Though stylistically mostly a talking-head/lecture-podium item, documentarian Liz Marshall's feature covers a vital, potential game-changer in agriculture, the advent of "clean meat." These viands are cloned from biopsied live-animal cells and grown in high-tech laboratory settings. This Brave New World way of food production eliminates the need for stockyards, killing floors, run-off waste, greenhouse gases, and other offenses of the farm system.
Documentary heavy-hitter Chris Hegedus and musician Moby share credits as producers, and Jane Goodall provides a brief, bookending narration. But the majority of the film belongs to Dr. Uma Valeti, a cardiologist who stepped into a CEO role at Memphis Meats (competing startup companies centered around cloned beef, poultry or fish remain largely out of the spotlight.). In his native India, he saw the disconnect between joyous family celebrations and the horror going on in the back room, with the slaughter of live animals.
Now, using "cellular agriculture" (perhaps because of patents, viewers do not really get much of the informative NOVA-style treatment to take step-by-step through the science), meaty muscle and fat tissues can be replicated in the laboratory, even down to recreating texture and fiber, and avoiding the unwanted growth of, say, bones or hair. One of the beaming young Memphis Meat scientists says these meat matrixes look not unlike Van Gogh's "Starry Night" painting.
A drawback is that in 2016, the cost of painstaking replica meat carried a fine-art-staggering price of $18,000/lb. (by 2017 it was $1,000 cheaper - phew). And in a Trump Administration hearing, cattlemen oppose allowing this quasi-meat to be labeled and cleared as an equivalent by the FDA/USDA to their livestock beef.
As an "alternative" meat product, the ranchers seem agreeable and even intrigued by the technology. Overall the film avoids a confrontational tone in favor of the optimistic. On that note, Meat the Future sidesteps raging controversy within the vegetarian/vegan community about whether cultured-cell meat is ethical or an atrocity, does not ask the GMO/"frankenfood" activist opponents to the table, and keeps the nightmare footage of cramped animals suffering in factory-farms to a minimum.
This educational documentary is very much an unfinished story, but as a snapshot, however incomplete, of social evolution of major importance, it comes recommended, for library shelves dealing with science, food, and agri-business.