In short
Podcast Summary: Moonshots with Peter Diamandis
Episode Title
Slaughter-Free Meat, Coming Soon To Your Dinner Tables w/ Josh Tetrick | EP #58
Podcast Overview In this episode, Peter Diamandis interviews Josh Tetrick, the CEO of GOOD Meat, discussing the revolutionary concept of producing meat without slaughtering animals. The conversation covers GOOD Meat's journey from a small studio apartment to a large facility in Alameda, California, and Tetrick's vision for a sustainable and ethical food system.
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Key Themes
- The Vision of GOOD Meat
- Objective: Produce meat without animal slaughter, revolutionizing the food system to reduce harm to animals and the environment.
- Philosophy: Just because something has been done a certain way for a long time doesn't mean it's the best method.
- Historical Context
- Conventional Animal Agriculture:
- Emerged post-World War II, with significant impacts on resources and animal welfare.
- Statistics:
- One-third of the planet is dedicated to feeding farm animals.
- More greenhouse gas emissions from animal agriculture than all transportation sources combined.
- The Process of Cultivated Meat Production
- Methodology:
- Cultivated meat starts from an animal cell, which is grown in bioreactors under controlled conditions.
- Comparison to brewing: large stainless steel vessels are used to cultivate meat.
- Final products are structured (e.g., nuggets, patties) through an extrusion process.
- Health and Environmental Benefits
- Health Improvements:
- Reduction of antibiotics and zoonotic disease risks.
- Potential for meat with healthier attributes (e.g., lower cholesterol).
- Environmental Impact:
- Reduces land use, water consumption, and emissions compared to traditional meat production.
- Challenges and Opportunities Ahead
- Regulatory Hurdles:
- Approval processes with agencies like the FDA and USDA are lengthy but necessary for safety.
- Scaling Production:
- Current production is small-scale; large-scale operations are needed for widespread availability.
- Plans to expand into beef, pork, and seafood in the future.
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Interesting Insights
- Storytelling:
- Tetrick emphasizes the importance of storytelling in conveying the mission and vision of GOOD Meat, making it relatable and engaging for consumers.
- Cultural Shifts:
- The potential for cultivated meat to challenge the norms of animal agriculture and meet the growing demand for sustainable protein sources.
- Future Aspirations:
- Aiming by 2040 for the majority of meat consumed globally to be cultivated instead of slaughtered.
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Conclusion Josh Tetrick’s ambitious vision for GOOD Meat encapsulates a transformative approach to how humanity thinks about and produces food. The episode calls for a re-evaluation of current agricultural practices, encouraging listeners to consider the ethical, environmental, and health implications of their food choices. Through innovation and storytelling, Tetrick aims to change the meat industry for the better, paving the way for a future that prioritizes sustainability and compassion.
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Further Resources
- GOOD Meat: [Website](https://www.goodmeat.co)
- Peter Diamandis: Follow him on X [@PeterDiamandis](https://x.com/PeterDiamandis)
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Key Takeaways
- Cultivated meat offers a viable solution to many of the ethical and environmental challenges posed by conventional meat production.
- Effective storytelling can significantly enhance consumer engagement and understanding of new technologies.
- The future of food production may shift towards local, sustainable methods, reducing reliance on extensive land use and animal agriculture.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00We want to make meat without the need to slaughter a single animal. We need to reinvent how we produce high quality protein for individuals. Let's get folks to meat they want, but let's just make it in a different better way. Just because we used to do something an old way for a long time doesn't mean it's the best way to do it. The chicken that we eat for food today is not the original chicken. When you need to slaughter an animal for food, you have to feed that animal. Why not just skip a lot of that process? And people go, that's disgusting. And my answer is, have you ever actually been in a slaughterhouse?
0:38And you look at Salmonella, you look at E. Collod, you look at Feeful Contamination. It's a definition of cruelty. I want us to create food that is causing a whole less harm. I don't know why we have to cause any harm to any living thing if we don't absolutely have to.
0:58Everybody, Peter Damon, just here and welcome to Moon Shots. On this episode, we're going to have an amazing conversation with a Moon Shot entrepreneur, Josh Tetrick, who is the CEO of Good Meat. Now here's the question, would you eat lab -grown meat, lab -grown chicken, fish, pork, tuna, whatever it might be? We're going to hear about the technology to feed the world with benefits to you, your pocketbook, your body and the planet. Josh is amazing. He's also one of the best story tellers. He's going to teach us why storytelling as a moonshot entrepreneur is so critically important. All right, get ready for something that's going to blow your mind and make you hungry.
1:38Let's jump into the episode. Everybody, Peter here, welcome to moonshots. I'm here with a dear friend, a brilliant entrepreneur, Josh Tetrick. Josh, good to see you, pal. Hey, Peter. Good to see you. We're on the planet are you today? I am in the East Bay and Alameda California, so Alameda is where headquarters is Is best is it exactly where I was last time has it grown and expanded into new territories? It has yet grown and expanded. Yes, we start off in a studio apartment in Southern California Then we move to a garage in the mission in San Francisco Then we move to the last place that you saw which was an old bread company I remember that.
2:20Now we've moved to Alameda a little bit more, professionalized a little bit, a better live infrastructure, our production facility, and a team of people who are making this happen. You know, let's kick off with your moonshot because it's an ambitious moonshot that, in reality, billions of people around the world want you to succeed with how would you describe your moonshot at good meat? We want to make meat without the need to slaughter a single animal. We think the world's most consumed meat shouldn't require billions of animals, shouldn't require a third of our planet, just a plant swimming core to feed those animals.
2:56We think we can make meat in a smarter way, and that process is called cultivating meat instead of slaughtering meat. And it's a chance to reinvent what we humans have been doing for hundreds of thousands and millions of years. You know, often thought about the fact that just because we used to do something an old way for a long time Doesn't mean it's the best way to do it I don't think people realize the implications on every aspect of our lives and the environment of our food systems or food economics If you want to just jump in one second and talk about that Yes, so we've as a species been eating animals for for millions, excuse me, for tens of thousands of years, first with the spear, and then really beginning in the 1950s, we began to mechanize, industrialize the process.
3:54There was a chicken farmer in Delaware who got an extra order of chickens and shouldn't have enough space for them outdoors. So she said, well, maybe I'll move inside my house. And that was really the beginning of what we call conventional animal agriculture, where we could farm billions of animals to feed ourselves. The issue with that though is that about a third of our planet today is dedicated just to feeding those animals that we saw. I'll say it again for your listeners because it's a harder thing to really wrap one's brain around. A third of our planet is... Like a third of the landmass of planet Earth.
4:34One third of it. So you know, we see those you know those potential sources of intelligent life that may or may not have been visiting us through the you know the recent congressional investigations Imagine them coming down here and doing a survey of the planet and then asking themselves well How are they using this planet and one of the aliens tells you on what seems like a third of it is dedicated to this food Well, is it for them? No, no, it's it's to feed the animals that they eat and then you know So they probably then leave right away because they determine that we're not the most null of the species.
