Cultured Meat and Future Food Podcast Episode 3 with Paul Shapiro
Cultured Meat or Clean Meat is changing the world in many different ways. Paul Shapiro is the author of “Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World”. Paul shares his experience eating different types of clean meat and discusses the companies that are making an impact in the industry.
Alex (00:00):
Thanks for tuning in to the Cultured Meat and Future Food podcast. This show is intended for anyone interested in cultured meat and food technologies. On this episode, I’m excited to have Paul Shapiro. He’s the bestselling author of Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World.
Alex (00:29):
Thanks for joining us on the Cultured Meat and Future Food podcast. We’re excited to have Paul Shapiro as a guest for today’s episode. Paul Shapiro is the author of the Washington Post bestseller, Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World. Paul, I’d like to welcome you to the Cultured Meat and Future Food podcast.
Paul (00:50):
What an honor, Alex. Thanks for having me.
Alex (00:53):
Paul, tell us a little bit about the book, Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World, and really the inspiration behind it.
Paul (01:01):
Well, Alex, I’m proud to say that I have written a book on clean meat since I have written literally the only book on clean meat. So it’s a low bar to hurdle, to climb over there, but the book basically takes a look at the race to commercialize the world’s first ever clean animal products. And it looks at the history of this industry. You know, to the extent that anybody is actually familiar with this, most of the time, they know that there was a burger that was debuted about four or five years ago. And then some more companies have been founded since then, but this goes back further than that and looks at the history of the ideas and the original players and pioneers, and really like the prophets of the clean meat field. And then looks at how the companies that are getting the most attention now basically got started, what the motivations were and what they’re doing, what they’re focused on. So the inspiration for me was essentially that I think there’s a story to be told here, that it’s very difficult to see how we’re going to feed the coming billions of people who will be inhabiting the planet by 2050 with anything resembling any type of a sustainable diet if they eat the way that we think that they’re going to want to eat, which is the way that wealthy Western countries do, which is a diet that’s heavy in meat and eggs and dairy.
Paul (02:15):
Those are very resource intensive on the planet. They promote an enormity of cruelty to animals, and there’s not a way that we can do it. The planet isn’t getting any bigger, but humanity’s footprint on it is. And so I want to take a look at this possible solution. You know, when you ask environmental groups and others what the best thing to do is on this issue, they’ll tell you to eat less meat. I think that’s a great idea. We could eat less meat. Better for us, better for the planet. But in the same way that when you think about fossil fuels, you don’t just ask people to drive less or turn their heaters down. You look for alternative energy sources that don’t emit greenhouse gases. There’s a technological solution to the problem of fossil fuels. And likewise, there’s a technological solution to the problem of factory farm, and clean meat is one such solution.
Alex (03:03):
I’m about to ask you about your experiences with cultured meat. But before I do that, tell us a little bit about prior to trying cultured meat, or maybe even before you started the journey to create the book. What kind of diet did you have and were you eating meat before? And if not, why were you not eating meat?
Paul (03:23):
I became vegan in 1993 and I did it primarily out of a desire to prevent cruelty to animals. I basically figured that we don’t have to eat animals in order to be healthy. And so if I had my choice between committing violence against them or not, I would really rather just live and let live. So I think there’s other reasons why it’s a good idea to choose vegan foods, but that was the primary reason for me. And so when I first ate clean meat in 2014, I was at Modern Meadow. At that time, they were based in New York City and Andras Forgacs, the CEO, had been experimenting with what he called steak chips. These are basically kind of like potato chips but made out of meat or like a dehydrated barbecued piece of beef jerky.
Paul (04:12):
Now Andras at that time was doing both beef and leather. So the inside and the outside of the cow, and he’s since gone on to focus exclusively on leather and he’s put his steak chips on ice, so to speak, but I was very glad to eat the steak chip. In fact, at that time more humans had gone into space than had ever eaten meat that had been grown outside of an animal. And so it was a great honor. I went there to take a tour to see what he was doing. I had no idea that he was going to offer me to sample some. I knew that it must be very expensive because only a year prior, Mark Post in the Netherlands had debuted the first clean burger with a price tag of around 330,000 U.S. Dollars. And so I looked at Andras like he was a little bit crazy when he offered me a bite and I said, you know, isn’t this really expensive?
