Interview with Paul Shapiro

Transcript

Sheldon Young
Welcome to No Footprints, a podcast about impact, people, and their efforts to make sustainability real. I’m Sheldon Young.

Jason Moreau
And I’m Jason Moreau.

Sheldon Young
Welcome to our podcast brought to you by Alfa Laval. So Jason, episode one, here we are. Exciting stuff.

Jason Moreau
It’s very exciting. It’s been a long journey to get to episode one.

Sheldon Young
I know, right?

Jason Moreau
I’m excited that it’s finally happening.

Sheldon Young
Well, we’re here. It’s good, right? So I think maybe we kick off, and let’s tell people a little bit about, this is episode one, obviously.

So let’s tell them a little bit about what our podcast is about and kind of what it entails and kind of what it doesn’t entail. I’ve got a couple of notes here, kind of read through those. So it’s a sustainability focused show.

I work, my job is sustainability solutions. It’s kind of what I do every day. And it’s designed to kind of touch on topics in that realm, and it’s going to feature guests that are doing some kind of neat things in that space.

So I will, a little bit of a disclaimer for this podcast, because it’s important I talk about this stuff. We’re going to hit all kinds of topics, and we’re going to have guests from many different industries. The show is really focused about helping the world learn about sustainability and all the things that are happening to make it happen.

And we’re going to hear from all walks of industry. We also work for a company, Alfa Laval, who has solutions in literally almost any industry that you can imagine. So it’s pretty much a certainty that at some point we’re going to have guests that will be from companies that do or could use our solutions or products.

That does not mean, however, that we or Alfa Laval are endorsing any of these companies’ guests or their specific ideas that we discuss. In fact, we may and they may work with competitors. But we are staying focused on bringing interesting conversations about sustainability in our world to you in an entertaining and hopefully educational way.

So that’s about what we’re doing, Jason. How’d that sound? Did that sound official enough?

Jason Moreau
Yeah, yeah. I think legal will be happy with that. Yeah.

Sheldon Young
Yeah, right. But anyways, I want to make sure that people know we’re doing this to bring awareness. We get to see all kinds of cool stuff in the world of sustainability and in almost any industry.

It’s so much fun. And we wanted to share that and give people more ideas and hopefully generate more ideas out in the world around sustainable solutions that they can bring to us. And, you know, if you have an idea for guests, of course, send them our way.

We’d love to hear it. And what’s our it’s nofootprints.podcast at alfalaval.com, correct?

Jason Moreau
That’s the email.

Sheldon Young
That is our email. Excellent. So anyways, so we’re talking about alternative protein today.

So I have a question for you out of the gate. Have you tried alternative proteins?

Jason Moreau
And that’s a big category, right?

Sheldon Young
Yeah. So like I’m sure you have. I’m sure you have tried it.

But what kinds of ones have you tried, Jason? Let’s go that route.

Jason Moreau
This is yeah, this is this is where I out myself as a very bad consumer, I suppose. So other than I would say, you know, your standard veggie burger. I don’t know that I’ve tried a lot of alternative proteins.

I am fairly new to this whole space. To my recollection, I don’t think I’ve even tried like an impossible burger or anything like the beyond meat have not. No.

Okay. So I feel like a taste test is in my very near future. I do think it needs to be.

Yes. Yes, for sure. So, yeah, even the ones that are more readily accessible, I’ve tried them.

The ones that are less accessible, not like I haven’t done it yet.

Sheldon Young
Interesting. Okay, well, I’ve had a few I’ve had actually did at one point did a little series on LinkedIn around tasting and trying different alternative proteins. I was a little bit involved in that market for a while with with with our work.

And so I’ve tried a bunch of the different chicken nuggets that are out there. I’ve tried obviously I’ve had impossible and beyond and all that. And some of the other ones that are more readily available in stores.

I’ve also had I’ve had crickets. I’ve had cricket powder. Yeah.

Cricket powder in like a. You know, a like a granola bar kind of thing that was kind of I honestly I couldn’t tell honestly what it was.

Jason Moreau
I’ve had the odd chocolate covered cricket novelty, but nothing like where it’s like, oh, I would I would eat this as a as a protein substitute on a daily basis. Yeah. Wow.

Sheldon Young
Okay. Well, that’s a yeah. So for me, I haven’t tried anything that’s like I think like fermented pork, I know there’s like egg product out there like that.

I haven’t really tried those yet. But I’m excited when they finally start to get the the true cultured meat, like it’s meat cells that have been in a reactor. And we’ll talk about that during during the interview.

But that to me is going to be like the ultimate, OK, can they do this? And I really want to try that and see what it’s like. But I do have a couple before we get the interview.