5:06But that third of the planet that we used to feed the animals we eat, the total volume of that food is actually more than we feed the billion people are going to bed hungry every single night. It's insane. Yeah, the second issue with the consumption of all these animals is that when we look at what is driving climate change, all of the billions of animals that are slaughtered for our consumption are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all the transportation sources combined. So many of the soy and corn fields that are planted are where biodiverse rainforests used to stand, which are sucking in carbon from the atmosphere and helping to mitigate climate change.
5:48Third, the animals we are often pack body to body in small spaces and that leads to a breeding ground of zoonotic diseases like a mad bowel disease or like an avian flu. And then the last thing, Peter, and this is the thing that resonates the most with me. Not the most with investors or my friends. I don't know why we have to cause any harm to any living thing if we don't absolutely have to. You know, it's fascinating. First of all, I love those three massively compelling reasons. I think the, along with the first reason you brought up, is the fact that as people are moving out of extreme poverty to poverty to middle class, they all want higher and higher quality protein.
6:39And who are we to say they can't? And if they can, then what do you clear cut more rainforests? Do you chop down city buildings and plant crops there to feed them? We need to reinvent how we produce high quality protein for individuals. Yeah, I spent a little bit of time in South Saren Africa and one of the countries I worked in Liberia, which is the third poorest country on the planet. These two security guards were outside the building I was working in. And I, every day when I would come in and leave, I'd say hi to them and we'd talk a lot about food. And I would notice that 29 out of the 30 days of the month, they would be eating corn, potatoes, cheap plant -based foods.
7:32And then one day of the month, and it was the day they got paid, they'd be eating chicken and beef. And, you know, I thought in that moment just how difficult the situation is because I want them to get paid. I want them to get paid more. I want them to rise up the income, ladder, and have improved livelihoods. But as they do that, they're going to want to just like us consume more chicken and beef and pork and lamb and seafood. And how do we allow them to do that without creating the incredible pressure that it's placing on our health and our environment, our ocean ecosystems. And I think the way around it is, let's give folks a meat they want, but let's just make it in a different better way.
8:15I'm in. I wanna go back to that store you told about the woman bringing the chickens into the house. And I wanna, I was fascinated prepping for this session. I asked myself the question, how many chickens are there on planet earth? And when I Googled that, I was blown away. I think people have no idea how many chickens are on planet Earth, or cows or sheep or pigs. What's the number you keep in your head for a number of chickens on the planet? It's about 90 billion, at least I've seen. Peter, what's amazing about the volume of farm animals is the total biomass of the chickens, of the cows, of the pigs that are slaughtered every year is more than the total biomass of every other animal human and other non -human animals combined.
9:08There was an article I read about, you know, what would be the most relevant traces of humanity millions of years from now? Like what would be our defining feature? chicken poop. Someone suggests chicken months. Wow. And I hope we're known for a little bit more than that. I hope so too. I hope so too. So this woman brings the chicken into her home. Why did she do that? And then what happened next? And how did we end up going from I don't know hundreds of thousands to, you know, tens of billions of chickens on this planet? Yeah. So yeah, so she had a nice little outdoor farm and this is, this is how farm animals used to be raised and it's still the conception that we often have today, right?
9:57Our animals come from a farm with a red barn and a little girl, you know, catching butterflies in a net, but that's a fantasy vision. But back in the day it was actually true. So she lived in Delaware and she had a home with about 50 chickens in her yard, basically in her backyard. And she got a delivery. And this time the delivery truck was much bigger than it usually is and it had about 500 chickens and she didn't have enough space in her backyard. So she thought, okay, well, I don't want to turn down this delivery. I'll just bring them inside and bring inside then did a really important thing for the animal industry.
10:35It then stimulated this movement where animals can be raised in much closer quarters and much higher densities. And by raising animals in much higher densities, you can produce more meat per square inch. You can produce more meat per minute per day, per hour per month. And that obviously is a big motivator for meat companies. So that accident, I think our first name is Cecilia, then led to the advent of the conventional animal protein industry that we have today. Because this was after World War II, you had people moving the suburbs, they had more income, and there was a real demand for more animal protein.
11:14And companies begin to realize that there are a lot of technology as automation that was being used previously in the automotive industry that could be applied to animal protein. And that's what happened. So that was the birth of Purdue and Tyson's and all the massive industrialization of this industry. That's right. That's right. It was also the birth Peter of a whole new kind of bird. So the chicken that we eat for food today is not the original chicken. The original chicken is called the jungle foul. It was athletic. A fly to the top of trees was a very agile predator. But what we've done to that jungle foul is we've created sort of a monster chicken.
12:03The chicken we have today lives until 45 days. is it's breast isn't large, it can barely stand up. Its colors have been wiped away, only to have white feathers. It's engineered for a single purpose to make as much chicken as quickly as it possibly can before it's slogged and then fed to us. So it is a genetically hardwired chicken for food consumption and nothing else. Yeah, I don't think people realize, as people talk about where I'm anti -GMO and I, you know, not for this. But we've been genetically modifying our foods intensely, whether it is the chicken, as you just said, or an ear of corn that 100 ,000 years ago was the size of, you know, my pinky and had like five kernels on it.
12:52It's amazing. And from that innovation to today's industry, protein industry, it's the number one consumed protein on the planet by far, isn't it? It is, yeah, it's chicken and then it's pork and then beef and then lamb. The thing about these animal protein companies and what we did, no one including, including a thinker named Cecilia, who moved this chicken's indoors, was doing it for bad intentions. They weren't doing it thinking, I really want to inflict harm on the planet or these animals today. They were doing it because this seems like a more efficient way to produce animal protein. That was the logic So I you know I step back and I get it I can see how that could happen.
13:39I see the logic of it the problem is When you begin to expand that industry to serve the needs of seven eight plus billion people You then have a big issue Because when you need to slaughter an animal for food you have to feed that animal And when you have to feed that animal, then you need all this land and all this water and all these resources. And that, it's the sort of the idea that you have to slaughter the animal in the first place is the first inefficiency. And if you can somehow change the paradigm that you can get meat without that slaughter, you can create a more efficient way of making meat.
14:23One of the things I love about you, Josh, other than amazing human heart and entrepreneur, is your storytelling. And we've talked about this before. And those listening, I want you to listen carefully to Josh as he tells his stories, because it's part of what you built inside your organization. And as we're serving entrepreneurs here, I'm going to come back to storytelling as one one of the most important skills an entrepreneur can have. So if you listen to that conversation about Cecile or what happened in this farmhouse, it brings it, it makes it vivid. And we, as humans, are storytellers. And we consume data as stories.
15:07So tell me the story if you would of the first time. So you had been running Eat Just, which we'll talk about a little bit prior to this. And like I like to say, an overnight success after 11 years of hard work, you started it back in 2011 looking at the monk being, right? The monk being. Yeah, the monk being able to be scrambled and cooked like eggs. And it's amazing if anybody's ever eaten the just egg products. But I remember when you pulled me aside, I was visiting your facility, your last facility, and you said we're going into cultured meat. And we can talk about whether, you know, back then I was thinking we're calling it stem cell grown meats or lab grown meats.
