80,000 Hours Podcast With Rob Wiblin

First, decide on the type of animal. Next, pick the cell type. Then take a small, painless biopsy, and put the cells in a solution that makes them feel like they’re still in the body. Once the cells are in this comfortable state, they'll proliferate. One cell becomes two, two becomes four, four becomes eight, and so on. Continue until you have enough cells to make a burger, a nugget, a sausage, or a piece of bacon, then concentrate them until they bind into solid meat. It's all surprisingly straightforward in principle according to Marie Gibbons​, a research fellow with The Good Food Institute, who has been researching how to improve this process at Harvard Medical School. We might even see clean meat sold commercially within a year. The real technical challenge is developing large bioreactors and cheap solutions so that we can make huge volumes and drive down costs. This interview covers the science and technology involved at each stage of clean meat production, the challenges and opportunities that face