when i was a little boy i remember being on my grandpa's farm in upton warren a small village in worcestershire he bought it back in 1954 so my mom spent a lot of her childhood there too there was a sense of freedom you get that with 400 acres i was always on the hunt for the next adventure whether building dens with my brother in barns we weren't allowed in or climbing trees in the woods and getting stuck or just roaming through the fields with my dogs i was always able to explore and the animals on the farm had freedom too my grandpa loved his cattle and pigs he cared for them treated them well and let them roam across the fields so growing up i naturally thought that all farm animals had the same sense of freedom that my grandpa's animals did now i understood that one day they would show up on my plate in a form such as this but i knew they'd had a happy life and there was a process carried out with kindness care and respect for the animal not content with being just a farmer my grandpa was also a butcher owning shops with his brothers across birmingham but the love of meat wasn't just on my mom's side my dad was a butcher his dad was a butcher his dad's dad was a butcher in fact the tucker family have been butchered since the 1800s with knowledge and integrity passed down from one generation to the next and again there was respect for the animal and the process i grew up with this idyllic sense of what farming and butchery were all about so picture the scene a 12 year old russ tucker a bit shorter no beard came home from school one day with an idea my friend had just made a big life decision and i not wanting to miss out suggested to my dad that we should do the same how about i said for just one day a week we become vegetarians well let me tell you you could cut the tension in the room with a butcher's knife never in the 200 year history of a proud family of butchers has something so saccharine that just been uttered he looked at me very unimpressed because for him a meal wasn't a meal unless there was meat and from his view there was nothing wrong with farming and butchery so long as it was carried out with kindness care and respect for the animal he didn't see why we would need to change and if you think about it we have a very emotive connection with meat it makes sense it's primal and goes back to caveman days meat was valued as the most important food to find hunters would go out for days to track it down and bring it back proudly slung over their shoulders over half a million years later we still love meat is part of our daily lives and features in many of our special occasions i still get that warm fuzzy feeling when i think of my mom's sunday roast i've never eaten better and for our christmas lunches we'd get up at six in the morning to begin basting and cooking the centerpiece of our meal so much care and attention goes into our food and then of course there are bacon butties but they deserve a dedicated ted talk all to themselves right most of us have grown up in a world where meat is what we base the meal structure around sausage and mash steak night burger and fries chicken tikka masala the list really is endless and it's because in a way it's connected through the way that parents show love through the responsibility to provide plenty of protein to growing bodies there's a lot wrapped up in it now many of the vegans and vegetarians in the audience might not feel terribly pleased with me and that's okay really i understand not only have i displayed slabs of meat but you might also think there's already a solution plant-based food and many of the plant-based alternatives are trying to emulate meat as best as they can even large chains like burger king are showcasing their meat substitutes it looks like it it tastes like it not only can you not tell the difference but you're even considered a rebel if you buy one of their naught percent meat whoppers now i want to be clear i'm 100 supportive of giving people choice i'm not against plant-based food however as much as vegan and vegetarian options are becoming more prevalent especially in urban areas the truth is that our global demand for meat is actually increasing estimates show that by 2050 global consumption of meat will be 70 percent more versus today we may think that it's decreasing but it actually isn't as much as vegetarian and vegan options can be beneficial as choices for many people they feel like too much of a compromise you could say they just don't cut the mustard consumer data tells us that choices need to be easy tasty affordable and enjoyable yet recent data tells us that less than 25 percent of people think the taste of plant-based food is good and more than 90 percent of meat-eaters find it too difficult to switch we cannot rely on millions of people putting down their steak knives it's just not happening we need to provide consumers with choices that meet their needs but of course the big issue is our growing demand for meat and what it takes to facilitate its production and the truth is we are running out of planet our world is stretched beyond its limits and here are a few stats you may already be aware of each year our population grows by more than 80 million producing meat takes up 80 percent of all agricultural land yet it only provides 18 of the calories that we consume it means that we're constantly reducing natural land habitation which is having a devastating impact on biodiversity as each year more and more animals and plants become extinct over the last 40 years the combined number of hectares that have been deforested totals 327 million a few guesses for how much land that is maybe it's the size of the uk how about france how about france and germany well actually it's almost the same as the entire landmass of the european union whichever stats you look at one thing is clear the way we produce meat is unsustainable okay i want you all to make a fist with one hand and put it in the air and i'm expecting 100 audience participation thank you very much although we only have one how many planets do you think we act like we have show me some fingers who thinks one two three [Music] got a few threes four five you're right five the way we use our planet assumes we not only endlessly take from it but we act like we have spares and though we're familiar with these kinds of images it's important to note that animal agriculture contributes more to global greenhouse gas emissions than the entire transport industry in fact it contributes 18 of greenhouse gas emissions but the automotive industry