgeoning industry of cell-cultured meat, and the meat aisle of tomorrow could look like a very different place. 🐦 [Tweet this]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( Reuters/Francois Lenoir By the digits [20,000:]( Number of fibers in the first cell-cultured beef burger, made in 2013 by Dutch scientist Mark Post [3:]( Months it took three lab technicians to nurture those fibers [$1.2 million:]( Cost per pound that cell-cultured beef would have sold for [$6,000:]( Retail cost per pound of [cell-cultured chicken meat]( Memphis Meats is currently working on [$3.54:]( Average retail cost per pound of regular ground beef [$12:]( Approximate cost per pound of Beyond Meat’s plant-based burgers, sold at Whole Foods and Safeway [$554 million:]( 2017 sales of meat alternatives, a 6% increase over 2016 [<$1:]( Cost of White Castle’s original beef slider (without cheese) [$1.99:]( Cost of a White Castle Impossible Slider [70,000]( square feet: Size of Impossible Food’s new production facility in Oakland, California [1 million pounds]( (454,000 kg): Quantity of plant-based burgers the factory will be able to produce per month Beyond Meat Who's who The imitation-meat arms race --------------------------------------------------------------- Impossible Foods has been in a [race with Beyond Meat]( another plant-based burger company, to grow a bigger footprint in restaurant and grocery markets. Beyond Meat made it into Whole Foods Market’s meat section in 2016—the first startup to get into aisles to compete with the likes of beef and turkey—and has since gotten into dozens more, most recently [picked up by Safeway](. Impossible Foods chose [a different path]( aiming to get [into restaurants first](. Aside from plant-based burgers becoming more meat-like, there are also “cellular-agriculture meats” being developed fiber by fiber in laboratories. None of those have hit the market, in part because the process of making them is still too cost prohibitive to amass a large supply quickly. But based on the promise that cell-cultured meat, also called “clean meat,” could be a more ethical, more ecologically sustainable alternative to eating animals, companies are buying into the development process. Clean-meat startups argue that their production facilities will use less water and land than factory farms, and that animal feed will become unnecessary. Slaughter would then become obsolete, and because cell-cultured meat would be made in controlled environments, it wouldn’t be exposed to pathogens. Those are attractive prospects for the big players in the global meat market looking to cut costs and hold on to customers increasingly seeking protein alternatives to conventional meat: In January, the US’s largest meat company, Tyson Foods (with annual revenues of around $38 billion) announced an investment into Oakland, California-based clean-meat startup Memphis Meats. That same month, the third-largest poultry producer in Europe, PHW Group, announced it was [partnering with SuperMeat]( an Israeli clean-meat company. Brought to you by HBO Ready for a new reality to dawn on Westworld? --------------------------------------------------------------- For a behind-the-scenes look at the upcoming season’s chaos and revelations—and a preview of a very vengeful Dolores—watch this trailer with the show's cast and crew.[Click to watch]( AP Photo/Jay LaPrete pop quiz What was the title of White Castle's industry newsletter circa 1926? Castle UpdateSlider TimesHot HamburgerThe Weekly Sack Correct. Tagline: "Just off the griddle." The publication would later be renamed the White Castle House Organ, according to Josh Ozersky's "The Hamburger: A History" Incorrect. If your inbox doesn’t support this quiz, find the solution at bottom of email. Watch this! The Impossible Burger is meatless, but it tastes, smells, and bleeds like the real thing. The secret ingredient? Neuroscience. Reuters/Tim Wimborne Explainer How do you grow meat from cells? --------------------------------------------------------------- Clean meat turns conventional meat production on its head. The startups developing these products don’t rely on raising and slaughtering chickens, cows, and pigs; they need only a handful of animal cells. They then take those cells and put them in a nutrient-dense liquid medium in a bioreactor, where they grow and proliferate. The scientists behind the resulting product—a combination of muscle and fat tissue—say it’s [identical to conventional meat]( on a molecular