Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #046_ The Clean Meat Revolution!

Transcript

#046_ The Clean Meat Revolution! · INSPIRE STORY

0:24
Speaker 1: Good to see you, my friend. It's really good to
0:26
Speaker 1: be here. Thank you. I think the last time we
0:29
Speaker 1: did this was two years ago. How long ago was it.
0:32
Speaker 1: It was a while ago.
0:32
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, it was a little while ago, maybe
0:34
Speaker 2: eighteen months a little more.
0:35
Speaker 1: I remember it was the dead of winter in New York.
0:38
Speaker 1: That's all I remember. It was very cold. Well, much
0:42
Speaker 1: has happened since then, so I'm excited to have you
0:45
Speaker 1: back to bring us up to speed on everything clean meat,
0:50
Speaker 1: everything that's happening in the plant based food movement. You
0:55
Speaker 1: guys just had a big conference, right we did.
0:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it was a conference focused. Day one was
1:05
Speaker 2: predominantly on plant based meat. Day two was predominantly on
1:08
Speaker 2: clean meat, and we had kind of everybody who's anybody
1:12
Speaker 2: in the plant based meat and the clean meat market sectors.
1:15
Speaker 2: And then we invited We had two panels on plant
1:18
Speaker 2: based meat and two panels on clean meat, where we
1:20
Speaker 2: invited people from industry in the one case, and we
1:23
Speaker 2: invited scientists in the other case, where we think they
1:26
Speaker 2: have the capacity to basically move these market sectors forward
1:31
Speaker 2: in a really big way, but they're not currently involved. So,
1:34
Speaker 2: for example, people who are doing extruders and people who
1:37
Speaker 2: are doing crop sciences, and people who are doing Zeno
1:41
Speaker 2: free media for therapeutics, and basically the real goal of
1:44
Speaker 2: the conference. We wanted people to network, We wanted to
1:47
Speaker 2: connect investors with startups, We wanted to get scientists more
1:50
Speaker 2: excited about the space. But we really wanted the market
1:54
Speaker 2: sectors that are currently existing and the scientists who are
1:58
Speaker 2: currently active. They're not looking at plant based meat or
2:01
Speaker 2: clean meat at the moment, but they would be essential
2:04
Speaker 2: to plant based and clean meat accelerating. So we brought
2:07
Speaker 2: them and it was a phenomenal success in that regard.
2:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like that's one of the I mean,
2:14
Speaker 1: Good Food Institute takes this multi pronged approach to, you know,
2:19
Speaker 1: developing this new way of thinking about food and how
2:23
Speaker 1: we're going to innovate for the future. But one of
2:25
Speaker 1: the more compelling prongs in your approach is trying to
2:30
Speaker 1: cultivate cooperation not just amongst all of the you know,
2:36
Speaker 1: sort of major players in the clean meat and plant
2:38
Speaker 1: based food movement, but also with the people that are
2:42
Speaker 1: outside of it that can contribute to this rapidly growing
2:49
Speaker 1: revolution that we're experiencing right now. So what came out
2:52
Speaker 1: of that, like what what what we're you know, what
2:54
Speaker 1: are some of the things that are happening right now
2:57
Speaker 1: in this world that are perhaps new since last spoke.
3:00
Speaker 2: Well, there is a tremendous amount that's new since we
3:03
Speaker 2: last spoke. So all of gfi's departments are ramping up,
3:06
Speaker 2: which I'm very excited about. What you just said is true.
3:09
Speaker 2: We see ourselves certainly as helping the current players, so
3:13
Speaker 2: the current startups and the current companies that exist in
3:16
Speaker 2: plant based meat and clean meat, to help them all
3:18
Speaker 2: to coordinate across a variety of sectors, from science to
3:22
Speaker 2: policy to networking with sort of big corporations, big food
3:26
Speaker 2: corporations and meat corporations. But we also really want to
3:30
Speaker 2: create a pipeline of scientists. We really want to get
3:33
Speaker 2: the therapeutics industry that exists thinking about cross application of
3:38
Speaker 2: what it is that they're doing to the food sector.
3:40
Speaker 2: In other words, to clean meat. We want to get
3:43
Speaker 2: people who are currently funding for the environment or sustainability
3:47
Speaker 2: or global health thinking about the value of funding plant
3:50
Speaker 2: based meat and clean meat R and D. So we're
3:53
Speaker 2: doing a lot across our programmatic areas at GFI, and
3:56
Speaker 2: there's a tremendous amount that's happened since the last time
3:58
Speaker 2: we talked. I think we had the teen or fourteen staff.
4:01
Speaker 2: Now we have fifty three, will probably be more than
4:03
Speaker 2: seventy by the end of the year in the US
4:05
Speaker 2: and hopefully somewhere in the order of twenty internationally. So
4:08
Speaker 2: a lot happening, But the conference really worked for that.
4:11
Speaker 2: There were people who run extruder companies and people who
4:14
Speaker 2: run media companies, and scientists who are working in tissue
4:17
Speaker 2: engineering and people who are doing plant biology, and they
4:21
Speaker 2: came to the conference and they learned about how much
4:23
Speaker 2: good they can do in the world while also doing
4:26
Speaker 2: very well for themselves if they refocus some of their
4:29
Speaker 2: efforts into plant based meat and clean meat. Really excited
4:32
Speaker 2: by an email that I got from a Berkeley professor
4:34
Speaker 2: in the Plant Sciences Department, and she said that she
4:36
Speaker 2: came to the conference just sort of to explore what
4:38
Speaker 2: was happening, and she walked away completely enthused and talking
4:41
Speaker 2: about how she will be educating her students about this
4:44
Speaker 2: and encouraging them to take the class we designed at
4:46
Speaker 2: Berkeley in plant based meat and clean meat and to
4:49
Speaker 2: think about focusing their careers here. And that was just
4:51
Speaker 2: replicated over and over and over again with people at
4:54
Speaker 2: really big food companies, people who are in therapeutics, who
4:58
Speaker 2: are in crop science is who are thinking about you know,
5:02
Speaker 2: chemical engineering and mechanical engineering, and they're currently in the
5:05
Speaker 2: food industry and now they're thinking about plant based meat
5:07
Speaker 2: and clean meat and how they can plug in.
5:09
Speaker 1: It's very exciting. That's cool. So, yeah, you guys created
5:12
Speaker 1: or are behind the very first college course on clean meat, right,
5:19
Speaker 1: and is that at Berkeley.
5:20
Speaker 2: That's at Berkeley, and we're launching one this semester at
5:22
Speaker 2: Stanford and other one at Penn State. We've got a
5:25
Speaker 2: mook that will be coming out in the next what's
5:27
Speaker 2: some five or six weeks massive open online course m okay,
5:33
Speaker 2: so it will be an even lead an eleven week
5:35
Speaker 2: sort of crash course in plant based meat and clean meat.
5:39
Speaker 1: And it seems like it's it's a subject matter that
5:42
Speaker 1: really is multidisciplinarian, right, because you have to understand chemistry,
5:46
Speaker 1: you have to understand sell biology, like you have to
5:50
Speaker 1: understand engineering, you have to understand I don't know brewing,
5:54
Speaker 1: Like what do you need to understand to really wrap
5:56
Speaker 1: your head around what clean meat is and what is
5:59
Speaker 1: going on? And how we're going to innovate this future.
6:01
Speaker 2: Well, it's not super hard to understand it sort of
6:03
Speaker 2: a basic level, but as with any sort of production
6:06
Speaker 2: scale food supply, there is a tremendous amount that you
6:10
Speaker 2: need to understand about sort of each sector. So, you know,
6:13
Speaker 2: for plant based meat, we need to be doing crop
6:15
Speaker 2: optimization and we need to figure out, you know, what
6:18
Speaker 2: are the proteins that are going to be best turned
6:20
Speaker 2: into plant based meat, and we need to figure out
6:23
Speaker 2: what that looks like. Then we need to figure out,
6:25
Speaker 2: you know, how you put all these things together in
6:27
Speaker 2: order to make something that biomemics meat, and you need
6:30
Speaker 2: to figure out what the production technology is going to be.
6:32
Speaker 2: It's really sort of fascinating to us. When we first
6:36
Speaker 2: started looking at plant based meat and clean meat, we
6:38
Speaker 2: sort of thought we had plant based meat figured out
6:40
Speaker 2: because there are a bunch of companies doing it, and
6:42
Speaker 2: clean meat was going to be really complex and difficult
6:45
Speaker 2: because nobody essentially was doing it. Memphis Meats was just
6:48
Speaker 2: getting started, there was super Meat, and most of meats
6:52
Speaker 2: just getting started. None of the three of them had incorporated.
6:55
Speaker 2: But what we found is that the plant based meat
6:57
Speaker 2: is actually a lot more complex than the clean meat,
7:00
Speaker 2: because clean meat we've got cross applicability from therapeutics, from
7:04
Speaker 2: tissue engineering, so everything happening in George Church's lab at
7:08
Speaker 2: Harvard Medical School. You could just like sort of take
7:11
Speaker 2: all of that and say, okay, we're going to do
7:13
Speaker 2: food now and start producing clean meat. With plant based meat,
7:17
Speaker 2: you've sort of got the pioneers beyond meat and impossible foods,
7:20
Speaker 2: but there is limitless other stuff that could be happening,
7:23
Speaker 2: and even impossible foods and beyond meat are pretty tiny
7:26
Speaker 2: when you compare them to you know, sort of the
7:28
Speaker 2: big meat industry or sell therapeutics, so a tremendous amount
7:32
Speaker 2: to learn. At its most basic level, though, plant based
7:35
Speaker 2: meat is let's take plants. You know, there's nothing in
7:37
Speaker 2: meat that doesn't exist in plants, meatas lipids and aminos
7:41
Speaker 2: and minerals and water. Let's figure out how we take
7:43
Speaker 2: those constituent parts, put them together and process them so
7:47
Speaker 2: that they biomemic meat, so that they give every people
7:50
Speaker 2: everything that they like about meat, but using plants, and
7:52
Speaker 2: because it's so much more efficient, it will be less expensive.
7:55
Speaker 2: And then clean meat is similar, except you take the
7:57
Speaker 2: products of tissue engineering. Are we going to grow cells,
8:01
Speaker 2: How are we going to put them on scaffold so
8:02
Speaker 2: that they can grow? How are we going to put
8:04
Speaker 2: them into a bioreactor? Like what does this look like
8:06
Speaker 2: at food grade, which obviously has to be significantly less
8:10
Speaker 2: expensive than tissue engineering for therapeutics.
8:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I want to get into clean meat, but
8:14
Speaker 1: let's start with plant based meat. It seems that pea
8:19
Speaker 1: protein has sort of been the protein of choice as
8:22
Speaker 1: a foundational basis for creating these foods. Are we moving
8:27
Speaker 1: in different directions now? Like how you know, where are
8:30
Speaker 1: we sourcing those nutrients, the lipids, the proteins, and what
8:35
Speaker 1: does that future look like? Yeah?
8:37
Speaker 2: I mean this is one of the sort of interesting
8:39
Speaker 2: aha moments for us when we were thinking about plant
8:41
Speaker 2: based meat and clean meat and the fact that up
8:43
Speaker 2: until Ethan Brown comes along in two thousand and nine,
8:46
Speaker 2: so Ethan was working Ethan's the founder Beyond Meat, and
8:49
Speaker 2: he was working in clean energy, and he read the
8:51
Speaker 2: UN report about the climate change impact of the meat industry,
8:55
Speaker 2: and he pretty much simultaneously at about the same time,
8:59
Speaker 2: heard about some pepro research that was going on at
9:01
Speaker 2: the University of Missouri and the idea of using peas
9:05
Speaker 2: to basically get you the taste, the texture, other things
9:07
Speaker 2: that people like about meat. And he jumped in, and
9:10
Speaker 2: that was sort of the first time anybody had ever
9:12
Speaker 2: looked at crops with the idea of optimizing them to
9:15
Speaker 2: create something that tastes like meat. Up until that point,
9:18
Speaker 2: all of the companies were using either wheat or soy,
9:21
Speaker 2: and it was the waste product of wheat and soy.
9:23
Speaker 2: So for wheat, it was the waste product of carbohydrates.
9:26
Speaker 2: For soy, it was the waste product of oil. And
9:28
Speaker 2: it was sort of, let's cram this stuff together and
9:29
Speaker 2: make vegetarians eat it.
9:31
Speaker 1: So we can just you know, not have to throw
9:34
Speaker 1: stuff away and maybe created an additional revenue stream. Yeah, no,
9:38
Speaker 1: exactly our main business.
9:39
Speaker 2: Exactly, but it was basically it was basically the waste product.
9:42
Speaker 2: So pea protein was the first of the proteins to
9:45
Speaker 2: really be optimized for plant based meat, and other companies
9:48
Speaker 2: have jumped on board. But there's really no reason it
9:50
Speaker 2: should be pea proteins. So people are looking at lupin,
9:53
Speaker 2: they're looking at lentils, they're looking at oats. Really kind
9:56
Speaker 2: of any source that has protein impossible foods is using
9:59
Speaker 2: potato protein, and yeah, and they're us that they're optimizing
10:02
Speaker 2: potato protein for the impossible burgers. So even products that
10:07
Speaker 2: you don't generally think of as being particularly high protein
10:10
Speaker 2: really kind of any crop. And this goes back to
10:12
Speaker 2: that Bill Gates line when he tried beyond meats plant
10:15
Speaker 2: based chicken, and he wrote a blog called the Future
10:18
Speaker 2: of Food and he said, what I just tasted. It's
10:20
Speaker 2: not just a clever meat substitute. It is the future
10:22
Speaker 2: of food. Hence the title of the title of the article.
10:25
Speaker 2: He said, ninety two percent of protein plants have not
10:28
Speaker 2: been explored for their capacity to be turned into plant
10:31
Speaker 2: based meat.
10:32
Speaker 1: And that's still true.
10:33
Speaker 2: And it's also true that most of the work that's
10:36
Speaker 2: going on in this space is protected by IP. It's
10:39
Speaker 2: going on in private universities. So one of the things
10:42
Speaker 2: we're doing at GFI is really trying hard through our
10:44
Speaker 2: science team to change that. And we're launching fellowship programs.
10:48
Speaker 2: We're identifying the top twenty four universities globally for plant
10:51
Speaker 2: based meat and clean meat, the top twenty four universities
10:53
Speaker 2: in the US for plant based meat and clean meat.
10:56
Speaker 2: Most of these universities are doing nothing now, but they
10:59
Speaker 2: have the you know, they have the basic agricultural sciences
11:01
Speaker 2: or the basic tissue engineering or biochemistry. They have the
11:04
Speaker 2: right departments, they have the right funding, they have the
11:07
Speaker 2: right research focus, and we're going to be going to
11:09
Speaker 2: them and strongly encouraging them to put some of the
11:12
Speaker 2: resources into plant based meat and clean meat.
11:14
Speaker 1: Yeah. I would think that the universities that have strong
11:18
Speaker 1: agricultural studies programs would would be obvious choices. But I'm
11:24
Speaker 1: wondering whether you get pushed back from them because there's
11:27
Speaker 1: a certain status quo and that perhaps the universities with
11:32
Speaker 1: strong engineering programs and science, you know, a science focus
11:36
Speaker 1: might be more open to you know, the possibility of
11:39
Speaker 1: the future. I mean, have you had those kind of conversations.
11:42
Speaker 1: Have you gotten pushed back from the academic sector? Not
11:46
Speaker 1: so far.
11:47
Speaker 2: I mean, it may happen so but so far there's
11:49
Speaker 2: there's uniform enthusiasm. I mean, and this goes to sort
11:53
Speaker 2: of one of the other revelations of this space is
11:56
Speaker 2: that the vast majority of people working in the meat
11:59
Speaker 2: industry are not especially excited to be working in the
12:02
Speaker 2: meat industry. They have the noble goal of supplying high
12:05
Speaker 2: quality protein to lots of people inexpensively. I mean, if
12:09
Speaker 2: that's your goal, and that's what it is for you know,
12:11
Speaker 2: pretty much everybody at a place like Tyson or Purdue
12:14
Speaker 2: or Smithfield. If that's your goal, this is a better
12:17
Speaker 2: way to do that. It's also generally the goal even
12:19
Speaker 2: at the land universities. So I mean, I think cattle
12:22
Speaker 2: ranching and regenerative agriculture are sort of the two exceptions
12:25
Speaker 2: to that. But the vast majority of what happens in
12:29
Speaker 2: the meat industry doesn't have to involve raising live animals
12:32
Speaker 2: and it doesn't have to involve slaughter, and so we
12:35
Speaker 2: generally meet with enthusiasm, especially when we start talking to
12:38
Speaker 2: people about how this is. Like, you know, there's a
12:40
Speaker 2: lot of discomfiture in the meat industry about undercover investigations,
12:44
Speaker 2: about the link to antibiotic resistance, about the link to
12:48
Speaker 2: climate change, about animal slaughter, and this gets people past
12:51
Speaker 2: all of that while doing still what is their fundamental goal,
12:55
Speaker 2: which is let's produce high quality protein for people to eat.
