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Artifact from the Future: CHURCHILL'S CARNERY: ESCAPE THE ABSURDITY
Read coverage in Fast Company »
WHAT: When Winston Churchill said “Fifty years hence we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium,” he probably wasn’t imagining that Sydney’s most popular weekend destination would eventually bear his name. Great white shark sushi rolls, deviled dodo bird eggs, and Tasmanian Devil tartare are the inventive creations that keep adventurous eaters lining up for a taste of Australia’s rarest and most dangerous creatures. Located on the ever-popular King Street in Newton, lines for the Carnery wrap around the block with people waiting for a chance to see how their cultured meat is made. The airy warehouse has been outfitted with 25 NewHarvest bioreactors that produce 900,000 kg of meat each week. That’s almost one fifth of the total meat consumed by Sydney!
Pro tip: skip the queue and tour the Carnery in virtual reality (here you can actually go inside the bioreactors!), then pick up a frozen pack of Dingo Paw Fritters, now available at most Woolies!
SO WHAT: Animal agriculture is plagued by a host of pernicious environmental, economic, social, and animal welfare problems, and 89.5% of our wild fish stocks are either fully-fished or overfished. The next wave of domestication will not be on land or in the sea, but in petri dishes. This will revolutionize animal-based protein production, relegating slaughterhouses to our history books and opening up new opportunities for animal products to be grown anywhere. Unlike the ag-gag laws in many US states that forbid the filming or photographing of farm activity, the public will be welcomed into these “animal farms” of the future to see how bioreactors are creating more humane and environmentally-friendly meat. Similar to beer breweries of today, meat factories of tomorrow will be centers of social activity, laughter, and good food.
How did we get to this future? Signals from today:
A signal is a small or local innovation that has the potential to grow in scale and geographic distribution. Signals are very specific examples that, when clustered together, point to a larger trend or shift. When creating Artifacts from the Future, IFTF combines today’s early signals to tell a new story about what’s possible in the next decade.
Here are some of today’s signals that, when combined, make “Churchill’s Carnery: Escape the Absurdity” a possible future:
Silicon-valley food tech unicorn JUST (formerly Hampton Creek) has launched a cultured meat R&D lab internally, joining multiple startups in the space like Memphis Meats and Mosa Meat.
Deviled eggs from an extinct Dodo bird may seem impossible, but breakthroughs in biotechnology have led to many de-extinction projects around the world. With synthetic biology, we don’t need to bring extinct animals back from the grave in order to consume them anymore.
Legacy infrastructure is being redesigned to meet new needs in our modern world. Rowdy Cowgirl Sanctuary in Texas is a farmed animal sanctuary built on a former cattle ranch. As animal-based products are produced without animals, infrastructure like feedlots, slaughterhouses, and processing plants will be repurposed to house facilities like carneries.
Currently, the biomedical communities bioreactors that aren’t large enough to produce the massive amount of tissue needed to scale cultured meat production. Dr. Marianne Ellis at the University of Bath has been leading the research into bioreactor fabrication and design for large scale cell culture. These are the kinds of bioreactors one might find in Churchill’s Carnery in the future.
Finally, all around the world, food venues like bars, restaurants, and even hotels are exploring Virtual Reality food and drink experiences. Glenfiddich has launched a VR whiskey experience and Project Nourished hacks your vision, gustation, olfaction, audition, and touch to create gastronomical virtual reality experiences.
What other signals of this future do you see already happening today? Or, what else becomes possible when these signals combine? We invite everyone to practice being a food futurist and creatively imagining futures that are radically different from the present. Share your ideas with us at [email protected]!
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This particular Artifact from the Future—Churchill's Carnery: Escape the Absurdity—is one of six Artifacts developed in conjunction with our recent Food Innovation report, and might be something you would see over the coming decade as Experimental Biodesign revolutionizes the food system. Read more forecasts and signals about how Experimental Biodesign will be an ingredient for food innovation in the future.
This Artifact from the Future is a snapshot of what might emerge if forecasts about the future materialize. It was developed as part of our Food Innovation: Recipes for the Next Decade report which is a book of recipes on how to create systems-level change across the food system. This Artifact from the Future is an at-a-glance tool for exploring the fundamental question: What is possible?
Like all IFTF’s Artifacts from the Future, this image offers insights into future everyday lives and is intended to give you an immersive look at a possible future change.