Paul (04:59):
And you know, part of me was thinking it was expensive. The other part of me was thinking I haven’t eaten meat in more than two decades. And so I was a little bit conflicted. But one, I wanted to be a good guest. And two, I realized the historic nature of what he was offering me the chance to do. So I didn’t really think long about it at all. He gave me the steak chip. I put it on my tongue and I remember before chewing it, I pushed it to the roof of my mouth and I basically just tasted barbecue at first. And I started chewing it and I liked it. I thought it was very good and I wish I had more. So my mind started racing with these questions about personal identity. Did this mean I wasn’t a vegetarian and I basically concluded, I didn’t really care. You know, for me the idea of vegetarian or vegan eating, it’s not about a label or a personal identity. For me, it’s a pragmatic decision to try to reduce animal suffering.
Paul (05:53):
And this product seemed to satiate that concern. So when I ate it, I mean, it wasn’t that much. It was just one chip and it was good, but I hadn’t yet decided to write a book on the topic yet. I didn’t make that decision until 2016, but I knew that what Andras was doing with Modern Meadow and what others in the very, very embryonic field of cellular agriculture at that time were trying to do was revolutionary. By divorcing meat production from livestock raising, it could address many of the most pressing problems that humanity faces. And from that moment on, I was completely fascinated by it. And I had been a fan of the idea of culturing meat from, without animal, without whole animals for a decade at that point, but actually tasting it myself and realizing this was no longer just science fiction fantasy, but really was now science fact. That to me really made me excited.
Alex (06:58):
What about other types of cultured meat that you’ve tried? What kind of scenarios were you in and how were those experiences?
Paul (07:05):
Well, I think I have the distinction of maybe having eaten a greater variety of clean animal products than anybody else on the planet. I don’t know if that’s true, but for the purpose of the book, I was fortunate enough to get to eat clean beef, duck, fish, foie gras, chorizo, and yogurt. And so, you know, when you’re chronicling these companies, of course many of them were quite eager to let me sample their products so I could write about it. And they varied. You know, take the foie gras as one example. You know, to the extent that people even know what foie gras is, which most people don’t, they probably don’t know how to pronounce it. They don’t know anything except maybe that it’s controversial. You know, it involves force feeding a duck or a goose to get their livers to swell up to 10 times their normal size. And it’s been the target of animal welfare concerns for a long time.
Paul (07:57):
In fact, more than a dozen countries have banned its production. California thinks that it is so cool that it bans both the production and the sale of avian liver, that from a bird who’s been force fed. But Hampton Creek, which is now called JUST, was, in 2016, experimenting with growing their own liver cells and fattening them. So in vitro, they would feed them more sugar and that would fatten the cells up and they were producing real foie gras truffle mousse from it. And they offered me some of their foie gras mousse. And you know, this is a product that is, you know, among the most controversial animal products on earth. And so it was pretty surreal to put this in my mouth and to realize that I was eating truly cruelty-free foie gras, no animals were harmed whatsoever in this. And I liked it.
Paul (08:47):
I mean, I have to admit, it was kind of like an embarrassing amount of pleasure. Now I had never eaten foie gras from a bird in my life, so I don’t have any basis with which to compare it, but I did like it a lot. And I thought to myself, you know, when you eat a really fatty food, you get a lot of dopamine, you feel very good, it tastes great. And the only thing I have in my life like that probably is eating guacamole, which I love. And it was better than that though. I mean, it really tasted great.
Alex (09:16):
The main market for clean meats and cultured meat is not the vegan or vegetarian segment. Right? But do you think that most vegans and vegetarians would try clean meat?
