Chapter 135: Cultured Meat (1)

Springdale was a city in Arkansas that was about an eighteen-hour drive from Maryland on Interstate 70. This was where Tekeyson Foods was, a huge livestock company. Tekeyson Foods first started out as a meat processing company but now, it acquired thousands of livestock farms and grew their own livestock. It was the second-largest livestock company after Redmeat in Brazil. Also, it was the biggest beef exporter in the United States.

The head of Tekeyson Foods was Mckinney; he was a legend in the livestock industry.

There were three reasons why he became famous. One was because of his talent and sharpness in business. He was the one who went to Korea as soon as Young-Joon developed the diagnostic kit and proposed they make an animal disease diagnostic kit together. Thanks to that, he made a contract with Young-Joon faster than anyone else and succeeded in supplying the kit to Tekeyson. That was how sharp, fast, and accurate Mckinney’s business sense was.

The second reason was that he was a strong animal rights advocate. It was ironic that someone who made his living by slaughtering livestock would be an animal rights advocate, but that was what he aimed for. An advocate for the rights of animals suffering in factory farming: that was the image Mckinney sold to the public.

People wanted to eat meat; that was the inevitable truth. But at the same time, people felt sympathy for animals who were brutally slaughtered. In response to the inevitable tragedy, Mckinney took on the role of the moderator. He took over a number of livestock farms and transformed the factory farming system into a welfare system. The animals had more green space to roam, and they ate clean feed. The animals were killed in the quickest way possible to minimize the pain, with no fear of death until just before the slaughter. Tekeyson solidified its brand value by building a reputation for animal welfare. They made morally conscious customers feel less guilty about eating meat.

The third reason why Mckinney was famous was because he came back from end-stage pancreatic cancer. There were quite a few people who survived the disease now that Virnagen, A-Bio’s pancreatic cancer cure was commercially available, but there was nothing like that in Mckinney’s days. He stepped away from his role as the CEO after being diagnosed with end-stage pancreatic cancer, but he came back after participating in the clinical trial that A-Bio conducted. He recovered from pancreatic cancer, which had a mortality rate of nearly one hundred percent, and came back to his role as the CEO.

—Steve Jobs didn’t come back, but Mckinney did.

A lot of people were amazed and applauded at his return.

“There’s swine fever at the Westcoff Barn?” Mckinney asked.

He was listening to the third-quarter earnings report.

“They look fine, but the diagnostic kit showed the sign. It’s only one pig for now. It didn’t show up in the rest of them,” said the franchise farm manager.

“Good. Whatever it is, let’s quarantine them right away. Test the herds once every week if possible since the diagnostic kits are cheap,” said Mckinney.

‘Everything looks fine but the diagnostic kit showed swine fever? The diagnostic kit was probably right. It’s probably in its incubation period, and it will develop soon.’

There was no cure for swine fever, so there was a high probability that the infected animals would die. And because swine fever was so contagious, an entire barn would have to shut down if it spread in the incubation period.

‘I’m glad I bought the kit.’

Mckinney let out a sigh of relief inside. The diagnostic kit had already saved him twice.

When he first supplied the kit, bovine akabane disease was found in Missouri. If they found it a little later, three farms in Missouri would have been destroyed. Additionally, about a month ago, infectious bursal disease was found in one of the farms in New Mexico. What could have killed hundreds of animals and forced them to close their doors ended with the loss of five cows and two chickens.

“There is an economic loss, but killing livestock is too cruel. The top priority is to stop the infection from spreading, so let’s quarantine it if it shows up in the diagnostic kit no matter what,” Mckinney said.

He knew well about the killing process. It was a living hell.

The chickens were suffocated and then tossed into a spinning grinder, but some of them were alive. The chickens, who had their legs and spines broken alive and had their organs crushed, could barely scream. The blood that splattered everywhere and the smell of blood on their bodies was enough to traumatize the healthiest of people.

“Large-scale killing doesn’t align with our company image, so let’s stop it as much as possible. And keep promoting our company image with that,” Mckinney said.

“Of course. But sir, didn’t you say you were meeting someone today?” the manager asked.

“Yes. I have to be out by about twenty past three.”

“It’s twenty-five past three right now.”

“Oh!”

Mckinney looked at the clock in surprise, then got up.

“Move, move!”

He put on his jacket in a hurry and ran out.

“I can’t be late! He is an important guest!”

* * *

Young-Joon arrived at the Tekeyson headquarters in Springfield at thirty past three. There were refreshments prepared in the meeting room. Mckinney, the head of Tekeyson Foods, greeted Young-Joon happily.

“Hello. It’s been a while,” Young-Joon said. “We’re meeting in America this time around.”

“It’s nice to see you.”

Young-Joon took a seat.

“Are you hot, Mr. Mckinney? You’re sweating.”

“Haha, it’s fine.”

Chuckling, Mckinney wiped the sweat off his forehead.

“The reason I asked to meet with you today is about the cultured meat business.”

Young-Joon cut straight to the chase.

“The cultured mean industry?”

“Yes. Mr. Mckinney, you run one of the world’s largest livestock industries, and you are also a strong animal rights advocate. I thought you might be the person who will be able to apply my technology in the best way possible.”

“Have you developed cultured meat technology?”

“To be honest, I don’t have any experimental data as it is only in theory. However, I think it is very promising. So, I thought it would be good to talk about it while I’m here before I go back to Korea,” Young-Joon said.

“Hm.”

Mckinney crossed his arms and thought.

