this is bbc news. the headlines: hong kong's newly appointed chief executive carrie lam has been sworn in by china's president xi jinping, she is the first woman to hold hong kong's top post. and the chinese and hong kong flags have been raised in a ceremony to commemorate 20 years of chinese rule in the former british territory. the leader of the local authority in west london where at least 80 people died in a huge fire in a tower block earlier this month has resigned. nicholas paget—brown stood down for its response to the disaster. a coroner has ruled that seven men, who drowned at camber sands in east sussex last summer, died because of misadventure. relatives of some of the victims have been asking why no lifeguards were on the beach. but the coroner said they might still have drowned even if there had been lifeguards.

coming up in ten minutes‘ time, newswatch, but first on bbc news, click. this is salad, grown the old —fashioned way. you know, in shipping containers, under led lights, without soil, in an optimised water and nutrient mix. as farmer spock called it, good old hydroponics. in all seriousness, it's been suggested that the type of intense farming going on here at local roots in los angeles could help solve the world's food problems in years to come. transport costs can be reduced by growing plants wherever they are needed, even in areas of famine where the land and climate are too harsh. you get higher volumes and many more crop cycles during the year, too. lettuce can be grown in 30 days instead of up to 90 outdoors,

and a new crop can be grown immediately. all in all, one of these containers yields the same as five acres of land over the course of a year. it's very similar to the strawberry farm that we saw in paris in the spring and in miyagi injapan in 2015, where the land had been ruined by the tsunami. using artificial intelligence to make some quite unusual tweaks. but before we talk about the vegetables of the future, we are off to san francisco where kat hawkins has been looking at the meat of the future. i've come to this lab in the heart of silicon valley to visit impossible foods. they claim to have invented the food of the future — a completely meatless meat made entirely of plants. it's big, it's light. it's actually remarkably important to get that state of mind perspective but actually it's also

useful for interpreting the colour of meat. this is where the research happens. the aim is to reverse engineer the flavour and texture of meat using only plant extracts. and as someone who very much enjoys their meat tasting like meat, i wanted to find out how they're doing it. what is it about the flavour of meat that makes it so damn delicious? why is it so agreeable, what is it that triggers your mind to say "mmm. . . bacon" or "burger"? there is a lot that goes into that and it turns out that flavour is about 75 or 80% aroma and about 20 or 25% taste. impossible foods found that the key ingredient that gives meat its characteristic irony taste is heme, a molecule found in most living things and especially in animal muscle. luckily, it's also found in plants. so this is your magic ingredient, right? this is your plant—based blood?

right. and it provides the explosion of flavour you get that makes the difference between white meat chicken with a beefburger. the company has recently flipped the switch on its meatless meat—packing factory as it ramps up production. they will eventually make 4 million burgers a month, and the next aim is to move into chicken, pork and lamb. but it's one thing being a scientist who's enthralled by food tech and another to be a chef, using the ingredients produced on your carefully crafted menu. i think we eat way too much meat in general. so i think this is a way to be as close as possible to how meat looks and tastes. the impossible burger is now the only one rocco has on his menu it seems like at this stage it might be a novelty for silicon valley diners with money to spend but of course, as always,

the true test is in the tasting. 0k. it's about to happen. it's really good. the texture‘s just like meat. it doesn't taste like minced beef. it tastes like mushrooms, but i know there's no mushrooms in there. ijust tasted it and it's delicious. but it doesn't taste quite like meat to me. is that something that you noticed? yes, it's a little bit leaner, as a meat. i would say like bison meat. but it looks like it — it's got that kind of umami flavour of the irony part of the blood. close enough. it tasted good as i was eating it but afterwards it left a slightly strange taste in my mouth — very strong, very irony.

still, it's healthier than meat, and has zero cholesterol so maybe it's worth it. what comes across talking to rocco, though, is how important it is for his customers that the flavour is close to meat while still being ethical. but what if you could serve actual animal flesh without a single creature being harmed ? that is what several companies, including this small tech start—up in the heart of silicon valley, are working on. they plan to grow actual fish from stem cells. it might sound like an unnerving prospect but they believe is the future. fish consumption is demanding, fish demand is rising, but the production cannot go higher. 52% of all fisheries are fully exploited. 25% above that are in collapse, they are overextended. so we only have 23% of the world's fisheries left that we can use to increase production. so if we still want to eat fish at the rate that we're eating it, we have to do this.