Paul (09:30):
Well first, Alex, I think you’re right. It really doesn’t matter whether vegans eat clean meat or not. They are not the target audience for this. The goal is not to get vegans to swap out, you know, tofu with brown rice and beans for clean burgers. The goal is to have clean meat replace conventionally produced animal products. But to the extent that there are vegans like myself who are primarily vegan for ethical reasons, then yeah, I don’t see why they would have a concern about doing it. I mean personally, I don’t really have a big desire to eat meat. So even when clean meat is commercialized and regularly available, I would still probably eat a plant-based diet. At the same time, there’s interesting polling on this. So nearly all of the polling until very recently has shown that those with the least interest in eating clean meat are vegans, vegetarians and meat reducers.
Paul (10:21):
So basically what the polling has shown until very recently has been that the people with the greatest interest and willingness to eat it are the people who eat the most amount of meat. So let’s say like, you know, people who go to KFC and other fast food restaurants. And the people with the least interest are the people with the least amount of meat now. However, a new poll just came out that I read just a few days ago that actually found that like 60% of vegetarians, or I don’t know if it was vegetarians or vegans, one of the two, but it was 60% said that they were willing to eat it, which was pretty remarkable and anomalous in the literature. So I’d like to see some replication in that since it is such an outlier in what the research shows. But again, I think you’re right, Alex. Frankly I mean, it doesn’t really matter whether vegetarians eat it since that’s not really the goal.
Alex (11:08):
Currently, the industry is pretty small. Do you think that the cultured meat startups or clean meat startups will be really big tech revolution that’s comparable to like artificial intelligence today cryptocurrencies today, or do you think it’s going to have such an impact like the internet or even smart phones like the iPhone?
Paul (11:29):
I’m very hesitant to make this type of prediction since I think it’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future. So I don’t know the answer to that, but I will say this. Right now, you have in the polls from the most pessimistic poll showing only 20% of Americans willing to eat this to the highest one showing in the high 70% of people willing to eat this. No matter which way you slice it, you’re talking about multibillion dollar industry. If it can be commercialized, we still don’t know if that’s so, if it can get down to cost competitive ways with actual conventionally produced meat. If it could, if clean meat could be produced in a cost competitive way with conventional meat, then yes, I think that it would be an unbelievable revolution in agriculture that would have a dramatically positive effect throughout the world.
Paul (12:20):
You would see not only a great (unintelligible) for human nutrition, but you’d also be able (unintelligible) food safety problem because clean meat is called clean meat in part, not only because it’s like clean energy. In that, it’s much more efficient to produce, but it’s also much cleaner from a food safety perspective than conventionally produced meat. But you would also see really a change in how the planet looks from space. I mean, right now the two leading causes of deforestation on earth are creating pasture land for cattle grazing and growing feed crops to feed animals confined on factory farms. And so you would quickly have a reforestation of lots of parts of the planet that have been deforested for these two purposes. You would also have a return in some cases, not necessarily to forests, but let’s say to wetlands where they were, that they were prior to being farmed. Because animal agriculture is a leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and produces more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire transportation sector combined, more than all cars, planes, boats, trucks, all combined.
Paul (13:26):
You would also have a very notable reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Not only though would you have that, but a lot of those emissions are methane and CO2, which is the most commonly talked about greenhouse gas, stays in the atmosphere for many, many decades. I mean, it’s the real problem once it’s there. Hopefully, we can do some geoengineering and remove it from the atmosphere. But barring that, we’re going to have that problem for very many decades, whereas methane, which is a far more potent greenhouse gas, even though there’s less of it, it’s way more potent than CO2. And it dissipates from the atmosphere relatively quickly compared to CO2. So you could see real gains. If we were able to quickly convert to a clean meat food system, you would be able to see real gains. I think that would be appreciable from the climate perspective in a matter of years, rather than waiting perhaps a century.
Alex (14:19):
Tell us a little bit about designer meat or really combining beef and tuna or meat from two different species. Do you think that designer meat is something that could become mainstream?