15:57But what was that founding story? What was going on? When did you, you know, click in that, like there's an opportunity? Because it's massive as compared to anything else. It is. While I'll go back to, I'll go back a little bit. I was raised in Birmingham, Alabama on a lot of chicken. I remember getting off the bus at Chelsea Middle School when I was 10 and if I was lucky my mom would have a plate of chicken wings and collard greens waiting for me. I remember eating chicken sandwiches at Burger King. I remember eating lots of meat at outdoor barbecues before football games. I grew up in a meat culture.
16:38That's always been with me. The second important step was I read a paper when I was in law school. I was in a constitutional law class by this profession named Catherine McKinnon and she was teaching a solid class, but I was more interested in this NASA paper on culturing goldfish for long -term space exploration. I don't know why they picked goldfish. Goldfish. I don't know why, but they had run the experiment where they wanted to see if they could culture goldfish for long -term spaceflight. And then as we built the company, I began to think, well, what else could we do that would be next? What else could we do that if we solved it, wouldn't just solve a portion of the problem, but might solve almost all of the problem.
17:34And I thought about all the folks I grew up with really good people who love meat, right? I thought about the challenges in the plant -based industry, sometimes no matter how good it tastes, the fact that it's not actually meat is a limiting step for good people to choose it. And I thought about the technology around cultivating meat. And then I also had my best friend co -founder of the company who's always there to push me to do things. His name is also Josh who said, you know what? You should go for it. So we decided that that would be what we would do next. And we began a small research program to investigate it and that eventually led to where we are.
18:16What year was that? It's about five years ago. And I take me through this because you had been working with plant proteins. In fact, you had built one of the most extraordinary databases of all plant proteins out there and their attributes and how they combine to create different kinds of foods. It was amazing. You had a lab full of protein scientists and Michelin -Charsthar chefs as well to cook it. That's right. Yeah. And so, wasn't there a story that involved your dog as well? Well, my buddy Jake, who I lost a little bit ago, we named the initial project, the Jake Project, is a nod to him and what he did for my life.
19:09So, the Jake Project had started on an idea that this is a big chance to really impact food insecurity and do something good for the world uplift humanity. What did you do next? So what is what is a moon shot entrepreneur like you do when you have that big problem? Do you hire people? Do you do research? Do you like what's the what was step one in this venture? Step one was figuring out what the current state of the researches. So we had a few of our scientists talk to people who had looked at this in the past. We had our scientists look at what's happening in the world of bio -pharmaceutical research and production around cell line development and production.
19:54We had them gather information to see what is the current status of where cultivating meat is so we could then plan our next steps. So our scientists spent six to eight months doing that. And what they came back with is a lot of the techniques being used in the bio pharmaceutical world around cell line development and culturing cells could be applied to this. There's been very little thought on how to translate that to food production. And there's nothing just from the first principles perspective that would make anyone think that this isn't doable. So that was enough to say, let's now take the next step and really begin hiring people to build a program to attempt to really do it.
20:42So you hire those people, you have, and I love the fact that you use zero first principle thinking, right? This is what Elon attributes to his success. It's like, is there anything fundamentally that will prevent this from actually happening? And if there's not, then you can look at from a first principle, will this be as cost effective or more cost effective than the alternative? And here the answer appears to be sure. You don't have to grow the entire whole animal here. You can just grow the meat segment of it. And so it should be cheaper and it should be more cost effective. And can it be healthier?
21:18Can it be better for the environment? So I think check, check, check, all the way down that line. So you hire people and talk about the early days, Did you buy the equipment and start producing in -house? I mean, was it easy? Was it a challenge? What kind of failures did you face in that first instantiation of this effort? We learned an important lesson in the first year or two, which was a lot of the solutions to this are already out there. They're just in different industries. For example, the process of cell line development. Biopharmaceutical manufacturing has really got that down. The processing, culturing cells in the case of a vaccine to produce antibodies.
22:09Biopharma companies have got that down. Food production is really good at taking a raw material and converting it to a finished product. So we learned that there wasn't some magic new breakthrough idea. It was really a process of combining these different elements across different industries together. And that was a really important insight for us. And then we eventually learned, which is related to where we are now, just because you can do it on a small scale. and we were making bits of chicken back in the day, doesn't mean A, it will get approved by regulators, B, folks outside your friends and your family will like it, and then C, that you can actually scale it up.
22:59Yeah, I think, turning into a business is a challenge. So let's take that a little bit of time. First of all, when I talk about cultured meat and I'm on stage and I'm like, you know, just super excited. I'm saying, listen, we're going to make this more efficient, right? Because what is meat products today? It's photons from the sun, 93 million miles away, traveled to the earth, they get absorbed by chloroplasts and plants, and they get eaten by the animal that then digest them and turns them into proteins and then the muscle, and then you eat that portion of the animal. And you're really effectively eating embodied energy from the sun in this regard.
23:40But why not just skip a lot of that process? And people go, that's disgusting. And my answer is, have you ever actually been in a slaughterhouse? It's not. It's beautiful. So how do you go from a, you know, so let's talk about the technology a piece at a time, if we would, and I want to come back to the environment and cultural elements, you get those cells from where and what type of cells are you starting with for a chicken product? Yeah, and I do want to get back to this idea of people hearing about it for the first time and thinking it sounds strange or gross or you know, Ick because there's a lot going on there.
24:34So hopefully we can get back to that. Let's unpack that because yeah it's the most beautiful form of cleanest form of food we're going to have in the future I believe. Yeah okay so let's talk about so I think first First, the first thing to do with it, step one is realizing where a meat comes from today. And in order to realize where a meat comes from today, one really has to disentangle the Old MacDonald had a farm fantasy from what actually is. And what actually is a antibiotic fed engineer chicken lasting for 45 days. about 100 ,000 to 200 ,000 in a warehouse that never sees the light, never sees that farmers little girls catching butterflies in our net or that red barn, they just see a warehouse and then they're slaughtered and it's a very similar story for other farm animals.
25:31So that is the meat we eat today. That's 90%. It's a definition of cruelty. Yeah, and that's that's 99 % of it. And for you know, some folks who do choose pastures or other much better forms of meat, just an important reminder that might be your choice, but 99 % is that. So you sort of got to get people there. Now as it relates to cultivated meat, something that would be much better in some ways in cultivated meat would be if people just ate beans and greens and fruit, we just get a step altogether. But that's a challenge because just like people like driving cars sometimes instead of walking to work, you got to meet people where they are.
26:15But as it relates to cultivating meat specifically, it starts with a cell. And you can get that cell from a cell bank, you can get it from a biopsy of an animal, you can get it from a fresh piece of meat. And we get ours that's currently being sold from a cell bank and that original cell comes from an egg. And let me pause you there because one of the things that you don't feel don't realize is if you're starting with a cell bank where you have a very characterised cell, you can actually pick the original genetic stock if you would of the chicken, the fish, the pig, whatever that is the most healthiest, right?