finless foods takes a small sample of cells from real fish and cultures it up. one cell can theoretically become one tonne of fish meat but they're not there yet. we'll be on the market in three years with products that are new versions of fish that people haven't had before and in five or six years we'll have steaks and filets like the fish that you currently eat at the supermarket, just like what's inside of the fish that you'd normally see in the ocean. and they're not the only company working on what some have dubbed clean meat. just this week, hampton creek claimed they will hit the stores with their lab—grown meat by 2018. and around the corner at memphis meats, they've already produced fried chicken and meatballs from stem cells. but at $18,000 for a pound of beef,

there's a long way to go. scaling up will mean finding a new medium to help grow the stem cells. currently, the blood of calf foetuses is used, which is extensive and of course, if you don't want to hurt animals, pretty self—defeating. with the population due to increase to 9.7 billion by 2050, many people feel current approaches to food production are unsustainable. cultured meat promises to reduce environmental impacts and meat looks set to be the latest thing to be given the silicon valley overhaul. much like we expect from our phones, from our cars, that it will be better, cheaper, faster, safer, year by year, we should expect the same thing from ourfood. but once you start thinking about food, a cow, as a pure piece of technology, and you apply those same technological insights we use elsewhere in our lives, you can start really thinking about what food should be, what food could be. that was kat.

i think i'll stick to the salad for the moment. which is lucky, because i'm surrounded by the stuff. the thing that really hits you inside one of these containers is the smell. it's just lovely, all this concentrated fresh lettuce. and you don't even get this, i don't think, in an open—airfield. because it all blows away. but in here — wow, it's lovely. everything looks lovely and fresh. i'm inside what is called a food computer, where every aspect of the plant's growth cycle — the temperature, nutrient mix, humidity and light is monitored and controlled. this kind of computer—controlled hydroponics is allowing food scientists to not just replicate but improve on mother nature's recipes. so every plant that we grow has a finely—tuned growing algorithm to optimise its growth, its yield and its flavour profiles and nutrient characteristics. not only does each variety get its own unique growing

conditions but artificial intelligence and computer vision are monitoring the plants, looking out for and treating any problems as soon as they're spotted. local roots hopes to place between 20 and 50 of its so—called ‘terrafarms‘ right next to supermarkets‘ local distribution centres. it means the veg won't have to travel so far and it will be fresher when it hits the shelf. i've always needed a dressing on my salad because i thought it tasted quite bland without it, but this is really full of flavour. because it is so fresh. i could even eat an entire bowl of this without any dressing. but some researchers don't like the idea of individual companies doing research by themselves. putting life in a box is incredibly complex. it requires biology as much

as chemistry, as much as plant physiology and biochemistry. it requires all disciplines. and so right now it's being tackled by a lot of start—ups and it's hard for those start—ups to have such a multidisciplinary approach. this is why all of our work is open sourced — the hardware, software — so we can get people thinking on the issues and we can ask them for advice. and we are not stymied by intellectual property. at mit's media lab, the open agricultural initiative, or 0penag, wants to create a worldwide collection of food hackers. one of the things that we've invented here we call the personal food computer and it's like a hacker kit for plants.

what we've done is distributed all the plans, all the materials, all the tutorials, open source. so not only might food computers improve on nature but they could also teach us more about how to get the best out of the earth that we have. that is it for the short cut off click. the full version is online. and you can check us out on facebook, too. hello, welcome to newswatch, with me, samira ahmed. coming up: emily maitlis clashes with andrea leadsom on newsnight. is she another bbc presenter is guilty of being too negative, and interrupting rudely? and is this government minister being given too hard a time on bbc news? as the aftermath of the west london

fire continues to dominate the news agenda, it has been a tough week for housing minister alok sharma. on wednesday he was faced on the victoria derbyshire show with an emotional group of residents of the grenfell tower. i want a permanent accommodation. if you don't give me a permanent accommodation, i'm not going to accept it. i'm notjust going to take anything else you give me. and if you don't have anything else to give me, if you give me a house, i am not going to vacate. i was happy in my house. i work hard, i work hard, i had a good house. i am not going to accept it. i'm not going to accept it. 0k. no, no, please... right, you know what, we will come to you, sid, i promise. i promise. so victoria... just a minute. some viewers told me they felt victoria derbyshire lost control of the conversation, with michael bailey e—mailing...