Paul (14:31):
Well, we already have the turducken. So you know, people who aren’t familiar with the turducken, it’s basically a chicken inside of a — well, no, no. It’s a chicken inside of a duck inside of a turkey. And then you bake it all together and you eat like a (unintelligible) in there. But I don’t think it’s that unreasonable to expect that you could culture, let’s say tuna and beef cells together and get some type of like tuna steak combo. I think also though, even more likely eventually, will be designer meat in the sense of creating meat that is healthier than meat today. So clean meat has the obvious food safety advantage, but it’s still nutritionally equivalent to meat because that’s exactly what it is. It’s meat, which means that it has some health concerns.
Paul (15:20):
So we know that eating a diet heavy in meat and other animal products is associated with heart disease and other types of problems. So the question is, can you make it not just like conventional meat, but actually better? And I think these companies first just want to do the same thing. They want to make meat that is the same, which is of course very popular today. But there is some talk about, let’s say for example, making a burger that has less saturated fat and more Omega-3 fatty acids, for example. In that case, you could have a hamburger that instead of causing heart attacks actually prevents them. But that’s, I think further down the road. So yes, I think there’s nothing to suggest that that’s not possible, but it still is not going to be one of the first products offered, I don’t think.
Alex (16:07):
Sometimes we use the term clean meat. It’s been referred to as cultured meat, also in vitro meat. What do you think we’ll be calling it 20 years from now?
Paul (16:16):
It is kind of like ice and that 150 years ago, we had a massive ice industry where (unintelligible) were made from harvesting naturally formed ice in Northern lakes and shipping it all over the world. And then you enter the advent of industrial refrigeration and all of a sudden, you had a much more efficient way to get ice just by cooling the water down right in front of you. Now the natural ice producers and shippers were livid over this technological innovation railing against what they called artificial ice, saying it was unnatural, was unsafe. You shouldn’t use it. Well now, fast forward to today and all of us have artificial ice makers in our homes.
Paul (16:54):
We call them freezers and we don’t think there was anything unnatural about it at all. We don’t even stop to contemplate anything other than that is the way that we get ice is by making it ourselves. But for millennia, the only way anybody had ice was getting it from nature. Similarly for millennia, the only way we’ve had meat is by getting it out of animals’ bodies. Now we have the capacity through science and technology to produce meat outside of animal bodies, just like we had the ability to produce ice without having to get it from nature. And we just call it ice. We don’t have any special name for it. This is meat. There’s no, I mean, really that’s what it should be called is just meat, because that’s exactly what it is. At the same time for now, we need some type of a term so you can have intelligible conversations about it, when you still have this nascent industry.
Paul (17:45):
And what do you call it? And what the product is called really matters. It really matters because it influences what people think of it. I mean, words matter. And the polling and the focus groups are very clear. All the surveys and focus groups that have been done on this topic, whether done by the Good Food Institute or by New Harvest or others, have found that clean meat performs very well. It also has the benefit of being accurate in that it’s again, cleaner for the planet and cleaner from a food safety perspective. In vitro meat is automatically a turnoff. I think it sounds like eating a baby. Since most of the time when lay people here are in vitro, they’re still thinking of in vitro fertilization. And by the way, that’s another good example.
Paul (18:31):
You know, what do you call babies born from in vitro fertilization? You just call them babies because that’s what they are. And so it’s another similar analogy. At the same time, cultured meat was an improvement over in vitro meat. When people like Jason Matheny, who was the founder of New Harvest and now is the director of IARPA, started using that term. It was definitely a big improvement, but it doesn’t really pull that well. A focus group suggests that it’s really not that appetizing to people. And frankly, discussing the manner in which it is made is less helpful and effective than discussing the actual benefit of it. So if you say cultured meat to somebody, they ask well, why is it cultured? Then you have to explain to them first what cell culturing is, since most people don’t even know what it is.
