How ‘lab-grown’ meat is made and will people accept it?

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• Amna Nawaz:

  Nearly 90 percent of Americans eat meat as a part of their diet. But, earlier this year the Agriculture Department approved the production of what's known as cultivated meat. That is chicken grown in a lab.

  That approval clears the way for companies to begin selling poultry produced from animal cells, rather than animals bred in factory farms and killed.

  William Brangham gives us a taste of what the future could hold. William

• Nate Park, Chef, Good Meat:

  We put a little allium glaze on it, which is just an onion-garlic reduction. Just give it a little color and some flavor on the outside.

• William Brangham:

  At the Good Meat plant in Alameda, California, chef Nate Park is putting the finishing touches on a dish that is seemingly pulled right out of science fiction.

• Nate Park:

  A lot of people don't know what this is. So there's a tendency to maybe back away because they don't know what it is. But I think once they understand what it is, and that it's just chicken, and that it's delicious, it'll be very easy for everyone to get on board.

• William Brangham:

  Getting people comfortable with the idea of cultivated chicken is at the heart of operations here at Good Meat. It's one of two companies now federally approved to make it.

• Nate Park:

  We want to slice it in front of you. We want you to see what it is that you're going to get on the plate.

• William Brangham:

  Grilled, sliced and served with heirloom beans and a sweet potato puree.

  If you had said nothing about this, I would just think this was a lovely meal.

• Nate Park:

  Well, thank you.

• William Brangham:

  It tastes, as the saying goes, like chicken.

• Nate Park:

  It's chicken.

• William Brangham:

  And delicious.

• Nate Park:

  Thank you.

• William Brangham:

  But long before I enjoyed it for lunch today, that chicken meat could only be seen here, inside this bioprocessing lab, as tiny microscopic stem cells.

  They're all taken from real chickens without harming them. The cells are then constantly stirred, kept warm, and nourished, so that they will multiply inside these massive bioreactors.

  It's all part of a lengthy process designed to mirror how actual animals grow.

• Josh Tetrick, CEO, Eat Just:

  Cultivated meat has been talked about for over 100 years.

• William Brangham:

  Josh Tetrick is the co-founder and CEO of Eat Just, which operates Good Meat.

  What is the rationale for cultivated meat?

• Josh Tetrick:

  First and foremost, we just got to accept people love meat. And it's difficult, really difficult, to get people to stop eating meat and choose beans or some other plant-based source, which would be better for them.

  So how do you get at that? And I think the answer is,you make real meat in exactly the same taste and texture that people are used to, but you make it in a way that doesn't require billions of animals. You just can't feed the world without the billions of animals, because each animal has to be slaughtered.

• William Brangham:

  Global food production is responsible for roughly a third of all the manmade greenhouse gases that are dangerously heating the planet. And meat production is the major driver of that impact, with the majority of the world's croplands and forests being used to grow food for the animals we then eat.

• Josh Tetrick:

  If were going to solve the climate problem, we definitely need to move from fossil fuels to renewable energy. And we also definitely need to move from intensive animal farming that is eating up a third of our planet today to an entirely different approach.

• William Brangham:

  But not everyone is sold on this new approach.

  Ned Spang, University of California, Davis: We can't just take it as a given that cultured meat is good for the environment.

• William Brangham:

  Ned Spang is an associate professor at the University of California, Davis, who studies the links between food and the environment.

  He says, while no animals are being slaughtered, a recent report he co-authored about cultured meat indicates it's not nearly as green as many would hope.

• Ned Spang:

  Along the lines of climate emissions or energy use, we found that cultivated meat might actually have more of an impact than the conventional agriculture.

• William Brangham:

  And how is that possible?

• Ned Spang:

  Well, the major driver is that these are still animal cells, so they still need to eat food. And, basically, just as a cow needs to eat some grass or corn to grow and grow muscle mass, we need to feed the cells. And so we need to feed them glucose for energy and amino acids to build proteins.

  And it takes a lot of resources to actually make the food to grow these cells to create the cultivated meat.

• William Brangham:

  But Tetrick argues that, as the technology improves, cultivated meat has the potential to pollute much less and consume far less land and water than conventional meat.

  And he argues, our current approach, from its cruelty to animals to its environmental impacts, has to change.

• Josh Tetrick:

  We're eating food every day that no one would be proud of if they actually engaged with it.

• William Brangham:

  Several companies have come to market with plant-based meat substitutes, like Beyond Meat or Impossible Burgers.

  But cultivated meat will likely be a tougher sell. A recent poll from the Associated Press found that half of adults in the U.S. say they would be unlikely to try it, with many citing that it sounded weird.

• Josh Tetrick:

  We found the most effective way to move someone from, this is kind of weird to, all right, I'm down with it, is put it on a plate, get them hanging out with their friends and have them eat the chicken. And then a bit about midway through it, they're like, all right, this is just chicken.

• William Brangham:

  So far, only a few restaurants in the U.S. have actually served cultivated chicken, including China Chilcano in Washington, D.C.

• William Brangham:

  Take it right like this?

• Daniel Lugo, Head Chef, China Chilcano:

  Yes. Don't be afraid to get a little messy. No worries.

• William Brangham:

  That is delicious.

  It's owned by world-famous chef Jose Andres, and here, head chef Daniel Lugo prepares it as a traditional Peruvian street food.

  So when Jose first came to you and said, we'd like to try cooking with this unique type of chicken, what was your reaction?

• Daniel Lugo:

  Well, at first, I was super excited and curious. And, to be honest, once I tried it, I was super surprised and actually liked it.

• William Brangham:

  But getting cultivated meat both into more restaurants and eventually into grocery stores won't be easy.

  Good Meat is reportedly looking for ways to cut surging production costs. The company had aimed to eventually produce up to 30 million pounds of meat annually.

• Josh Tetrick:

  Yes, we are nowhere near the scalability to actually make a dent in this problem. And that was exactly the same way for solar energy 30 years ago. And we were in exactly the same position for electric cars 20 years ago.

  And if you're ultimately going to shift the system, best to start now, because it's going to be a many-many-decade long, very, very hard, uncertain problem to solve.

• William Brangham:

  It's a problem now being tested and tasted in labs like this one.

  For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm William Brangham in Alameda, California.