27:00The baddest tasting. And you can raise, you know, people to have a different cuts a meat and this one tastes better. Imagine if the cost of creating the best cut of meat or chicken is identical. It's independent because you just pick the original source DNA if you would of that cell. That's an incredible idea. That's exactly right. It's a way of, it's a much more precise way of getting and clean way of getting the meat that we want. After you identify the appropriate cell line, then you need to identify the right feed for that cell line. So in the same way that a chicken or a cow or a pig in a warehouse is consuming swank corn and muscle and fat are building up on their bones before they're slaughtered, the cells need to consume, and they're consuming vitamins and minerals and amino acids.
27:55It's some of the same stuff that's made up, that's when corn is made up of. After you've identified the right feed stock, you then take that cell line with the appropriate feed and then you begin manufacturing your meats. And that meat is manufactured in a stainless steel vessel called a bioreactor. It's creating the conditions for that cell to grow. And over the course of about three weeks, that cell is doubling until you get what amounts to raw chicken or beef or pork in that vessel. And we're talking about the muscle cells, right? This is the muscle which is the meat that we eat, whether it's of any of these animals.
28:42And so you're cultivating and growing these muscle cells in this medium, in this growth medium. Well, you can do muscle, you can do fat. So it depends what you're trying to optimize for. And then after about three weeks, you're removing, so just if you're listening, just imagine a stainless steel vessel that looks somewhat similar to what a brewery would look like. And imagine taking the top off that stainless steel vessel and what you see when you look down it is raw, unstructured chicken beef or pork. Then you take that out of the vessel, the technical term is you harvest it from that vessel.
29:23Is it a slurry? Is it a thick pudding -like substance? What does it feel like or look like? It looks like, and I need to figure out a better way to communicate this one, is it looks like, take a chicken breast, put it in a Vitamix on low blend for, I don't know, 45 seconds. That's what it looks like. Got it. Okay. So then we take it out of that vessel, and then we run it through a process called extrusion, which is applying heat and pressure to the raw chicken beef or pork and creating what the end product is, whether that's a chicken nugget or a chicken strip or a hamburger, and then we feed it to the consumer.
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30:08So from a real... You're restructuring it, essentially, giving it structure once again. Exactly, exactly. So from cell to feed, to vessel, to finish product, to shipment, to a restaurant, all without the need to slaughter an animal. And today it's being done on very small scales, both in Singapore where we're selling and now the United States where we're also selling. And, first of all, congrats just for folks who haven't watched this sector as closely as I have Josh and and Goodmeat was the first to get approval in Singapore, the first to get approval in the world in Singapore and is one of one of two or just one of one in the US with FDA approval.
31:00One of two one of two that have both FDA and USDA approval and have sold in the United States. Amazing. Amazing. So super excited about that. And so it's the end, let's talk about the end goal here, which is going to be healthier for you, cheaper for you, locally generated, better for the planet, and we can parse those a little bit. So talk about where this could be produced. Can you imagine having a good meat or your production partners in every city around the world? Will I eventually buy products that are produced locally versus shipped from around the world? Yeah, the things that you need are talent.
31:48So talent that you would have that would work in food production or biopharmaceutical production. So you want to have an environment you get like that. But you don't need the same land. So a country like Singapore, the reason they're behind it, a country like Qatar or Saudi, the reason they're looking into it, is because you don't require all the land and all the water and all the resources. You can make the same amount of meat in a much smaller space. So in the future, yeah, you'll have cultivated meat facilities in suburbs and urban areas. You can be much closer to the production. And one of the key things and what we'll get into this more is the economics of building those facilities today are probably the biggest limiting step to this happening faster.
32:39We're using principles that are being applied in the world of biopharmaceutical production, but these stainless steel vessels that we're talking about need to be much larger. And they have to be designed and engineered and and purchase and installed. And that's a real limiting step to ultimately this being the meat that we all consume, surmountable, but a challenge. But no different than Tesla going from the Roadster to the Model Y and three. Exactly. Healthier for you, there are no antibiotics in the process. You control the entire process, start to finish and can keep it really healthy. And what the cells eat as well is carefully controlled.
33:21That's right. So can we create a healthier product as a result of that? Yeah, we think about health in a few different dimensions. So first is today we believe it to be healthier because you don't have all the antibiotics used. You don't have the risk of zoonotic disease. When you look at cultivated versus conventional and you look at salmonella, you look at ecoli, you look at fecal contamination, non -existent in the cultivated space, but very much existent in the conventional space. But other health metrics like saturated fat, like cholesterol, they're more or less the same. That's today. In a future state, you could imagine creating beef that has significantly less saturated fat, beef has more protein, beef that's potentially cholesterol -free.
34:16Now that's going to require some advancements in gene editing, so we have a CRISPR program that's happening internally. And so applying CRISPR to cultivate in meat has really significant potential to create meat products that are more cost -effective and healthier than the conventional sources. Love that. Let's talk about cost. I mean, for me, I talk about the 60s of exponential when you digitize and dematerialize and demonetize and democratize. This is the chance for us to effectively digitize food production in a form. How low cost could it get? I mean, right now, if I understand correctly, you're basically selling these chicken products at the same price in the US and Singapore, but you're taking the loss at Ono sales, is that correct?
35:11That's right. Where could it get to? Yeah, so right now, the average price of, let me take a step back. So the market for me today is about a trillion dollars. Wow. The average price, and so tens of billions of animals are slaughtered every year. They're sold, market, a trillion. about half of that trillion. Our products like sausages, chicken nuggets, chicken strips, ground beef, minced pork, and then the other half are steaks, more products with bones in them. That's roughly how it split. Roughly the average cost of meat today of the main sources of meat is about four dollars. If you combine chicken, beef and pork.
35:53Per kilogram per pound. Per pound. And now we're stuck in the US on this old imperial system. There has to be a world history. Yeah, about $4 per pound. So our cost a day without saying exactly what is, is many, many, many times the cost of conventional production today. We see a path over the next 10 years to get at or below the cost of that conventional production. So at or below $4. And then ultimately to get even more significantly below the cost of that as advances in gene editing as advances in production and efficiency take on decades from now. There are really three key things that have to happen to get us from where we are today, which is we made some history.
36:42We're selling Singapore to butcher shop. We made some history, hosting Andres, one of the best chefs in the world, is offering this at his restaurant on a menu in Washington DC. But how do we get from those two historic things to something a lot more? First is you've got to make this meat in much larger vessels. It would be like if you and I started a micro brewery, we're probably not going to compete with a cost of Budweiser, because they're making in much, much larger vessels. So therefore, it's a lot more efficient. They're buying a lot more ingredients and it's going to be very difficult to approach their costs.
