MEAT THE FUTURE
a film by Liz Marshall
Premiere’s on documentary Channel
Thursday October 11
9:00pm ET/PT
To be repeated October 13, 18, 23
Available to stream on GEM, starting October 23
MEAT THE FUTURE is a timely documentary about ‘cultivated meat’, a food science that grows real meat from animal cells, a revolution in food production, proposing a sustainable way to feed the world in the future, without the need to breed and slaughter animals. At the forefront of this urgent new frontier is cardiologist Dr. Uma Valeti, the co-founder and CEO of Memphis Meats, one of the leading start-ups in the field. From a meatball which cost $18,000 per pound in 2016 to the world’s first “clean” chicken fillet in 2017 for half the cost, the film follows Valeti over three years as the cost of production continues to plummet and consumers eye the birth of this industry.
In 2013, Liz Marshall opened our eyes to the inhumanity and environmental impact of animals exploited for food, fashion, entertainment, and research with The Ghosts in Our Machine. The award-winning documentary was seen by hundreds of thousands of viewers in 92 countries.
Now Marshall returns with Meat the Future, a story of human ingenuity and planetary hope inspired by one of this century’s biggest ideas. Cell-based meat could prevent the next global health pandemic.
Animal agriculture dominates nearly half of the world’s land surface, producing more greenhouse gases than all forms of transportation. The prospect of meat consumption doubling by 2050 is not only sobering, it is a wake-up call for solutions. Compared to conventionally-produced beef, cell-based beef is estimated, at scale, to reduce land use by more than 95%, climate change emissions by 74% to 87%, and nutrient pollution by 94%.
Filmed exclusively between 2016 and 2019, Meat the Future follows the genesis phase of the clean meat movement in America, behind the scenes with its pioneers – they are activists, scientists, researchers, marketers and policy experts, all focused on the goal of an ethical, sustainable and profitable food future.
“What the future holds for cell-based meat is unclear,” says director Marshall, “but I believe its revolutionary promise and historic journey into the world will stand the test of time.”