12:59
Speaker 1: Right right, Well, it's undeniable that this is on the rise.
13:03
Speaker 1: I mean I was looking at some of the statistics
13:05
Speaker 1: and they're pretty staggering. I mean, it's seventeen percent growth
13:09
Speaker 1: in the plant based food sector, twenty three percent growth
13:12
Speaker 1: and plant based meats. The plant based food sector is
13:15
Speaker 1: now a three point seven billion dollar industry. I mean,
13:20
Speaker 1: these are gigantic numbers, and when you see that growth curve,
13:24
Speaker 1: that portends, you know, optimism for the future. Yeah. Absolutely.
13:29
Speaker 2: I mean some of these companies beyond Meat grew at
13:31
Speaker 2: seventy percent, and if they had been able to supply more,
13:34
Speaker 2: they would have been able to grow a lot more
13:35
Speaker 2: quickly than that. That was literally the match they could produce.
13:39
Speaker 2: Field Roast was just south of that. Guardian was just
13:42
Speaker 2: south of that. In the entire plant based meat sector,
13:45
Speaker 2: as you said, grew at a rate of more than
13:46
Speaker 2: twenty percent. If you stay on that trajectory, which is
13:49
Speaker 2: roughly the trajectory that plant based milk was on. If
13:52
Speaker 2: you stay on that trajectory, you're literally at hundred percent
13:55
Speaker 2: by twenty fifty. So it's a third of one percent. Now,
13:59
Speaker 2: if you would incorporate also restaurants, it's about one it's
14:01
Speaker 2: about one percent. Just at grocery it's a third of
14:03
Speaker 2: one percent. Once you incorporate restaurants, you stay on that trajectory,
14:07
Speaker 2: next year you're only at zero point five. Right, in
14:10
Speaker 2: about seven years you're at one percent, but in thirty
14:12
Speaker 2: five years you're at one hundred percent. If you're growing
14:15
Speaker 2: at about you know, one point two per year.
14:17
Speaker 1: Uh, And that's the GFI goal.
14:19
Speaker 2: That is the gif that is the GFI goal. I
14:21
Speaker 2: mean it will be incorporating clean meat into it as well.
14:24
Speaker 2: But if X is plant based meat and why is
14:26
Speaker 2: clean meat, the goal is that X plus Y equals
14:30
Speaker 2: roughly one hundred. There will still be some regenerative agriculture
14:32
Speaker 2: in there. I'm not sure what percentage that will be,
14:34
Speaker 2: but mostly yeah, mostly it's a plant based meat and
14:38
Speaker 2: clean meat. They're more efficient, they're better in all these
14:40
Speaker 2: myriad ways. It's just a better way of producing meat.
14:44
Speaker 1: Well, when Bill Gates made that statement, I mean that
14:47
Speaker 1: was definitely a watershed moment. And then he's put his
14:50
Speaker 1: money behind his words. I know he's invested in beyond meat.
14:53
Speaker 1: I'm sure he's invested in you would know better, like
14:55
Speaker 1: you know, all kinds of these companies Peter Thiel is
14:58
Speaker 1: jumping in now. He just invested in like lab grown
15:03
Speaker 1: meat for pets, you know, like, who would have thought,
15:07
Speaker 1: so this is happening. We have the Impossible Burger in
15:10
Speaker 1: white Castle, which is CHRISTI announced nationwide.
15:13
Speaker 2: I think that might have been white Castle's fastest from
15:15
Speaker 2: regional to national introduction. I know that for Beyond Meat
15:19
Speaker 2: and TGI Fridays, it was TGI Friday's fastest from regional
15:23
Speaker 2: to national introduction.
15:24
Speaker 1: Oh that's amazing. And why aren't we seeing either beyond
15:29
Speaker 1: Meat or the impossible burger, or some variation thereof in
15:33
Speaker 1: every fast food restaurant. I'm sure these conversations are happening
15:37
Speaker 1: in boardrooms, you know, across the world. I know McDonald's
15:40
Speaker 1: was running a pilot program like in the Netherlands or
15:43
Speaker 1: someplace like that with a with a veggie burger. But
15:46
Speaker 1: it would seem that the time is ripe that all
15:50
Speaker 1: of these major chains would at least be testing this
15:53
Speaker 1: at the moment.
15:54
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, they might want to be testing it.
15:56
Speaker 2: But what I encounter everywhere I go is people saying,
15:59
Speaker 2: why can't I get the impossible burger? Why can't I
16:01
Speaker 2: get the beyond burger? And they literally are producing as
16:05
Speaker 2: fast as they can possibly produce, and they simply can't
16:08
Speaker 2: meet the demands of the fat chain situation.
16:10
Speaker 1: Right now. We just need scale, Yeah, I mean, I
16:13
Speaker 1: don't know for sure.
16:14
Speaker 2: That's why McDonald's doesn't have the Beyond Burger or the
16:17
Speaker 2: Impossible Burger, although there were people from McDonald's and other
16:21
Speaker 2: fast food and big meat industry players at our conference
16:24
Speaker 2: who were super enthused about the experience and what they
16:27
Speaker 2: were hearing. But I don't know what's happening in the
16:29
Speaker 2: border room at McDonald's. But I do know that if
16:31
Speaker 2: they came to Impossible or Beyond Meat and said we
16:34
Speaker 2: would like to have your burger nationwide, neither of those companies,
16:37
Speaker 2: at least right at the moment. It would have to
16:39
Speaker 2: be a negotiation for the future.
16:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, let's take a step back and just kind
16:44
Speaker 1: of canvas the landscape in terms of, you know, the
16:48
Speaker 1: benefits of moving in this direction from a variety of perspectives. Obviously,
16:55
Speaker 1: clean meat avoids having to kill animals for food, It's
17:00
Speaker 1: better on the climate, there's a health argument, There's all
17:04
Speaker 1: of these reasons. But I think it would be good
17:07
Speaker 1: And we probably covered this last time we spoke, but
17:09
Speaker 1: there's a lot of new people that are listening now
17:12
Speaker 1: that might not have listened to our first conversation. Let's
17:15
Speaker 1: talk first about the climate. Let's talk about the impact
17:20
Speaker 1: of animal agriculture on the climate and how you see
17:25
Speaker 1: this new revolution in plant based foods being a curative
17:31
Speaker 1: to the ills that we're currently facing and this dystopian
17:35
Speaker 1: future that lies in you know, that will fall into
17:39
Speaker 1: the lap of future generations if we don't figure this out.
17:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the two big questions in food are
17:45
Speaker 2: how do we feed nine point seven billion people by
17:47
Speaker 2: twenty fifty and what do we do about climate change?
17:50
Speaker 2: And plant based and coming up what do we do
17:52
Speaker 2: about global health, Like antibiotics is up and coming as
17:55
Speaker 2: a concern and according to the UK government, is a
17:58
Speaker 2: bigger concern for the human race to dan climate change.
18:00
Speaker 2: So those are sort of the big three and they
18:03
Speaker 2: interlink at least the first two winterlink. So raising crops
18:07
Speaker 2: to feed them to animals so that we can eat
18:09
Speaker 2: animals is just vastly inefficient. And it's the same as
18:13
Speaker 2: you know, the vast majority of what we eat doesn't
18:15
Speaker 2: go into gaining weight. The vast majority of what we
18:17
Speaker 2: eat sorry, okay, the vast podcast. I know, I'm very
18:24
Speaker 2: excited about that. I'm glad it's not live. The vast
18:28
Speaker 2: majority of what we eat goes into just allowing us
18:31
Speaker 2: to lead our lives. And that's true for farm animals
18:33
Speaker 2: as well. So the most efficient meat is chicken, and
18:36
Speaker 2: yet it takes nine calories into a chicken to get
18:38
Speaker 2: one calorie back out.
18:39
Speaker 1: Explain that for people that are unfamiliar with how this
18:42
Speaker 1: whole thing works. Yeah, so, I mean it makes intuitive sense.
18:45
Speaker 2: Right. So I weigh about one hundred and eighty five pounds.
18:47
Speaker 2: If I do nothing but lay in bed, watching bad
18:50
Speaker 2: television and not even moving, I'm going to burn like
18:52
Speaker 2: twenty four hundred calories every single day.
18:54
Speaker 1: What if you watch good television.
18:56
Speaker 2: Well, if it gets me excited, I suppose my adrenaline
18:59
Speaker 2: could go a little bit of if I'm shouting at
19:00
Speaker 2: the television if it's sports and I care who's going
19:02
Speaker 2: to wan or something. But I mean, basically, our metabolism,
19:05
Speaker 2: or my metabolism, is going to burn about twenty four
19:07
Speaker 2: hundred calories a day, and that's just physiologically what I
19:10
Speaker 2: need just to keep my body going. The same sort
19:12
Speaker 2: of thing is true for farm animals. The vast majority
19:14
Speaker 2: of the calories that you feed them they need just
19:17
Speaker 2: to exist, so that it takes nine calories into a
19:19
Speaker 2: chicken to get one calorie back out in the form
19:22
Speaker 2: of that animal's flesh. Sometimes the industry will do a
19:25
Speaker 2: mass to live weight conversion. From mass to live weight,
19:28
Speaker 2: you can get to two point two or something like that,
19:31
Speaker 2: but about half of the calories in go into bones
19:34
Speaker 2: and blood and feathers and other things that we don't eat.
19:37
Speaker 2: And then you really have to like have dense calories
19:40
Speaker 2: to get that mass calorie out conversion. What really matters
19:43
Speaker 2: is energy energy out. We ate those crops directly, you'd
19:46
Speaker 2: get nine calories instead of one calorie if you funnel
19:49
Speaker 2: those crops through a chicken, So that means nine times
19:52
Speaker 2: as much land, nine times as much water, nine times
19:54
Speaker 2: as much pesticide and herbicide, nine times as much fossil
19:57
Speaker 2: fuel to power the combines. And then you're growing all
20:01
Speaker 2: of those crops, you're shipping those crops to a feed mill,
20:03
Speaker 2: you're operating the feed mill. You're shipping the feed to
20:06
Speaker 2: the farm. You're operating the farm, you're shipping the animals
20:08
Speaker 2: to the slaughterhouse, you're operating the slaughterhouse. Just a vastly
20:11
Speaker 2: inefficient system. The nine in one out is vastly inefficient.
20:15
Speaker 2: And then you total all of the inefficiencies, all of
20:19
Speaker 2: the extra stages of production, all of the gas guzzling,
20:21
Speaker 2: pollution spewing vehicles, all of the extra factories. And what
20:24
Speaker 2: you find is that a conservative estimate is that about
20:28
Speaker 2: thirteen point five percent, according to the United Nations, about
20:31
Speaker 2: thirteen point five percent of all climate change is attributable
20:34
Speaker 2: to the meat industry. It's more than all transportation combined
20:38
Speaker 2: on a point.
20:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's a that's a conservative estimate from what
20:41
Speaker 1: I understand right. I think in Conspiracy they said it
20:44
Speaker 1: was fifteen percent. I think it depends on how you
20:46
Speaker 1: run the numbers, but thirteen point five is pretty you know,
20:50
Speaker 1: that's being conservative, And it's still Trump's transportation, which is
20:54
Speaker 1: what we're all focused on.
20:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and food waste, which people are focused on.
20:58
Speaker 2: I mean, food waste is forty percent of everything we
21:00
Speaker 2: grow we throw away, and obviously that's bad, but this
21:03
Speaker 2: is literally eight hundred percent food waste. Literally, you're throwing
21:07
Speaker 2: away eight calories for every calorie that you consume. And
21:10
Speaker 2: then you're stacking on top of this that all of
21:12
Speaker 2: these extra factories, all of these other eighteen wheelers driving
21:16
Speaker 2: around moving stuff. And I'm going to just environmentally, The
21:20
Speaker 2: United Nations said, no matter what environmental issue, you're looking at,
21:23
Speaker 2: from the smallest and most local to the largest and
21:25
Speaker 2: most global.
21:26
Speaker 1: So it's loss of.
21:27
Speaker 2: Biodiversity, it's water pollution, it's water use, it's soil desertification,
21:31
Speaker 2: it's chopping down the rainforest. Every single issue. The meat
21:34
Speaker 2: industry is one of the top two or three global
21:37
Speaker 2: causes of that issue, including climate change. I'm on a
21:39
Speaker 2: per calorie basis, somebody sits down and they eat chicken,
21:42
Speaker 2: which is the least climate change inducing meat. That's four
21:45
Speaker 2: thousand percent of the climate change. As if you were
21:48
Speaker 2: eating like oons, like soy or peas, forty times as
21:51
Speaker 2: much on a per calorie basis for that meal. So
21:54
Speaker 2: total insanity. It is total insanity. And what does it
21:57
Speaker 2: look like with beef, Well, it's even where so it's
22:00
Speaker 2: about twenty five calories in to get one calorie back out,
22:03
Speaker 2: so it's you know, twenty four hundred percent. It's as
22:05
Speaker 2: so you're throwing away twenty four calories for every calory
22:08
Speaker 2: that you consume. I remember three, one hundred and thirty
22:11
Speaker 2: times on a per calorie basis. I pulled that out
22:13
Speaker 2: of the recesses in my brain. It's a Lancet article
22:15
Speaker 2: from I think twenty fifteen, but three hundred and thirty
22:18
Speaker 2: times as much climate change per calorie of protein for
22:21
Speaker 2: beef as opposed to four legooms like soy and soy piece.
22:27
Speaker 1: So the UN report that was two thousand and eight.
22:30
Speaker 2: It was, yeah, the eighteen percent one in two thousand
22:34
Speaker 2: and eight they said eighteen percent, and then I think
22:36
Speaker 2: in twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen they said thirteen point five.
22:39
Speaker 1: Right, and then there was this Chatham House report as well. Right,
22:42
Speaker 1: A couple of years later.
22:44
Speaker 2: Well, there's a World Watch report that was put together.
22:47
Speaker 2: Chathamhouse had a really interesting report. Chathamhouse the Royal Institute
22:51
Speaker 2: of International Affairs, which is the foremost think tank in Europe,
22:55
Speaker 2: and they released a report that said unless animal product
22:58
Speaker 2: consumption goes down every country, no country is going to
23:01
Speaker 2: be able to keep climate change under two degrees celsius
23:04
Speaker 2: by twenty fifty, which is the Paris Climate Agreement. Yeah,
23:08
Speaker 2: that is the Paris Climate Agreement. No country can do
23:10
Speaker 2: it unless their meat consumption goes down. And they recommended
23:12
Speaker 2: that we educate populations about this issue. And then world
23:15
Speaker 2: Watch did a report from a World Bank agricultural economist
23:19
Speaker 2: and an IFC International Finance Corporation agricultural economist in which
23:23
Speaker 2: they basically disputed the UN numbers and they said, actually,
23:27
Speaker 2: climate change more than fifty percent of it is attributable
23:30
Speaker 2: to animal agriculture. And that's pretty easy to find. You
23:33
Speaker 2: just google Worldwatch, Institute, Climate Change, World Bank, it'll be
23:37
Speaker 2: like the first thing to pop up. We tend to
23:38
Speaker 2: focus on the thirteen point five because it's still more
23:40
Speaker 2: than transportation. It's still awful and certainly should be should
23:45
Speaker 2: be motivating to people.
23:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's shocking. It's shocking that we're not talking about
23:50
Speaker 1: this more like, what are the barriers to really being
23:54
Speaker 1: able to penetrate mainstream awareness to elevate this discussion to
24:00
Speaker 1: the highest level. And really, you know, I know you're
24:02
Speaker 1: doing everything you can at GFI, but what do you
24:05
Speaker 1: see as the biggest impediments or the challenges that you
24:09
Speaker 1: face in trying to get people to really understand this
24:14
Speaker 1: and make change.
24:15
Speaker 2: Well, Rich, we're not actually trying to get people to
24:18
Speaker 2: understand this and make change. Like gfi's theory of changes
24:22
Speaker 2: that we have beat our head against a wall of
24:24
Speaker 2: education for decades. We have attempted to convince people to
24:27
Speaker 2: change their diets. With educated people about climate, we've educated
24:31
Speaker 2: them about the inefficiency. I mean, Francis mor Lpey wrote
24:34
Speaker 2: the book that turned me vegan more than thirty years ago.