37:20So we need to get our vessels from where they are today, which is about 3500 liters to north of 100 ,000 liters. That's step one. And there's design and engineering challenges, nothing that is can't be done, but design and engineering challenges and also capital challenges to be able to spend the money to get these companies to actually make it. Second is the feed costs. So our feed costs are above a dollar a liter today. We need to get them into the tens of cents per liter right about 20 cents a liter. How do you do that? Well, you've got to buy a lot more feed and you also need to remove some of the components of the feed.
38:03So basically right now, Peter, we've stuffed a whole lot of stuff in there just to ensure that it's working well. A lot of it not particularly necessary in terms of amino acids and vitamins and minerals. We want to reduce the amount by more of it in third and to metric called cell density. So for the exact same reason why Cecilia, you know, many decades ago decided that she was cool with moving those birds indoors, denser operations with farm animals lead to lower cost of production. Denseer operations and cultivated meat production lead to lower cogs, lead to more efficient production. So we want our cell densities to climb so we can make more meat in the given period of time.
38:45So it's really the path to cost parity in below goes through bigger vessels, lower feed costs, and higher cell densities. Nice. I want to talk about the name a second. So cultured meat, I get it, but I've also heard this call lab grown meat and stem cell grown meat and you've probably heard a few other variants as well. Are those all accurate ways to speak to this and is cultured meet your favorite for a particular reason? So our favorite is cultivated meat. Okay, cultivated meat. Cultivated meat is our preference. Okay. Today, my preference in the future is meat. So I want to drop the cultivated.
39:31I think that, so for most people out there, If you've heard of this, you probably know of it as lab ground. That's far in a way the most common way of describing what this is. So what is true is there's been a lot of research in a lab. That's true to make this happen. Just like with conventional animal production, there's been a lot of research in a lab to ultimately get to that chicken that is engineered to make as much breast meat as you possibly can. But Jose Andress, And I have our first purchase order somewhere around my house here. Congratulations. He's not buying the product from the lab.
40:11He's buying it from a production facility that is certified by the USDA. The USDA provided a grant of inspection for our production facility, not our lab. So the reason why we think, at least what we do, should be called cultivating. We should drop the lab is this is a legit production facility. and many food products from yogurt to conventional animal protein to fruit roll hooks started in a lab but we think it's you know now time to to drop it. With that said you know I always need to remember Peter that this is what I do every day but my friends in Alabama are not hanging out in research labs with folks developing cell lines from cows from Japan all day long.
41:05It's a brand new for a lot of people's strain sounding thing and we need to explain what the hell it is and we need to be really open about it and we need to be really open about what the comparison is and my hope is just like with you know my phone which I would never, if my brother was holding this phone, I would never say his name is Jordan, he Jordan passed a smartphone. I just ached him my phone. My hope is eventually all these labels drop and we just call it, we just call it meat, but I'll probably sell a bit more before we get there. All right. And in fact, you call it good meat in particular.
41:44Yeah. So and by the way, if people are interested, Josh's website is goodmeat .co and you can check it out there. All right, I see a future in which it's vertical farms and cultivated meat that is really leveling the playing field and bringing us towards food security around the world, right? Because you don't have to worry about transportation miles, which by the way is a good chunk of the cost, right, for a lot of meals. Can you speak to that? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, you don't, if you think about someone in North Carolina right now and let's say a student at UNC Chapel Hill they're going to their cafe and they're having a hamburger.
42:33That hamburger came for often or actually say a pork sandwich. That pork could have been shipped from China fed by swing corn that was grown in Brazil and then shipped to UNC's distribution house owned by Cisco right before that you know college student who's probably studying microbiology is is eating it you know eating it for lunch right? Didn't have to be that way. You could have a big cultivated meat facility right there in the research triangle, right? Who's just supplying that distribution house directly. So yeah, the way we do meet production today is just done because it was a continuation of what happened in Delaware.
43:24You know, North of 50 years ago. And I mentioned this before, but Singapore has an initiative called 30 by 30, where they're aiming to get 30 % of their food produced domestically by the end of the decade. And AC cultivated meat is being an important, in addition to vertical farms, is being an important part of that. They can own their food supply. They can control their food supply. They don't have to outsource it to another country, to another group. Which is important for the Middle East and North Africa as well, right? The whole of the United Kingdom. Let's talk about beyond chicken. Where are you going next?
44:05And what are the protein sources that could be actually turned into cultivated meats? Yeah, so we're working on beef as our next product and then pork is the next product after that and then we'll get into seafood probably starting with tuna. There's, and I love tuna and I've stopped eating it for two reasons, right? I hate the fact that we are decimating our oceans and killing most of the large sea life. And then I just don't want to take the mercury risk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. I think a lot of people would choose that too if they took a breath and thought about it. But yeah, when you cultivate meat, it's really an unlimited kinds of protein that you can cultivate, if you want to cultivate pork or beef or lamb or salmon.
45:02One of the biggest challenges for the types of products you can make however are bones are difficult, right? So if you want to make a chicken bone that's more challenging. I don't know how to do that yet. Probably need to find some random NASA paper and figure out maybe they've tried. I'll introduce you to Dean Kamen. You know Dean. I know I know of him. Yeah, so Dean is running an organization in New Hampshire called the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute and it's a couple hundred million dollars DOD but a lot of universities and corporations and what he was given was the challenge of going, of generating and abundant supply of replacement organs for humans.
45:47And so he is all about process and manufacturing process. And I'm shocked I haven't introduced you, so I will do this. So what he's built is the capability to put in on one end stem cells, in fact, induced pluripotent stem cells. And out the end, those stem cells grow in large populations, as you well know, we talked about that earlier, and then differentiating them and then producing organs. And so the first that he created was bone ligament bone segments for surgeries, knee surgeries, ankle surgeries using human derived stem cells, but he's going then to pediatric hearts and kidneys and lungs.
46:31And so that capability is resonant and I should definitely connect you guys will love each other as incredible entrepreneurs. Yeah, thanks for that. Thanks for all for that. Yeah, I'm going to ask a related question. Have you read the book Hail Mary by Andy Wehr? I'm reading it now. Yeah, I'm reading it now. Yeah, you know, it really resonated with me because I think it's that kind of mindset. that this, we just have to figure it out, all hands on deck, all the different disciplines necessary, get in a room and figure the shit out or else, you need that mindset for this. Yeah, the famous line from his other book, The Martian was, we're going to engineer the shit out of this.
47:21Yeah. Right. And I love that. Well, I'm going to give you a spoiler alert at the very end. And the hero finds himself on an alien planet that has, let's say, life that's incompatible with human digestion. And so he, at the end, discloses the fact that he's living off of me, burgers, me, burgers. Right? So the idea that you can sample your own stem cells and grow your own protein products. Right. He probably read that same NASA paper. So a lot of thought about that. It's a little funny, strange, but still hilarious. Going back to what we were saying earlier, you were talking about where this is going for different protein sources.