Paul (19:17):
And then it automatically brings up an image of a mad scientist in a white lab coat. If you’re talking about clean meat, however, they ask, well, why is it clean meat? And you can tell them, well, it actually doesn’t, you don’t have to worry so much about intestinal pathogens like E. Coli and salmonella and campylobacter that plague the meat industry today because again, those are intestinal pathogens. When you’re making clean meat, you don’t have to grow intestines at all. You’re just growing the muscle. So it’s cleaner from a food safety perspective and like clean energy, it’s better for the planet. So I’m open to other terms that would be better if, if anybody comes up with a term that polls better than that. But for now, it does seem like clean meat is the most effective term and probably the most accurate term to use as well.
Alex (20:02):
In your book, you spoke to a number of startups that were in the clean meat space. If somebody was interested in getting into the industry today as a scientist or entrepreneur, what suggestions would you have for them?
Paul (20:14):
Great. Well, you’re needed. Visit cleanmeat.com and click on the jobs section. There is lots of jobs needed. And most of the people who would be involved in this type of work, STEM cell biologists, tissue, engineers, and so on are going into the medical industry. They’re going into pharmaceutical, they’re going to medical, et cetera. And they are needed in this field and they can make a huge impact. And so we need them. We need them. And so I would suggest taking a look. I mean, companies like Memphis Meats and JUST are hiring like crazy. Geltor is another great company. They are hiring, but nearly all of these companies are hiring. I would just go to cleanmeat.com, look at the jobs page, and start talking to these companies because your expertise is desperately needed.
Alex (21:03):
What’s really the biggest blocker from us having clean meat on store shelves today? Is it related to financing? Is it related to bring costs down? Like what is really blocking us from taking this mainstream?
Paul (21:19):
Yeah, I think the two issues that you just mentioned, Alex, are two sides of the same coin because bringing the cost down is contingent upon extra funding for R and D, but there seem to be three hurdles and I’ll tell you my view on them in order. So the biggest hurdle is bringing the costs down, and that basically means finding less expensive ways to feed the cells. You know, you take these cells out of the animal’s body and you put them in a cultivator so that they think they are still in the animal’s body. You need to put energy in there so that they’re warm and they’re at body temperature, but you need to feed them so they will proliferate. And right now, what is fed to them is very expensive. And that’s fine if you’re working on this in the medical space because people are willing to spend a lot of money on medical therapies, not so much on food though.
Paul (22:07):
So we need to find cheaper ways to feed these cells that will keep them happy and growing. That’s problem number one. Problem number two is potential government regulation. So if you look, for example, in the European Union where they have straight up banned you know, various genetic modification technology they might do the same here. Now, to stress, the clean meat companies are not using GMO technology. They could, but they aren’t right now for consumer concerns. But it’s not so much GM stuff that people hear. It’s, you know, this idea of applying technology to food. We delude ourselves into thinking that we want natural food, as if any of the foods that we’re eating today are somehow natural. I mean, just go do a Google image search for what the original bananas looked like. I mean, they’re these puny little fruits that had gigantic seeds in them.
Paul (23:01):
I mean, you know, when you go and eat a banana today, it may not be technically a GMO banana, but I mean, it’s so dramatically different from the ancestor that we domesticated. It’s hard to even recognize it, but I think government regulations based on unfamiliarity among consumers with this category of food are a real concern. This is one of the reasons I wanted to write the book was to help familiarize people with this industry because unlike conventional meat production with cellular agriculture, the more you learn about it, the more comfortable you become. You know, most people, if they go tour a slaughterhouse or a factory farm, they’re not going to be enthusiastic about the foods that they’re eating or feeding to their families. When you learn about how these companies are producing meat, you’re actually quite psyched about it. And you think that this is something that you would want to support.
Paul (23:51):
So I think the technological barriers are probably a bigger problem than the potential government barriers, especially in countries where this is going to be needed the most like China and India and Brazil and so on. And then finally, and this is I think the least of the concerns, but it’s still a concern is that issue of consumer acceptance. Will people want to eat these foods? And I think the polling is pretty clear that many people do. And I also think that when people are offered food at a cost competitive price that is the same, except that it’s safer, that they’ll gladly eat it. I mean, think about it. Right now, people eat meat, not because of how it is produced, but rather in spite of how it is produced. If you were to ask somebody, hey, would you like to eat meat from an animal who is pumped full of hormones and antibiotics who lived in her own feces, never saw the sun, never walked outside, and was slaughtered in a horrifically violent way? Most people of course would say, dude, are you crazy? Yeah, that’s a reality for a lot of the meat that people eat today. And so when you present a better alternative available to them, I think people in the same way that people converted to human-made ice, people will want to convert to clean meat as well.