I don’t people don’t want to hear us talk all day quickly. I have a couple of fun facts for you about the the industry, though. The first work around alternative proteins, as we know them today, really started with like NASA in the 1960s, that’s what I read, where they were looking at looking at taking fungi and creating proteins from them, which I thought was kind of like, wow, it’s been around a long time.

It’s taken a long time to kind of get here. Right. The other thing I the other thing I had was there’s at least one company out there now that is actually synthesizing protein from air.

Jason Moreau
I saw that and it kind of blew my mind. That is that is some voodoo science that is the ultimate example of the what is the Arthur C. Clark quote of any sufficiently advanced technology is basically indistinguishable from magic.

Yeah, like that to me is just Harry Potter stuff.

Sheldon Young
Right. Very neat. I know.

Right. It’s going to be really neat to kind of learn about all these things. And finally, before we get I do have a trivia question for you.

And this is if our guest today, which I’ll mention a second, he’s written a book and this is the book kicks off with kind of this story. But I’ll give you kind of the punchline of it. The first cultured meat hamburger was created in 2013.

About how much do you think that cost?

Jason Moreau
Mm hmm. In today dollars or 20?

Sheldon Young
Yeah, I don’t know. Whatever it was. Let’s say I have a number.

Just go just go with a number.

Jason Moreau
I’ll I’ll random guess 20 bucks, 20 bucks, three hundred and thirty thousand dollars.

Sheldon Young
That was a true cultured meat. But again, that was the prototype of basically it took them like a long time to ferment that much that many cells and stuff. So anyway, so I think that’s kind of the punchline of it.

I thought that was a really interesting, fun fact to bring to you, but that’s amazing. It is right. Right.

And didn’t even come with fries, but no, just kidding.

Jason Moreau
So I was going to say better be the best burger.

Sheldon Young
That’s right. That’s right. All right.

So let’s get to kind of our guests. Our guest today is really kind of cool. He’s I’ve interviewed him before.

I had a podcast I did a while ago and I interviewed him. Fascinating. I thought it’d be really interesting to have him as guest one.

His name is Paul Shapiro. He is the CEO and founder of the Better Meat Co. And they make kind of meat protein substitute using something called my seal, mycelium.

And we’ll learn what that is in the show. But he takes us on a fascinating dive into the world of alternative proteins. And he’s even written a book on the topic.

So looking forward to it. What do you say we get to it, Jason? Let’s do it.

And we’d like to welcome our very first guest to the No Footprints podcast, Paul Shapiro. I’ve interviewed Paul before and he was fantastic. So I was very excited when he agreed to be guest number one for this show.

Paul is the CEO of the Better Meat Co., a West Sacramento, California organization dedicated to solving the meat sustainability challenge our planet faces. He’s the author of the bestselling book, Clean Meat, How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World. He’s also a five time TEDx speaker and host of the Business for Good podcast.

We’re proud to have him on today to share his insights and sustainability leadership. Welcome, Paul Shapiro.

Paul Shapiro
Sheldon and Jason, great to see you guys.

Sheldon Young
Thank you for joining us here. Super excited to have you on. I’ve interviewed you before, as I said, loved the conversation we had.

And I wanted to share it on this new format show we’ve got where we’re talking about sustainability leadership. And I just kind of thought we’d start with just give us your story. Your journey to the meat alternative space.

And how did you get here?

Paul Shapiro
Well, the planet isn’t getting any bigger. Humanity’s footprint on the planet, of course, is getting a lot bigger. But the planet itself is stubbornly remaining 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. It’s no longer a secret that raising billions of animals for food is extremely taxing on the planet. Takes huge amounts of water, land, greenhouse gas emissions and more compared to just eating plants.

The problem is, though, that meat demand continues to go up, not down. It’s going up not just because there are more humans on the planet, though that’s part of it. But it’s going up also because on a per person basis, we’re eating more meat than ever before.

And so even though we know that it would be better for humanity to eat less meat and enjoy more foods like lentil soup and bean and rice burritos and hummus wraps and so on, sadly, the opposite is happening. And this is a really big problem that has been the animating cause of my life for the last three plus decades. And so I devoted much of my career to lobbying on food and sustainable ag issues.

And then nearly a decade ago, I started thinking that food technology was going to do more to solve this problem than what I was doing. And so I wrote the book that you kindly mentioned, Sheldon. It’s called Clean Meat.

And I started a company called The Better Meat Co., which is designed to try to recreate the meat experience, but do it without animals. So that’s the basic premise of my entire life, really, is how are we going to feed humanity without destroying the planet and tormenting billions of animals in the process? That’s what I’ve been trying to accomplish for a long time and still am doing.