48:09Yeah. Yeah, so bones are a challenge. And also the more highly structured a product is. So for example, a steak is more challenging to do than ground beef. A pork chop is more challenging to do than mint's pork. A chicken thigh is more challenging to do than a chicken breast. So we're starting off with simpler products. So with nuggets, with chicken strips, with patties, with sausage, with mint's pork, we want to build up the technology to scale to be able to do that. and then eventually get to these more highly structured products. And along the way, really work to educate people about what the heck this is and why it matters.
48:56Everybody, this is Peter. A quick break from the episode. I'm a firm believer that science and technology and how entrepreneurs can change the world is the only real news out there worth consuming. I don't watch the Crisis News Network, I call CNN or Fox, and hear every devastating piece of news on the planet. I spend my time training my neural net the way I see the world by looking at the incredible breakthroughs in science and technology. How entrepreneurs are solving the world's grand challenges. What the breakthroughs are in longevity. How exponential technologies are transforming our world.
49:33So twice a week I put out a blog. One blog is looking at the future of longevity, age reversal, biotech, increasing your health span. The other blog looks at exponential technologies, AI, 3D printing, synthetic biology, AR, VR, blockchain. These technologies are transforming what you as an entrepreneur can do. If this is the kind of you use you want to learn about and shape your neural nets with, go to demandus .com, backslashblog, and learn more. Now back to the episode. So, you know, I love when I'm trying to guide and inspire entrepreneurs, I say, listen, I want you to find your massive transformative purpose and then the moonshots that are on that canvas of your purpose.
50:20And I feel like your first moonshot was what you did with, you know, eat just and the monk fruit and creating a new form of plant to arrive protein. And then this is the second moonshot you're taking on that canvas of transforming how you feed the world in a more compelling, healthier, civil fashion. I love storytelling. And would you mind taking a second and talking about your storytelling philosophy inside of your company? And tell it to the perspective of teaching other entrepreneurs out there how important it is and why you do it. You know, it goes back to no matter what we're doing or how advanced it might be from a technology perspective, you can't take the just primal human out of the modern human.
51:22And storytelling is just wound up in our DNA. And other than I just think this acknowledgement that it just is so very human, I think about the things that have really stuck with me. And it's often when someone that I respect is telling me a story that is visceral, that is emotional, that is concrete, that sometimes has contrast in it. All these things, not only have I seen resonate with me on my life, but then when I've looked into the evidence of it, is very much evidence -based. When you share authentic stories that have emotion, that have specific details, that have something that's unexpected or something that's contrasted, It is just much more likely that it will resonate with another human animal that you're talking to.
52:24A good example of that is there's been a lot of research in how organizations will raise money for folks that are living under a dollar a day. And you can say that over a billion people are living under a dollar a day and you should donate to help them or you can say there's a young girl named Rebecca. She lives in a township in Liberia. She likes to play soccer at lunch. She's corn for dinner. She wants to be a musician when she grows up and you should consider helping her. And that is just so much more effective than the big number. And I think the challenge and I still got to work on this is, you still got to talk about the numbers.
53:19You still got to talk about these bigger meta issues, but it just has to be done with an understanding that we're not just talking to AI agents. For now, we're talking to primal human beings who are hardwired to listen to each other around the fire. And that just can't be forgotten. Do you actually take the time with your team to teach them storytelling? And do you create stories as an entrepreneurial team? Or do you share the stories and allow others to tell them? Can you go a little bit into that? because I think it's such a powerful element. And your point is absolutely right, our brains are wired for storytelling around a campfire.
54:09And we lose interest when we hear about big numbers that we can't relate to. We relate to single individuals. We relate to an individual in our tribe. We relate to an emotional experience. We are emotional animals. But yet when we're coming at this, we either talk about dollars or big numbers. but it doesn't create a visceral connection. And I just, you know, when I asked you on this podcast, it's like the number one thing I want people to get out of this is the power of storytelling, because you said, you do such a beautiful job, and I learned a lot of this from you, and also from Tony Robbins and others, as I hear them giving compelling stories.
54:49So let's take it a next step here. What's your advice for entrepreneurs here? Yeah, so I, we definitely on the sales team, and I talk to them a lot about, you know, when you're, you know, you're selling cultivated meat in talk about, there's this young kid named the deep in Singapore. He's the first person to try it and talk about what the deep said, talk about his reaction to it, talk about a young girl named Kaya, who was the first to eat it at this restaurant called 1880. But these are real stories. These are real stories. Yeah. And you're not making them up. They're real stories, but you're giving them your, your painting them in full spectrum color in details.
55:29Yeah, so I share with them use these real examples to communicate what this is. So cultivated meat doesn't come off as this abstraction of technology. Cultivated meat is much more than cell lines growing in a stainless steel vessel. It's a guy named Mr. Liu in Singapore who is initially hesitant to put cultivated meat on his menu to make chicken curry rice. And then his daughter said, dad, give this a try. And then he reluctantly said, all right, I'll put it on the menu. And then Mr. Lou had a line out the block of people wanting chicken curry cultivated chicken curry rice. So I really emphasize the importance of sharing these stories with our sales team and with anyone who's speaking externally.
56:22And then I just got, you know, I'm naturally doing it a lot. So people, you know, people pick up on it. One thing we just do at our headquarters now, Peter is all our offices in place for the team to meet. Our name after something that has a story behind it. So for example, our largest conference room is named Mr. Luz. It's named after that dad who's convinced by his daughter, the place where I work is called Reves Drive. And that's the story of how I founded the company on a street called Reves Drive in Southern California. Yes, it's become part of our culture. But if it's not real, if it's not authentic, the storytelling can land really flat and be counterproductive.
57:15And if it hits, it's something that it will be the thing that people remember and connects their heart and their mind with you. As with every entrepreneurial venture and I have had my full set of them, there are massive challenges, failures, recommitments, and then taking a shot at again. And do you have some stories to sort of incentivize people to pick up at 2am in the morning and keep going here? Well, I mean, we have almost, I've lost count of the times that we have almost run out of money over the course of last 10 plus years. I think I've lost count of the number of people that I thought were vital at the time who were really talented who decided to leave.
58:09And in the moment, I thought that is gonna change our trajectory entirely. But then we regroup, found other talented people and moved on. I haven't lost count of the number of term sheets that I thought we were gonna have that didn't actually end up transpiring in the end. that I think I've, you go through enough of these things where you sort of just have the expectation that a lot of shit is going to happen. And the best way to deal with all the shit that's going to happen is put your head down and just keep walking through it. And, you know, it reminds me I was thinking about like a good metaphor for this and back to Liberia.
59:04During the rainy season in Liberia, if you see like white people who are visiting Liberia for the first time, it's sunny and then a second later, it's storming down on them. And they're, freaking out. We've got to take cover, we're running around, and then you look at Liberians, and then just put their head down and they just walk right through it, because they know it's rainy season. And for me, it's always rainy season. I don't know when the storm is gonna come, but it's gonna come. And I'm just gonna have to keep walking through it. And I've gotta just know that you work to on something that's important and meaningful and you try to do it the right way.