in particular already has a solution and importantly with government and industry mandates we're not simply waiting for it to happen it's already here in the form of electric vehicles and hydrogen vehicles are in development too so the question is what's our solution for animal agriculture well this is where we pick up my story again many years after my time as a little boy on the farm i studied mechanical engineering at loughborough university before heading to pwc and qualifying as a chartered accountant although i learned a lot accounting wasn't for me so i went back to uni and completed a phd in biomedical engineering at oxford and then i joined the boston consult consulting group to help solve some of the complex problems facing the world's largest retailers now i did wonder at the time where all this seemingly varied education experience would take me how would the dots ever connect themselves at the boston consulting group i found myself advising large supermarkets across the globe and i started to understand how meat was sourced on a mega scale supermarkets work with huge processors to supply our insatiable need for meat suppliers have become experts at cutting costs and increasing supply packing more cows pigs and chickens onto their farms in fact many of the farms have become little more than factories and it's important to note that across the globe 80 billion animals are killed each year yes i said billion some of the best farmers have the same values that my grandpa did are being backed into a corner due to margin cutting they're under intense pressure and rely heavily on subsidies so even if they want to do the right thing and farm in the right way they can't because if they do they simply won't survive it's that black and white this new type of animal rearing can be categorized as industrial or intensive farming and its structures and processes are completely man-made two generations ago it didn't exist over that time the industry has ruthlessly adapted to meet our growing demand for meat the idyllic memories in my head of my grandpa's farm are being replaced with images like this and this just as you were horrified to see these so am i and it wasn't until my work with the supermarkets and their supply chain that i became aware of them it's the darker side of farming that up until then i'd never been exposed to most of us aren't and these aren't even the worst images i could show you but i really don't want to i want images like this to signal the change that we need because we need to let the good farmers breathe again and we need to let farming flourish in the way that it should so quickly back to me again after learning all of this i suddenly realized that my unique set of educational experiences had combined to show me what i really wanted to do was to provide a solution for our growing demand for meat actually that's right i was going to produce the future of meat but as with any good idea it shouldn't be done alone so i teamed up with the amazing and brilliant kathy yee who i met while studying at oxford kathy is a professor in engineering science specializing in tissue engineering and kathy's dad is a pig vet in china researching african swine flu so she understood exactly what was going on and what needed to be done we started with a question how can we use a lot less land to provide the meat that the world demands how can we make it much much much more sustainable and we started working on this notion using the most natural process on the planet cell replication the basic units of life the reason why animals plants and humans exist on the planet today our plan was this what if we treat meats like plants because everyone knows to make more plants you simply take a cutting pot it in soil place it in sunlight or a greenhouse water it well and wait and plants for all their ingenuity are just cells and animals for all their complexity are also just cells so why don't we try treating them the same now before you picture me herding cows into a greenhouse i can assure you our process involves a lot less broken glass here's how it works without harming an animal we take a tiny piece of tissue as in one centimeter cubed the size of a plane dice and we replicate it not the nose or hooves or grizzly bits that nobody wants to eat just the good protein and fat the delicious bits and to continue our plant analogy our cutting is our tissue biopsy our pot of soil is a perfect liquid mix of nutrients such as carbohydrates and amino acids our greenhouse is a large steel tank called a bioreactor where the cells replicate and in as little as three to four weeks we turn our small piece of tissue into kilos of meat and we call it cultivated meat and because we're not growing the whole animal our process is super efficient we only grow what we need and at the same time our meat is just that meat doesn't feel it doesn't get sick doesn't develop diseases so it doesn't need antibiotics it's all around cleaner greener meat making meat in this way not only uses a lot less land but it uses a lot less animal too cultivated meat has the potential to radically reduce levels of industrialized farming and the suffering that those animals endure and it has the added benefit of helping stop the alarming scale of deforestation helping the planet to restore some of the diversity biodiversity it has lost and helping the unintensive farmers who farm just like my grandpa did breathe once more relieving the relentless pressure they're under so they can focus on what they're good at farming with care and respect for the animal as i come to the end i hope you see the huge potential that cultivated meat offers as one of the solutions needed for our broken food system it shows how through cutting edge technology we can provide a hundred percent real high quality meat while helping to save the planet it's a compelling proposition right real meat guilt-free and it's why i firmly believe that cultivated meat is here to stay the company that kathy and i started ivy farm are already in discussions with the food standards agency who will have to approve cultivated meat before it can go on sale in the uk but others have already started singapore have approved cultivated meat and israel and the us are expected to follow suit in fact experts believe that 35 of all meat consumed worldwide will be cultivated meat by 2040. as for me well i finally get to connect the dots in my life live my purpose which i'm grateful to have discovered and do something for the world that the planet approves of thank you [Applause]