Alex (25:05):
Follow up on kind of like the first point regarding what we’re feeding the cells. What exactly is it?
Paul (25:12):
Right. Well, a couple of things. So first, I mean, just to state one fact, I mean. Most plant-based foods like fruits and vegetables still have inputs that are not vegan. I mean, you’re using animal manure. You’re using fish blood as fertilizers. So a lot of the foods, even fruits and vegetables that we eat, still have animal inputs, sadly. But yeah, I mean, for the ACE cellular producers, companies like Geltor and Modern Meadow and Perfect Day and Clara Foods, they are not using animal ingredients at all. I mean, they are basically doing a cellular process of microbial fermentation that does not require any animal ingredients. And they are producing real collagen, real dairy proteins, real egg white proteins, and so on. However, the clean meat producers, by and large, are still using some type of animal serum that feeds the cells. And that’s largely because for the past 130 years that humans have been culturing cells, that’s been the norm. And they are feverously working to find alternatives to this, not only because of the ethical concerns that you correctly raised, Alex, but also because it’s just not economically feasible.
Paul (26:24):
Nobody thinks that you’re going to be able to sell anything at like a reasonable price if you’re using bovine serum, because it’s so expensive. I mean, you’re talking like $500 a liter and that’s not even going to produce that much meat. So using the serum was done to show that you can do this, that you can produce it, but now these companies are working to find serum-free ways to make their meat. With some of it, like with liver and foie gras, they’ve been able to free themselves from using serum, but others, they haven’t. Interestingly enough, Nick Genovese, who’s one of the scientists and a cofounder at Memphis Meats, published something in the journal Nature on a bovine serum-free cocktail that you could use that replaces it. So there still is more work to be done and these companies are really going, but that’s kind of like the Holy Grail for these startups right now is how to free themselves from using serum and animal serum.
Alex (27:19):
What can the general public expect from the clean meat industry in the very near future?
Paul (27:25):
Well probably some symbolic commercialization. I think that you’re going to have companies for other publicity stunts or to try to increase investment in investor interest and so on to show that they can do this. We’ll actually sell some clean meat. Nobody’s done that yet. You know, there have been public tastings of the Memphis meatball or of the Mark Post burger or Hampton Creek has had people eat some of their products, but nobody’s actually made a commercial sale of clean meat anywhere on earth yet. And I think that’s going to be probably the next step is some type of symbolic commercialization to show that it is possible. I also think that Modern Meadow is going to commercialize its clean leather, that it calls Zoa, probably within the calendar year of 2018. They are moving really fast.
Paul (28:18):
They are the most capitalized of any of these companies, having raised already more than $50 million. And I think clean leather is going to be among the very first products out on the market. Geltor has already sold some of its clean collagen into the cosmetics market, like collagen that it has grown. So that’s pretty cool that they are actually commercialized. That’s really a big breakthrough for the field. And I suspect that a company like Perfect Day, which is making clean dairy proteins, they just raised $25 million in a series a round. And I suspect that there’ll be selling some dairy proteins into the market within a year or so as well.
Alex (28:56):
We were having a discussion about Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat. And these two companies currently their pitch is that they’re using 100% plant-based products. But do you think that that’s the actual play? Or are we seeing some sort of, right now where the Netflix shipping out DVDs and just waiting for the high bandwidth to come in? Are companies — right, yeah. So like is Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat, are they going to be switching over to a clean meat solution once they have the marketing and branding really down pat?