59:49All you can do is try to increase the probability that you get it right. And that's the way to go about it. but not being surprised when the storm comes is a really important part, I think, of being an entrepreneur. You're going to have some crazy shit happen to you. You're going to have people who you care about, who you think are vital, who will leave you. You're going to have people that you think should be so loyal and then they're not. You're going to have investors pull their term sheets. That's the deal. Well, like that is the cost of doing something on your own. That's the cost of doing something that ultimately can be really important.
1:00:35And you got to be able to go into the cost of going big. Yeah. It's a lot easier to go incremental. But when you're trying to change the world, it's hard work. And I think people have this fanciful point of view that they'll look at you now, they'll look at what you've built. And oh man, Josh is so lucky, he's really smart, he's got an amazing team. And look at this overnight success. And little do they know all the trials and tribulations along the way. I mean, I think it's true for every major entrepreneur. I don't know anybody who's not gone through these ups and downs, right? The conversations with Elon around going through bankruptcy and borrowing money and going through divorce and leveraging everything for Tesla and SpaceX back in 2008, going from nothing to the wealthiest person in a decade's time.
1:01:27And just it's extraordinary. Would you say it's that emotional connection, that deep emotional purpose that keeps you moving forward?
1:01:44I mean, this is insane sometimes. Yeah, I just really think that is I have a lot of fun in doing what I do. I find it really creative. There's ego that's associated with it. All that's a part of it, but like at the bottom, like of all this, I want us to create food that is causing a whole less harm. I really want that. And I think putting my head down and getting through a lot of this pain that has happened that I know will happen in the future is for something that I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I deeply, when no one else is listening, when no one else is watching, when it's just me, when I'm not trying to impress anyone, I really, I really believe that that matters, that we shouldn't cause so much pain to ourselves and to animals and to our planet, just because we really wanna have bacon, just because we really wanna enjoy chicken nuggets to the football game, it doesn't have to be that way, so that that more than anything gets me through it.
1:03:12Nice. The other thing you have to get through is regulations. And man, oh man, I mean, there I don't think people, entrepreneurs, if you have a chance to choose building something in an unregulated industry versus a regulated industry like the FDA or the FAA. So how did you do it? I mean, I assume that there was a tremendous amount of not invented here. You're threatening a trillion dollar industry. Maybe the industry doesn't recognize how big the transformation could be. But can you talk about the regulatory process here and what was involved? Yes, so we received approval to sell in Singapore in late 2020.
1:04:03Actually, on Thanksgiving. How long did that take you? It's about a two and a half year process. So we submitted our application, waited for about two and a half years, going back and forth with this agency called the Singapore Food Authority, on all the questions that you would expect, where do you get the cell? How do you develop the cell line? What's happening in this vessel? How do you convert it? Did you bring them lunch in a, did you bring the SFA sort of chicken sandwiches and set here to try it? Yeah, we eventually did. We eventually got them and showed it to them. And then you have to this process that understandably they're trying to wrap the arms around, right?
1:04:41It's not, we didn't go into it expecting that regulators you can automatically get this. So they asked a lot of good questions. Singapore is one of the, I think, the most pragmatic evidence -based regulators out there. We get approval on Thanksgiving day 2020, then we won on the cell on December 20, 2020 to a group of young people, including that young kid I mentioned, Vadeep, who were the very first table, the very first humans experience cultivated meat ever in a commercial setting. And then we, in parallel, we had submitted an application to the FDA. And that was about a two -year -long process, also.
1:05:28Very similar questions to the Singapore Food Authority, where to get the cell, what's the feed made up of? How do we know what's safe? And then in the United States, it's not only the FDA that needs to give you clearance, but also the USDA. So in America, it's jointly regulated by the Food and Drug Administration and the U .S. Department of Agriculture. The FDA handles everything from the initial cell to what happens in the vessel, and then the USDA handles everything after it comes out of the vessel and it's served. So then we worked with the USDA to get what's called our grant of inspection, that was a final step in this long regulatory process that allowed us to sell.
1:06:10But we had to build up a team of people, Peter, who had gotten food products approved, who'd gotten pharmaceutical products approved, who understood how to write a dossier, the application that you submit, that lays out all the elements in the process, who understood how to answer questions appropriately, who understood how to, in an emotionally intelligent way, work with these agencies, meaning you can't be pinging them constantly. Hey, do you have an update? Hey, do you have an update? Right? How do you work with them thoughtfully? And yeah, we'll have to do we'll have to do the same thing with beef and pork and you know, whatever else we we decide to do to do next.
1:06:52But hopefully it'll happen a little bit faster because the agencies have more you know, experience with you know, wrapping your arms around applications like this. And do you, is it easy once you've gotten chicken to get beef next in order to these things topple quicker when you've gotten one through the shoot? Well the process, so the process is very similar. What's different is you might have different, a different feed composition for the beef than you would chicken, but the steps are the same. I think to be determined whether regulators will take as long with beef as they did with chicken, My sense is it'll go faster simply because they've done it before Right now they have people within the agency that have seen applications Have asked questions have seen what an appropriate answer is and what you know What they expect so my hope is it goes a bit faster.
1:07:49Let's talk about some predictions here. No, it's super challenging always or you don't have to call them predictions. You can call them aspirations what should we see by the end of this decade, by the end of 2040 from yourself and or from the industry? And how many other players are there right now in this industry? Yeah, so there are about a hundred companies that are cultivating me in some way, whether in the smallest of lab scale or in the case of us, still a very small but a production facility. most of them are the United States, but you've got a number of them in Israel and Western Europe and China and Singapore.
1:08:36I'll start with the long term. If we get this right, if the industry gets this right, the majority of meat that will be made on January 1, 2040, where we hopefully can have another podcast together, we'll be cultivated instead of slaughtered. And that is the goal, that we will be able to say on that day, the majority of meat is cultivated instead of instead of slaughtered. Across all meats. Across all meats. Across all meats. Whereas today we can say the majority already a meat produced is not only slaughtered but slaughtered in the most industrialized setting. So that is where we want to get by January 1st, 2014.
1:09:27What I see in 2023 -24 is very small scale production. And when I say very small scale, just to make it concrete for folks, we just delivered two pounds of chicken to Hosea Andrus a couple days ago. Nice. We had someone fly two pounds of chicken, deliver it to Hosea Andrus' team, and then they're going to be serving the public here in the next couple days. So that's what we're talking about. Wow. We're talking about volume. So it's that kind of, hopefully, a little bit more than that, but very small scale production, at least for the next two, three years. Now, yeah, you're gonna say. Now, I was gonna say, you know, by the end of the year, are you up to tens of pounds?
1:10:19Are you up to you? Yeah, we'll probably be up to tens of pounds by the end of the year. Our facility today maxed out has the ability to 100 ,000 pounds, a year fully maxed out, but we're not maxing it out today because we're just in a single restaurant and it's more about optimizing our process and getting sort of the public impact of selling it as opposed to trying to sell as much as we can because after all, we're losing money on every, every time we make it up on volume. But really the next inflection point will be when our company or others move to truly large scale production. And companies use these terms.