24:36
Speaker 2: She wrote it almost fifty years ago now, and it
24:39
Speaker 2: makes the arguments that we're making now about the environmental
24:42
Speaker 2: impact and the inefficiency. PETE has been around since nineteen
24:45
Speaker 2: eighty telling people about the harm to animals. Environmental groups
24:48
Speaker 2: have been talking about the inefficiency conspiracy, what the health
24:52
Speaker 2: phenomenal films, and yet in twenty seventeen, per Happit to
24:56
Speaker 2: Me consumption in the US was the highest it's ever
24:58
Speaker 2: been in US history. Twenty eighteen is going to be
25:01
Speaker 2: even higher. So, I mean, GFI US are global, it's both,
25:05
Speaker 2: it's both. It's skyrocketing globally, but it's up in the
25:09
Speaker 2: US highest it's ever been. I mean, people are generally
25:12
Speaker 2: pretty shocked by that. Sometimes people even say, well, is
25:14
Speaker 2: that because the population's bigger and I have to steal
25:16
Speaker 2: per per capita twenty seventeen high.
25:19
Speaker 1: It's everything. It's interesting that that is in tandem with
25:22
Speaker 1: the growing, you know, market of plant based foods and
25:26
Speaker 1: plant based meats.
25:27
Speaker 2: It is yeah, no, it's it's super interesting. And I
25:29
Speaker 2: think we will see this turn as we give people
25:33
Speaker 2: what they want, but produced in a different way. So
25:36
Speaker 2: the theory of change of impossible foods beyond meat, of
25:40
Speaker 2: just of these companies, the theory of changes, Let's actually
25:43
Speaker 2: give people everything that they like about meat and dairy
25:45
Speaker 2: and eggs, except let's make it less expensive and so
25:49
Speaker 2: it will sell more.
25:50
Speaker 1: And let's just replace it.
25:52
Speaker 2: Because every single survey that's ever been done indicates that
25:55
Speaker 2: what people make their dietary decisions on the basis of
25:57
Speaker 2: its price, its taste, it's convenience. A lot of us
26:00
Speaker 2: who are having this conversations are like, will we shop
26:02
Speaker 2: at the farmer's market, or we shop at Whole Foods,
26:04
Speaker 2: or we shop at our local co op, which my
26:07
Speaker 2: wife and I do in all three cases, and we
26:09
Speaker 2: get this vision of people who are very mindful about
26:12
Speaker 2: the food that they're eating. But even watch what people
26:14
Speaker 2: are eating at Whole Foods, like that entire sector is
26:16
Speaker 2: less than two percent.
26:17
Speaker 1: So ninety eight.
26:18
Speaker 2: Percent is Albertson's and Target and Whole food I mean,
26:21
Speaker 2: and Walmart and sort of that sort of grocery, like
26:24
Speaker 2: really big grocery but even watch what people are eating
26:27
Speaker 2: at whole foods.
26:28
Speaker 1: I mean even folks at whole foods.
26:30
Speaker 2: It's like the price matters and the taste matters, and
26:33
Speaker 2: whether it's healthy for them is not that high on
26:35
Speaker 2: the scale, which is why obesity rates. They actually these
26:37
Speaker 2: maps that are sort of color coded for obesity. They
26:40
Speaker 2: have to keep adding new colors because people are getting
26:42
Speaker 2: fatter and fatter and fatter and fatter.
26:45
Speaker 1: So you at GFI, you're like, all right, forget about
26:47
Speaker 1: like trying to educate people. That's a non starter. But
26:51
Speaker 1: we're making for the amount of like you use the
26:54
Speaker 1: nine calories in one calorie out, it's like, you know,
26:57
Speaker 1: a thousand calories into trying to get people to check
27:00
Speaker 1: their habits versus what you're getting out. So instead you
27:04
Speaker 1: have this focus on trying to leverage basically market forces
27:10
Speaker 1: to incentivize companies to innovate and to create products that
27:14
Speaker 1: people like that address these problems. Yeah.
27:17
Speaker 2: No, it's markets and food technology and that will be
27:19
Speaker 2: the transformation. And we do talk about, you know, how
27:22
Speaker 2: do we feed nine point seven billion people by twenty fifty.
27:24
Speaker 2: We talk in sort of an uber way about keeping
27:26
Speaker 2: antibiotics working because governments care about those things, and we
27:30
Speaker 2: want governments to be supporting research and development and plant
27:33
Speaker 2: based meat and clean meat. That's a big part of
27:34
Speaker 2: what our policy department does. It's a big part of
27:36
Speaker 2: what our international engagement folks are doing in India and
27:39
Speaker 2: Israel and China and Singapore and Brazil, which is the
27:42
Speaker 2: areas where we're particularly active and governments.
27:45
Speaker 1: You know these plant based meat and clean meat. They're
27:47
Speaker 1: the solution.
27:47
Speaker 2: They are how governments meet their obligations under the Paris
27:50
Speaker 2: Climate Agreement. They're how governments provide safe food. Food safety
27:53
Speaker 2: is a big issue, especially in places like China and India.
27:56
Speaker 2: They're how water is conserved. They're how resources are conserved.
28:00
Speaker 2: We talk about these things, but we talk about them
28:01
Speaker 2: to people who are doing policy. So fund these things,
28:05
Speaker 2: roll out the regulatory red carpet for clean meat. If
28:07
Speaker 2: you are a philanthropist or an impact investor and what
28:10
Speaker 2: you care about is climate change or sustainability or global health,
28:14
Speaker 2: these are things that you should be investing in. If
28:17
Speaker 2: you're a foundation and you do grant make in these areas,
28:20
Speaker 2: you should be doing grant making on these issues. But
28:22
Speaker 2: for individual consumers, it's really go try the impossible burger.
28:26
Speaker 1: It tastes incredibly.
28:27
Speaker 2: Awesome, and then you can also talk about the impact
28:29
Speaker 2: on the climate or the impact on sustainability or whatever.
28:32
Speaker 2: Once people are already thinking, oh, this is like an
28:35
Speaker 2: awesome new food at this hot new restaurant. It tastes amazing. Oh,
28:38
Speaker 2: and I can also feel good about the fact that
28:40
Speaker 2: I'm doing something awesome for the planet or it's healthier
28:43
Speaker 2: or whatever else.
28:44
Speaker 1: Right, while this approach seems to be working, I mean,
28:46
Speaker 1: there's a huge upswing in venture capital funds that are
28:49
Speaker 1: investing in this sector. We're seeing a rapidly changing regulatory
28:55
Speaker 1: landscape which I want to get into with you. And
28:58
Speaker 1: the money is flowing and the innovation is happening, and
29:01
Speaker 1: it's happening quickly. Yeah.
29:03
Speaker 2: And at our conference, we were just delighted to see
29:05
Speaker 2: so like the biggest plant based meat company is morning
29:08
Speaker 2: Star Farms. They are doing a lot of innovation internally.
29:11
Speaker 2: I mean it was interesting to see sort of beyond
29:13
Speaker 2: meat and impossible foods come up and they suddenly now
29:16
Speaker 2: like the old guard exactly. Yeah, and so sort of
29:20
Speaker 2: the legacy companies saw what happened with impossible foods and
29:23
Speaker 2: beyond meat and like Google Ventures is investing in Impossible Foods,
29:27
Speaker 2: and DFJ is investing in Memphis Meats. And so the
29:30
Speaker 2: companies that are already sort of established, like morning Star
29:33
Speaker 2: Farms and Gardeene and Tofurky, they're like really upping their
29:36
Speaker 2: innovation game in response to this. I think they sort
29:39
Speaker 2: of saw their market sector as being roughly you know,
29:41
Speaker 2: it caps at maybe six hundred million dollars. Now they're
29:44
Speaker 2: seeing their market sector as it caps at two hundred
29:46
Speaker 2: billion dollars, and they're taking that very very seriously. All
29:49
Speaker 2: those guys sponsored the conference, they were at the conference,
29:52
Speaker 2: they're having these conversations, and they're doing a lot of
29:54
Speaker 2: really exciting work internally.
29:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that that relatively bland soy, Patty just ain't
29:59
Speaker 1: going to cut it in anymore.
30:00
Speaker 2: You better up your game, yeah, I mean unless you
30:02
Speaker 2: want to stay. I mean even you know, now, even
30:04
Speaker 2: vegetarians aren't going to settle for.
30:06
Speaker 1: That, right, That's what I'm saying. Yeah, No, that's exactly right.
30:08
Speaker 2: But I mean a lot of these people, like I mean,
30:10
Speaker 2: I just love listening to like Pat Brown and Ethan
30:13
Speaker 2: Brown no relation, but Pat Brown from Impossible and Ethan
30:17
Speaker 2: Brown from Beyond talk about their vision for their company,
30:20
Speaker 2: and both of those guys see themselves as running meat
30:22
Speaker 2: companies and their competition is the entire meat industry. Their
30:26
Speaker 2: goal is to take some significant slice of the two
30:29
Speaker 2: hundred billion dollars a year that is the US meat market.
30:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the future. This is happening. The train
30:36
Speaker 1: is pulled out of the station, and I think it's
30:39
Speaker 1: a wake up call for the industry and all of
30:44
Speaker 1: its status quo to either understand that they need to
30:48
Speaker 1: get on board or that they're going to be quickly antiquated.
30:51
Speaker 1: So you're seeing the Cargills and the Tysons investing in
30:56
Speaker 1: these companies because they realize that if they want to
30:59
Speaker 1: be if they want to continue to exist, they're going
31:02
Speaker 1: to need to jump on this train. Yeah.
31:04
Speaker 2: The cover story of BusinessWeek was about the CEO of Tyson,
31:08
Speaker 2: a guy named Tom Hayes. So just in early September
31:11
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen. The cover story it was about him, and
31:14
Speaker 2: the final sentence of the story was, if we can
31:16
Speaker 2: make meat without the animal, why wouldn't we. So second
31:20
Speaker 2: largest meat company in the world by far, the biggest
31:23
Speaker 2: meat company in the United States, and of their first vent,
31:26
Speaker 2: they launched a venture Capital Fund in twenty sixteen. Of
31:29
Speaker 2: their first four investments, two were clean meat companies, one
31:32
Speaker 2: was a plant based meat company, and they are all
31:34
Speaker 2: in on plant based meat and clean meat. And it
31:37
Speaker 2: just underlines the fact that like these guys, like most
31:40
Speaker 2: of the people who were executives in this company, they
31:42
Speaker 2: could have ended up at you know, anywhere. They could
31:44
Speaker 2: have ended up selling T shirts, right. I mean, they
31:47
Speaker 2: went to business school and they sort of worked their
31:49
Speaker 2: way up the corporate ladder, and they found themselves at Tyson,
31:52
Speaker 2: and they see themselves as nobly feeding the world high
31:55
Speaker 2: quality protein at a low cost. They can feed the
31:58
Speaker 2: world higher quality protein a lower cost with plant based
32:01
Speaker 2: meat and clean meat. They will make more money and
32:03
Speaker 2: they won't have all the headaches of you know that
32:05
Speaker 2: come with farms and slaughterhouses and all of the external
32:08
Speaker 2: costs that are involved.
32:09
Speaker 1: Yeah. All right, So let's assume there's a lot of
32:13
Speaker 1: people that are just being introduced to this idea of
32:17
Speaker 1: clean meat for the very first time. Explain to me
32:20
Speaker 1: what it is, how we create it, and why it's
32:23
Speaker 1: so exciting.
32:24
Speaker 2: Sure, so, right now, if you want to get meat,
32:27
Speaker 2: you feed an animal and the animal grows, so the animals,
32:30
Speaker 2: cells multiply and grow, and then you slaughter the animal
32:34
Speaker 2: and you eat the meat. As we've been talking about,
32:36
Speaker 2: it is a horribly inefficient process that comes with a
32:39
Speaker 2: lot of external costs that are not good.
32:43
Speaker 1: When at it's most I mean, factory farming is one
32:45
Speaker 1: of the most efficient. I mean, if you're going to
32:47
Speaker 1: raise an animal for food, they figured out the most
32:49
Speaker 1: efficient way to do it. Yeah, i mean, blow this
32:52
Speaker 1: animal up in the shortest period of time to create
32:55
Speaker 1: the most food out of it. And yet it's still inherently, systemically,
32:59
Speaker 1: completely completely inefficient. Yeah.
33:02
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a basic physiology that we just talked about.
33:04
Speaker 2: I mean, they now have chickens growing seven times as
33:08
Speaker 2: quickly as they would naturally. So chickens as opposed to
33:11
Speaker 2: like the nineteen nineteens and nineteen twenties and thirties, they're
33:14
Speaker 2: now growing seven times as quickly as they would naturally.
33:18
Speaker 2: They are fed massive doses of antibiotics, they barely move
33:21
Speaker 2: so that their caloric conversion is as good as it
33:23
Speaker 2: can possibly be. And it's just the nature of physiology
33:26
Speaker 2: that you can't do much better than nine in for
33:28
Speaker 2: one out. That's just that's what you can do, and
33:32
Speaker 2: they might be able to get a little bit more efficient,
33:34
Speaker 2: but not a lot more efficient. And pigs are worse,
33:36
Speaker 2: Farmed fish are worse. Cattle or worse, lands are worse.
33:40
Speaker 2: So it's just it is a bad system if your
33:42
Speaker 2: goal is to convert food into protein, if your goal
33:46
Speaker 2: is to convert you know, one food into meat, it's
33:48
Speaker 2: a really bad way of doing that. So with clean meat,
33:51
Speaker 2: what you do is you take you can take a
33:54
Speaker 2: biopsy from an animal. You take a couple of cells,
33:56
Speaker 2: very limited number of cells. You bathe those cells in nutrients,
34:00
Speaker 2: which is basically the equivalent of feeding the animal, except
34:03
Speaker 2: that all of the energy goes into causing those cells
34:05
Speaker 2: to multiply and grow. You don't have the fifty percent
34:08
Speaker 2: waste that comes with farm animals. Fifty percent of the
34:10
Speaker 2: farm animal we don't need. And it's just a far
34:13
Speaker 2: more efficient way of causing the cells to multiply and grow.
34:16
Speaker 2: You can do it on a scaffold or not on
34:17
Speaker 2: a scaffold. If you want, like a chicken breast, you
34:19
Speaker 2: need a scaffold.
34:20
Speaker 1: You do it in basically a scaffold being like a
34:23
Speaker 1: sort of simulated skeleton to grow these cells around.
34:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. It's basically a simulated skeleton, except the scaffolds
34:30
Speaker 2: that they use. You can actually you can either have
34:32
Speaker 2: them biodegrade or you can have them be edible, so
34:35
Speaker 2: either of those works, so you don't end up with
34:37
Speaker 2: something you have to throw away at the end, like
34:39
Speaker 2: the bones, or you have to you know, turn into
34:40
Speaker 2: dog food or cat food or whatever they're going to
34:42
Speaker 2: do with the bones. And so then you put it
34:45
Speaker 2: in basically a giant sort of meat fermentor. At end
34:49
Speaker 2: stage it looks like a brewery. So you could literally
34:52
Speaker 2: have you know, a meat and beer brewery and both
34:55
Speaker 2: of the vats, you know, both of the sort of
34:57
Speaker 2: meat fermentor and the beer fermentor. I think are now
35:00
Speaker 2: calling the meat one a cultivator. So you've got the cultivator,
35:03
Speaker 2: you've got the fermentor, and out is coming beer through
35:06
Speaker 2: sort of a chemical process, and out is coming meat
35:09
Speaker 2: through essentially a chemical process. The food is a lot purer,
35:12
Speaker 2: I mean, it takes far fewer resources. But it also
35:14
Speaker 2: because there's no intestinal track, it doesn't have the salmonella
35:17
Speaker 2: or the campilobacter, or the E. Coli or the other
35:20
Speaker 2: you know, food poisoning concerns products doesn't require anti any antibiotics,
35:24
Speaker 2: which I mean, you know, we haven't talked that much
35:26
Speaker 2: about that, but GFI were talking a lot more about antibiotics.
35:30
Speaker 2: You want to scare Google antibiotic at the end of
35:32
Speaker 2: working antibiotics, you know, a real scare punch in the
35:35
Speaker 2: word China. China is using antibiotics that are banned in
35:38
Speaker 2: the US, and the US is pretty liberal about which
35:41
Speaker 2: antibiotics they will allow to be used in food. Seventy
35:44
Speaker 2: percent of antibiotics that pharmaceuticals are producing in the United States,
35:47
Speaker 2: seventy percent of them are being fed to farm animals,
35:50
Speaker 2: not because the animals are sick, but because the animals
35:52
Speaker 2: are in awful conditions in which they would get sick
35:54
Speaker 2: if they weren't fed prophylactic antibiotics.
35:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, and not to kill the lily, but ingesting those antibiotics.
36:02
Speaker 1: And we're basically, you know, paving the way for the
36:06
Speaker 1: cultivation of some kind of superbug that could create.