Paul (29:29):
That’s an interesting analogy with the DVDs, Alex, and I thought about that, but that’s interesting. But no, my answer to your question is I highly doubt it. Pat Brown, the founder of Impossible Foods, is very derisive about clean meat. He thinks that it’s not a feasible idea. And so I just cannot possibly imagine him doing what you’re suggesting. Of course, you know, lots of things happen. You know, lots of people can’t possibly imagine certain things that may happen. So I’m not suggesting it with certainty. I would just be very surprised. People like Ethan Brown and Pat Brown, the CEOs of Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, I don’t think have much interest in producing clean meat in all honesty. I think that they are betting that plant-based meat is going to be easier to do on a cost competitive level.
Paul (30:21):
And there’ll be enormous health benefits because these are cholesterol-free products that they’re making. And I think that they think there’ll be higher consumer acceptance as well with plant-based. So and I’m not even disagreeing with them. I think time will tell what ends up happening. In fact, even Jason Matheny, again, the founder of New Harvest said, and he says this in the book that if he had to make an investment right now between plant-based meat or clean meat, that he would probably bet on plant-based meat doing something bigger. And keep in mind, like the Beyond Burger is already in thousands of supermarkets. It’s selling for $2.99 per burger. They’re in lots of restaurants and people really like it. I personally love it. I think it’s great. Whereas clean meat has never been sold anywhere on earth. It’s still, you know, astronomically priced. Plant-Based meat just has a really big headstart. At the same time, it isn’t actual meat. And if there is a psychological problem for some people with that, you know, some people may say I’m down to eat plant-based meat. Other people may say, I only want what I consider the so-called real thing. And for those people who feel wedded to eating actual animal meat, hopefully clean meat will be a good solution for them.
Alex (31:33):
It’s been a short time since the book has been on store shelves, but the industry is moving very fast. Are there any clean meat startups we should be on the lookout for that might not have made it into the book?
Paul (31:46):
Yeah, a lot’s happened. You know, the book’s been out for only two months and I’m already — we’re selling the book in other countries now. And so I’m already doing updates to the manuscript for that. I mean, you know, Tyson Foods for example, had yet to actually invest in a clean meat company, but by the time the book was published, Cargill had invested in Memphis Meats, but Tyson hadn’t. So that’s one update, but yes, there are. So Finless Foods is mentioned in one paragraph in the book, but at that time they were not really capitalized in any way. And they got started just too late in the process. I wanted to include them because I’m really enthusiastic about the idea of making clean fish. I think it’s so desperately needed. But they’ve now raised a couple million dollars and they’re doing some wonderful things and I did get to taste their clean carp.
Paul (32:34):
I think I mentioned that earlier that I had eaten fish. I don’t remember, but I did eat some of their clean carp for the writing of the book also. But I, to be able to update the American version, I definitely would add more about Finless Foods. There’s, there’s an interesting project going on in Japan called IntegriCulture, which they have a cool project called the Shojinmeat Project where they’re giving students a little microwave sized meat maker. So imagine you go home and you have, of course your bread maker or your ice cream maker, then you have your meat maker right next to it. And they can culture their own cells and grow their own meat in their own homes. It’s very cool. I probably would include that as well. There’s a promising startup called Mission Barns, which is being run by Eitan Fischer and David Bowman, two folks who were at Hampton Creek doing their clean meat program.
Paul (33:24):
They left Hampton Creek and have now started their own clean meat startup called Mission Barns. So things are moving. I mean, things are really moving fast. A lot has happened in the couple months since the book was published. And I do hope that there is another edition, like a paperback, and I can add that to it and hopefully a lot more.
Alex (33:40):
You can find Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World on Amazon and other booksellers. The official website is cleanmeat.com, where you’ll find job openings in the cellular agriculture world. Paul, are there any last insights you might have for our listeners?
Paul (33:57):
I’m grateful that you’re doing this show, Alex. It’s really cool and I’m very honored to be a part of it. So thank you for having me.
Alex (34:02):
Paul, thank you so much for being with us today and sharing your story on the Cultured Meat and Future Food podcast. This is your host, Alex, and we look forward to being with you on our next episode.
Transcript by Dana Cooner.