And I probably am about at the 50 or 55 percent point in my life right now. So I got like 45 or 50 years left to go. Maybe if I’m lucky, if life chances keep extending, and hopefully I’ll be making more progress in the next half than in the first half.

Sheldon Young
Awesome. I love it. So you mentioned your book.

I’d like to talk about it real quick, the Clean Meat. I’ve read it. I know you just re-released it as well, I believe in April was last year.

Is that correct? I can’t remember exactly the timing.

Paul Shapiro
Yes.

Sheldon Young
And so just tell us a little bit about the premise of that book and kind of what drove you to write it.

Paul Shapiro
It’s very kind of you. So Clean Meat chronicles the stories of the entrepreneurs, the investors, the scientists who are all racing to bring to the world the first ever slaughter-free meat. I’m not talking here about plant-based meat like Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods, which is basically taking crops like peas or soybeans and making them taste like animals.

I’m talking about real, actual animal meat simply grown without animals. And so this field, which is often called clean meat or cultivated meat, is relatively new. In the last 10 years or so, you’ve seen the first companies formed and billions of dollars of investment go in, regulatory approvals for certain products in specific countries like the United States and Singapore.

Yet at the same time, it hasn’t really commercialized in a meaningful sense in the way that, let’s say, plant-based meat has, where you can get plant-based burgers everywhere from Burger King to Walmart. So the book tells the story. It’s not very science-heavy.

It’s a breezy read, but it tells the story of these people, why they’re doing it, what they’re trying to accomplish by recreating the meat industry without animals. And the reason that I wrote the book is, frankly, because I thought their stories deserved to be told. At the time, there were no books that had ever been published on this topic.

This has the potential to really revolutionize our world. Think about all the ways in the past that we have ended the millennia-long use of animals. We used to live-plug geese for quills to write with, and then we stopped because metal fountain pens were invented.

We used to harpoon whales to light our homes with whale oil, and then we stopped because largely because kerosene was invented and it was a cheaper, brighter way to light our homes. We used to whip horses to get around, and then we stopped because cars were invented, or at the time, which were called horseless carriages. And the list goes on and on and on of all of these ways that we used animals for millennia, and then we stopped because of a new technology.

Well, for thousands of years, we’ve used animals as a source of food. But what if we’re on the cusp of ending that too, of moving to new types of technology that can displace the exploitation of animals and allow humanity to enjoy the experience of consuming meat that we love without having to tax the planet and torment animals in the way that we do to produce meat today?

Sheldon Young
Yeah, that’s a great summary there of the book. When it comes to meat alternatives, whether it’s plant-based or cellular-based or mycelium-based like you have at your company, what makes them more sustainable? So this is a podcast about sustainability.

So what leads them in that more sustainable direction?

Paul Shapiro
Well, just to use one example, Sheldon, right now, raising animals for food contributes more greenhouse gas emissions than the entirety of the transportation sector combined. So let that sink in for a second. All cars, all planes, all boats, all trains, all trucks, all combined contribute fewer greenhouse gas emissions than raising animals for food, right?

And so that’s only on the greenhouse gas part. Raising animals for food is also the number one cause of deforestation, the number one cause of biodiversity loss, a huge contributor to pandemic risk, a huge contributor to antibiotic resistance risk, and so on. And so there are a multitude of reasons why it would be better to wean ourselves off of the factory farming of animals and onto a diet less reliant on animals in the first place.

And when you look at producing protein without animals, it clearly has a much lower footprint. Not only do the life cycle analysis show this, but think about it from a common sense point of view. To get beef, you have to feed a cow huge amounts of grain, right?

It takes a lot of grain to get a little bit of beef out of a cow. Well, what if you just ate the grain directly? You’d get way more food than you would by funneling it through a very inefficient converter, which is known as the cow.

Now, of course, you’ve got other reasons that are useful for this, too, from a sustainability perspective, such as the inhumane treatment of animals, which most people view as unsustainable as well. Few people want to know about what happens to animals who are raised for food because the ways that we treat them would not be tolerated for the most heinous criminals in our society. So I think both from the perspective of the planet, from the perspective of public health, and of course, from the perspective of the animals themselves, it would be better if we didn’t have to rely on so many of them.

Now, I don’t think that means that people are necessarily going to stop eating meat and shift instead again to lentil soup and bean and rice burritos. But I do think that if we can recreate the meat experience, there will be plenty of people who will be happy to do that. It’s similar to the light in the room that you’re sitting in right now.

When you walked into that room and you flipped on the light switch, you probably didn’t contemplate where the light came from. You just wanted an illuminated room. You wanted the experience of light in the room.

