Meat the Future
Liz Marshall Canada 2020 88 min.
Surprisingly, the driving force behind an innovative company that wants to market "cultured meat" is not a climate or animal rights activist, but a cardiologist. In 2015, Dr. Uma Valeti gave up his job and started focusing entirely on growing meat for the food industry, without any involvement of animals. Is cultured meat the holy grail that can help eradicate global problems such as climate change and hunger?
DOCVILLE 2021
Brave new docs
Growing healthy, tasty and affordable meat from the cells of animals in a controlled laboratory environment. If Valeti succeeds, this would be a revolutionary way to feed the world's population in a more sustainable way without having to breed and slaughter animals. Valeti and his team have faced many challenges and obstacles in the past five years. There is the practical challenge of creating a product that meets all the expectations consumers have when they want meat on their plate. But there is also a huge economic challenge in finding enough investors for a product that does not yet exist and that wants to radically reform the framework of food production. In addition, there is the perception of the consumer. The notion of in vitro meat must be kept far away from any intuitive aversion to "frankenmeat": a creepy product cooked up in a lab. Only enough potential consumers can enable real production of an affordable product. In 2016, Valeti's first full-fledged meatball came at a cost of approximately 15,000 euros for half a kilo. In 2017, this amount had already dropped to half for a chicken fillet. Meat the Future captures this particularly fascinating subject that can radically change our future with a balanced mix of personal, political and technical insights. Rightfully so, the documentary won prizes for its successful editing at the Directors Guild of Canada.
Credits
Director
Liz Marshall
Cinematography
John Price
Editing
Caroline Christie, Roland Schlimme
Music
Igor Correia
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