36:10
Speaker 2: A pandemic or an epidemic. Yeah, I mean, we are
36:14
Speaker 2: consuming the antibiotics. That's not the real health risk, although
36:17
Speaker 2: it is certainly concerning. Nicholas Christoff wrote a piece for
36:20
Speaker 2: The New York times a few years ago about some
36:22
Speaker 2: research out of Johns Hopkins University where Hopkins analyzed chicken
36:27
Speaker 2: flesh and found that there was like the active ingredient
36:30
Speaker 2: in benadrill and prozac and aspirin and antibiotics like in
36:35
Speaker 2: the meat. So that's bad enough, but the real risk
36:38
Speaker 2: factor is the superbugs. What happens is you're feeding the
36:42
Speaker 2: animals the antibiotics, and the Campilobacter like tries to infect
36:47
Speaker 2: the animal and it fails because of the anti antibiotic,
36:50
Speaker 2: and then that bug mutates so that it can get
36:53
Speaker 2: around the antibiotics, and then you scrape your knee or
36:56
Speaker 2: you cut your finger or you know, whatever happens, and
36:58
Speaker 2: you're given antibiotic, and the antibiotics don't work because now
37:02
Speaker 2: there are these superbugs and what used to be you know,
37:05
Speaker 2: a routine infection ends up you have to lop off
37:08
Speaker 2: your arm. I mean, it's according to the UK government,
37:11
Speaker 2: the end of working antibiotics is a greater threat to
37:13
Speaker 2: the human race than climate change. Right now, about ten
37:16
Speaker 2: thousand people in North America and Europe are dying from superbugs.
37:20
Speaker 2: They're saying it will be ten million people per year
37:22
Speaker 2: if we stay on this trajectory and it's slated to
37:25
Speaker 2: cost the global economy one hundred trillion dollars by twenty fifty.
37:29
Speaker 2: Bigger threat than climate change. That's unbelievable and solvable. I mean,
37:34
Speaker 2: it's unbelievable and it's solvable.
37:36
Speaker 1: So like we're not talking about that either. I know.
37:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, that that one isn't even being talked about.
37:41
Speaker 2: Like folks are talking at sort of government levels and
37:44
Speaker 2: foundation levels. Like a lot of people are talking about
37:46
Speaker 2: how do we solve climate change? Yes, and thanks tank culture,
37:49
Speaker 2: Well yes, but we need think tank culture talking a
37:51
Speaker 2: lot more about antibiotics as well.
37:53
Speaker 1: So this is the one.
37:54
Speaker 2: I mean, like at GFI, we're doing a ton of work.
37:56
Speaker 2: We have more than fifty staff. You know, we're trying
37:58
Speaker 2: to raise seven point five million dollars this year. Like
38:00
Speaker 2: we're doing a lot of stuff, but this is this
38:02
Speaker 2: isn't big We're not thinking well, we're thinking big enough.
38:05
Speaker 2: But like, the real solution is the philanthropists who care
38:08
Speaker 2: about climate change, the governments who care about these issues.
38:10
Speaker 2: They should be sinking clean energy level resources into this.
38:14
Speaker 2: It should We shouldn't be thinking in terms of you know,
38:16
Speaker 2: seven point five million dollars. Look at how big GFI is.
38:19
Speaker 2: We should be thinking in terms of seven hundred and
38:21
Speaker 2: fifty billion dollars. This is a solvable issue. We can
38:24
Speaker 2: knock out the anti well, we can significantly ameliorate the
38:28
Speaker 2: main cause of antibiotic resistance. We can significantly ameliorate one
38:32
Speaker 2: of the principal causes of climate change, water pollution, antibiotic resistance,
38:36
Speaker 2: food poisoning. Like all of these issues, there should be
38:38
Speaker 2: like Harvard Medical School should have a sixty million dollar
38:42
Speaker 2: Clean Meat Research Institute. Cornell should have a sixty million
38:45
Speaker 2: dollars per year, now sixty million dollars to get it going,
38:48
Speaker 2: plant based Meat Research Institute. Government should be funding this,
38:50
Speaker 2: foundation should be funding this. Just a big part of
38:53
Speaker 2: what GFI is doing in our international offices, a big
38:55
Speaker 2: part of what our policy department is doing, big part
38:58
Speaker 2: of what our science department is doing is trying to
39:00
Speaker 2: you know, reach people like Mark Benioff and you know,
39:02
Speaker 2: people who are like interested in these issues and say
39:05
Speaker 2: this deserves really significant resources.
39:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, we need an interdisciplinary Manhattan Project.
39:14
Speaker 2: We need a whole bunch of them, right, Yeah, we
39:15
Speaker 2: need an interdisciplinary Manhattan Project for sure. But just like
39:19
Speaker 2: you know, Georgetown Law school has a climate center, which
39:23
Speaker 2: most people haven't heard of because it's not one of
39:25
Speaker 2: the ten best climate centers, or maybe it is. I
39:27
Speaker 2: hope I didn't just defame them. But there are tons
39:30
Speaker 2: of climate institutes at like every major university in the country.
39:34
Speaker 2: There should be institutes focused on plant based meat and
39:38
Speaker 2: clean meat, at least for a start at the twenty
39:40
Speaker 2: four global universities that we've just identified. People can check
39:43
Speaker 2: them out at GFI dot org. It's on our blog.
39:46
Speaker 2: We're about to be releasing the top I think thirteen
39:49
Speaker 2: or fourteen in the United States for plant based meat
39:51
Speaker 2: and clean meat. Like all of these universities, none of
39:53
Speaker 2: them have it now. All of them should have institutes.
39:56
Speaker 2: All of them should have disciplines. You know, Berkeley had
39:59
Speaker 2: the first plan based meat and clean meat class that
40:01
Speaker 2: we designed last year, and now we've got one at
40:02
Speaker 2: Stanford and Penn State. Every university that has a sciences
40:06
Speaker 2: department should have how do we apply science to food?
40:09
Speaker 2: Plant based meat and clean meat?
40:10
Speaker 1: Right, so clean meat sort of comes online. What was
40:15
Speaker 1: it like five years ago? Oh? Less than that?
40:17
Speaker 2: No, the yea twenty fifteen, Uma Valetti starts working on
40:21
Speaker 2: Memphis meats twenty fifteen, Mark Post starts working on most
40:24
Speaker 2: of meats and the guys at super Meats start working
40:26
Speaker 2: on super meat. Memphis Meats is incorporated in April twenty sixteen.
40:31
Speaker 2: That's the first company ever to incorporate on clean meat.
40:34
Speaker 1: As I thought there was the one in Japan, though,
40:37
Speaker 1: wasn't that a little earlier?
40:38
Speaker 2: No intercra culture they were. They actually just incorporated as
40:42
Speaker 2: a company. They might have started working on it in
40:45
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen. I mean, the first clean
40:47
Speaker 2: meat conference at mass Street University in the Netherlands was
40:50
Speaker 2: in October of twenty fifteen. New Harvests which is a
40:54
Speaker 2: nonprofit organization in cellular agriculture, their first conference was in
40:57
Speaker 2: November of twenty fifteen. Are really really new and they're
41:01
Speaker 2: now thirty companies, thirty clean meat companies around the world,
41:04
Speaker 2: and probably about twenty of them have raised you know,
41:07
Speaker 2: five hundred thousand dollars or more. So, still super nascent,
41:10
Speaker 2: but it's optimistic.
41:12
Speaker 1: It's an interesting thing because we're talking about it, it
41:15
Speaker 1: is happening, It's going to happen. We're going to figure
41:18
Speaker 1: out how to scale this whole thing. But much like
41:21
Speaker 1: the automation of cars. Nobody's tried this yet. You know,
41:27
Speaker 1: it's like it's something we're talking about that's very academic
41:29
Speaker 1: and kind of ephemeral and you know, theoretical in most
41:32
Speaker 1: people's minds. You know, people that even know the slightest
41:37
Speaker 1: bit about it. All they know is, Okay, they're growing cells.
41:42
Speaker 1: It's a three hundred thousand dollars biger. You know, this
41:45
Speaker 1: is not I'm grossed out and it's too expensive. Yeah,
41:49
Speaker 1: this is going to solve anybody's problems. And I just
41:52
Speaker 1: to step back. I mean, we wish it were more
41:54
Speaker 1: academic like this is. This is one of the things
41:56
Speaker 1: we're trying to solve for is there are thirty companies
41:59
Speaker 1: And what that means is there are thirty different companies
42:01
Speaker 1: trying to solve from the ground up, how do we
42:03
Speaker 1: grow meat from cells? What does it look like to
42:05
Speaker 1: get immortalized cells, What should the scaffolding look like, what
42:08
Speaker 1: should the bioreactors look like like all, what should the
42:10
Speaker 1: media look like that feeds the cells. Thirty different companies,
42:13
Speaker 1: all protecting their own ip working in this sector. So
42:16
Speaker 1: one of the things that absolutely needs to happen is
42:19
Speaker 1: a serious infusion of cash into the academy that does
42:23
Speaker 1: that basically says, Okay, here's how we're working on media.
42:26
Speaker 1: All of you companies can use this. Here's what bioreactor
42:29
Speaker 1: scale up looks like. All of you companies can use that.
42:32
Speaker 1: So at GFI, we published the cover story in Food Technology,
42:35
Speaker 1: which is the professional journal of the Institute of Food Technologists.
42:39
Speaker 1: We pub published a peer review journal article in Biochemical
42:43
Speaker 1: Engineering Journal, and we're doing a lot more peer reviewed research.
42:47
Speaker 1: We also just got a two million dollar grant from
42:49
Speaker 1: a philanthropist in New Jersey.
42:51
Speaker 2: No. One million dollar grant from a philanthropy philanthropist in
42:54
Speaker 2: New Jersey, and two million dollar grant from a philanthropist
42:57
Speaker 2: in Massachusetts. And we are announcing a call for proposal
43:00
Speaker 2: and we will be going to all of the one
43:03
Speaker 2: hor research institutions in the United States, and we will
43:05
Speaker 2: also be going to all of the universities we've identified
43:08
Speaker 2: as being most promising for plant based meat and clean meat.
43:11
Speaker 2: So we have three million dollars dedicated to this. It
43:13
Speaker 2: doesn't come out of our general operating budget. It's just
43:16
Speaker 2: for this, but it should be tens of millions of dollars,
43:19
Speaker 2: and it should be you know, George Church and other
43:22
Speaker 2: like top tissue engineering pupahs and top crop biology and
43:26
Speaker 2: plant sciences, like these folks should be spearheading this and
43:30
Speaker 2: it should be well, it shouldn't even be tens of
43:32
Speaker 2: millions of dollars. It should be you know, billions of dollars,
43:34
Speaker 2: because this is this solution to really big problems. But
43:37
Speaker 2: we are excited about what we're going to be able
43:38
Speaker 2: to do with the three million dollars, like we will
43:40
Speaker 2: at least be able to put this onto the agenda
43:43
Speaker 2: at people at all of these schools. We're also launching
43:45
Speaker 2: fellowship programs at about twenty five science schools. We have
43:49
Speaker 2: six fellows at six of the top ten business schools,
43:52
Speaker 2: and the focus is basically, if you are a tissue engineer,
43:55
Speaker 2: we want you to be thinking about this as possibly
43:57
Speaker 2: your vocation and applying to work at some of these companies.
44:00
Speaker 2: If you are a business person and you're going to
44:02
Speaker 2: come out of business school and maybe you're going to
44:04
Speaker 2: end who knows where you're going to end up. We
44:05
Speaker 2: want to make sure those folks know about plant based
44:08
Speaker 2: meat and clean meat as a place that they could
44:10
Speaker 2: apply their talents do a ton of good in the world.
44:12
Speaker 2: Well simultaneously doing really well for their families. But this
44:16
Speaker 2: just needs a huge injection of cash, and it needs
44:18
Speaker 2: a huge injection of talent, and that's one of the
44:21
Speaker 2: things that we're trying to catalyze at GFI.
44:23
Speaker 1: That's a huge that's a lot of progress since the
44:27
Speaker 1: last time we talked. I don't think you were doing
44:29
Speaker 1: really any of that two years ago, right, Yeah, I
44:32
Speaker 1: mean we were.
44:33
Speaker 2: I think we were about twelve staff members then or
44:36
Speaker 2: fifty three staff members now. I think we had maybe
44:38
Speaker 2: three or four of our directors at that point. Now
44:41
Speaker 2: we have all nine of our directors. Everybody is thinking
44:44
Speaker 2: super strategically. You know, we have quarterly goals, we have
44:48
Speaker 2: sort of everything tied. We've got a strategic plan that
44:50
Speaker 2: anybody wants to see it can see, and kind of
44:52
Speaker 2: everything down. But we do have a lot of job openings.
44:54
Speaker 2: The last time I was on, I was talking about
44:56
Speaker 2: job openings, and I think we got at least four
44:58
Speaker 2: or five of our current FA fifty three person staff
45:01
Speaker 2: people who people who listen to me on the podcast.
45:03
Speaker 1: So I hope people will will check out GFI.
45:05
Speaker 2: Dot org or if you don't see job openings there
45:08
Speaker 2: that are interesting to you, feel free to email me directly.
45:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, make sure you dial up that resume. Though, Yes,
45:14
Speaker 1: Bruce only wants good people. It's true. Yeah, no people.
45:17
Speaker 2: We have a bit of a reputation for having a
45:19
Speaker 2: rigorous application process. So if you make it into the
45:23
Speaker 2: application process, it is multiple stages. I mean, you know,
45:26
Speaker 2: look at the If you look at GFI dot org
45:28
Speaker 2: and click on our team, you can see the caliber
45:30
Speaker 2: of people who we have hired to work for us.
45:32
Speaker 2: It is and all of those people are working for
45:34
Speaker 2: you know, I said the thing that was some somewhat
45:36
Speaker 2: disparaging about the idea of people changing their diet on
45:39
Speaker 2: behalf of these factors. But people do want their vocations
45:42
Speaker 2: to be meaningful and and at GFI, Daniel Pink in
45:46
Speaker 2: his book Drive, he says the things people want out
45:48
Speaker 2: of their vocation they want self actualization, they want something
45:51
Speaker 2: that's meaningful. They want to be challenged, but not to challenge.
45:55
Speaker 2: Every six months we do an internal anonymous staff survey
45:59
Speaker 2: and we are knocking it out of the charts on
46:01
Speaker 2: those things. It's a phenomenal place to work, but a
46:03
Speaker 2: hard place to get a job.
46:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think that's we're seeing more and more
46:07
Speaker 1: of that purpose driven young people who who really prioritize that,
46:13
Speaker 1: perhaps even more than salary. And I think that's that
46:17
Speaker 1: that gives me hope for the new generation, the next
46:20
Speaker 1: genera Gen Z or whatever it is, whatever we're calling it.
46:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, the cover letters, the cover letters that
46:25
Speaker 2: we read are just so inspiring people, you know, a
46:28
Speaker 2: they think they can change the world and be they
46:30
Speaker 2: want to change the world. It is really yeah, it's
46:32
Speaker 2: really really good.
46:33
Speaker 1: Yeah. All right, So give me an estimate of how
46:38
Speaker 1: long it's going to be before clean meat is going
46:42
Speaker 1: to be commercially available to consumers.
46:46
Speaker 2: I mean, I think commercially available at a price point
46:49
Speaker 2: that is somewhat reasonable, commercially available at a price point
46:53
Speaker 2: that is similar to like grass fed beef, probably three
47:01
Speaker 2: or four, maybe five years. Commercially available at really low
47:06
Speaker 2: price points, probably ten years, I would guess. But you know,
47:10
Speaker 2: like China wants to be the global leader on climate change,
47:13
Speaker 2: Singapore is looking in a big way at food tech
47:16
Speaker 2: to feed its population. And you know it's this tiny
47:19
Speaker 2: little country. If Israel or Singapore or China or the US,
47:23
Speaker 2: if they decide they're going to sink billions of dollars
47:25
Speaker 2: into advancing this technology could happen a lot more quickly.
47:29
Speaker 2: I mean, you know this this should it shouldn't be
47:32
Speaker 2: sand Hill Road venture capitalists and with you know a
47:35
Speaker 2: bit of VC money from Tyson Foods and Cargill and
47:38
Speaker 2: you know other companies like that that are seeding plant
47:41
Speaker 2: based meat and clean meat. It is a solution to
47:43
Speaker 2: really big problems that governments care about. Governments should be
47:47
Speaker 2: sent a lot of money into this if we convince
47:49
Speaker 2: them to do that, And that's like one of the
47:51
Speaker 2: key things that we're doing in our overseas offices, and
47:53
Speaker 2: it's a key aspect of what our policy department is
47:55
Speaker 2: doing in the US. We convince them to do that.