But you weren’t thinking, is this light coming from coal or oil or wind or solar? You just wanted light. And I think the same is true for most people who eat meat.

Most people who eat meat aren’t thinking, oh, I’m so glad an animal was slaughtered for this. They’re thinking instead, I just like the way it tastes, and I like the way it makes me feel, and I like that I can afford it, and so on. They may not even think about an animal.

And if they did think about an animal, they probably wouldn’t be so pleased to think about it for too long. So I think that if there were a way to enjoy the meat experience without having to subject animals to these types of conditions and harm the planet in the process, maybe not everybody, but a large portion of people would be quite pleased to consume that type of meat rather than factory farmed meat.

Sheldon Young
Yeah. I mean, again, great analogies. That’s why one of the reasons I love conversing on this topic is you always have really good ways of thinking about these problems.

Now, we do see a lot of pushback in some places, particularly other parts more than others. And a lot of it’s like, oh, I don’t want to eat fake meat. They’ll say, you know, ingredients in my burger is beef.

Ingredients in this are a mile long. How do you address that kind of pushback? Because, I mean, when someone looks at an ingredients label, they don’t necessarily understand what they’re looking at.

What’s the way to kind of deal with that?

Paul Shapiro
Sure. Well, I think it’s helpful to remind ourselves how meat is produced today. Take chicken as just one example.

We have genetically selected chickens to grow so big, so fast that most of them have a difficult time taking more than a few steps before they collapse underneath their unnaturally large weight. So when we think about how inhumane and unnatural and unsustainable the way that we raise animals for food today is, I think that it’s naturally preferable to eat something that didn’t involve such inhumane and unsustainable treatment. Now, admittedly, there are some plant-based products that do have, you know, a dozen or two dozen ingredients in them.

But what’s really important to remember is not necessarily how many ingredients something has. If something has oregano, basil, thyme, marjoram, like that’s a bunch of ingredients, but they’re just spices, right? It’s not like it’s a big deal.

The number of ingredients does not matter. What matters is the nutrition facts from a health perspective, that is. How much saturated fat, how much cholesterol, how many calories, and so on.

And it’s helpful to remind ourselves that plant-based meats have zero cholesterol. All of them. Zero cholesterol.

Whereas animal-based meats have cholesterol. Plant-based meats have fiber, which is not present in animals. The reason why plants and fungi have fiber is because they don’t have skeletons, right?

We animals have skeletons that hold us up. Plants and fungi don’t have skeletons, so they require fiber to hold them up. So there’s not one type of meat on the planet that has even a single gram of fiber in it at all.

Yet plants and fungi and plant-based meats do have fiber, and that is really important for us. Nobody you’ve ever met in your life is protein deficient. But nearly everybody you’ve ever met in your life is fiber deficient.

Over 90% of Americans don’t eat even the paltry standards of the American RDA, the Recommended Daily Allowance of Fiber, which is lower than it is in other countries. But even with the low American standards for the RDA, we don’t even meet that, right? And so there is a fiber deficiency epidemic in the country, and that leads not just to problems like constipation, though that’s bad enough, but heart disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes, all these things that are associated with a fiber deficient diet.

And so plant-based meats are better for us in general than animal-based meats. They’re not as good as eating a kale salad or a quinoa wrap, but they are better for us. And that’s the goal, to be better than the food that they’re displacing.

When you walk into Burger King and you have a choice between a regular Whopper and an Impossible Whopper, you can bet that the Impossible Whopper doesn’t have any cholesterol and has more fiber than the regular Whopper. Now, would it be better to go get a salad somewhere else? Sure, that’s healthier for you.

But if your options are a Whopper and an Impossible Whopper, it’s better to get the Impossible Whopper.

Jason Moreau
I was curious on that, because for me, I tend to look at it from a consumer standpoint, and I think you’re absolutely right that I just want the protein, I want the chicken, I want the beef, right? And I think most people are sort of out of sight, out of mind, which is horrible to admit, but I think that’s sort of where most people are. And so where do we reach that tipping point where it doesn’t feel weird?

And it literally is just the choice that people pick up without even really thinking about it. Because there is that sort of power of the dollar from a consumer standpoint, but then there’s the like, well, Kroger needs to put it on the shelf and then manufacturers need to send it to Kroger. It seems to get into this huge supply chain thing, and I’m just curious your perspective on that.

Paul Shapiro
Yeah, I think if we look at most of the times that there’s been some shift in the market, it’s because something is cheaper, right? So the reason why kerosene was so successful at just poisoning whale oil is because it was way cheaper than whale oil, as an example. Everybody can say that they love solar and wind, but if they’re more expensive than coal and oil, it’s going to be very limited adoption.

