Can This Piece Of Fried Chicken Save The World? [The Katchup Podcast]

This past week, Memphis Meats broke the internet by introducing a piece of fried chicken made without killing a single animal. Their “clean” cultured meat that’s been grown in a lab is the company’s latest in a string of successes around lab-grown meat. Memphis Meats’ hope is to become a significant part of the world’s meat supply as livestock becomes unsustainable to raise in factory-farmed, mass-scale settings over the next couple of decades.

With that story buzzing around, one has to pop the question: is lab-grown meat truly necessary to save the world’s food supply?

That’s what was discussed in this week’s episode of The Katchup, Foodbeast’s podcast that covers the hottest stories in food from the past week. Foodbeast Editor-in-Chief Elie Ayrouth moderated a fiery discussion between UPROXX’s Steve Bramucci and The Ecology Center’s Founder and President Evan Marks on lab-grown meat and the future of food.

Photo courtesy of Memphis Meats.

While both Steve and Evan are supportive of a future of food that doesn’t rely on factory farming, they represent opposite stances about the usage of lab-grown meat to make that future possible, with Steve supporting and Evan against it. However, both clearly agree that there is a problem with our current food system.

Evan Marks claimed that in our current food system:

“The earth, farm labor, and us are typically the losers.”

Steve Bramucci agreed, and targeted his blame at humanity for getting us into this mess in the first place.

“I don’t feel sorry for us if we have to use tech to solve everything we’ve fucked up.”

This led to some deep conversations and intense debates about our farm and livestock systems, sustainable agriculture, the relationship between technology and agriculture, and what the future of food should be.

How does that future look? You’ll have to listen to the podcast to answer that question for yourself.