Meat the Future: CBC Hot Docs doc asks, 'How now, grown cow-sample?'

With the postponement of this year’s Hot Docs International Film Festival because of the coronavirus crisis, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation is airing a selection of films that would have been screened at this year’s festival. 

By Jim Slotek

Rating: B-plus

In 2016, a company called Memphis Meats debuted a meatball cultivated from cattle cells. At then-$18,000 a pound for the beef, you were looking at about a thousand-dollar meatball.

At that point in Liz Marshall’s documentary Meat the Future, you might be inclined to joke about them already matching the price at Whole Foods.

But part of the narrative in Meat the Future is watching the price-point drop to a fraction over a few years. Memphis Meats is the industrial player in the transfer of research from the lab to the supermarket in bulk. Target date for a full range of cell-grown meat in the store fridges is 2022.

Dr. Uma Valeti prepares to chow down. No chickens were harmed in the making of this meal.

Whether that target is achievable is subject to debate, but the likes of Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Tyson Foods have put their money where your mouth is, and have been investing in the industry.

The prospect of meat that doesn’t involve killing an animal (the protein process starts with a biopsy from a live pig, cow or chicken) is intriguing in itself. No more raising and grazing on arable land the size of whole European countries. No more flatulent greenhouse gases released. Even eating vegan will have a larger carbon footprint, it’s claimed.

But it’s also remarkable that Meat the Future is a work by Liz Marshall, a Canadian who may be the world’s best-known filmmaker in animal activism (her previous film, Ghosts In Our Machine was practically a scream for action against factory farming and other brutality). A vegan herself, Marshall as much as admits that the human race – the vast majority of whom are meat eaters – will not switch to a vegetarian diet any time soon, if ever. Hard-core activists might call this surrender.

But she presents cell-grown meat as the answer to this hard-to-accept truth. There’s really nothing in this form of meat eating for activists to object to, no carbon footprint to call out on environmental grounds. There might still be fat and cholesterol issues, but there are unhealthy non-meat diets too.

Coincidentally, Meat the Future introduces us to Memphis Meats’ founders, both of whom were affected by the reality of animal-harvesting. Indian-born Dr. Uma Valeti recalls the horror of encountering the slaughter of chickens for a village feast, and remembers dreaming of meat growing on trees. Stem cell biologist Nicholas Genovese grew up on a family farm, and became increasingly uncomfortable with nurturing animals being raised to be killed.

The behind-the-scenes in the movie depicts an industry in the “Yes, it’s food” state of its evolution, pushed forward by young professionals on a mission. Chefs are brought in to make interesting dishes that are tasted throughout with appropriate gusto.

And DNA continues to amaze. We discover in the process that the cells taken from a chicken breast “instinctively” grow as chicken breast meat, with the appropriate striations and texture.

On the other end of the food-animal universe, Meat the Future takes us to a conference in Washington, D.C. of ranchers, farmers and their lobbyists. Interestingly, this sector is shying away from demanding that cell-grown meat be banned. For the most part, they just want it labeled. This suggests many old-school meat producers may see the writing on the wall. 

Or they may be waiting to launch a campaign condemning is as “Franken-food” the second it hits the stores.

Either way, these will be interesting times for carnivores.

Meat the Future. Directed by Liz Marshall. Starring Dr. Uma Valeti and Nicholas Genovese. May 7, 8 pm on CBC, and on CBC Gem; 9 p.m. on the Documentary Channel.