47:58
Speaker 2: If we find, you know, people with ties into government
48:00
Speaker 2: who are really excited about this, could happen a lot
48:02
Speaker 2: more quickly.
48:02
Speaker 1: Right, So the bottlenecks aren't the bottlenecks in terms of
48:07
Speaker 1: the timeline, aren't necessarily technological breakthroughs. No, it's just.
48:14
Speaker 2: Sort of supply chain economics create talent and money. I
48:18
Speaker 2: mean it's talent and money. So I mean even beyond
48:20
Speaker 2: meat and impossible foods like they're scaling up as fast
48:23
Speaker 2: as they can, but they can't meet demand. The other
48:26
Speaker 2: plant based meat companies, multiple of them are having trouble
48:28
Speaker 2: meeting demand. And you know, as I mentioned Beyond Meat,
48:31
Speaker 2: they sold seventy percent year on year growth in terms
48:34
Speaker 2: of sales last year. Field Roast, which has been around
48:37
Speaker 2: for a little while, they sold I think like sixty
48:40
Speaker 2: five percent more. Guardeen was like sixty percent more. Actually
48:43
Speaker 2: a little more like sixty four percent more. So they're
48:46
Speaker 2: scaling up kind of as fast as they can. And
48:48
Speaker 2: with clean meat, there are some technological hurdles, like we
48:51
Speaker 2: need to take the what we know about tissue engineering
48:54
Speaker 2: and we need to figure out how to make you know,
48:56
Speaker 2: food grade media, how to scale up the bioreactors. So
48:59
Speaker 2: we have twenty thousand Leader birectors buy reactors instead of
49:02
Speaker 2: five Leader BUYO reactors. So there are some questions to answer.
49:05
Speaker 2: There isn't anybody who's like really deep in this who
49:08
Speaker 2: thinks these are going to be insurmountable obstacles. But they're
49:11
Speaker 2: going to take you know, really smart scientists, and they're
49:14
Speaker 2: going to take money. And if we're continuing to rely
49:16
Speaker 2: on Silicon Valley and you know, twenty to one hundred
49:20
Speaker 2: and fifty million dollar investments, it's going to take a
49:23
Speaker 2: lot longer than if we have multi billion dollar government, know,
49:26
Speaker 2: a Manhattan Project from China or the US or whoever.
49:30
Speaker 1: Assuming or presuming that we will resolve these you know,
49:34
Speaker 1: economic dilemmas, that there will be an adequate cash infusion
49:39
Speaker 1: and all of this stuff is going to happen. We're
49:41
Speaker 1: still looking at kind of a cultural revolution in the
49:45
Speaker 1: way that people have difficulty wrapping their heads around the
49:49
Speaker 1: fact that their cars are going to drive themselves. It's
49:53
Speaker 1: undeniable that, you know, there is this it's been called
49:56
Speaker 1: the ick factor of people trying to wrap their heads
49:59
Speaker 1: around the idea of eating something that's called meat that
50:03
Speaker 1: didn't come from an animal in the way that they
50:07
Speaker 1: understand it. So this is a hurdle that we're a drug.
50:10
Speaker 1: We talked about this last time a little bit, but
50:12
Speaker 1: I think it's worth kind of walking us through this
50:15
Speaker 1: aspect of culture change.
50:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, people don't eat meat because of how
50:20
Speaker 2: it's produced. They eat meat despite how it's produced. So
50:24
Speaker 2: a researcher at Oklahoma State University in early twenty eighteen,
50:28
Speaker 2: what happened was a group called the Sentience Institute, which
50:31
Speaker 2: is a sort of animal protection think tank. They released numbers,
50:34
Speaker 2: and they said, according to our numbers, more than forty
50:37
Speaker 2: five percent of people would ban slaughterhouses. So they want
50:41
Speaker 2: slaughterhouses banned. And so the meat industry said, you know,
50:45
Speaker 2: this cannot be true, look at the source. So they
50:49
Speaker 2: went to one of their hand picked researchers and ag
50:53
Speaker 2: researcher at Oklahoma State University, and he did the researcher
50:56
Speaker 2: research and it was like, sure enough, in our poll,
50:59
Speaker 2: forty seven percent people want to ban slaughterhouses. Two thirds
51:02
Speaker 2: of people are uncomfortable with the way that animals are
51:04
Speaker 2: raised today. So I think people like driving their cars,
51:08
Speaker 2: like you know, what they like about driving is not
51:10
Speaker 2: necessarily and only getting from point A to point B.
51:13
Speaker 2: I think there's also a control issue of like sort
51:15
Speaker 2: of sitting in the back of the car while the
51:17
Speaker 2: car is driving around That is a little harder for
51:19
Speaker 2: people to wrap their minds around. I would say this
51:21
Speaker 2: is more like going from the horse and buggy to
51:24
Speaker 2: a car, or going from a standard camera to a
51:28
Speaker 2: digital camera, or going from a you know, dial phone
51:31
Speaker 2: with a cord to go into your cell phone. Like
51:34
Speaker 2: what you like about taking pictures or talking on the phone,
51:38
Speaker 2: or eating meat?
51:38
Speaker 1: What you like about it with meat.
51:40
Speaker 2: It's taste, it's texture, it's experience, it's culture, it's whatever
51:43
Speaker 2: it is. But for almost nobody it's I really want
51:46
Speaker 2: animals to be raised and slaughtered for this. So if
51:49
Speaker 2: we can give people the taste, the texture, the things
51:51
Speaker 2: that they like about meat, and we can get it
51:53
Speaker 2: at a lower price point, I mean, I really have
51:56
Speaker 2: just absolutely no doubt that it takes off. And early
51:58
Speaker 2: polling is super good. Early polling on this is super
52:02
Speaker 2: super good.
52:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there was a I saw a stat
52:04
Speaker 1: twenty to thirty percent of people are willing to make
52:07
Speaker 1: the switch, twenty to thirty percent of people are willing
52:09
Speaker 1: to pay more for clean meat, people who are willing
52:13
Speaker 1: to try it is somewhere on consistently on the order
52:15
Speaker 1: of seventy percent people are willing to make the switch,
52:18
Speaker 1: like permanently or on the order of fifty percent. And
52:21
Speaker 1: this is programming against human physiology, which has forever told us,
52:25
Speaker 1: don't eat something unfamiliar until like lots of other people
52:28
Speaker 1: have eaten a first, or it might kill you. Like
52:30
Speaker 1: you just basically say, if we could grow meat directly
52:33
Speaker 1: from cells without animal slaughter, you know, what would you
52:36
Speaker 1: think of that? And most people are excited about it,
52:39
Speaker 1: and as we were talking about a minute ago, especially
52:41
Speaker 1: younger people are super excited about it. And bear in.
52:44
Speaker 2: Mind, right now, plant based meat is a third of
52:47
Speaker 2: one percent of the meat market, and we're talking seventy
52:50
Speaker 2: percent of people who would eat clean meat, which is
52:52
Speaker 2: you know, three times two hundred and ten times as
52:55
Speaker 2: many people before we even have a product like once,
52:57
Speaker 2: we actually have these products on sale on shelves, and
53:00
Speaker 2: we're saying, do you want the product that might have
53:02
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of bacterian might kill your family and
53:05
Speaker 2: maybe laced with antibiotics, and here's how the animals were
53:08
Speaker 2: raised and slaughtered, or do you want this other, safer,
53:11
Speaker 2: cleaner product that doesn't have all of those ancillary costs.
53:14
Speaker 2: I don't think like, you're not going to have to
53:16
Speaker 2: be a Madison Avenue genius to sell the clean meat, right.
53:19
Speaker 1: Well, if I was a venture capitalist, you just gave
53:22
Speaker 1: me the pitch of all time, right, I'd be like,
53:24
Speaker 1: take all my money. But it also I think there
53:28
Speaker 1: is a little bit of a fear button with people too.
53:30
Speaker 1: They're like, well, is this genetically engineered? And I heard
53:32
Speaker 1: that might not be so good and what's the long term.
53:36
Speaker 1: You know, we don't know what this is doing to
53:37
Speaker 1: our bodies long term, like I you know, in fairness,
53:40
Speaker 1: like I think we have to have those conversations. Oh yeah,
53:43
Speaker 1: absolutely to you know, really make sure that we're doing
53:45
Speaker 1: all of this right. But you made an interesting analogy
53:50
Speaker 1: in an article you wrote between this movement and kind
53:55
Speaker 1: of what went down with the in vitro fertile is movement,
54:01
Speaker 1: which I thought was apt. Yeah.
54:03
Speaker 2: No, I mean it's so forty years ago. I mean,
54:06
Speaker 2: ethicists and lots of other people were screaming bloody murder
54:11
Speaker 2: at the idea of in vitro fertilization. They're saying it's
54:14
Speaker 2: unnatural and just like real absolute freak out, super controversy.
54:19
Speaker 2: And now we're forty years later and there's no controversy
54:22
Speaker 2: at all. It's how I think, like two percent of
54:24
Speaker 2: babies now are born through in vitro fertilization. And there,
54:28
Speaker 2: you know, may be some Jesuit academics who are still
54:31
Speaker 2: raising concerns, there's some very conservative old bioethicists, but for
54:35
Speaker 2: the most part, this is like completely non controversial, super common.
54:39
Speaker 2: Most people, know, you know, have family members or friends
54:41
Speaker 2: who have had babies through in vitro fertilization.
54:44
Speaker 1: It's just that's what it is.
54:46
Speaker 2: In the same way it was controversial originally when we
54:48
Speaker 2: were going to make ice and ice makers instead of
54:51
Speaker 2: pulling ice out of you know, cold lakes and rivers,
54:54
Speaker 2: and there was an uproar. And now there's you know,
54:56
Speaker 2: obviously no hot brower at all. It's a safer, better, cheaper.
55:00
Speaker 1: Like ice was controversial. Ice was controversial. Yeah, I didn't
55:03
Speaker 1: know that.
55:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, Paul Shapiro talks about it in his book Clean
55:06
Speaker 2: Meat and Lots of did talk about that. Yeah, other
55:09
Speaker 2: things in the same sort of vein. But yeah, this
55:13
Speaker 2: will I mean, there will be certain people who are
55:16
Speaker 2: concerned about this early on, and there will be some
55:19
Speaker 2: interests that tried to drum up even more concerned about
55:22
Speaker 2: this early on. But it is just a much better product.
55:25
Speaker 2: It's perfectly safe. And it's worth noting that all of
55:28
Speaker 2: the people who have started companies so far, like most
55:31
Speaker 2: of them, are in this because they want their lives
55:33
Speaker 2: to be meaningful. So Uma Valletti, who started Memphis Meats,
55:36
Speaker 2: he said, I calculated that as a cardiologist, which is
55:39
Speaker 2: what he was doing before he was a professor of
55:41
Speaker 2: cardiology at the University of Minnesota, trained in cardiology at
55:44
Speaker 2: the Mayo Clinic, which is where he got the idea
55:46
Speaker 2: for growing cells for meat. He was the head of
55:48
Speaker 2: both the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart
55:51
Speaker 2: Association for the Twin Cities. So like it, really, you know,
55:54
Speaker 2: he could do kind of anything, and this is what
55:56
Speaker 2: he decided to do. And he decided to do it
55:58
Speaker 2: because he realized he could save even more and do
56:00
Speaker 2: more good in the world by accelerating the advancement of
56:03
Speaker 2: clean meat than he could do as a cardiologist. And
56:06
Speaker 2: that's kind of the way that most people in plant
56:09
Speaker 2: based meat and clean meat are thinking about this.
56:11
Speaker 1: For Pat Brown and Ethan Brown, yeah, Ethan for sure,
56:13
Speaker 1: Josh Tatrick the same thing.
56:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so they all want to be completely transparent,
56:17
Speaker 2: like they are consumer focused, you know, maybe even slightly
56:21
Speaker 2: to a fault if you're sort of an old school
56:25
Speaker 2: sort of food marketing person, but they want to be
56:28
Speaker 2: completely transparent. And I think probably even from an old
56:30
Speaker 2: school sort of food marketing with a new technology, for
56:33
Speaker 2: all the reasons you just enumerated, you really do want
56:36
Speaker 2: to make sure that people are super comfortable and have
56:38
Speaker 2: a complete understanding of the technology and how it works.
56:41
Speaker 2: And you know, everybody's talking about we're going to be
56:43
Speaker 2: live streaming meat production on the internet. You want to
56:46
Speaker 2: see Memphis meats. You don't want to see the meat
56:48
Speaker 2: that you are going to be eating being made. You know,
56:51
Speaker 2: log into memphismeats dot com and click on the live stream.
56:54
Speaker 2: It gets boring in about thirty seconds, but it makes
56:56
Speaker 2: a bit of.
56:56
Speaker 1: The fact that it exists. I mean, this is super important.
57:00
Speaker 1: You know, people want to be connected to how their
57:03
Speaker 1: food is made. Yeah, Now I think those products are made,
57:06
Speaker 1: how everything they purchase is made, and transparency is no longer,
57:12
Speaker 1: you know, something to be dismissed. I think it needs
57:15
Speaker 1: to be front and center. And the fact that they're
57:18
Speaker 1: doing that I think is amazing. And it stands, of course,
57:21
Speaker 1: in start contrast to the way you know, meat and
57:24
Speaker 1: dairy products have been produced historically and how they're protected
57:27
Speaker 1: through aggag laws and all kinds of regulations that insulate
57:31
Speaker 1: the consumer from the very truth of how these things
57:35
Speaker 1: are created.
57:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean for people who don't know what an
57:37
Speaker 2: aggag law is. Mark Bittman from The New York Times
57:40
Speaker 2: coined the term AGGAG and in states have been passing
57:44
Speaker 2: these laws to make it illegal to find out how
57:46
Speaker 2: meat is made. There are a variety of these laws,
57:48
Speaker 2: the early ones where you can't tape inside a factory, farmer,
57:52
Speaker 2: a slaughterhouse, or any sort of facility that goes toward
57:56
Speaker 2: raising animals for food. So you've got the plant based
57:58
Speaker 2: meat and the clean meat companies saying come one, come all,
58:02
Speaker 2: and good luck getting into a modern farm or a
58:04
Speaker 2: modern slaughterhouse, you know, And that goes back to people
58:06
Speaker 2: eat meat despite that, not because of that. So these technologies,
58:09
Speaker 2: I think, once the price is competitive, and once it
58:13
Speaker 2: is taste identical or better, I don't see many people
58:16
Speaker 2: not switching.
58:18
Speaker 1: Well, that's a perfect segue into a certain sector of
58:22
Speaker 1: the economy that is somewhat resistant to this, which is
58:27
Speaker 1: the meat and dairy producers themselves. For every Cargill or Tyson,
58:33
Speaker 1: there's a whole variety of other ongoing concerns that would
58:36
Speaker 1: prefer to not have this succeed. And we're seeing this
58:41
Speaker 1: battle taking place. In the front lines of it right
58:46
Speaker 1: now are over labeling, right, yeah, So tell me about
58:49
Speaker 1: what's going on with the meat labeling thing. I know,
58:52
Speaker 1: you guys have jumped in there's an injunction like this
58:54
Speaker 1: is super fascinating to me.
58:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been surprising to me, and I should just
59:01
Speaker 2: say there aren't really There isn't a company that's similar
59:04
Speaker 2: to Tyson or Cargill that is not on our side here.
59:08
Speaker 2: The cattle ranchers and the dairy producers are pretty much
59:11
Speaker 2: the only folks who are not excited about plants directly
59:16
Speaker 2: threatening their livelihoods, So you almost can't blame them, like
59:19
Speaker 2: this is how they make a living.
59:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right.
59:22
Speaker 2: But I guess it just to sort of underline people
59:25
Speaker 2: who work in slaughterhouses like it threatens their livelihoods, but
59:28
Speaker 2: those are just the worst jobs. Human Rights Watch said
59:32
Speaker 2: that the way that slaughterhouse workers are treated in the
59:34
Speaker 2: US is the US's human rights crime. But people who
59:37
Speaker 2: are working in chicken farms and pig farms, like, those
59:41
Speaker 2: folks are not excited to be working in chicken farms
59:43
Speaker 2: and pig farms, so kind of the only people with
59:46
Speaker 2: a vested interest who care about this stuff are the
59:48
Speaker 2: dairy producers. There are still tens of thousands of small
59:51
Speaker 2: dairy farms and cattle ranchers there are still I don't
59:54
Speaker 2: know how many, but lots of cattle ranchers. So that's
59:57
Speaker 2: kind of the only folks in the resistance to this
1:00:00
Speaker 2: sort of move in this direction technologically, and it's our
1:00:04
Speaker 2: position that they shouldn't be. It's our position that plant
1:00:06
Speaker 2: based meat, clean meat, and these alternative products they actually
1:00:09
Speaker 2: will create better livelihoods for farmers. It's been go big
1:00:13
Speaker 2: or go home for such a long time, and so
1:00:16
Speaker 2: we've gone from what more than fifty percent of people
1:00:18
Speaker 2: in farming to fewer than two percent of people in farming,
1:00:20
Speaker 2: and they all have to be for the most part,
1:00:22
Speaker 2: really really massive. This allows us to open up all
1:00:25
Speaker 2: kinds of different crops to cultivation. You can have smaller farms,
1:00:28
Speaker 2: you can have farms that you actually are able to
1:00:30
Speaker 2: do crop rotation like this is sort of a new
1:00:32
Speaker 2: agricultural renaissance that will be good for farmers.