And it wasn’t until solar actually became cheaper than fossil fuels that we started seeing widespread adoption of it. And the same is so with EVs, right? They started out pretty expensive and very few people had them.

They’re starting to come down in cost, and now more and more people are driving them. But until EVs are actually cheaper than internal combustion cars, don’t expect them to become the norm, right? They’re still going to remain a niche that will probably be a sub-10% of the market.

Now, the same is true when it comes to alternative meats. Right now, plant-based meat is sold at much more expensive costs than animal-based meat. That’s just the reality of it.

And so until it comes down in cost and actually undercuts the cost of animal-based meat, I think it will remain a niche product, no matter how good it tastes, no matter how good for the environment it is, no matter how good for your health it is. People like to say that they eat for their health, but last time I checked, burgers and french fries and potato chips were still extremely popular foods, right? So until plant-based meat is actually cheaper than animal-based meat, I think it’s going to be pretty hard to see it actually become more of a mainstream option.

It’s already mainstream in that it’s on all the shelves of Safeway and Kroger and Raoey’s and Walmart and Costco and so on. But in terms of actually making a dent, and I’ll give you an example. Plant-based milk right now, on a percentage basis, is about 15% of the fluid milk market in the United States.

It’s a lot less for solid cheese and things like that, but when it comes to fluid milk, it’s about 15%. That’s pretty big, right? That’s pretty big, and in large part, I mean, a large part of it has to do with the fact that it has come down in cost and it is largely competitive.

Part of it also has to do with the fact there’s a lot of people who are lactose intolerant or just allergic to milk in general, but a big part of it is cost. And plant-based meat, though, comparatively, is still at less than one single percent. If you look at the total volume of the meat industry in America and then you look at the percent of that that plant-based comprises, it’s less than 1%.

And I think what’s holding plant-based meat back is the price, and that’s what it’s going to take now. Jason, you mentioned subsidies. Of course, the traditional meat industry is the beneficiary of billions of dollars of direct and indirect subsidies on an annual basis.

I’d love to see that corrected, but at the same time, it’s very tough to change that policy and it probably wouldn’t have that dramatic of an impact. I think what will likely have more of an impact are things like what we’re seeing with this really devastating avian flu issue right now, where over 100 million laying hens have been killed as a result of this. I think it’s over 100 million now.

I’m not sure, but it’s certainly tens of millions. And it’s skyrocketed egg prices, right? This is a really terrible thing for animals and it’s just causing major spikes in egg prices.

And it’s going to lead to adoption of egg alternatives, though, which might be a silver lining there that processed egg users, people who make cookies, muffins, pancakes, whatever, all these other baked goods that can do with egg replacers, it might tip the scales and make egg replacers more of an economic choice for them. And I think as water and land resources continue to get more scarce, you’ll see meat prices keep on going up and that will have some effect too in this way too.

Jason Moreau
Do you see the cultivated meat and the fermented meats achieving those sort of economies where they are less expensive than the plant-based? And so they gain that traction maybe in the market that the plant-based just really hasn’t seemed to be able to grab?

Paul Shapiro
Well, it’s interesting you ask that, Jason, because in the UK there’s a company called Corn, Q-U-O-R-N, which makes a fermented microbial product that’s called corn. And it’s an alternative meat. And I was in London last year and I went to KFC and looked on the menu and they had corn on the menu that was cost competitive with the chicken sandwich that they offered.

So here you have an example of a fermentation-derived meat product that actually is cost competitive in a very cheap place, right? It’s not just cost competitive with beef, which is more expensive than chicken. It’s cost competitive with chicken in a fast food restaurant where it’s really cheap, right?

So that’s already happened. And that’s pretty impressive. I don’t know what the sales are.

It’s not cheaper though. And I don’t think price parity is sufficient, right? I mean, people really like meat.

It’s the same price. It’s hard to make them switch, but not make them in a forcible way. I mean, make them want to switch, that is to say.

Now, with regard to plant-based meat, it’s hard to see how it comes down below the price of meat because plant-based meat requires a lot of processes to take place. You’ve got to grow a field of peas, harvest a field of peas, mill it into a flour. Then the flour is very low protein.

So you’ve got to strip out the fiber, strip out the fat, concentrate it down into a pea protein powder that an athlete might take as a supplement. And then, even then, you have a high protein powder, but you don’t have something that’s textured like meat. So you have to subject it to a process known as extrusion, which is basically lots of pressure, lots of heat.

And then you add it to another dozen ingredients and you get plant-based meat. And so you can see there’s just so many processes. It’s hard to wring a lot of cost out of that.

