Andras Forgacs: Leather and meat without killing animals (TED - English video lesson)

https://www.ted.com/talks/andras_forgacs_leather_and_meat_without_killing_animals

Task 1: Introduction: (10')
Discuss these questions in pairs or in threes
• Do you eat meat? Why / Why not? Do you know any vegetarians? Why do you think they are vegetarian?
• What do you know about where your food comes from?
• Do you use leather products? Why or why not?
• Do you think we need to change the food industry? Why / Why not?
• Study the infographic above. What do you see? What is your reaction?

Task 2: Vocabulary (10')
Match the vocabulary to the definition. Use the examples below to help you.

Here are some examples from the video. Study these examples to help you match the words above:
• “We breed and raise highly complex animals only to create products that are made of relatively simple tissues.”
• “I soon came to realize was that this is not so crazy after all”
• “Did you know that today we maintain a global herd of 60 billion animals to provide our meat, dairy, eggs and leather goods?”
• “This collagen is the stuff between cells. It's natural connective tissue. It's the extracellular matrix, but in leather, it's the main building block.”
• “What if, instead of starting with a complex and sentient animal, we started with what the tissues are made of, the basic unit of life, the cell?”
• “Animals are not just raw materials.”
• “And so I'm very excited to show you, for the first time, the first batch of our cultured leather, fresh from the lab.”

Task 3: Listening Comprehension (15')
Listen to Andras Forgacs speak (find the link above)
True or False?

• In the next few decades, we will need over 200 million animals to support the world’s population.
• The speaker’s solution involves the cloning of animals from
• One of the problems with our system today is the spread of disease among animals.
• He calls leather a “gateway material.” (It means that it will introduce people and make them more comfortable with bio- fabrication).
• The process he plans to use to get the original cells harms the animal, and is the only bad thing about the new technology.
• The first batch of leather he made had some problems with it.

Targeted Listening (10')
Listen carefully from 2:37 to 3:00
What parts of the body does Andras say can be biofabricated?
Ears, eye balls, windpipes, nostrils, skin, blood vessels, reproductive organs, bone, cartilage, hair.

Listen carefully from 4:08 to 5:13
The process of making leather involves the following: True or False?

1. Slaughtering the animal in a slaughterhouse.
2. Taking cells from an animal, through a simple biopsy.
3. The animal could be a cow, lamb, or even something more exotic.
4. The animal has to have its skin removed for the leather to be made.
5. This process does no harm, and Daisy the cow can live a happy life.
6. We then isolate the skin cells and multiply them in a cell culture medium.
7. Skin cells and fur cells are collected separately.
8. This takes millions of cells and expands them into billions.
9. The cells are forced to reproduce using a high intensity laser.
10. And we then coax these cells to produce collagen, as they would naturally.
11. And what we next do is we take the cells and their collagen and we spread them out to form sheets.
12. The sheets are copied using a biofabricaton machine.
13. We layer these thin sheets on top of one another, like phyllo pastry, to form thicker sheets, which we then let mature.
14. We take this multilayered skin and through a shorter and much less chemical tanning process, we create leather.
15. The send the material to a factory to transform it into real leather.

Task 4: Reflection (15')
Decide with a partner:
• Do you think the planet is overpopulated?
• Do you think cloning is ethical?
• How worried are you about epidemics (i.e. swine flu, avian flu)?
• Do you think it is necessary to introduce consumers to products gradually or do you think that if a product is good, people will just buy it?
• Is it acceptable to harm animals?
• How much should society invest in developing new technologies like biofabricated leather?
Have you finished? Join with another paid to compare your ideas. Discover where you agree and where you "agree to disagree"

Task 4: Free Discussion (10-20')
Answer the following questions in small groups of 3-4. The following are guiding questions. Feel free to discuss each question for as long as you are interested. It is not necessary to answer all the questions.

Before you begin! Study and use this useful language

1. Would you prefer to use products like leather created through bio-fabrication? Why / Why not?
2. Are you aware of the details of current ways of slaughtering animals? What do you know?
3. What do you think bio-fabricated meat would taste like? Would you eat it?
4. Do you think there is anything wrong with the way animals are bred and raised today? Why? / Why not?
5. Is it okay to farm or use exotic animals for raw materials? If it is done humanely?
6. What other kinds of products would you like to see created through this process? How would they make your life better?
7. Would bio-fabrication affect your industry or your life if it became widely used? How so?
8. What do you think the world would be like in 50 years if we started using bio-fabrication today? In 100 years? In 500?
9. Can you think of any ethical problems that the new technology presents? How could they be solved?
10. Should we all be vegetarian until a technology like this enables us to stop killing animals for food? Why / Why not?

Credit and other notes:
This lesson has been entirely designed planned and researched by me, yourah (not my real name), the idea for the lesson was inspired by a lesson from TEDxESL. The lesson has been modified according to my vision and teaching needs and philosophy, visit TEDxESL for another perspective. If any similarities remain and objections arise, please contact me and I will make immediate changes. Otherwise, I insist on the uniqueness and authenticity of this lesson and am able to justify the effort and conceptual design that went into each of its elements.

Permission and use:
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About the creator:
I am an actively working teacher. I teach the indicate levels above and have done this lesson many times with proven success every time. I have been teaching for over 5 years I have been trained in a specialized TESL program and have a Master's degree in TESOL. In this lesson, I created new content that is authentic and tested for its success. I have taken the extra time to convert my lessons into publishable content that can be used by others by simply printing or by using other media.