1:00:35
Speaker 1: But are there programs underway to help train these people
1:00:40
Speaker 1: so that they can segue into a new way of
1:00:44
Speaker 1: using their land.
1:00:45
Speaker 2: This is one of the things that there is some
1:00:47
Speaker 2: really interesting stuff happening in this regard. I was actually
1:00:50
Speaker 2: just chatting with Kathy Freston, my co author in the
1:00:52
Speaker 2: book Clean protein and she was just out in Arkansas.
1:00:55
Speaker 2: She got an email from somebody who read one of
1:00:58
Speaker 2: her books and emailed her apparently emailed for people, and
1:01:01
Speaker 2: Kathy was the only one who replied, and it's a
1:01:03
Speaker 2: chicken farmer from Arkansas. They have more than one hundred
1:01:05
Speaker 2: thousand chickens supplying one of the biggest chicken companies in
1:01:10
Speaker 2: the United States. And Sean Monson, the filmmaker, was out
1:01:13
Speaker 2: there with Kathy filming them as they are basically moving
1:01:17
Speaker 2: out and they're going to go to hemp, and there
1:01:19
Speaker 2: are other farmers who are going to mushrooms and other
1:01:21
Speaker 2: farmers who are going to other crops. So this is
1:01:24
Speaker 2: a transition that we think is going to have to happen.
1:01:27
Speaker 2: Our hope is that governments, as they fund plant based
1:01:29
Speaker 2: meat and clean meat research, will also fund programs to
1:01:33
Speaker 2: help people who are currently in the current industry to
1:01:37
Speaker 2: transition into these new jobs that are actually absolutely coming
1:01:40
Speaker 2: that are also just better for the soil, which is
1:01:43
Speaker 2: something that farmers care about. Like farmers are not monocropping
1:01:47
Speaker 2: because they're excited about monocropping. They're monocropping to stay alive essentially.
1:01:51
Speaker 2: But to the labeling issue, there is, there are. The
1:01:55
Speaker 2: dairy industry has for decades been trying to convince the
1:01:59
Speaker 2: government that swoy milk should not be called swey milk
1:02:01
Speaker 2: and almond milk shouldn't be called almond milk. There have
1:02:04
Speaker 2: been class action suits which are really fun to read.
1:02:07
Speaker 2: The judicial opinions on the class action suits, Like the
1:02:10
Speaker 2: judges get very very creative, and you know, it begs
1:02:13
Speaker 2: credulity that somebody would be buying almond milk and think
1:02:16
Speaker 2: they're getting, you know, milk that comes from cows.
1:02:18
Speaker 1: And right there are the do these almonds lactate? Like
1:02:22
Speaker 1: it gets really weird, It gets really really weird.
1:02:24
Speaker 2: But and that is all just because you know, these
1:02:27
Speaker 2: sorts of endeavors don't pass the smell test, but they're
1:02:30
Speaker 2: hail mary's. They are absolute hail mary's. But I mean,
1:02:33
Speaker 2: they did pass the law in Missouri that says that
1:02:36
Speaker 2: you can't use meat terminology on the packaging of products
1:02:39
Speaker 2: unless those products come from raised and slaughtered animals. And
1:02:43
Speaker 2: so we along with the Animal Legal Defense Fund and
1:02:46
Speaker 2: the ACLU of Missouri and the Plant Based Meat Company
1:02:49
Speaker 2: Tofurkey and then GFI. GFI is both one of the
1:02:52
Speaker 2: lawyers and one of the plaintiffs in the case.
1:02:54
Speaker 1: We're suing the.
1:02:55
Speaker 2: State of Missouri to overturn that law, and the main
1:02:59
Speaker 2: the main are you is that it's unconstitutional. Unless the
1:03:02
Speaker 2: labels are false or misleading, Missouri can't censor speech. We
1:03:07
Speaker 2: also have the dormant commerce clause argument in there, as
1:03:09
Speaker 2: well as a due process clause in there.
1:03:11
Speaker 1: What's the dormant commerce clause argument.
1:03:13
Speaker 2: The dormant commerce clause argument is essentially that it was
1:03:17
Speaker 2: very clear when the legislation was being passed. It was
1:03:20
Speaker 2: passed by the cattle industry, so it is to protect
1:03:23
Speaker 2: Missouri cattle interests against competition from other states. So that's
1:03:28
Speaker 2: the dormant commerce clause argument. And then the due process
1:03:31
Speaker 2: is void for vagueness. You read the law and it's
1:03:34
Speaker 2: very unclear. The only way you know what it is
1:03:36
Speaker 2: actually supposed to do is if you read the legislative history,
1:03:39
Speaker 2: and so due process demands that if you're going to
1:03:42
Speaker 2: be convicted of a crime, you have to know what
1:03:43
Speaker 2: it looks like to violate the crime. And that's become
1:03:46
Speaker 2: even into starker relief in sort of the conversations that
1:03:51
Speaker 2: have been had after the law passed. But so we're suing.
1:03:54
Speaker 2: We're about to be asking for a preliminary injunction to
1:03:57
Speaker 2: enjoin the government against actually the law until our lawsuit
1:04:01
Speaker 2: is over.
1:04:02
Speaker 1: And the defendants argument, curiously, is that they do not
1:04:07
Speaker 1: want consumers to be confused, right, They want to make
1:04:10
Speaker 1: sure that these consumers know where their food came from.
1:04:14
Speaker 1: And the inherent irony, of course, and all of that
1:04:17
Speaker 1: goes back to what we were just talking about. They
1:04:19
Speaker 1: have enacted all of these laws, these protectionist measures to
1:04:24
Speaker 1: prevent that very thing. They actually don't want consumers to
1:04:28
Speaker 1: know how those products are produced. So it feels like
1:04:31
Speaker 1: this bizarre straw man. It's almost laughable that that's their argument.
1:04:35
Speaker 2: It is.
1:04:35
Speaker 1: It is darkly ironic, for sure, I know, and we
1:04:39
Speaker 1: saw this. Of course, Hampton Creek, which is now called
1:04:43
Speaker 1: just went through this in the mayonnaise sector, right that
1:04:47
Speaker 1: the word mayonnaise must meet must by its very definition,
1:04:51
Speaker 1: means eggs. And that was a lawsuit that was pursued
1:04:56
Speaker 1: by Unilever.
1:04:57
Speaker 2: Correct, Yeah, it turned into a pr nie I mean unially, yeah,
1:05:01
Speaker 2: I turned into a pr nightmare. Unilever not only dropped
1:05:04
Speaker 2: their lawsuit but subsequently introduced their own beginning and what
1:05:07
Speaker 2: I was going to say, so, yeah, they've jumped on board,
1:05:09
Speaker 2: you know, which I think is that's a beautiful thing. Yeah,
1:05:12
Speaker 2: we thought, like Sir Kensington, right, they did by Sir Kensington.
1:05:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're in tent with this stuff, but not as
1:05:17
Speaker 1: much as you. I try, you know, I try to
1:05:19
Speaker 1: pay attention from the sidelines. But yeah.
1:05:21
Speaker 2: One one of gfi's four programmatic departments is our corporate
1:05:25
Speaker 2: engagement department, and we have really good relationships with Tyson
1:05:28
Speaker 2: and Cargill and Smithfield and Unilever and all of these
1:05:32
Speaker 2: big food companies. Like when GFI started, we were talking
1:05:35
Speaker 2: about disrupting the food industry, disrupting the meat, dairy, and
1:05:38
Speaker 2: egg industries. Now we're talking about transforming because the more
1:05:41
Speaker 2: we have conversations with these people, the more we realized
1:05:44
Speaker 2: that they, you know, they're in this for whatever reason.
1:05:47
Speaker 2: They're in this, but if they can do what they
1:05:49
Speaker 2: want to do, which has nothing to do with raising
1:05:51
Speaker 2: and slaughter slaughtering animals, if they can like provide high
1:05:54
Speaker 2: quality food to people in a more efficient way that
1:05:56
Speaker 2: is more profitable without all of the external costs, they're
1:06:00
Speaker 2: all in on that. So that was sort of an
1:06:02
Speaker 2: interesting scenario and yeah, Unilever, they dropped the lawsuit, but
1:06:06
Speaker 2: then the FDA got involved, and it's all based on
1:06:09
Speaker 2: standards of identity from like the early nineteen thirties and
1:06:13
Speaker 2: they don't make a lot of sense, and as applied
1:06:15
Speaker 2: in some cases, they're not constitutional. They can't pass First
1:06:18
Speaker 2: Amendment scrutiny. And they would also make things like gluten
1:06:22
Speaker 2: free bread. You know, bread has a standard of identity,
1:06:24
Speaker 2: so you can't have gluten free bread, you can't have
1:06:26
Speaker 2: rice noodles. There are tons of things that, according to
1:06:29
Speaker 2: the dairy industry's interpretation of things, wouldn't be on shelves.
1:06:33
Speaker 2: And I mean their position is just literally indefensible.
1:06:38
Speaker 1: It's so important and powerful, this idea of disrupting within
1:06:43
Speaker 1: if you want to use that word, or finding a
1:06:45
Speaker 1: way to collaborate and cooperate with what is to try
1:06:50
Speaker 1: to improve it.
1:06:52
Speaker 2: We had a panel at this Kellogg School of but
1:06:54
Speaker 2: Business and we had the senior sustainab the senior VP
1:06:57
Speaker 2: for sustainability at Tyson Foods, Justin Wentmore, and he was
1:07:01
Speaker 2: just so awesome on this panel. But one of the
1:07:04
Speaker 2: things he said has really stuck with me. He said,
1:07:06
Speaker 2: at Tyson, we don't want to be disrupted. We want
1:07:09
Speaker 2: to be the disruptor and that is absolutely the way
1:07:12
Speaker 2: that the entire food industry should be thinking about this,
1:07:15
Speaker 2: and we've been super encouraged that a lot of them
1:07:18
Speaker 2: really are. I mean, one of the biggest plant based
1:07:20
Speaker 2: meat companies in the US is called Lightlife, and if
1:07:22
Speaker 2: you go to Lightlife's website lightlife dot com, I'm sure
1:07:26
Speaker 2: it says meat without the middleman. So, like the largest
1:07:30
Speaker 2: meat company in Canada, may Belief owns Lightlife, and they
1:07:34
Speaker 2: are all in on this is meat. It's just meat
1:07:37
Speaker 2: made from plants. They're also the owners of Field Roast,
1:07:40
Speaker 2: which had the second highest growth in the last year
1:07:42
Speaker 2: at almost seventy percent, just behind Beyond Meat.
1:07:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, I feel like as amazing
1:07:49
Speaker 1: as the vegan movement is. There are factions within the
1:07:52
Speaker 1: vegan movement that get in their own way, Like you know,
1:07:56
Speaker 1: for example, somebody who would say, how dare you talk
1:07:58
Speaker 1: to Tyson? How do you These are the bad guys,
1:08:01
Speaker 1: This is the enemy. We're trying to tear these people down,
1:08:04
Speaker 1: but they exist, They're not necessarily going away. So what
1:08:08
Speaker 1: is the best strategy, Like, what is the battle that
1:08:10
Speaker 1: you're trying to Are you trying to win the battle
1:08:12
Speaker 1: or the war exactly? And you're fighting the war. You're
1:08:15
Speaker 1: fighting this long term. You have a long term view
1:08:19
Speaker 1: on how to succeed, and it requires collaboration and cooperation
1:08:23
Speaker 1: and some level of humanity, right. Seeing these people as
1:08:29
Speaker 1: people who want to do the right thing and.
1:08:31
Speaker 2: They are I mean, it's not even you know, it's
1:08:34
Speaker 2: sort of like Martin Luther King Jr. Talks about how
1:08:37
Speaker 2: he adopted non violence in the fifties as a tactic.
1:08:40
Speaker 2: You know, he read about Gandhi and he adopted nonviolence
1:08:43
Speaker 2: and he just sort of thought, they're way more powerful
1:08:45
Speaker 2: than we are. There's no way we're going to win
1:08:47
Speaker 2: with violence. So he adopted nonviolence as a tactic. And
1:08:50
Speaker 2: then by the early sixties he's like, no, nonviolence is
1:08:53
Speaker 2: just you know, deontological non violence is the only way
1:08:56
Speaker 2: to victory and success. It's not a tactic. It's just
1:08:58
Speaker 2: an absolute moral impasarrative. And I think similarly some people
1:09:03
Speaker 2: may see let's work with Tyson as a tactic. I
1:09:07
Speaker 2: see it as a moral imperative. I mean, it certainly
1:09:09
Speaker 2: is the most the way that we are most likely
1:09:12
Speaker 2: to be successful, but it's also true. I like, I
1:09:15
Speaker 2: know the people at Tyson and Cargill and Unilever and
1:09:18
Speaker 2: these companies, and we go in and we spend an
1:09:20
Speaker 2: entire day with these folks talking about plant based meat
1:09:23
Speaker 2: and clean meat. They are good people, just like you know,
1:09:25
Speaker 2: the people in the vegan movement are good people. Everybody
1:09:28
Speaker 2: who is vegan knows lots of people who they love
1:09:31
Speaker 2: who are not vegan, and hopefully we don't think they're
1:09:33
Speaker 2: bad people because they're not vegan. So the fact that
1:09:35
Speaker 2: somebody has found themselves, you know, in the upper echelons,
1:09:38
Speaker 2: this one of these corporations allows them to do a
1:09:41
Speaker 2: lot more good than ninety nine point nine nine nine
1:09:43
Speaker 2: nine percent of vegans because they can be a part
1:09:46
Speaker 2: of the transformation and the inside. And if we look
1:09:49
Speaker 2: at them as you know, human beings, which they who
1:09:51
Speaker 2: they are trying to do good in the world, which
1:09:53
Speaker 2: they are, rather than sort of any sense of enemy.
1:09:56
Speaker 2: I mean a that's just true, and be it's also
1:10:00
Speaker 2: going to be tactically a lot smarter.
1:10:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, they have their hands on the Archimedes lever that
1:10:05
Speaker 1: can create seismic major shifts in you know, how we
1:10:09
Speaker 1: think about food, how we produce food, how we eat food,
1:10:12
Speaker 1: how we innovate a brighter future, that is protective of
1:10:17
Speaker 1: our planet for future generations to come, that spares all
1:10:20
Speaker 1: of these animals, that improves our health. I mean it
1:10:23
Speaker 1: checks all the boxes. Yeah, and anybody can see that, right.
1:10:26
Speaker 2: I mean, you don't have to be vegan, you don't
1:10:29
Speaker 2: have to be an activist. Like most of these people
1:10:32
Speaker 2: have families. They want the best for their children and
1:10:35
Speaker 2: their grandchildren and themselves and the world. So that's that's
1:10:40
Speaker 2: like also just a nicer conversation to have, you know than.
1:10:44
Speaker 1: You are bad.
1:10:45
Speaker 2: And I started I started learning this. I was at
1:10:48
Speaker 2: People for the Ethical Treatment of aw.
1:10:49
Speaker 1: You we repeat it for a long time. So this
1:10:51
Speaker 1: is you've had your own personal kind of journey and
1:10:53
Speaker 1: exploration to this place as well. Yeah.
1:10:56
Speaker 2: I remember in the early two thousands at PETO, we
1:11:00
Speaker 2: started launching corporate campaigns to reform industrial animal agriculture. And
1:11:05
Speaker 2: we got a professional business consultant who taught business I
1:11:09
Speaker 2: think at University of Illinois, if memory serves, a guy
1:11:12
Speaker 2: named Steve Gross And the first thing he said to me,
1:11:15
Speaker 2: and you know, we couldn't have afforded him, but he
1:11:17
Speaker 2: was doing it pro bono. He now is I think
1:11:19
Speaker 2: chair of the board of a group called Farm Forward.
1:11:22
Speaker 2: And so he was our negotiator with McDonald's, with KFC,
1:11:25
Speaker 2: with Wendy's, with Safeway, and calling up sort of all
1:11:28
Speaker 2: of the big fast food and grocery outlets. And he said,
1:11:31
Speaker 2: you know, we are absolutely going to get nowhere if
1:11:34
Speaker 2: we go in with confrontation. We have to go in
1:11:37
Speaker 2: with you know, let me tell you about my son
1:11:39
Speaker 2: and my daughter. And here's what my son and my
1:11:41
Speaker 2: daughter are doing. Tell me about your son and your daughter.
