RIAS Media Prize winners for Digital Video talk about their award-winning report

Here is a short interview with Han Park. Together with his colleague David Diwiak, they are the winners of the RIAS Digital Award 2020 for their report entitled “Veggie vs. Labor?”

Question: Where did you get the idea to do your story?

Park: Veggie products have become more and more popular in German grocery stores. Most people are not critical about the ingredients at all. As I am a journalist and have a passion for food, I was interested in researching meat alternatives and the announced “revolutions” on the market. My vegetarian colleague David was a perfect partner.

Question: When and exactly where did it air?

Park: It aired on STRG_F, our YouTube-channel by funk, NDR and Panorama. The publishing date was 4th June 2019.

Question: What’s the bigger story you hoped to tell?

Park: We asked ourselves how and what we will eat in a few years. Can fake meat save the world? What are the ingredients? How much money do you need to save the world?

Question: Do you like veggie hamburgers?

Park: It really depends: I dislike seitan burgers. Veggie burgers can be good, when they don’t imitate meat. But mostly I prefer butcher’s burger meat. David is vegetarian.

Question: Did you like them more before or after the story?

Park: While making the story, I really fell in love with the taste of a vegetarian burger that “bleeds” and tastes like a meat burger. Driven by biotechnology, the evolution of meat alternatives has reached a new milestone. The future can taste good.

Question: How much money did you spend on all these hamburgers?

Park: A lot. Fake meat is way more expensive than real meat. Or animal-meat is too cheap compared to meat alternatives.

Question: How much was the most expensive one?

Park: We had a chicken nugget made of cell-based meat. The company told us that the nugget cost about $100.

Question: How much time did you spend on your story – talking with the protagonists and others?

Park: We spent almost half a year from the start of research till finishing the story.

Question: Was it difficult to find the protagonists in your story or did they fall into your lap?

Park: It was really, really, really, really hard to find the protagonists. Many companies have started to fundraise money. A few companies have started to research on cell-based meat, but the technique is top secret and not yet market-ready. We contacted almost all of the companies in the world, and fewer than five have produced more than a gram of cell-based meat. Only one company has gave us the opportunity to eat it.

Question: Do you think things in the United States serve as a prototype for Germany? Or vice versa? Or are the two countries just too different in too many ways?

Park: In terms of start-up entrepreneurships, the United States are a prototype. We started our research in San Francisco, it is the center of cell-based start-ups. The latest big businesses like Uber, twitter and Google have their headquarters in that dynamic area. The fastfood scene is awesome – maybe the best I have ever experienced.

Question: Do you think Germans are open enough to learning from the experiences of the United States?

Park: I can’t say for Germans, but I hope everybody is open to learning from others. But it’s always important to ask questions.

Question: Your story is incredibly neutral and non-partisan – anyone watching that story would probably never know if you preferred US or German veggie food. How difficult was that to do? How important is that for journalism?

Park: Nobody cares about politics when it comes to food. The most important thing is the taste. But most of all, we are journalists. We always look for a non-ideologic approach. It doesn’t depend on countries.

Question: Anything else you’d like to add?

Park: We enjoyed the research. We are happy that we have tasted the future of meat. And we are keen to see if cell-based meat can save the world.