1:11:04you know, some company will say, you know, we're in a pilot plant or we're in a demo facility, we're in a small -scale production facility, those are just synonyms for not producing a lot. That's only less than 100 ,000 pounds. But to get up to millions, tens of millions of pounds, you got to get these bigger vessels and that's not going to happen for at least another two years, at least. You know, when I look at other industries that are in the process of being disrupted, You know, you look at the automotive industry, producing internal combustion cars, and then they start seeing in the distance the glimmer of EVs, and then now they've completely flipped over to EVs.
1:11:45Right? Would you imagine there will be a time where Tyson's and Purdue and the other large chicken farmers are going to come in and say, can we convert? And what's the timeframe for that? because I think ultimately they're the ones that can help you scale this with capital and distribution. Yeah. I definitely see that happening. For the same reason that our chicken farmer friends, Cecilia and Della were back in the day, moved the chickens indoors because it's just more efficient. I think it's important when people look at car companies back in the day sort of sticking to gas, power cars or animal protein companies sticking to conventional production.
1:12:34Just take the emotion out of it and realize that from their point of view, they think it is the most efficient way to make the thing that enables that company and themselves to make money. And if you take that layer and you say, okay, fair enough, will these companies eventually CCC cultivated meat is being a more efficient way to make the same amount of meat. I think the answer is yes. And therefore, I think you'll definitely see Tyson impreduin these other companies moving to it because it just makes rational economic sense to do so. More profitable for them and better for the planet. But they need just like, you know, Ford needed Tesla to scare the shit out of them.
1:13:16big animal protein companies need young companies to take the bet to, you know, rock the boat a bit, show them that cultivated chicken, can taste like chicken, and an amazing chef like Jose Andres can serve it in one of his restaurants in DC that we can scale up. And I think right now, big animal protein companies are looking at cultivating me and they're trying to figure out, they're not quite sure, they're trying to figure out, is Is this something that I'm going to need to worry about in the next 10 years, like while I'm still working here? Or is this something that like whoever replaces me when I retire is going to have to worry about?
1:13:57And I think the more we and other companies can show them, no, some you need to worry about. I think the more that we'll be able to partner with them, right? And the more that we'll be able to leverage their scale to make this happen a lot faster. We partnered with a great company called ADM. ADM is one of the biggest of ours of feed to the animal agriculture business. They feed the world. They feed the world. They invested in us and they want to develop feed for cultivated meat that enables them to use their capabilities on the feed side to do, you know, ultimate to do it in a more efficient way.
1:14:35Josh, as we close this out, you know these numbers by heart. I want to share with everybody again, those numbers about the realities of the food industry and why creating cultivated meat is so critical for humanity. Do you mind running through those one more time? Yeah, so on this planet today, if you were flying over and doing a surveillance of how we the human animal is using the planet, you would find that a third of this planet is dedicated to not feeding me and you and my mom and my brother, but dedicated to feeding the farm animals we eat, a third of it, primarily swim corn. In a more concrete way that means there's a dude in a bulldozer somewhere in the Amazon rainforest, clear -cutting that biodiverse area to plant swim corn, to feed a chicken in North Carolina that you have been eating for lunch.
1:15:35Animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all the transportation sources combined. It's hard because when you're eating bacon for breakfast, you don't see fumes coming off that bacon, right? But when a tree is not there to suck in energy, to suck in carbon, it has an impact and it gets more impactful than all the transportation sources combined. The way we farm animals today by continuing the legacy of my friend in Delaware 50 years ago is that they're packed body to body and when you pack living things body to body you need to layer antibiotics into their food and often they get sick and sometimes not always but sometimes when they get sick it spills over to our families like avian flu or mad cow disease and other zoonotic diseases and And then finally, the very simple fact, we're smart enough that we don't need to create all this harm just to enjoy all this meat.
1:16:44It doesn't have to be that way. Growing chickens all muscle, barely able to stand up for just 45 days to be slaughtered in a cruel and inhumane or fashion. It's interesting, there's been a lot of discussion in the AI world about being specious about viewing AI's that could become sentient and intelligent, different from humans and why would we give them rights. But we do that with animals all the time, right? We view a dolphin or a whale and we must preserve them and not harm them. But we don't, to a pig or a chicken, and we're specious in that fashion. I find that absolutely fascinating. Yeah, no, that's right.
1:17:30And what I think what we often do, Peter, is that when you create an abstraction, and a chicken nugget is like the ultimate abstraction, just a quick story about how it even affects me, I visited a chicken production facility in northern Germany. And as much as I know about the issues of chicken production, they took me through the chickens and the slaughter and then the chicken nugget. At the end of the process, I saw the chicken nugget and I was hungry. And your mouth watered. I was really hungry. I didn't look at it as this nugget of cruelty. I looked at it as like, like, damn, are they going to give us a sample?
1:18:18As much as I know about it. Right? Yeah. In abstraction hides cruelty. It hides the bulldozer and the Amazon rainforest. It hides the transmission of avian fluid. It hides it. And I think that removing is hard as it is for us to remove that abstraction and remember that pig or that chicken that is making that nugget isn't necessarily more intelligent than your dog who's sitting over there watching you as you're on another Zoom call. And it's hard for us to get there because we're so busy. We don't take a moment to stop and ask ourselves these questions, but I think if we did, maybe we wouldn't even need a cultivating meat company.
1:19:15Peter, we just realized that we can make those decisions ourselves and create a better world at the same time. Well, Josh, yes, we should eat beans, yes, we should hold plants and having said all that, thank you to you and your team at GoodMeat .co for all that you're doing. Everybody, please check out GoodMeat .co. Josh here, an extraordinary entrepreneur. I'm blessed to call you a friend and thank you for this incredible moonshot and this journey and holy cow. How far you've come. And yeah, you've reached orbit. Now it's time to hit the moon and go to Mars next. Everybody excited to taste it myself and and please check it out.
1:20:04GoodMeat .co and of course the related company eat just. Thank you all, Josh, thank you for your support and your extraordinary work. Thanks, Peter.
From the publisher
In this episode, Peter and Josh, CEO of GOOD Meat, delve into the revolutionary concept of producing meat without slaughtering a single animal. The conversation explores the journey of GOOD Meat, from its inception in a studio apartment to its current expansive headquarters in Alameda, California. Tetrick's vision is to transform the global food system, reducing harm to animals and the environment while providing consumers with a sustainable and ethical alternative to conventionally produced meat.
14:24 | The Story of Josh and Chicken
24:44 | Meat From an Antibiotic-Fed World
1:07:50 | The Future of Meat: Cultivated
Josh Tetrick is the CEO of Eat Just a company that specializes in no-kill meat. Eat Just was founded in 2011 by Josh Tetrick and Josh Balk. The company’s goal is to replace chicken dinners with cultivated fillets in the near future. Eat Just recently netted $370m in investments, including wealth funds backed by Qatar and the estate of Microsoft co-founder Paul G Allen
Check out GOOD Meats
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