And you have very big companies that are just nowhere near the price of animal-based meat right now. And they have pretty large scale. Now, they don’t have the scale of the meat industry, but they have pretty big scale.

And it’s just hard. It’s hard to see how it happens. So I am more bullish on microbial fermentation getting there in terms of undercutting the price of meat than I am on plant-based.

But I think plant-based is very important and they’re going to be a combination of them. It’s kind of like you want wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear, right? All these ways of getting energy without fossil fuels.

It’s not like one of them is going to win. You’re going to have a combination of those contributing to the sustainability of the energy sector. And the same is true here.

I think in the future that we will have protein coming from fermentation, from animal cell culture, from plant-based proteins, and so on. Maybe something else. Maybe it’ll be algae proteins.

I don’t know. But I do think it’ll be a pie rather than just one piece of it. Yeah.

Sheldon Young
Really good assessment there, Paul. I think from our seat as well with our company, it’s like we see the same thing. Lots of different aspects of this blooming in different ways.

So let’s go right to the Better Meat Company, your company, and talk a little bit about that. I’m also interested, Better Meat Company goes the mycelium path. What made you choose that?

And talk a little bit about your company and your missions and goals and how it’s going for you.

Paul Shapiro
Sure. That’s kind of you, Sheldon. Thank you.

So I started the Better Meat Co. in 2018. And the company is a B2B ingredients provider.

We’re not aiming to be on the shelf with a brand that you’ll notice. We’re not aiming to compete against the impossibles and the beyonds of the world. We’re aiming to supply food companies with mycelium that they can use to make either better plant-based meats or better animal-based meats that have been hybridized with our mycelium.

And the mycelium that we grow is extremely versatile. It’s naturally textured like meat. It’s a whole food.

It’s all natural, non-GMO. And it has more protein than eggs. It’s complete protein and it has all the essential amino acids.

It’s got more fiber than oats, more potassium than bananas, more iron and zinc than beef. It’s just a true powerhouse nutritionally. But importantly, it’s also a powerhouse economically.

At scale, we can grow our mycelium for lower than the cost of ground beef. That is a very major feat that will help to revolutionize the way that I think the meat industry will operate. So if you look at our biggest partners, they’re not plant-based meat companies, they’re animal-based meat companies who want to lower their own cost of goods and improve their nutrition and their sustainability.

So if you use a lot of meat, let’s say you’re making burgers or meatballs or sausages or something like that, you can incorporate our mycelium into your beef, dramatically reduce the eco footprint of the product, improve the nutrition, meaning less saturated fat, less cholesterol, fewer calories, all at the same time while making it taste better. It’s not just that it doesn’t detract, it actually enhances the taste and texture of the meat product. Focus groups show that people prefer the taste of a mycelium blended meat over the taste of a product that is solely meat.

This is a real meat enhancer that we’re offering. The goal for our company now is to scale up. We operate a 9,000 liter fermenter in Sacramento, which is where our headquarters is.

That may sound like a lot, but it’s only about three stories tall. We need something that’s maybe 15 times bigger in order to actually produce the types of commercial quantities that could start making a dent in the problem that we’re trying to solve. So we have done a great job obtaining patents, a whole wide variety of patents on our processes, have received regulatory approval from the FDA and USDA for our products, and have received some government funding too from the U.S. Department of Defense to enhance American biomanufacturing. But we need to scale up, and the time is now to do it. And so we’re raising capital at this moment to afford the ability to scale up and bring ourselves to a place where we can start providing commercial quantities and make millions of kilos of mycelium that we can sell to food companies to reduce their own footprint on the planet.

Sheldon Young
So I’ll ask the someone that may not know what I’m talking about when I say mycelium, what’s a mycelium? I’m going to, I’m going to, I’m going to dump it back a little bit. So tell us a little bit about exactly what we’re getting at.

Paul Shapiro
Yeah, I’m so glad you asked this, Sheldon, because sometimes I speak in ways that presume knowledge of the subject, and I’m glad that you’re asking. So think about it this way. There are plant proteins like soy protein and pea protein and wheat protein that currently make up the basis of alternative meats.

On the other hand, there’s a world of fungi out there. Fungi are not plants, a separate kingdom altogether. And fungi, while you think about them as mushrooms, which don’t have much protein at all, fungi also produce mycelium, which is the root-like structure of fungi.

And oftentimes there are species of mycelium that not only are very high in protein, but also have a very meat-like texture. And so what we at the Better Meat Co. have done is pioneered technologies surrounding the industrial growth of mycelium in ways that you can economically grow mycelium at a low-cost, high-volume way that maintains that natural meat-like texture while at the same time enhancing your nutritional content.