1:11:44
Speaker 2: You know, what do you want for the future of
1:11:46
Speaker 2: the world, these sort of high falutin things, And this
1:11:49
Speaker 2: is another example. We might not change people's diets necessarily
1:11:52
Speaker 2: with these sorts of conversations, or at least not as
1:11:54
Speaker 2: many as we want to change. Some people change. I changed,
1:11:56
Speaker 2: you change. But if we really want to bond with
1:12:00
Speaker 2: people and create transformation, we need to do it at
1:12:03
Speaker 2: a human level. So that's been sort of my philosophy
1:12:06
Speaker 2: since then, and I think it's you know, it's.
1:12:08
Speaker 1: Correct, it's correct, and I think it applies to how
1:12:13
Speaker 1: we're having conversations about everything right now. You know, the
1:12:17
Speaker 1: dialogue that we're seeing online, especially in the political sphere,
1:12:26
Speaker 1: even in the health and nutrition sphere, is pretty toxic.
1:12:29
Speaker 1: You know, it's pretty toxic. And I think we need
1:12:32
Speaker 1: to take a step back and really try to understand
1:12:36
Speaker 1: how to better communicate our point of view. And I
1:12:40
Speaker 1: think it begins with some level of humility and compassion
1:12:46
Speaker 1: for other people and the inherent humanity that we all share.
1:12:50
Speaker 1: I just I was at a conference this past weekend
1:12:54
Speaker 1: in Nantucket, this thing called the Nantucket Project, and that
1:12:57
Speaker 1: was kind of a theme of this event. The theme
1:13:00
Speaker 1: for this year was neighborhood, and it was very consciously
1:13:06
Speaker 1: curated in terms of the speaker lineup to cultivate like
1:13:12
Speaker 1: this conversation around how to really communicate effectively so that
1:13:18
Speaker 1: we can come together and make positive change in the world.
1:13:22
Speaker 1: So there were polarizing figures. There was Sean Spicer, there
1:13:25
Speaker 1: was George W. Bush, There was Lance Armstrong, there was
1:13:28
Speaker 1: Valerie Plain like a very interesting mix of individuals who
1:13:33
Speaker 1: in their own worlds are polarizing for a lot of people,
1:13:37
Speaker 1: And all of the conversations that took place were about like,
1:13:42
Speaker 1: let me see if I can see this from this
1:13:44
Speaker 1: person's point of view, Like what is it like for
1:13:46
Speaker 1: that person as a human being. And I left that
1:13:49
Speaker 1: experience a better person because I really did force myself
1:13:55
Speaker 1: to set aside my preconceived ideas and whatever projections I'm
1:13:58
Speaker 1: putting on all of these people. And I left with
1:14:01
Speaker 1: a greater sense of compassion. And I think that we
1:14:04
Speaker 1: need more of that, you know, we need that in
1:14:06
Speaker 1: the vegan movement. We need that in these conversations that
1:14:09
Speaker 1: we're having about politics, and certainly with respect to what
1:14:13
Speaker 1: you do, which is interfacing with these titans of industry
1:14:17
Speaker 1: who are in, you know, organizations that when you were
1:14:20
Speaker 1: at PEDA, you know, you had a very different perspective
1:14:23
Speaker 1: on right, Sure, so it's really interesting that you're now
1:14:28
Speaker 1: creating the most change that you've ever had in your
1:14:30
Speaker 1: entire career by taking a very different psychological and communicative approach. Yeah.
1:14:39
Speaker 2: Well it helps a tremendous amount that. I mean, we
1:14:42
Speaker 2: I had the same basic attitude at PETA, but what
1:14:45
Speaker 2: we were asking them to do was a lot harder.
1:14:47
Speaker 2: And so you're, you know, you're asking them to be
1:14:49
Speaker 2: the industry leader, and it is going to adversely affect
1:14:52
Speaker 2: their profitability. So they were harder conversations. They were still
1:14:55
Speaker 2: good conversations, but now we're actually you know, we're saying
1:14:58
Speaker 2: this is why this will be are profitable for you,
1:15:01
Speaker 2: and it's simultaneously you know, you should do it for
1:15:03
Speaker 2: all these very human reasons, but it's in your best interest.
1:15:06
Speaker 2: But it's in your best interests, which makes.
1:15:07
Speaker 1: Want to get rich. Yeah, makes it makes it a
1:15:10
Speaker 1: much easier conversation. So what's going on on the regulatory
1:15:14
Speaker 1: landscape right now with the FDA the USDA are the hurdles?
1:15:18
Speaker 1: There is this smooth sailing like what does that look like?
1:15:22
Speaker 2: I mean, the sort of preparatory thing to say in
1:15:25
Speaker 2: response to that question is that there are you know,
1:15:28
Speaker 2: one hundred and ninety something countries, and every country has
1:15:32
Speaker 2: the capacity to introduce clean meat, so plant based meat,
1:15:37
Speaker 2: you know, obviously it's plant based meat. So it's all
1:15:39
Speaker 2: foods that are already in the food supply. So there
1:15:41
Speaker 2: are some regulatory questions. They mostly have to do with
1:15:43
Speaker 2: labeling and safety testing for new ingredients. But the really
1:15:47
Speaker 2: interesting question has to do with clean meat. And in
1:15:49
Speaker 2: the United States there's a bit of a battle. In July,
1:15:53
Speaker 2: FDA asserted its unalloyed authority and said essentially they had
1:15:58
Speaker 2: a whole day meeting at which the Commissioner and the
1:16:01
Speaker 2: woman who runs the Center for Food and Nutrition and
1:16:04
Speaker 2: their chief scientist just said, we got this, we got this,
1:16:08
Speaker 2: we got this, which is kind of what GFI thought
1:16:11
Speaker 2: should happen, and we still think should happen. The current
1:16:14
Speaker 2: regulatory regime is up to the task, and it makes
1:16:16
Speaker 2: the most sense for FDA to do it because these
1:16:18
Speaker 2: are the sorts of products that they have been regulating
1:16:21
Speaker 2: for decades. But USDA also wants in on it, and
1:16:26
Speaker 2: the cattle ranchers want USDA to be in on it,
1:16:29
Speaker 2: so there's a little bit of a battle in the
1:16:31
Speaker 2: United States. I mean, it looks like everybody thinks that
1:16:34
Speaker 2: the current regulatory regime is up to the task. If
1:16:38
Speaker 2: I were a betting person, I would bet that there
1:16:41
Speaker 2: will be some sort of dual authority from USDA and FDA.
1:16:45
Speaker 2: So maybe FDA will do safety testing pre market, and
1:16:49
Speaker 2: then USDA will actually regulate the production and the labeling.
1:16:53
Speaker 2: But it's hard to say for sure. And obviously Congress
1:16:57
Speaker 2: could jump and jump in and just sort of dictate,
1:17:00
Speaker 2: in which case, you know, whatever FDA or USDA wants
1:17:02
Speaker 2: would be irrelevant. Congress would just say, but we're optimistic.
1:17:06
Speaker 2: The National Academies of Sciences released a report about two
1:17:10
Speaker 2: years ago in which they said this is a very
1:17:12
Speaker 2: promising technology and the government should do everything that it
1:17:15
Speaker 2: can to make sure that the current regulatory regime is
1:17:18
Speaker 2: used no new regulatory propagation, and also that it is
1:17:22
Speaker 2: smooth and quick. And since again this is something I mean,
1:17:26
Speaker 2: this is not sort of your average regulatory discussion of food.
1:17:29
Speaker 2: This is a regulatory discussion of a food that solves
1:17:32
Speaker 2: a lot of problems that the government wants solved. So
1:17:35
Speaker 2: hopefully those sort of normative considerations will also be worked in.
1:17:39
Speaker 2: But we're simultaneously. Like in our overseas offices, the focus
1:17:43
Speaker 2: is policy and science. So the focus is a convinced
1:17:47
Speaker 2: the governments on the policy side. One side of policy
1:17:49
Speaker 2: is convinced these governments to fund open source, plant based
1:17:52
Speaker 2: and clean meat research. And then the other side is
1:17:55
Speaker 2: roll out the regulatory red carpet for clean meat, so
1:17:58
Speaker 2: we're doing analysis and all of these kinds. Then the
1:18:00
Speaker 2: other side is, if you're they're going to fund the science,
1:18:02
Speaker 2: we need the scientists. So we're doing a lot of
1:18:04
Speaker 2: outreach to scientists in these countries to get them excited
1:18:07
Speaker 2: about it.
1:18:07
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I would think in the in the US,
1:18:10
Speaker 1: it would be advisable to bring the EPA in as well,
1:18:13
Speaker 1: like because it impacts it's not just food, right, this
1:18:17
Speaker 1: is a bigger This is a bigger subject matter with
1:18:20
Speaker 1: more profound implications beyond like what are the ingredients? And
1:18:24
Speaker 1: you know, is it is it healthy for human consumption? Yeah?
1:18:27
Speaker 2: I mean I think there are many other agencies which
1:18:30
Speaker 2: especially if you're talking about funding. EPA has a research
1:18:34
Speaker 2: and development budget. It used to go significantly to climate
1:18:38
Speaker 2: change initiatives, and now it's going to a variety of
1:18:41
Speaker 2: other environmental things. But some of that money could certainly
1:18:45
Speaker 2: be made available to plant based meat and clean meat
1:18:47
Speaker 2: research and development. But if what you're talking about is
1:18:50
Speaker 2: regulatory oversight, you know, you've got the Food and Drug
1:18:52
Speaker 2: Administration under the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act, they oversee
1:18:56
Speaker 2: about eighty percent of food. Then you've got the USDA
1:19:00
Speaker 2: the Federal Meat Inspection Act, and they oversee the vast
1:19:02
Speaker 2: majority of meat oversight. And so this is meat, but
1:19:07
Speaker 2: it also uses a lot of the sort of food
1:19:08
Speaker 2: technologies that have generally been the province of FDA. So
1:19:13
Speaker 2: at least for regulatory oversight, it'll either be FDA or
1:19:16
Speaker 2: USDA or some combination.
1:19:18
Speaker 1: Of FDA and SDA. Yeah, it's confusing. It's a little confused.
1:19:21
Speaker 1: The food system over that.
1:19:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, the food system in the United States is definitely
1:19:26
Speaker 2: is definitely confusing.
1:19:28
Speaker 1: Well, I think most people think that the USDA is
1:19:32
Speaker 1: this government organization that functions like a consumer watchdog that
1:19:37
Speaker 1: has our best interests at heart, and I think a
1:19:39
Speaker 1: lot of people would be surprised to learn that it's
1:19:41
Speaker 1: only a quasi government organization that functions in many ways
1:19:46
Speaker 1: like a lobbying arm for the dairy industry.
1:19:50
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, meat and dairyman. I mean, yeah, USDA was
1:19:53
Speaker 2: set up to promote US agriculture, and I think it
1:19:56
Speaker 2: was the nineteen sixties that it became also focused on
1:20:00
Speaker 2: food safety. But it definitely appears to be more promote
1:20:04
Speaker 2: US agriculture than it does food safety. And we have
1:20:07
Speaker 2: the only Department of Agriculture in the world that doesn't
1:20:10
Speaker 2: have mandatory recall powers.
1:20:12
Speaker 1: Like you will always.
1:20:13
Speaker 2: See the meat industry a voluntary recall and it's oh,
1:20:16
Speaker 2: it's a voluntary recall. You know, this must must not
1:20:18
Speaker 2: be that's toxic. Of recalls are voluntary recalls because USDA
1:20:23
Speaker 2: is not empowered with the authority to issue a mandatory recall.
1:20:26
Speaker 1: That's really quite remarkable, and it's the checkof program, right, Yeah,
1:20:31
Speaker 1: I spoke with Neil Bernard about that, But explain what
1:20:34
Speaker 1: that is, because that's just a mind blower that that
1:20:36
Speaker 1: even is a thing.
1:20:38
Speaker 2: Well, there are a bunch of different checkoff programs, so
1:20:40
Speaker 2: of course, again USDA was set up to promote US agriculture.
1:20:44
Speaker 2: So there's a beef checkof, and a dairy checkof, and
1:20:46
Speaker 2: a cheese checkof, and basically a percentage of all cheese, dairy,
1:20:50
Speaker 2: and beef sales in the United States go into government
1:20:54
Speaker 2: administered checkof programs that then do general promotion of those products.
1:20:59
Speaker 2: And they are pretty controversial because the small producers uniformly
1:21:03
Speaker 2: feel like what's true, which is it's a sort of
1:21:05
Speaker 2: lowest common denominator promotion for the entire industry. And then
1:21:10
Speaker 2: you get into sort of weird legal ramifications as well,
1:21:13
Speaker 2: where the laws that affect the general population generally don't
1:21:17
Speaker 2: also affect the federal government, So the federal government can
1:21:21
Speaker 2: do things that if it were a private corporation it
1:21:23
Speaker 2: would be illegal to do, which happened when there was
1:21:26
Speaker 2: this lawsuit in California. This happened in California over those
1:21:30
Speaker 2: happy Cows commercials. Happy cows come from California, and so
1:21:35
Speaker 2: PETA and I think the Animal Legal Defense Fund and
1:21:37
Speaker 2: some other folks sued and the defense.
1:21:40
Speaker 1: Was not these commercials are true.
1:21:42
Speaker 2: The defense was the government does not have to abide
1:21:45
Speaker 2: by the consumer protection laws that apply to corporations. And
1:21:49
Speaker 2: that was the reason that that lawsuit ended up being ejected,
1:21:52
Speaker 2: despite the fact that even people on the board who
1:21:54
Speaker 2: are watching the commercials and the focus groups were saying,
1:21:58
Speaker 2: I don't think all of the cows in CALIFORNI you
1:22:00
Speaker 2: are out on Fields and Sonoma.
1:22:02
Speaker 1: And isn't it true, Like I know that that when
1:22:06
Speaker 1: dairy products find their way into television commercials, like when
1:22:09
Speaker 1: Pizza Hut introduces its cheesy crust, and that's that there
1:22:13
Speaker 1: is government funding going into those ad budgets. Yeah. No,
1:22:17
Speaker 1: it's fascinating. I mean that's that's yeah.
1:22:20
Speaker 2: It's the American Egg Board and the American Dairy Council
1:22:23
Speaker 2: and the Beef Council and the Pork Board, like those
1:22:26
Speaker 2: are quasi governmental agencies. I mean, in part that's why
1:22:30
Speaker 2: Hampton Creek when they there was this crazy thing where
1:22:34
Speaker 2: the American egg Board was laughing about killing Josh Tetrick
1:22:37
Speaker 2: and was trying to keep emails came out and they
1:22:40
Speaker 2: were trying to keep Hampton Creek products off the shelves
1:22:42
Speaker 2: of Whole Foods and all kinds of anti competitive stuff
1:22:44
Speaker 2: that is illegal for these groups to do because they
1:22:49
Speaker 2: are government funded. And the reason those emails came out
1:22:52
Speaker 2: is that because they are government funded, they're also subject
1:22:55
Speaker 2: to FOYA Yeah requests. Yeah, So all that stuff came
1:22:58
Speaker 2: back in a freedom of information request and it was
1:23:01
Speaker 2: interesting what the What happened in response to that was
1:23:04
Speaker 2: that the meat industry tried to pass a law to
1:23:07
Speaker 2: make FOYA more restrictive. So their response was not, oh
1:23:11
Speaker 2: my god, you know, this is an awful thing, joking about,
1:23:13
Speaker 2: you know, killing a competitor and all this anti competitive stuff.
1:23:16
Speaker 2: The response was, let's see if we can make the
1:23:18
Speaker 2: next FOYA not actually get the records. And fortunately FOYA
1:23:22
Speaker 2: is something that you know, the far right, the far left,
1:23:25
Speaker 2: and the center all agree on, so that legislation went
1:23:28
Speaker 2: absolutely nowhere. But that was the response of the sort
1:23:31
Speaker 2: of meat industry or at large, which was too bad.
1:23:34
Speaker 1: All right, So the players I'm familiar with Memphis meets,
1:23:40
Speaker 1: I know what Beyond Me Impossible are doing in the
1:23:43
Speaker 1: plant based sector, just and Josh Tetrik. They're they're getting
1:23:48
Speaker 1: into clean meat now they are Who are the other players, Like,
1:23:51
Speaker 1: what's going on now? That's new, Like, you know, what
1:23:55
Speaker 1: are some of the products that are being developed and
1:23:58
Speaker 1: who are some of the other active members of this movement.