level. But it will likely take several years (the consensus is around 2020) before a slab of animal-free meat will be seen as [affordable by the average consumer](. One of the biggest reasons it’s so hard to get clean meat to market is because it’s really difficult to affordably make enough product to meet demand. Just a pound of clean meat—grown inside high-tech industrial vats—can easily cost thousands of dollars. A pound of cell-cultured beef would have cost $1.2 million per pound to sell in 2013. In four years, the [price has fallen by 99%]( it’s still higher than your usual animal-reared meat. That’s partially because it’s tough to get a steady supply of one particular ingredient: Fetal bovine serum, which is blood extracted from the fetuses of pregnant cows that triggers cells to reproduce. Another reason it’s expensive? There isn’t a lot of automation in the laboratory process, as much is done by hand. Making cellular-agriculture products requires intensive tissue engineering; literally harvesting cells from fat and muscle, and putting them together. Reuters/Andrew Cullen Battle with the beef industry --------------------------------------------------------------- The entire American beef industry is worried about Silicon Valley’s cell-cultured meat companies, and most want to take down the tech interlopers. But the industry’s [divided over how to do it.]( The US Cattlemen’s Association (USCA) asked federal government regulators in February [to adopt a definition]( for meat that would exclude cell-cultured products. Earlier this month, the more-powerful National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) asked the same regulatory agency to rule the opposite. In a [letter]( to the USDA, the NCBA stakes an aggressive position toward cell-cultured foods that would put those products under the oversight of the USDA. “If producers of lab-grown or cultured meat products wish to call these products meat, they must adhere to the same stringent food safety inspection standards and comply with the same set of labeling mandates as all other traditional meat food products,” the letter states. In some ways, the NCBA is giving clean meat producers what they want—equal footing for their inventions among all meat products. But the NCBA may be using that to lure the tech companies into a regulatory trap. The USDA has [long been criticized]( for its dual role of regulating and promoting agricultural industries. Some within the clean-meat sphere have expressed a fear that they wouldn’t have the same degree of influence within the USDA as traditional groups, and so, under USDA regulation, they would be forced onto a lopsided playing field. Take me down this 🐰hole Can cell-cultured meat be kosher or halal? --------------------------------------------------------------- For thousands of years, meat has come exclusively from sentient animals. And for a sizable portion of humanity, how to raise and slaughter those animals has been a central component in religious-dieting doctrine. But religious scholars are now being confronted with a new question: How does high-tech cell cultured meat [fit in an adherent diet?]( Reuters/Beck Diefenbach Poll What meat will you eat in the future? [Click here to vote]( Cell-cultured, if I can afford itSticking to plant-based burgersPrefer slabs of pure animal The fine print In this week’s poll on [StingRays]( 88% of you said “nothing overrides the Fourth Amendment.” Today’s email was written by [Chase Purdy]( edited by [Jessanne Collins]( and produced by [Luiz Romero](. sound off ✏️ [What did you think of today’s email?](mailto:obsession%2Bfeedback@qz.com?cc=&subject=Thoughts%20about%20future%20meat.%20&body=) 💡 [What should we obsess over next?](mailto:obsession%2Bideas@qz.com?cc=&subject=Obsess%20over%20this%20next.&body=) 🤔 [What are you obsessed with this week?](mailto:obsession%2Bprompt@qz.com?cc=&subject=%0ATell%20us%20all%20the%20details%20and%20include%20links%20while%20you%27re%20at%20it!%20%20&body=) 📬 [Forward this email to a friend](mailto:replace_with_friends_email@qz.com?cc=obsession%2Bforward@qz.com&subject=How%20the%20meat%20aisle%20of%20tomorrow%20could%20look%20like%20a%20very%20different%20place.&body=Thought%20you%27d%20enjoy.%20%0A%0ARead%20it%20here%20http%3A%2F%2Fqz.com%2Femail%2Fquartz-obsession%2F1256590%2F%0ASign%20up%20for%20the%20newsletter%20at%20http%3A%2F%2Fqz.com%2Fquartz-obsession) The correct answer to the quiz is Hot Hamburger. 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