And so we’re not making animal proteins. We’re not making plant proteins. We’re growing fungi proteins, and we do it inside of large-scale fermenters.

Kind of looks like a craft brewery when you enter our factory, except instead of brewing alcohol, we are brewing protein. And unlike a cow, who takes about two years of feeding before you get a steak, the time from when we inoculate our fermenter to harvesting our fermenter is less than one single day. Put that in perspective.

Less than one single day from inoculation to harvest. And our harvest season, so to speak, is 365 days a year because it’s a controlled, indoor experience. And so this is a fantastic way to efficiently produce protein for the future in a way that can satiate humanity’s meat tooth, so to speak, without having to overly process plants, without having to raise and slaughter billions of animals, and in a way that just slashes the footprint of the food industry on the planet.

Sheldon Young
Wow. Great. Again, another great explanation of what you’re doing there.

So from a sustainability angle, or just in general, what have been the toughest challenges to get from the concept, the idea, to where you are today?

Paul Shapiro
There’s so many challenges, Sheldon. I didn’t invent the line. Ben Horowitz of the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz said this.

But he said, when you start your own company, you will sleep like a baby because you’re going to wake up every two hours and cry. And that’s been my experience. I love running the company.

And it’s a wonderful way to spend my life. And it’s a cause to which I am wholly devoted. At the same time, this is something where it’s very easy to see why founders give up, because it’s a very, very difficult thing to try to create something from nothing and make it work.

We faced a whole variety of challenges. Most notably, we were involved in some IP litigation that was very distracting for us. We ultimately prevailed.

And the judge in the case ruled that all of the patents in dispute belong to the Better Meat Co. At the same time, it was very distracting, very costly, and it made us less attractive to prospective investors. Thankfully, that case is resolved.

It’s behind us. And we have retained all of our patents. At the same time, we lost an opportunity to raise money during the very better times of like 2021 and 2022, when people were raising a lot more capital than they are today.

So now we’re going back out to the market at a time when valuations are way down, and we accept that. But where it’s just there’s less VC money for food tech in general. So that’s one challenge for sure.

But the broader challenge is just lack of resources. Like what we’re doing, we’re basically making biotechnology fit a food industry economic model, right? So usually biotech is used to do like pharmaceutical products where you have very high margins and can sell things for a lot of money.

People are willing to spend a lot of money for medicine. They’re not willing to spend a lot of money for food. And so essentially, what we’re trying to do is take biotechnology and make it work at food prices.

And we can do that, right? We can. And it’s not just us.

As I mentioned, corn is already doing it at scale. So we’re not trying to do the impossible, but we are trying to do the very difficult. And we’ve come a very long way.

And we’re so close to having profitability with scale. And I am working hard to make sure we get there.

Sheldon Young
Great. Good stuff. So you also have another little endeavor on the side there, the Business for Good podcast, which I’ve listened to and very much enjoy.

Can you just tell us a little bit about that? And what are your objectives you have with that?

Paul Shapiro
Oh, sure, Sheldon. So first, thanks for listening to the show. So I have many things that I care about in my life, right?

I try to be a good husband, a good dad to my dog, a good CEO for the Better Me Co. I like writing, but I also enjoy doing a podcast. So free time is not in abundance in my life.

I would prefer to be busy and to stay productive and creative. But the Business for Good podcast is a show that chronicles the entrepreneurs who are working on solving some of the world’s most pressing problems. And so I’ve done about 160 episodes now.

And it comes out twice a month on the 1st and 15th of each month. And we talk to entrepreneurs who are working on solving really important challenges. Some of them relate to food and agriculture.

Others relate to everything from diversity of things like storage of nuclear waste to house plants that can clean your air even more efficiently than normal plants to a whole variety of other ways of doing things. One cool one we had recently was a Mexican company that’s growing an alternative leather product from fruit waste. That was pretty awesome.

And so anyway, the show is inspirational. And there are a number of people who have told me they’ve started their own companies because of listening to the show, or they have joined companies they’ve heard on the show, or they have invested in companies they’ve heard on the show. And that’s very gratifying for me.

The goal is not merely to inspire, but it’s to inspire action. And I hope that the show does that. I enjoy hosting the Business for Good podcast.

And I love giving a platform to people who are trying to use their skill set to solve really important problems in the world.

Sheldon Young
Yeah, that’s fantastic. I mean, I’ll be very open about this. Your podcast was a definite inspiration when I thought about this show, right?