Young-Joon said, “Of course, I understand that it will be hard for you to support cultured meat technology when you are the CEO of a traditional livestock industry. However, please think about this not as the CEO of Tekeyson Foods, but as an animal rights advocate. Consider how many human and animal lives this could save, and how it could protect the environment.”

“Can cultured meat save human lives too?”

“Absolutely,” Young-Joon said. “Right now, there is plenty of food; the reason there are starving people is because of unequal distribution. However, that won’t be the case in the future.”

“I see. I agree with you.”

Mckinney nodded.

“Doctor Ryu, I focus on livestock, but I am also quite interested in agriculture as well. There have been a lot of predictions that a food crisis will slowly approach due to continued global warming and land degradation. And I read somewhere... Um, the United Nations Climate Council...”

“The IPCC.”

“Yes. You know about it. I saw the IPCC’s prediction the other day, and they said the increase and decrease in food production will be relatively equal in 2020, but the decrease will become a lot bigger from 2030.”

“That’s right. This means that from 2030, yearly food production will decrease when the population is growing. We will be able to defend ourselves for a while by changing how we distribute it, but it’s only a matter of time. If the temperature rises by even one degree, the production of rice and wheat drops by ten percent on average, and the quality will drop by thirty percent,” Young-Joon said.

Mckinney interrupted Young-Joon and said, “I get your point, Doctor Ryu. Almost half the corn currently produced on Earth is eaten by livestock. You’re saying that if we changed all that land used to grow livestock and corn to grow grains, we could solve a lot of our food problems, right?”

“Exactly.”

“That’s why you are saying that it will save people too.”

“That’s right.”

Cheon Ji-Myung laughed inside while listening to their conversation. There was a reason why Young-Joon came to Mckinney without hesitation. It was because Mckinney was similar to Young-Joon: smart and virtuous.

‘They are really hitting it off.’

To Mckinney, Young-Joon said, “And the environmental issue is important as well. If methane was carbon dioxide, the emissions from a single cow would be equivalent to a car. Then, there’s the issue of disposing of waste from the slaughtering and processing. There’s also severe land degradation because it takes a lot of cultivation to feed those animals.”

Mckinney nodded.

“I completely agree with you, Doctor Ryu. I saw the data from the Food and Agriculture Organization saying that fifteen percent of all greenhouse gasses come from the meat industry.”

“Yes. Then, why don’t you invest in cultured meat technology? If you decline, I will take it to another company. If existing livestock industries don’t take it, A-Bio will do it.”

Mckinney smiled.

“Doctor Ryu, we are already investing in cultured meat.”

𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

“Really?”

“Yes. There’s a venture company in Silicon Valley that makes cultured meat. There aren’t a lot of companies that do cultured meat because it is a new business, but it is the biggest and most famous one.”

“What is it?”

“It’s called Eat the Green. They have about sixty employees, and they are passionate. We invested two hundred million dollars on it last year.”

“Is it an SI?”

SI, or a strategic investment, was when a big company strategically invested in another venture company. It was the opposite of a financial investment, FI, where the capital provided the money. Ventures that received SI from a large company had an advantage when going public.

“That’s right,” Mckinney said. “It is true that the livestock industry is afraid of the cultured meat industry, as it is an alternative industry that could replace us. However, the scarier an enemy is, the more you have to keep an eye on them.”

Mckinney’s seasoned business sense had already caught onto the cultured meat industry. Rather than ignoring the technology that would blow up and turn the livestock industry upside down one day, he decided to do it himself. If he could monitor its development, the livestock industry could also adapt quickly to minimize the damage.

“Actually, there are quite a few livestock companies that have invested in cultured meat ventures like me.”

“I see.”

“Why don’t you come to Eat the Green with me?”

* * *

The employees at Eat the Green were very busy. It was because Mckinney, the CEO of their biggest investor, Tekeyson Foods, was suddenly coming to visit.

“Geez, how could our CEO say yes at once just because he asked?” said Frederick as he cleaned the lab.

The lab wasn’t a messy place to begin with, but he had to make the place shine because an important guest was coming.

“There’s nothing we can do about it. And besides, they said it was important business,” Stephan said.

The scientists organized the artificial meat that was cultured.

“Plate three is the most successful experiment. We should make some burgers with the meat we grew here,” Frederick joked as he glanced at the incubator.

Ding!

The elevator in the hall outside the lab arrived. Exiting the elevator were Mckinney, executives from Tekeyson Foods, and five Asian people. One of them was incredibly famous. “Doctor Ryu!” Frederick shouted in shock.

Young-Joon, who heard it, looked over.

“Ack...” Frederick groaned.

“Hello,” Young-Joon said as he held out his hand. “I’m Ryu Young-Joon, the CEO of A-Bio.”

“N-n-nice to meet you. I-I’m Frederick...”

Frederick shook Young-Joon’s hand while stuttering.

Young-Joon was a legend in the cultured meat industry. Of course, he didn’t actually do anything directly because he only recently became interested in cultured meat. However, cultured meat was usually made from stem cells, and two years ago, when Frederick first entered the field, stem cell technology was very inefficient. They had to be harvested every time from the cow’s bone marrow, cultured and then used to produce meat. That was the biggest obstacle to the development of the cultured meat industry.

That was until some crazy genius from Asia invented a shocking base technology called induced pluripotent stem cells. Because it was such a fundamental base technology, it had caused huge structural changes in fields completely unrelated to pharmaceuticals as well.