1:24:04
Speaker 2: There's a lot of really exciting stuff happening across plant
1:24:07
Speaker 2: based meat and clean meat. So, as you know, the
1:24:11
Speaker 2: twelve months that ended early September, there was twenty three
1:24:16
Speaker 2: percent growth in plant based meat and at the grocery
1:24:20
Speaker 2: sector and beyond meat was number one at seventy percent,
1:24:22
Speaker 2: and it would have been a lot higher if they
1:24:24
Speaker 2: could have met demand. But number two was Field Roast,
1:24:28
Speaker 2: which is sort of a legacy producer that's owned by
1:24:30
Speaker 2: a meat company in Canada. Number three was Guardeen. Number
1:24:34
Speaker 2: four was Doctor Prager's. So we are seeing a lot
1:24:37
Speaker 2: of the sort of old school plant based meat companies
1:24:41
Speaker 2: significantly upping their game, improving their products, improving their marketing
1:24:45
Speaker 2: and recognizing that they too can get really really big.
1:24:48
Speaker 1: So that's exciting. The Sarnos are getting into fish too, right.
1:24:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, that company is exciting. It's called good Catch. It's
1:24:55
Speaker 2: actually one of gfi's three success stories. So in our
1:24:58
Speaker 2: innovation department, in addition to helping startups to be successful
1:25:02
Speaker 2: and publishing all kinds of documents to help, we've got
1:25:04
Speaker 2: a Startup Guide which is a kind of everything in
1:25:07
Speaker 2: anything you've ever wanted to know about starting a plant
1:25:10
Speaker 2: based or clean meat food business. And we help companies
1:25:12
Speaker 2: with whatever they want. But we have also started three companies.
1:25:15
Speaker 2: One of those companies that we started with with a
1:25:18
Speaker 2: marketing company called Beyond Brands and a venture capital fund
1:25:21
Speaker 2: called New Crop Capital is Good Catch and Good Catches.
1:25:25
Speaker 2: They sponsored our conference and also did the me did
1:25:30
Speaker 2: the did the reception on Thursday evening, so the first
1:25:33
Speaker 2: night of the conference, and people who eat tuna were
1:25:36
Speaker 2: eating their tuna and were just blown away. They've also
1:25:39
Speaker 2: got crab cakes and they're going to be rolling out
1:25:40
Speaker 2: a bunch of other fish alternatives. And two of the
1:25:44
Speaker 2: chefs behind that are Derek Sarno and Chad Sarno, who
1:25:48
Speaker 2: have also been GFI advisors from from when we were
1:25:51
Speaker 2: first conceived. Super cool yea that good Catch products should
1:25:55
Speaker 2: be on the market certainly by the end of the year.
1:25:57
Speaker 2: So people should look out for them.
1:25:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they have a line of products in the
1:26:01
Speaker 1: UK too, Like I was just in London and you
1:26:04
Speaker 1: can go into their version of seven eleven or what
1:26:07
Speaker 1: I have prepackaged healthy you know, sandwiches and things like
1:26:12
Speaker 1: that that are all totally plant based.
1:26:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, Wicked Healthy, Yeah is the brand, and they're going
1:26:17
Speaker 2: to be launching in the US a brand called Wicked Meaty,
1:26:20
Speaker 2: which is which is also something that New Crop Capital
1:26:23
Speaker 2: and the Good Food Institute started working on together. Cool.
1:26:26
Speaker 1: So if you can grow meat products in this fashion
1:26:33
Speaker 1: from these cells, I would presume that you could also
1:26:38
Speaker 1: create cheese and dairy products as well. Is that true?
1:26:41
Speaker 1: What's going on there?
1:26:42
Speaker 2: So those are a cellular products of course, so you
1:26:44
Speaker 2: go straight to the proteins rather than the cells, and
1:26:47
Speaker 2: that's actually quite a bit easier, so you just isolate
1:26:49
Speaker 2: the proteins. You do need to use genetic modification, so
1:26:53
Speaker 2: the final product is not GMO, but there is a
1:26:56
Speaker 2: GMO product process. So you can take a GMO yeast
1:26:59
Speaker 2: or a bacteria and you get whatever the proteins are
1:27:03
Speaker 2: that you want the yeast or the bacteria to grow,
1:27:05
Speaker 2: and you program that directly into the east and out
1:27:09
Speaker 2: it comes, and it's a genetically identical thing.
1:27:11
Speaker 1: So you can.
1:27:12
Speaker 2: Create cheese or milk or egg proteins. Eggs and milk
1:27:16
Speaker 2: and cheese are pretty complex, but once you actually have
1:27:20
Speaker 2: the key proteins that give it the binding, or that
1:27:22
Speaker 2: give it the flavor, or that give it the whatever
1:27:24
Speaker 2: it is that you like about cheese or milk or eggs,
1:27:27
Speaker 2: it's probably going to be an easier process than meat,
1:27:30
Speaker 2: although it is the case that there are far fewer
1:27:32
Speaker 2: companies doing it. So the absolute leader in dairy is
1:27:35
Speaker 2: a company called Perfect Day, which is being funded by
1:27:38
Speaker 2: the richest guy in Asia, guy named Lee Kasheng, who
1:27:40
Speaker 2: has a venture capital fund called Horizons Ventures, and he's
1:27:43
Speaker 2: the money behind Horizons Ventures. The main egg company is
1:27:47
Speaker 2: a company called Clara Foods, and then there's also a
1:27:49
Speaker 2: gelatin company called geltr.
1:27:52
Speaker 1: The world is getting crazy, Ruth, it is getting crazy.
1:27:56
Speaker 2: I mean, we really think there should be a lot
1:27:58
Speaker 2: more plant based meat innovation, So plant based meat companies
1:28:04
Speaker 2: that are focused on biomimicry, that are focused on food tech,
1:28:08
Speaker 2: like good Catch is a phenomenal company company and they're
1:28:11
Speaker 2: doing a great job with tuna. They're mostly focused on culinary.
1:28:14
Speaker 2: I think their slogan is something like Chef Mastered. I
1:28:18
Speaker 2: can't remember exactly, but I mean they really focus on
1:28:21
Speaker 2: sort of the chef side of things, and that's exciting,
1:28:23
Speaker 2: but there is a tremendous amount that could be done
1:28:25
Speaker 2: with food tech, and some people I think maybe have
1:28:28
Speaker 2: the idea that impossible and beyond meat, have that cornered.
1:28:31
Speaker 2: They absolutely don't. It's still a third of one percent
1:28:33
Speaker 2: of the market. So we would like to see a
1:28:35
Speaker 2: lot more companies saying let's see what happens if we
1:28:37
Speaker 2: use lupin, Let's see what happens if we use chickpeas,
1:28:39
Speaker 2: Let's see what happens if we use millet, and like
1:28:42
Speaker 2: all of these under explored proteins and turn that into
1:28:45
Speaker 2: plant based meat.
1:28:46
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the plant based dairy market cap is massive.
1:28:50
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, No, I mean it's interesting. Plant based dairy
1:28:52
Speaker 2: has just surpassed thirteen percent of the dairy market. It
1:28:56
Speaker 2: was ten percent I think two years ago. So it
1:28:59
Speaker 2: is continuing to grow in a way that is very exciting.
1:29:02
Speaker 2: More and more companies more and more market share, and
1:29:05
Speaker 2: I think we're only going to continue to see that,
1:29:07
Speaker 2: especially as the price comes down. I mean it's at
1:29:09
Speaker 2: thirteen percent despite being more expensive. Once it gets to
1:29:13
Speaker 2: price parity, I think it's really going to shoot up.
1:29:15
Speaker 1: So the biggest barriers, from what I gather from our
1:29:19
Speaker 1: conversation are really capital like making sure that all of
1:29:24
Speaker 1: these ventures are properly funded, training the brightest minds to
1:29:30
Speaker 1: enter into this sector, to continue to innovate. I mean,
1:29:33
Speaker 1: what are some of the other hurdles that you're trying
1:29:35
Speaker 1: to overcome right now? Those are really the two big hurdles.
1:29:38
Speaker 2: I mean, if you go ask Ethan Brown or Pat
1:29:40
Speaker 2: Brown from Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, or you ask
1:29:43
Speaker 2: Uma Valletti or Mike Selton from Finless or Luke cooper
1:29:47
Speaker 2: House from Blue n Alu or sort of any of
1:29:49
Speaker 2: these companies right now, they're not having funding issues, Like
1:29:52
Speaker 2: every time they go to get the amount of money
1:29:54
Speaker 2: that they think they can effectively incorporate, the money is
1:29:57
Speaker 2: there so far. But what they're now finding is the
1:30:01
Speaker 2: cracker jack scientists, the tissue engineers, the biochemists, the meat scientists,
1:30:06
Speaker 2: the mechanical engineers, the people to design these technologies to
1:30:12
Speaker 2: make this market sector thrive. So far, they.
1:30:16
Speaker 1: Have the money.
1:30:16
Speaker 2: When I talk about needing money I'm talking about governments
1:30:19
Speaker 2: should be putting billions of dollars and creating research institutes.
1:30:22
Speaker 2: That hasn't happened yet, and it should. But so far,
1:30:25
Speaker 2: no startup in this space has failed due to lack
1:30:28
Speaker 2: of money. Although the most money that's been raised is
1:30:30
Speaker 2: Memphis Meets at twenty one million dollars, so that thesis
1:30:33
Speaker 2: has not been thoroughly tested. They're going to have to
1:30:35
Speaker 2: raise hundreds of millions of dollars to be successful, and
1:30:38
Speaker 2: we're super optimistic that they'll be able to do that.
1:30:41
Speaker 2: That that money is going to have to be there,
1:30:43
Speaker 2: But the talent gap is number one and number two
1:30:47
Speaker 2: and number three really in terms of obstacles at the moment,
1:30:50
Speaker 2: which is why GFI is excited to be launching fellowship
1:30:53
Speaker 2: programs at top universities internationally where we have identified huge
1:31:00
Speaker 2: opportunity for plant based meat and clean meat, even if
1:31:02
Speaker 2: it's not there quite yet, we just really need to
1:31:04
Speaker 2: create a talent pool of people who are excited to
1:31:08
Speaker 2: staff these companies.
1:31:10
Speaker 1: Right, So, all you super geniuses out there, what are
1:31:12
Speaker 1: you doing? I know exactly? Come on, look at this,
1:31:15
Speaker 1: look at this expanding universe. The world is your oyster.
1:31:19
Speaker 1: The world is your plant based clean meat oyster waiting
1:31:23
Speaker 1: for you.
1:31:23
Speaker 2: If people are wondering how they get involved, I mean
1:31:25
Speaker 2: especially if you're in college science, science, science, if you're
1:31:29
Speaker 2: in high school science, if you're beyond that, I mean,
1:31:32
Speaker 2: think about other ways that you can dedicate your talent
1:31:35
Speaker 2: to that. I mean obviously philanthropists the GFI. GFI we
1:31:38
Speaker 2: have to raise seven point five million dollars this year,
1:31:40
Speaker 2: so would love your help. If you have access to
1:31:42
Speaker 2: even more money than that, or you have access to
1:31:44
Speaker 2: people who you could connect us with who would help
1:31:47
Speaker 2: us raise tens of millions of dollars to create institutes.
1:31:50
Speaker 2: If you have access to governments, raise these issues with governments,
1:31:53
Speaker 2: they should be putting even more money into this. But
1:31:56
Speaker 2: we do have a lot of job openings in GFI.
1:31:58
Speaker 1: You know.
1:31:58
Speaker 2: GFI needs scientific and other help. We need lawyers, we
1:32:01
Speaker 2: need people in our corporate engagement department, we need people
1:32:03
Speaker 2: in our policy department. We need you know, kind of
1:32:06
Speaker 2: across the organization.
1:32:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're growing, So all you other super geniuses out there,
1:32:11
Speaker 1: get in touch with Bruce Man. Yes, he wants to
1:32:13
Speaker 1: hire you.
1:32:14
Speaker 2: And if you're if you're extroverted and can do sort
1:32:17
Speaker 2: of marketing stuff and meeting with corporations. We need we
1:32:19
Speaker 2: need that too. Yeah, all kinds of people.
1:32:21
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we got to wrap this up. But
1:32:24
Speaker 1: I think a good place to kind of leave people
1:32:27
Speaker 1: with is your version of the future, Like, paint me
1:32:31
Speaker 1: the picture of the future that you're working towards that
1:32:33
Speaker 1: you would like to see. Boy, you can go very,
1:32:37
Speaker 1: very big with that. I mean I.
1:32:39
Speaker 2: Before I got involved in this space, I ran a
1:32:42
Speaker 2: homeless shelter in a soup kitchen in Inner City, Washington,
1:32:45
Speaker 2: d C. For about six years. I also taught for
1:32:48
Speaker 2: through Teach for America for a couple of years.
1:32:50
Speaker 1: So my vision of.
1:32:52
Speaker 2: The future is people well fed, people well educated, everybody
1:32:57
Speaker 2: has healthcare. It's a future where people have the capacity
1:33:01
Speaker 2: to take a step back and reflect on their lives.
1:33:04
Speaker 2: People are practicing mindfulness from the highest to the lowest echelons.
1:33:09
Speaker 2: And a part of that is the good food future
1:33:11
Speaker 2: for sure. A part of that is if people are
1:33:13
Speaker 2: eating meat, it's plant based meat or it's clean meat.
1:33:17
Speaker 2: But it's also just a world where I mean, we
1:33:19
Speaker 2: are going to knock out global poverty probably in the
1:33:23
Speaker 2: next twenty or thirty years. We need to go from
1:33:25
Speaker 2: knocking out global poverty to like real health and health
1:33:29
Speaker 2: care and prosperity and spirituality and mindfulness. And I think
1:33:35
Speaker 2: plant based meat and clean meat. It's sort of on
1:33:37
Speaker 2: Maslow's period pyramid. The plant based meat and clean meat
1:33:40
Speaker 2: are part of the base. It's like, we need to people.
1:33:43
Speaker 1: Need to feed everybody. Yeah right, yeah.
1:33:46
Speaker 2: Global health needs to be to taken care of the environment,
1:33:48
Speaker 2: needs to be taken care of our basic physiological needs.
1:33:51
Speaker 2: But i want everybody up at self actualization and I'd
1:33:55
Speaker 2: love to see that happen by twenty fifty.
1:33:56
Speaker 1: You and me, both, Ruth, you and me both, well.
1:33:59
Speaker 2: You're doing a tremendous amount to get get us there.
1:34:01
Speaker 1: Rich.
1:34:01
Speaker 2: I think your podcast, I mean that the podcast with
1:34:04
Speaker 2: you baal Harari really blew me away. The podcast with
1:34:07
Speaker 2: the religious figure talking about the human need for spirituality,
1:34:12
Speaker 2: you know, just raising these issues with your listeners, I
1:34:15
Speaker 2: think is just so exciting and doing such a service.
1:34:17
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I appreciate that the work you're doing at
1:34:19
Speaker 1: GFI is incredible. You really are reshaping the world. I
1:34:23
Speaker 1: commend you, I wish you well, and if there's anything
1:34:26
Speaker 1: I can do to continue to support your mission, please
1:34:30
Speaker 1: don't hesitate to reach out.
1:34:32
Speaker 2: Having me on is As I mentioned, it's just such
1:34:34
Speaker 2: an honor and also such a help.
1:34:36
Speaker 1: So thank you. You're a gift, my friend. Quite often
1:34:40
Speaker 1: when people listen to podcasts, they have an option on
1:34:42
Speaker 1: their phone, like they can speed it up to like
1:34:45
Speaker 1: one and a half times or two times, so they
1:34:47
Speaker 1: can listen to a two hour podcasts in an hour.
1:34:51
Speaker 1: But you're firing off so much information. I feel like
1:34:54
Speaker 1: people are going to have to go the other direction
1:34:56
Speaker 1: and play it at half speed just so they can
1:34:58
Speaker 1: process everything that you said. That's hilarious. Cool. If you
1:35:02
Speaker 1: want to connect with BRUCEGFI dot org indeed and Bruce
1:35:06
Speaker 1: Friedrich on Twitter, Yes, Bruce G.
1:35:08
Speaker 2: Friedrich, Bruce g f on Twitter and LinkedIn. Yeah, there
1:35:11
Speaker 2: you go, man.
1:35:12
Speaker 1: And are you giving any speeches, public appearances or anything
1:35:15
Speaker 1: like that.
1:35:16
Speaker 2: I am kind of always giving speeches and public appearances.
1:35:19
Speaker 2: If people sign up for the GFI newsletter, you'll you'll
1:35:22
Speaker 2: find out about them. There you go, all right, pleasure
1:35:24
Speaker 2: my friend. Thanks Rich, Peace, peace plants, clean meat.
1:35:30
Speaker 1: Amen