“We can have a world in which we divorce meat-eating from animal slaughter, and where people can continue to eat the foods that they love with a far lower footprint than the foods today make.”
Today marks the kickstart to our 5th season! I don’t want to give too much away about this season, but so far we’re really digging into questions around meat and identity and also branching out into the very fun topic of beverages, which we haven’t covered much before! But that’s all the spoilers I’ll give.. I’m very excited.
To start our exploration of meat, we’re looking into the future of it – and questioning how we define it in the era of climate change and sustainability efforts. My guest this week is Paul Shapiro, who is the author of the bestselling book Clean Meat: How Growing Meat without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World through Simon and Schuster. He is also the CEO of the Better Meat Company, a four times TEDx Speaker, and the host of the Business for Good Podcast, all while being a long-time leader in food sustainability.
Based out of Sacramento, California with his wife Toni Okamoto Shapiro, Paul bases a lot of his work on finding common ground with folks across agricultural and tech industries while looking at the future of clean meat. He asks the question what if we could have our meat and eat it too? I know when I first heard about clean meat, I just assumed it was a plant-based alternative to animal meat… but it’s not! It’s real, actual meat that’s grown (or brewed?) from animal cells, as well as other clean animal products that ditch animal cells all together and are simply built from the molecule up… Wild, right?
Paul’s book Clean Meat really captures the tales of the innovators and investors that are racing to commercialize the world’s first real animal products that are grown without animals. And today, we’re diving into what a world with cell-based clean meats might look like, the moral and ethical discussions surrounding the products, the responses from industries, and breaking down the idea of what “natural” foods are and can be. It’s such a fascinating world that I knew very little about going into this conversation – I can’t wait for you to listen and learn from Paul!
Learn More from Paul: