Ep. 182. Paul Shapiro: Making the Case for Cell-Based Meats and Plant-Based Proteins

Summary

Food Safety Matters – Ep. 182

Guest: Paul Shapiro
Theme: Making the Case for Cell-Based Meats and Plant-Based Proteins
Date: November 26, 2024

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Episode Overview

This episode of Food Safety Matters dives into the intersections of food technology, sustainability, and policy as they relate to the rapidly developing world of alternative proteins. Guest Paul Shapiro, CEO of the Better Meat Company and author of "Clean Meat," joins the show to discuss the promise, challenges, and future of cell-based, plant-based, and mycelium-based (fungi) meat alternatives. The conversation covers technological, regulatory, and consumer acceptance angles, highlighting food safety as a powerful motivator for adopting new protein sources.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Context and Need for Alternative Proteins

• Global Demand and Sustainability:
  • Shapiro highlights the unsustainable resource consumption related to traditional meat, underscoring that "meat demand is going up, not down...all the places it's going to matter the most, meat demand is going up, not down." (25:08)
  • He draws parallels to energy: "We want to get energy without fossil fuels...people want meat, so we need to make the meat experience without animals." (26:19)
• Three Main Approaches:
  • Plant-Based: Products from familiar crops like soy, pea, and wheat attempt to mimic meat but are often costly and imperfect in replication of flavor and texture.
  • Cell-Based/Cultivated Meat: Animal cells grown in bioreactors, offering the real thing without animal slaughter, but these are costly and not yet broadly scalable.
  • Fungi-Based (Mycoprotein): Using microbial fungi/mycelium to create highly protein-packed, meat-textured foods, which is what the Better Meat Company specializes in.

2. Scalability and Market Penetration (29:07)

• Plant-Based: Well-established—appears in fast food menus and big box stores across the US.
• Cell-Based: Not yet commercially available in the US, extremely limited in Singapore, and likely years from broad adoption.
• Mycoprotein/Fungi: Already industrially feasible, with brands like Quorn operating large fermentation facilities. However, market diversity is low—most use a single species, leaving room for innovation.

3. Food Safety and Regulatory Landscape

• Stringent Regulatory Review:
  • "The FDA has a very rigorous safety protocol...takes years and hundreds of thousands of dollars of safety testing..." (33:54)
  • As a food tech CEO, Shapiro expresses personal confidence in the system having gone through it himself.
• Microbial Safety Upsides:
  • "We are warned to treat raw meat almost like toxic waste... The reason is because there's feces on the meat. ...When you're dealing with cultivated meat... you don't have to worry as much about intestinal pathogens because there are no intestines." (35:52)
  • Cultivated/fermented products grown in sterile bioreactors avoid common pathogens like E. coli and Salmonella prevalent in slaughtered animal meat.

4. Nutritional Benefits of Plant-Based and Fungi-Based Meats (47:27)

• "First, they have zero cholesterol. ... Second, they usually have a lot of fiber. You know, meat has no fiber. Not one type of meat has 1 gram of fiber in it at all."
• Shapiro stresses Americans face widespread fiber deficiency, linked to severe health concerns, whereas protein deficiency is virtually nonexistent.

5. Political and Societal Pushback

• Legislative Efforts to Ban Cultivated Meat:
  • "Rather than trying to help Blockbuster adapt...they just banned streaming. ...That's really the equivalent of what Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida just did by banning the sale of cultivated meat for the express purpose of protecting Florida cattle producers." (38:01)
  • Shapiro sees this trend as political grandstanding—an artificial barrier to food innovation.
  • He remains optimistic: “There’s a really big world out there, and many states and countries are quite eager to have cultivated meat on the menu…” (39:35)

6. Coexistence of Conventional and Cultivated Proteins

• "Whereas in the past the word protein has typically been perceived as being synonymous with a hunk of flesh from a slaughtered animal’s body, in the future there’s going to be a far more diverse set of protein definitions..." (40:59)
• Paul offers a vision of hybrid markets—a scenario where both traditional and novel proteins hold space, creating a richer culinary landscape.

7. Consumer Acceptance and Education (44:47)

• Taste and Cost as Core Drivers:
  • “People generally buy food for two, two primary reasons. One, they like the way that it tastes, and two, they like that they can afford it. …If it tastes good and it’s cost effective, I think that’s going to win a huge part of the market.”
• Responding to Apprehension:
  • “First and foremost at the Better Meat Co., what I do is have people taste it and once they taste it and see how awesome it is...that already goes a very long way.” (44:55)
  • Food science and transparency (“non-GMO, whole food, single-ingredient, all-natural protein” made by fermentation) are used to build trust.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Paul Shapiro Introduction & Episode Purpose:
  23:58–24:32
• The Sustainability Crisis & Meat Alternatives:
  25:08–28:44
• Scalability of Different Alternative Proteins:
  29:07–32:06
• Role of Fungi in Meat Replacements:
  32:07–33:16
• Food Safety and Regulatory Approval:
  33:54–35:42
• Microbial vs. Traditional Meat Food Safety:
  35:52–37:28
• Legislative Backlash Against Cultivated Meat:
  38:01–40:51
• Vision for Future Protein Markets:
  40:59–42:49
• Consumer Education and Apprehension:
  44:47–47:03
• Nutritional Benefits of Plant/Fungi-Based Alternatives:
  47:27–49:00
• Closing and Further Resources:
  49:30–50:08

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Notable Quotes

• On the Market Need for Alternatives:
  “It would be wonderful if people wanted to switch to bean and rice burritos and lentil soup and hummus wraps. Those are fantastic foods, I love them. But people seem to really want meat.”
  —Paul Shapiro (25:27)

• On Food Safety in Alternative Proteins:
  “We are warned to treat raw meat almost like toxic waste... The reason is because there's feces on the meat. ...When you're dealing with cultivated meat...there are no intestines in the first place.”
  —Paul Shapiro (35:52)

• On Political Opposition:
  “Rather than trying to help Blockbuster adapt...they just banned streaming. That's really the equivalent of what Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida just did by banning the sale of cultivated meat...”
  —Paul Shapiro (38:01)

• On Consumer Mindset:
  “People generally buy food for two, two primary reasons. One, they like the way that it tastes, and two, they like that they can afford it.”
  —Paul Shapiro (43:05)

• On Health Benefits:
  “No vegan products have cholesterol in them...We don’t have a protein deficiency problem in the United States...whereas nearly every single person in the United States is fiber deficient.”
  —Paul Shapiro (47:27)

• On the Promise of Food Innovation:
  “It seems almost like magic that you can go in less than one day from inoculation of a fermenter to harvesting...Of course it’s not magic, it’s just food science. But it’s something that’s really cool.”
  —Paul Shapiro (46:42)

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Memorable Moments

• Shapiro’s analogy of clean meat’s opposition to a hypothetical 2000s governor banning streaming video to protect Blockbuster Video paints a vivid picture of legislative resistance to food innovation. (38:01)
• The "Fermenter to Fork" dining experience at the Better Meat Company's Sacramento headquarters illustrates the hands-on, transparent approach to demystifying fungi-based meat alternatives. (32:14)

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Summary

Paul Shapiro’s interview provides a comprehensive, engaging look at why and how cell-based and plant-based meats are advancing, the barriers they face, and their unique advantages—particularly around food safety and sustainability. The podcast highlights the stringent FDA processes, the nutritional bonuses of alternative proteins, and the political frictions at play, while never losing sight of the consumer’s role in shaping the future protein landscape.

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For more resources and further reading, listeners are encouraged to visit Paul Shapiro's website and the Better Meat Company, as well as the Food Safety Magazine website.

Transcript

[A]

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Food Safety Matters, the podcast for food safety professionals. I'm Stacey Acheson, publisher of Food Safety magazine. And as usual, I'm joined by my co hosts, Adrian Blum, our editorial director, and Bob Ferguson, president of Strategic consulting. So let's go ahead and get started like we do by hearing a little bit from Adrian about today's interview.

[B]

Guest yeah, so today I'm talking with Paul Shapiro. He's the author of the book Clean Meat How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World. And he's also the CEO of the Better Meat Company, which uses fermentation to Turn Microbes into alternative meat. So during the interview today, we're gonna be discussing the intersections of food technology and innovation, food safety, sustainability and regulatory policy, and where it's all going in the future. Now, as a frequent TEDx speaker and visionary food futurist, Paul is a very dynamic and engaging person to talk to. So we look forward to bringing you that discussion later in the episode.

[A]

Indeed. So thanks, Adrian. So, you guys. So in our last episode, I mentioned that we here at Food Safety magazine have started a new twice monthly newsreel called Food Safety 5, hosted by our talented digital editor, Bailey Henderson. Now, in case you're not aware, Bailey writes all the news that we post to our Food safety magazine website, food-safety.com. she also does an outstanding job curating our social feeds. And she'll join us again this year for our very special and popular year end episode of the podcast where we look back on all all the top food safety stories of 2024. And no surprise, we've already started working on that. That's a big job. So if you haven't checked out the new Food Safety 5 video series yet, I encourage you to do so. You'll find them on our website, food safety.com and of course, mentioned on our social feed. Oh, and speaking of planning, we're very close to announcing the agenda for the 2025 Food Safety Summit. It's coming together really nicely, if I say if. I must say so myself. I know we set the bar pretty high this year, in 2024, in May this year. But our educational advisory board was up for the challenge, and we've posted a little bit of a preview to some of the topics on the Summit website. That's foodsafetysummit.com if you want to get an idea of what we'll be covering. But in the meantime, save the date and earmark your travel budget. The 2025 Food Safety Summit will be held May 12th through the 15th in Rosemont, Illinois. Easy access from O'. Hare. And I do remember meeting some of our podcast listeners at the event earlier this year. So we hope to see you there again, as well as meeting some new folks too. So, you know, remember too, you can bring your teams. We had a lot of people bring their teams this last year. It was a, I guess since pre. Since COVID and stuff, everybody's remote and this, that. And it's really providing a great meeting point for some teams that are using meetings to. As a time to get together. So great ideas. We even have some meeting rooms set aside, you know, all kinds of stuff that we can do to support you on that. So I better stop now because if I don't, I'm just going to keep talking and it'll be like a summit team meeting and you guys will get tired of everything. I have to say all my rah rah about this, but it was a great meeting and I know we're going to have a great time again next year. So, Adrian, do you have some news for us?

[B]

I do. And so first up, we're going to continue the discussion of something we've been covering, an ongoing topic, the E. Coli outbreak related to slivered onions supplied by Taylor Farms to McDonald's for its quarter Pounder burgers. So the case count in that outbreak has grown to 104 illnesses across 14 states, states expanding beyond the west and Midwest regions with a new case in North Carolina. So the FDA and the Colorado agriculture and public health departments have collected onion and environmental samples from McDonald's restaurants, distribution centers and companies of interest, which likely includes Taylor Farms Colorado Springs facility and an onion grower of interest in Washington State for laboratory analysis. However, only one FDA sample of recalled onions has tested positive for E. Coli, but it doesn't match the outbreak strain. Whole genome sequencing analysis found the sample to be positive for E. Coli O168:H8. Additional sample results are pending, although FDA says it is unable to definitively implicate an onion grower at this time. So there's no definitive answer on where the onions may have, what farm the onions may have come from. Not yet, anyway.

[C]

As this goes on, I think we're going to see a lot more data come out. That course we don't know yet. That's not been released. But I think that this outbreak will become a textbook case for how to solve and find a source and get to a root cause. I'm confident that that's exactly what will happen, but this is clearly Very complicated. In the CDC announcements, they say, just like Adrian, like you mentioned a second ago, that they're looking at different, what I would call centralized facilities and they're including the restaurants, processing centers. We talked last episode about maybe the equipment that was used to sliver the onions, which I still think maybe where this is going, that would be my guess. But it's probably not the restaurants because that would make the outbreak be all over the place. It's something centralized. But there's clearly more data coming out about this that we don't see yet. And they talk about the outbreak causing illnesses that they characterize as 015787, but they don't say that they have, as you just mentioned, a matching species with a sequence. So the question now becomes how did they know that? It's probably from patient samples. But there's a, there's a lot of details here and it just illustrates how complicated these things can be. But once they get to the bottom of this, I think we're going to learn a lot about how to solve a, a complicated outbreak. But I, my guess right now is, and I don't have any inside information or know anything more than what we just talked about, but I think we're going to find that this is a very interesting case, but we're going to learn a lot about how to solve these things.

[A]

Well, it's certainly gotten a lot of attention. I think we did. We had a meeting the other day. We were talking about, you know, high performing posts and stuff. And I mean, these just are off the chart, literally off the chart. But I think that's to be expected when you have, you know, companies like McDonald's and Taylor Farms being being referenced here. I really highlighted some of the qualitative language that we use that obviously is coming from official sources. Most probable vehicle, not definitely confirmed, that onions used in the quarter are the vehicle of the outbreak and that additional sample results are pending. It just seems to me that there's still really a great deal of uncertainty around this, which is interesting when it, given the amount of certainty that they've already kind of drilled down on. I don't know, Bob, that there's seems like a little bit of a disconnect there. I don't, can you help me with, you know, figure that one out or is that just the, is that just how this goes? Right.

[C]

Again, it's, it's, it's a little bit like solving a crime. I mean, you're following the leads and following the evidence where, where it takes you the One thing that strikes me about this and looking at what the CDC is saying, they're not pulling more onions off the shelf or saying don't eat onions from these places. I think they probably have some information that leads to a pretty safe conclusion that it's not even though they found the O168 on they found E. Coli on the onions, but it doesn't seem like they expect it to keep coming from those onions. So again, it looks like to me they may know that there's a central facility where it's being contaminated, but not necessarily at the onions themselves. Again, all speculation, but I have to assume that they have some evidence or they wouldn't make those kind of pronouncements.

[A]

I went ahead and referred back to a post from Frank Frankianas, former Deputy Commissioner of Food policy and Response at fda, well known to our audience. And he says that historically conclusively determining the source of a foodborne outbreak relies on three critical pieces of corroborating information. One, epidemio. I can say that epidemiological data still can't. Oh well, traceback information and ideally microbiological evidence from the outback strain in food or the environment. And he says, unfortunately it appears that in this investigation, the third leg of the outbreak investigation, stool microbiological content confirmation has remained elusive. So I don't know, we've made a lot of so many advances and we're going to be talking some more about whole genome sequencing, but we're still a long way from being able to nail this quickly, you know.

[C]

Yeah, I think Frank's spot on on that and he really describes that. Well, the other thing that jumps out at me with the CDC announcements is they're saying that there is ready for this, the epidemiological.

[A]

So you did better than I did.

[C]

But part of that information that they get is through the interviews and when they say that they asked people what they ate, it was a high percentage, 80, 90 higher percent, 99% in some cases. We're able them to trace it back to the Quarter Pounders and not other products. And they have the one sample at least that's been disclosed so far that traces them back to the onions. It seems to me like the epidemiological data that they have is from interviews, not necessarily from patient samples, although they're saying that it was caused by O157, which I don't think they would announce unless they had the patient sample. So one of the reasons why I think this is so confusing is we don't see all the pieces, but the folks in Colorado and the folks at FDA and CDC do. So they're able to make some announcements without necessarily releasing the information that we can't see yet.

[A]

Well, and I imagine they're pretty sure when you start mentioning, like I said, companies like McDonald's and Taylor Farms, that has a real big impact. So they're not going to do that lightly.

[B]

Well, this has been a pretty quickly unfolding story and it seems like there's new information coming out every few days. So we'll continue to report on this, of course, and continue to keep you apprised of what's going on as the CDC and FDA release more information. So next up in our news lineup, Setting a new precedent for pre harvest Food safety Interventions EPA has approved the first ever registration of an antimicrobial treatment for foodborne pathogens in pre harvest agricultural water. So this registration is the result of a collaborative effort between the EPA and the FDA to develop and refine an efficacy protocol to support the registration of such chemicals. So using this revised protocol, the University of Arizona and industry worked together to register the chemical for use against foodborne pathogens like E. Coli and Salmonella in pre harvest agricultural water. So prior to the registration, chemical applications for use in pre harvest egg water were limited treatments for the management of algae and biofilm formation or to mitigate produce rot. While growers aren't required to treat their agricultural water, it can serve as one option to help protect produce safety. And the use of the chemical also aligns with the FSMA Pre harvest agricultural water final rule. So that's been top of mind for folks, I think since that was finally the final rule was put out earlier in the year. So it's good to hear that that chemical aligns with that rule as well.

[C]

This is interesting. I like the idea that they're using pre harvest irrigation as essentially a spray treatment for fresh produce, which is sounds like a great idea to me. I don't know all the details of this, but in the registration it says that it can be applied right up until the day of harvest. So essentially you're treating the product as you're harvesting it, harvesting it, or at least within the last couple of days. And the chemicals in there are hydrogen peroxide and peroxy acetic acid, which PAA or peroxy acetic acid is typically applied to fruits and fresh products, again for the exact same reason. And this has been shown to be effective on E. Coli and Salmonella like Adrian mentioned. So maybe this is a good way to attack some of the leafy greens issues that we've seen.

[A]

So it's interesting idea, interesting developments for sure.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. It'll be interesting to see, you know, how, how growers decide to use the chemical and what results, you know, can be measured from the use of it. So we'll continue to keep an eye out for more data on that as well. Now, continuing on the theme of targeting pathogens, a recent study looked at the effectiveness of Canada's public health laboratories transitioning to whole genome sequencing, or wgs, from pulsed field gel electrophoresis for identifying foodborne illness outbreaks in the country. So this transition took place between 2017 and 2019. And the study looked at the impact of WGS on outbreak detection and response by analyzing PulseNet Canada surveillance data for 2015-2021. So before and after the transition to WGS. Now, the study focused on Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella Estec, and Shigella. Following the switch to wgs, there was a decrease in the number of Listeria monocytogenes clusters detected. However, the detection of Salmonella S. Tec and Shigella clusters increased. The increase in Salmonella clusters was primarily associated with subtype Enteritidis, which is the most common serotype in Canada. Also, the percentage of clusters that resulted in the identification of a food source increased from 3 to 25 in the pre WGS and post WGS periods. And these were mostly attributed to raw breaded chicken products. And that improved food source identification for Salmonella enteritidus led to revised food safety policies to reduce illnesses associated with these products in Canada. So real tangible policy improvements from the switch to wgs, which was cool to see. So overall, the WGS study concluded that the transition to WGS as the primary subtyping technique for foodborne illness surveillance has improved outbreak detection and response in Canada. So that's some positive news.

[C]

When we first discussed this paper, I sort of took it as WGS has improved outbreak investigations. My first thought was, yeah, okay, yeah, we kind of know that. But I have to tell you that after reading this and studying it a little bit, this paper is really rich in a lot of conclusions. It's really fascinating what they've done. First off, they do show the power of WGS and how it's, how it better IDs, outbreak strains. In the paper they have a quote, and I'm going to paraphrase a little bit where it says WGS shows a true genetic relationship versus a quote, crude approximation. That was the case with pulse field gel electrophoresis or pfge. Interesting. Adrian, you mentioned that the El mono cases dropped, but the other ones went up. You'd expect with something that's better that they would go up because they're going to see more. And that's what we've talked about a lot of. But the El mono cases went down. What they found in the paper was the reason for that wasn't that the WGS was less acute or less accurate, but because the pulse field data that they had linked cases to the wrong cause because of the crudeness of pfge. So they actually had false positives, I guess you could say, in the PFGE that the WGS was able to solve. So that number one thing jumped out, you know, why would it go down? Well, it goes down because we were putting too many of those pieces together with PFGE and they weren't all that accurate. The other thing that they said, which I thought was a pretty big takeaway from this, was a feature that I've not heard anybody really talk about with WGS before. We talk about the ability to solve outbreaks and how this works. What they also said is it gives people incentive, more incentive to solve cases. When you read further, the point that they make was, at least in Canada, they make the point that with pulse field, if they weren't able to get to A source After 60 or 120 days, they, in my words, just essentially dropped the case. They stopped looking because they didn't have enough definitive information to go back and solve what happened. But with wgs, that's not the case. So they're leaving these cases open and solving them again. You're going to see more of these cases come out and be solved, but you're not dropping the case. And it makes, it gives people an incentive to follow these through. Because if you know that the, the data is not going to lead you to a conclusion, it makes sense to drop it. But the data now is going to lead to a conclusion not much different than what we just talked about a second ago with the, with the McDonald's. You could easily conclude, well, we're just not going to be able to solve that one. Except with the data that they have. They probably. I'm confident that they will. And in this paper they said the exact same thing. They also said, and I think this is maybe a interesting point to talk about at some point is with that, though, as you solve more of these cases, you also need resources and people to work on solving the cases. If you're not dropping cases, if they're 60 or 120 days. Someone has to continue to pursue that and it doesn't mean that those cases don't come up. The last thing they mentioned, which I thought was really interesting is it also helped to solve some of the interest the cases with breaded chicken. And we've already seen what we're, what they're doing in the US with breaded chicken and controlling salmonella and making it an adulterant. So it looks like on both sides of the border that they're finding the exact same things, but an awful lot of things coming out. Learning about what wgs can do that's such a better improvement from what we.

[A]

Had before with PFG even I was totally geeking out. Well, I think that they presented the data really and I say that because a lot of, some of the science, it's really intense for us non scientists in the group. But the very, just very, very interesting stuff that I wish that I had had more time to spend with and I appreciate your analysis further here, Bob, but it also has implications around the world too. It seemed that internationally a lot of people were really looking at this and making the case. We see more and more countries moving to this and making the decision and seeing the benefits of whole genome sequencing and as you say, the ability to really put your resources to the right, in the right area, you know, and not chasing down stuff that there aren't, you know, strong links to and so on. So we're, it's just so important when we see how hard these, these cases are to solve and track down that we're, that we're starting out and using data that can get us headed in the right direction with some hope of solving it.

[C]

Yeah, the other thing they, they point out and you know, we, we should never forget is the other technology that's come in, come into play with this is also database and communication because you have the Pulse Net database and the genome tracker database which links the health information back to the investigative information, which then you get the more of the definitive link. And that wasn't possible for very long ago either because this data just wasn't stored that way. So now you have all the public health labs talking to each other and with the FDA investigators all talking to the same thing and you can query those databases, which is what they did for the retrospective. You know, that kind of database technology is also a key piece of this. It's, it's really fascinating.

[B]

Yeah, thanks Bob and Stacy for those comments. So before we go today, we want to share two quick pieces of regulatory news with you. So first, FDA has published a supplement to the 2022 Food Code based on recommendations made at the 2023 Conference for Food Protection, so highlights of the update include new provisions for disinfection of food contact, non food contact and equipment surfaces clarification on how and when food containers can be refilled and reused new information to help improve food defense programs definitions for food safety management system and active managerial control and new provisions that describe when a food safety management system is required and also updated requirements for the return to work of employees diagnosed with infections caused by Stec, Shigella or Salmonella and additional information on sushi rice acidification risks and controls. And you can find more info on the food code updates in the article link in the Show Notes Also, we want to let you know that USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service will be holding two virtual public meetings on December 3 and 5 on the Salmonella Framework for Raw poultry products. Proposed rule registration is now open for those meetings, which will take place from 1 to 4pm Eastern Time on both dates and will also include Q and a sessions. The December 3rd meeting will focus on final product standards, and the December 5th meeting will focus on statistical process control, monitoring methods and related topics. And as a reminder, the comment period for the proposed Salmonella Framework is open until January 17th of next year. And if you didn't already catch it, make sure to listen to my bonus podcast interview from last month with Dr. Emilio Esteban, Undersecretary for Food Safety, and Sandra Eskin, Deputy Undersecretary for Food Safety at USDA fsis, where we talk about the Agency's approach to developing, revising and implementing the Salmonella Framework. And we'll make sure to include the link to that episode in the Show Notes for you so you can listen to it.

[A]

Well, thank you. Thank you both for another great news segment here. As always, there are link to all the articles that we've referenced in our Show Notes. If you don't already, please follow us on LinkedIn X and Facebook. Just search for Food Safety magazine. And of course, to take a deeper dive into all the great content that we offer, just Visit our website food-safety.com and now it's time for Adrian's interview with Paul Shapiro, author of the bestselling book Clean How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World. Paul is also the CEO of the Better Meat Company, a company that uses fermentation to turn microbes into alternative meat. He's a five time TEDx speaker, the host of the Business for Good podcast and a longtime leader in food sustainability. He's been interviewed by hundreds of news outlets From CNN to StarTalk radio with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. As an authority on food and agriculture sustainability, he's also published hundreds of articles in publications such as the Washington Post, Scientific American, Fortune magazine, as well as academic journals. In 2023, Paul was named as a Most Admired CEO by the Sacramento Business Journal. And now here's that discussion.

[B]

Well, today we are looking at the intersections of food technology and innovation, food safety, sustainability and regulatory policy, and where it's all going in the future. And we have a lot to discuss and we have a very awesome guest with us today. We have Paul Shapiro, and he's the CEO of the Butter Meat Company and author of Clean Meat How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World. We're so happy that you took the time to talk with us today, Paul. Thanks so much for being on the podcast, Adrian.

[D]

It's my pleasure to be with you. Thanks for having me.

[B]

Yeah. So I know we have a lot to talk about today, so let's just dive right in. Now, you have given several TEDx talks and written extensively about the clean meat revolution and what cell cultured meat and alternative protein products could mean for environmental sustainability, food safety and technology innovation to meet the needs of growing population. So can you share a synopsis of where we are in this revolution and how companies, including the Better Meat Company, are working to stoke public awareness and acceptance for these products and also to create markets for them?

[D]

Sure. Well, let's just start from the basics, Adrian. So, you know, the planet isn't getting any bigger. Humanity's footprint on the planet is getting a lot bigger, but the planet itself remains the same size. And one of the primary ways that we leave that footprint is through our food print, principally in the amount of meat that we eat. Just takes a lot of land, a lot of water, a lot of greenhouse gas emissions, and more to raise and slaughter billions of animals for food. And so the question is, how can we move away from the system? We already know that we need to wean humanity off of fossil fuels, but we also need to wean humanity off of factory farming of animals. And there are numerous ways that we can do that. One is by trying to replicate the experience of meat consumption with plants. So what we call plant based meat, and that is things that are made from like soybeans or yellow peas or wheat are the three primary ingredients in those products. And, you know, just to back up a second. It's, you know, the reason we need to do this is because humans really want meat. You know, meat demand is going up. Meat demand is going up. It's not going down. Meat demand is going up in China, up in India, up in Brazil, up in Mexico, all the places it's going to matter the most. Meat demand is going up, not down. It would be wonderful if people wanted to switch to bean and rice burritos and lentil soup and hummus wraps. Those are fantastic foods, I love them. But people seem to really want meat. So we're trying to re, just in the same way that, you know, we want to, let's say, get energy without fossil fuels. Right? Like it would be awesome if people wanted to walk and bike more. But people seem to really like driving. So that's why we need to make cars that don't rely on fossil fuels. Well, similarly, people seem to really want meat and we need to make the meat experience without animals. And so one way is through plant based meat, which I mentioned, taking crops like soy, pea or wheat and turning them into things like animal meat. And that's really cool. But there's a big problem with it, which is that it's expensive and it still doesn't perfectly mimic the taste and texture of animal meat. And so this is why you have, for example, like a Beyond Burger is, you know, sold not like 30 or 40% more than, than ground beef, but like 3 or 400% more expensive than ground beef. And so that's a real problem for going anywhere from, you know, that's not just a niche product. So if you don't want to use the plant kingdom, then you can go to the animal kingdom and use actual animal cells and grow real, actual animal meat simply without the animals. And this is a technology usually referred to as clean meat or cultivated meat. However, the problem is it's also really expensive. Way more expensive than plant based meat. And it's going to be many, many years before this could scale to a point of being even 1% of the total meat industry's demand. You know, definitely in the 2000s, not in the 2000s. So that leaves one more kingdom. We had plants, we had animals, and then there's the F word, right? Fungi. And fungi offer a lot of benefits, a lot of benefits. And you can grow them. And I'm not talking here about mushrooms, I'm talking about mycelium or like microbial fungi, which you can grow into a very highly protein packed meat textured product, cost effectively that is a whole food, single ingredient, all natural alternative meat. And so that's what companies like my own at the Better Meat company are pursuing is what we call mycoprotein or protein from fungi that create the meat experience but without animals. And you can use mycoproteins both to create animal free meat and to even blend into actual animal meat to reduce the number of animals who are needed and create like a so called hybrid animal product there. So those are the three ways plant, animal and fungi that companies are pursuing right now to try to break this, this hold that the animal meat industry has over protein right now.

[B]

And you know, kind of as a follow on question, so we already have plant based meat alternatives in, in the market. But when we're talking about cell cultivated products and then also like what you're talking about with what the Better Meat co does with mycelium based products, you know the markets for those and the scalability, like what, what kind of hurdles are we looking at there?

[D]

Sure. Well plant based is already scaled to the point where it's on many fast food menus and it's in big box. You know every big box grocery store is going to in the United States at least is going to sell plant based meat meat. Cultivated meat is nowhere near that. They're not for sale anywhere in the United States right now at all. There's a couple places in Singapore where it's on sale, but it's in extremely limited quantities. And as I mentioned, it's going to be years before cultivated meat is available for sale in any meaningful way. Where you could go to, you know, Walmart or Burger King and see it on their offerings, that's a very long way away. But with mycoprotein or mycelium it's scalable. Now I mean yes, you're producing food inside of bioreactors, but this is already happening. So corn Q U O R N already operates five 150,000 liter bioreactors in the UK to produce their mycoprotein. So this is already scaled. I mean this is a true industrial fermentation facility where a river of mycoprotein is produced and they have over a hundred different skus of products they make from it. They're in thousands of supermarkets, they make several hundred million dollars in revenue annually. And so this is a technology that not only is scalable, it is already scaled. Now corn represents about 99% of the mycoprotein market globally. And they only use one organism, it's called Fusarium veninatum. And I love It, I think corn is great. I like eating it. But imagine if, Adrian, there were only one plant that we all ate, right? Like people only ate soy and nobody ate peas or wheat or chickpeas or fava beans or anything. There'd be a great opportunity because other beans and other legumes have lots of different properties, nutritional properties, textural properties, emulsifying properties, oil holding, water holding capacities and so on that are different from soy. Or imagine if people only ate beef and nobody ate pork or chicken or fish or crab. You know, the fact is that there are thousands of animal species, thousands of plant species, and thousands of mycoproteins out there that you can grow, and they all are different. And so corn, which is basically the entirety of the mycoprotein market for the most part, is one species only. In fact, it's one strain of one species. And so what we are doing at the Better MECO is bringing new species of mycoprotein, in fact, in a new genus altogether that create a more meat like texture and have even better protein. So what that is to say is that mycoprotein is already scaled, but there's so much more to do. There's so many other species that you could grow that will have different characteristics. And just in the same way that, you know, today, let's say you can go to Cargill and buy a whole variety of plant proteins, right? You can buy pea protein, wheat protein, chickpea protein, fava bean protein and so on. There needs to be a B2B supplier of mycoproteins that all have different characteristics and functionalities. And that's what the Better Meat Company is building right now.

[B]

Interesting. Well, as a fungi lover, I would love to try some of the Better Meat Co's products.

[D]

We're sold at restaurants in Northern California now, Adrian, but also if you're, you're ever in Sacramento, we'd love to host you at our headquarters. You can come and try Fermenter to Fork dining right in our, our fermentation headquarters. But I'll tell you, many people, I'm a fungi lover too. I, I try to eat mushrooms every day. Many people, when they hear the word fungi, they think of mushrooms, right? They think they're synonyms. But for the more initiated, they know that actually fungi is a huge kingdom, a huge kingdom. And only 10% of fungal species produce mushrooms. So as an example, when you eat bread, there is baker's yeast in that bread. That baker's yeast is fungi. That's in the fungi kingdom. Brewer's yeast when you drink a beer or wine, the brewer's yeast in there is fungal. Also when you eat soy sauce, there's a mold in there, it's called koji. It's a mold that's in the fungi world. So there's all types of fungi out there that have nothing to do with mushrooms. And that's typically what mycoproteins are. Not always, but typically we're not dealing with mushrooms. We're dealing with much higher protein ingredients that have a more meat like texture.

[B]

Oh, that's fascinating. Thanks for that, Paul. And, and so, you know, kind of moving to a little bit of more of the food safety angle and then looking at this cultivated meat revolution that we're talking about here. So I know that FDA has issued several approvals for cultivated meat products over the past couple of years, you know, kind of paving the way for these products to enter the US market, even though, you know, as you said before, they're not on the market yet. But how do, how does the FDA regulatory process ensure, you know, the safety and the transparency of cultiv meat products while supporting the coexistence of innovation and consumer protection?

[D]

The FDA has a very rigorous safety protocol that you have to go through that takes years and hundreds of thousands of dollars of safety testing that you have to conduct in order to get their, their so called like stamp of approval, essentially, which is essentially what's called a no questions letter where they don't question your data anymore. And this is a very, very intensive process. At the better meco, we went through it, it took us two years, definitely six figures, lots of different tests and so on. And it's a lot of consultation with the agency too. And so as a consumer, having gone through the process myself now as a CEO of a company, I feel even, even better as a consumer now knowing just how stringent the FDA protocols are that you have to go through. And so I think that consumers should be frankly proud that we have such a relatively safe food system. I mean, I think that many people don't really think about the fact that it wasn't always so, you know, you rewind the clock, let's say 100 or 150 years ago, there's really no standards and people could get sick and die and, you know, there's no problem now. Doesn't mean that there aren't problems still. Obviously we still have salmonella or listeria outbreaks every once in a while, but considering the vast, vast, vast river of food that flows throughout production facilities and into stomachs of hundreds of millions of Americans daily, the fact that nearly nobody gets sick from the food they eat. Now, I mean, food poisoning, of course, many foods long term will sicken us with heart disease and other things that can lead to. But I'm talking about, you know, an acute case of food poisoning or something like that. It's almost miraculous. And, you know, we have the FDA and others to thank for that. So as a CEO has gone through the process, I'm even more grateful as a consumer for the fda.

[B]

And, you know, you've also spoken and written about the microbial food safety advantages of cell cultivated meat over traditional meat products. Can you go into a little more detail about that?

[D]

Yeah, sure, Adrian. So think about it like this. Right now. We are warned to treat raw meat almost like toxic waste in the supermarket. You're supposed to segregate it from the rest of your food. They put it in different bags, you bring it into your kitchen. If it touches your counter, you have to disinfect your counter. If it touches your hands, you've got to wash your hands. We treat this less stuff like it again, like toxic waste. And why? The reason is because there's feces on the meat. E. Coli, Salmonella, Campylobacter. These are intestinal pathogens that can sicken us if we don't literally cook the crap out of the meat. That's what we're doing. We're cooking the crap out of the meat. Now, when you're dealing with cultivated meat or what's often called clean meat, you don't have to worry as much about intestinal pathogens because there are no intestines in the first place. You're not growing intestines. You're just growing the muscle and the fat that you want in the meat. In fact, you're more likely to infect the meat with your own hands than the meat to infect you. So this is one reason why so many food safety advocates are so passionate about growing meat without animals. Because, yes, it's good for the environment, yes, it's good for animal welfare, but it could be a huge benefit from a food safety perspective as well. And there even are tests, you know, that, where they will swab meat grown inside of reactors versus meat that comes from slaughtered animals. And the sterility of the former is really amazingly superior compared to the latter. So I, you know, I, as somebody who is passionate about food safety, is am very bullish on growing meat without animals for this reason, among others.

[B]

Now, you know, despite the sustainability and food safety solutions like the ones you just discussed that are offered by cell cultured meat. There's been a legislative push, you know, mostly led by conservative lawmakers to prohibit and even criminalize the sale of cell cultured animal product alternatives with bills introduced in, as of the time of this recording, 16 states and one already passed in Florida this past May. So a couple questions about that for you. What do you see as the driving force behind this backlash?

[D]

Well, part of it is just, you know, wanting to appeal to the culture wars and, and throwing red meat, so to speak, to the very far right conservative voter base. So imagine, Adrian, like if this were in, let's say, the year 2000, and you had a governor who was really concerned about protecting Blockbuster Video because they were headquartered in that governor's state. In fact, they were headquartered in Florida at one point. And so rather than trying to help Blockbuster adapt to new technology, they just banned streaming. Right? They said, okay, streaming video will be illegal. You have to go to video stores to get your videos. That's really the equivalent of what Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida just did by banning the sale of cultivated meat for the express purpose of protecting Florida cattle producers. They were very explicit as to why they were doing this. To protect Florida cattle producers from innovative out of state competition from companies in California and other parts of the country where they're growing meat without animals. And so that's really the equivalent of what they're doing. They're not trying to protect consumers, they're trying to protect cattlemen and trying to do it in that give some, you know, credence to the culture war to make it feel like, oh, yeah, you know, if you're for animal agriculture, you must be on the right, and if you're for microbial agriculture, you must be on the left. Now, needless to say, that's absurd. There's plenty of people who are on the right who would love to see more efficient ways to produce food. Just in the same way, there's plenty of people on the left who think, oh, I'm so concerned about small farms and what's going to happen to them. So it isn't. It shouldn't really be an issue. I could see why people on the left would feel the opposite of what's being perceived here and vice vice versa with those on the right. At the same time, there is litigation now over the law in Florida and we'll see if the law is constitutional or not. I presume the case will. You know, it's a pretty interesting test case for this, but thankfully there's a really big world out there, and many states and countries are quite eager to have cultivated meat on the menu there. In fact, some states, like California, are even allocating public dollars to funding research for cultivated meat. So I'm in California right now, where the state government is providing millions of dollars a year to the UC academic system for the sole purpose of researching cultivated meat. And then when you look at other countries that are doing quite a lot to promote cultivated meat research in their lands, and even in places like the Netherlands, where they are now literally paying farmers to stop farming animals for environmental benefit, I think there's ample room for a cultivated meat industry out there, even without Florida's market.

[B]

Okay, so considering that background, do you see room for the cell cultivated and traditional meat markets to exist alongside each other?

[D]

I do think that for a very long time, we're going to have the conventional meat industry. I'm pretty bad at making predictions about the future, so I try to avoid doing it. But I do think that whereas in the past the word protein has typically been perceived as being synonymous with a hunk of flesh from a slaughtered animal's body, in the future, there's going to be a far more diverse set of protein definitions where people will, yes, of course, still think of protein as coming from a live animal, but they'll also be thinking about getting protein from plants and from animal cell culture and from fungi and maybe even others like algae proteins or bacterial proteins and so on. And so I think there'll be a far more interesting culinary experience for people in the future with regard to protein will be quite different from the past. For example, what if, you know, you could have a meat maker on your counter in your kitchen, just like you might have a bread maker or an ice cream maker today. Imagine having a meat maker and you could order, let's say, spores of fungi in a tea bag, and you put it in there, and the next morning you come out and you have, like, freshly brewed meat equivalent right on your kitchen counter. Or maybe you go to your local restaurant and they just like, they might brew their own IPA in the back. Maybe they're brewing their own meat for you. That dinner right there, like, to local artisanal meat, meat grown just for you. What if it even came from a cell from a pig who lived behind the restaurant in a nice pen, and you could go out and tip your hat to the pig and say thank you, and he's still enjoying his good life, and you go have a sausage dinner. So, you know, there's lots of really interesting, cool Novel experiences in the culinary realm that I think might be unlocked by going big with microbial agriculture. And so rather than just continuing to do what we've done for millennia, which is just, just, you know, slaughter animals, maybe there's something that we could unlock that would be even better from the sensory perspective than what animals can provide.

[B]

And now you, you talked about how cultivated meat is seeing heavy investment and interests in countries like Singapore and China. So do you think that American consumers will become more interested in cell cultured meat as they become better educated about it and are more exposed to the idea of.

[D]

Yeah, I mean, I think that people generally buy food for two, two primary reasons. One, they like the way that it tastes, and two, they like that they can afford it. And so there are other concerns. But for most people, they're buying food because they think it tastes good and it's cost effective for them. Now, I'm not saying everybody is going to want to eat this. I mean, you know, even if you look at the debate over, let's say, genetically modified foods or bioengineered foods, you do have some people who say, I don't like to eat that. And that's fine, they don't have to eat it. But nearly everybody does eat it. It, nearly everybody in America eats bioengineered foods on a daily basis and nobody cares. So. And the evidence is very clear. There's nothing that indicates that they're somehow less safe to consume. It's just, just, you know, the concerns are basically more rooted in people's fears than they are in actual scientific evidence about bioengineered foods. And so the point is, like, you know, you could have said, when those foods are entering the market, oh, well, will people accept these? I don't know, will they? I mean, if you did a survey, you might have some people say, yeah, I don't like that idea. But the question is how many people actually try to avoid eating bioengineered foods? And of course, it's a vanishingly small number of people. Now with cultivated meat, it doesn't have to be bioengineered. Some of the companies are using bioengineering, others are not, but it's not an inherently bioengineered product. But will people think, oh, you know, I don't like the application of biotechnology to food? Sure, maybe some people will, but those people can continue, you know, going to their farmer's markets and paying a lot more for their food than nearly everybody else. But the vast majority of people are going to keep on going to Walmart and Costco and McDonald's and Burger King and buying their food. And if it tastes good and it's cost effective, I think that's going to win a huge part of the market.

[B]

And so how do you counter consumer apprehensions about the novelty of this food type and the technologies behind it?

[D]

Well, first and foremost at the better Miko, what I do is have people taste it and once they taste it and see how awesome it is and they their jaw drops, they can't believe how good it is. That already goes a very long way. Second, we already have received grass are generally recognized as CF stat status from the fda. So that goes a long way. And then third, with the mycoprotein that we grow, it is an all natural whole food, single ingredient, non GMO protein. So you know, this is not an isolate or a fractionate. It's not bioengineered. This is an all natural whole food that we grow simply through fermentation. It's really hard to imagine something less processed than this. You know, if you think about a, the, the actual process to make it, I mean all we do is we, you know, inoculate a fermenter with an all natural organism and a day later come back and harvest it and take what comes out of that fermenter and chop it up. That's it. You know, there's no fractionation, isolation, extrusion, none the of of it. None of it. So when I tell people how we make it, they become even more enthusiastic. Now how much do they really care? I don't know. Like do people really care how their food is made? I think there might be some people who say that they do. But you know, I mean when people go, I mean we look at like the most popular snacks that people eat. Like you know, let's say Cheetos or Doritos. Like do, do people need to know how they're made? I don't know. My guess is most people don't even think about it. They just buy it because they like the taste of it. But, but when people do want to know how we make mycoprotein here at the Better Meat Company, I am extremely eager to tell them because I love it. I think it's so cool and I love talking about it and touting it. And when they learn about it, they're equally excited. They're. It seems almost like magic that you can go in less than one day from inoculation of a fermenter to harvesting of a fermenter where you can have a harvest season that's 365 days a year. It almost seems like it's like miraculous. It seems like, like magic. Of course it's not magic, it's just food science. But it's something that's really cool. And when I bring people in here, even if they are the type of people who prefer to go to farmer's markets rather than Walmart, they're really excited about it.

[B]

That's very cool. Now, you know, plant based meat alternative products such as those produced by the Better Meat Company are becoming more diverse, more authentic and more appealing to consumers. And we've talked a bit about the clear sustainability benefits of alternative proteins. But what are some of the food safety and nutritional benefits of plant based meat alternatives that consumers are latching onto?

[D]

Well, first, they have zero cholesterol. Um, so that's automatically a really important thing to note that no vegan products have cholesterol in them. Um, second, they usually have a lot of fiber. You know, meat has no fiber. Not one type of meat has 1 gram of fiber in it it at all. So animals have skeletons. That's what holds us up. Plants and fungi don't have skeletons. They have fiber. That's what holds them up. And that's why if you want fiber, you need to eat plants and fungi and not meat. And so we don't have a protein deficiency problem in the United States. Not you, nor I, nor anybody we know is protein deficient, whereas nearly every single person in the United States is fiber deficient. Deficient. The RDA for fiber is not met by more than nine out of ten Americans. And the problems associated with fiber deficiency are serious. Yes, it can be things like constipation, which is, you know, problem in and of itself. But even things like colon cancer and heart disease are associated with fiber deficiency. In other words, the biggest killers of Americans like heart disease and cancer are associated with fiber deficiency. And so one of the things that plant based meat alternatives have going for them is that they're packed with fiber, fiber. And if you eat them instead of animal based meat, you're not only getting the protein you want, you get the fiber that you need. And when you combine that with no cholesterol and more fiber, you start realizing like, hey, actually, you know, this is a big benefit to myself that not only do these products taste really good these days, but it also is just better for you.

[B]

Interesting. Well, Paul, thank you so much for this interview and we really, I really appreciate you sharing your, your thoughts and your perspectives on, you know, where we are in this revolution of alternative protein products, you know, whether that's coming from plants or you know, cell grown, lab grown meat. It's a very interesting area and we're going to continue to watch it alongside you and I'm continuing to follow your thoughts through your newsletter, which is very interesting. So yeah, I'm very, very cool.

[D]

I'm very honored. Thanks so much, Adrian. So if anybody wants to subscribe, you get some cool, very cute animal videos, nice joke of the week, and some pretty inspiring news. You just go to Paul Shapiro.com again, that's Paul-Shapiro.com and sign up there. Or if you want to learn more about the Better Me code, just check us out at bettermeat Co. And again, if you want to get my book, it's called Clean Meat, which is sold anywhere books are sold. And I'd love to hear from you. So get in touch. I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you think we're doing something cool, if you have constructive criticism and think we could improve in some way, I always want to hear that too. So Adrian, let me thank you for all you're doing. I really appreciate your, your work and I'll look forward to hopefully crossing paths sometime again soon.

[B]

Soon, absolutely. Thank you so much, Paul.

[A]

Thanks again to Paul Shapiro for joining us on the podcast today. And of course thanks to all of you for listening. Now, you know we love hearing from you, so please don't hesitate to send us your questions or suggestions to podcastood-safety.com or post a note on LinkedIn X or Facebook. We're always happy to get your feedback and to make sure that new and bonus episodes magically appearing your podcast player, all you have to do is click that Follow or Subscribe button in the player of your choice and presto, bingo. All the episodes appear. And while you're there, please throw some stars our way by rating the podcast, especially if you enjoyed it. It only takes a moment and it's good for everyone. And that's it for us today. Our next regular episode will post on December 10th. In the meantime, take good of care care of yourselves and those around you. We'll talk to you then.