Because our goal is we’re focused very much around the sustainability aspect of things. But it’s like, what a great way to give a platform to people that are trying to solve real sustainability challenges, right? And so it was very inspiring to listen to some of your episodes and the people you had on for the same reason.

Paul Shapiro
Thank you. I really appreciate that. And I’m glad that it was inspirational for you.

That really makes my day to hear that.

Sheldon Young
Excellent. All right. So a couple more quick ones here.

These are around barriers. So if you can remove kind of one barrier to success for your business or even the industry that’s not financial, let’s step that one aside. Because everyone has that challenge, right?

That’s the low hanger, Paul. I got to go a little, I got to make you think a little more than that, right? Because money solves many problems.

But just so if there’s a challenge that you could, a barrier you could remove, what would it be?

Paul Shapiro
Okay. I am going to answer your question directly, but I just want to address one point you made about how money solves a lot of problems. I always find it funny when I hear people say, oh, money’s not the answer to your problems.

In fact, in running a business, I’ve found that not only is money the answer to your problems, it’s often the only answer to your problems. It’s not just the best answer. It’s like the only answer.

But anyway, independent of that, yeah, of course, I would like that. But what I would suggest is the following. Ways to produce microbes that are cheaper than pharma grade materials, right?

Like right now, you look at this biotechnology and a lot of these companies that are engaged in it, again, are making like pharmaceutical ingredients and so on. They’re using these stainless steel sterile bioreactors. It costs a lot of money.

It’s a big capex. So if you could invent ways to reduce the cost, the capex burden of getting to production for food industry fermentations. I’m not talking about fermentations like kombucha and kimchi here.

I’m talking about fermentations that are more like, you know, to grow microbes for the sake of eating those microbes, which is what we do at The Better Me Co. That would really help to make it possible for startups to compete in this space. Right now, the cost is so high that the entry point is just beyond the reach of a lot of startups that want to do this, or they get stuck in that valley of death where they can prove something in the lab, but they can’t actually get to a bigger point.

So that’s the invention of new ways to run industrial scale fermentations at cheaper prices.

Sheldon Young
Yeah, great, great answer. Yeah, again, from where we sit in our seats, it’s like we often work with people from pilot all the way through, and absolutely, sometimes it’s a great idea until you start looking at the scale up.

Paul Shapiro
Yeah, yeah, I can’t tell you. I’ll give you an example. Like I was talking to somebody recently, like, oh, we got our microbe to grow on agricultural waste products.

Like, oh, that’s cool. That’s amazing. How awesome.

But can you scale it? You know, can you actually scale it? Like you’re going to have to build a facility adjacent to where your waste stream is coming from, and you’ve got to make sure that it’s not variable in the nature of waste streams or that they are variable or that they are seasonal or there’s some issue, right, where it’s not a constant stream, and that’s going to ruin your fermentation.

So yeah, there’s just like being able to prove something in the lab is cool. It’s a great first step, but it is definitely not proof that you have a viable business.

Sheldon Young
Yeah, for sure. Last question I had for you. This is kind of a wild card.

It’s like, what’s something about you that most people wouldn’t know or guess?

Paul Shapiro
Um, well, I don’t know whether people would know or guess this, but my love for my dog is so high, his name is Eddie, that I try, despite the various projects that I have in my life, I try to spend at least, you know, 60 to 90 minutes a day doing things with him, whether it’s going to the park or going to the park, going for walks, taking him to hang out with other dogs and so on. And, you know, my view on this is that he has very little agency in his life. Like he doesn’t have a lot of choice that he makes.

He eats what we give him. He goes out when we bring him out, you know, it’s like he doesn’t have a choice. And so I’d like to give him an hour or more a day where I’m taking him around.

And so I spent a lot of time with him. And if you want to follow his exploits in life, he’s on Instagram as his handle is Eddie the Pity. So E-D-D-I-E the Pity.

So you can go check out Eddie the Pity and see this dog who I absolutely love. And I hope that I give him a good life.

Sheldon Young
You know, they say you can tell a lot by a person’s character, by the way he treats things that don’t have control. Right. And if that says anything about you, then you’re you’re a pretty good person.

I’m going to I’m going to wager.

Paul Shapiro
I appreciate that. My mom always told me that. She always said I was a good person.

So yeah, you and my mom at least agree.

Sheldon Young
Exactly. Yeah, you got two of us. So just finally, if anyone wants to follow you or follow your company or anything like what are the ways they can do that?

Paul Shapiro
So the company is just at Better Meat Co. So we’re Better Meat Co. on every all the socials.

And if you want to follow me, I’d welcome hearing from you. I do have a personal website. It’s paul-shapiro.com.

You can get in touch with me that way if you want to send me a message or get in touch. And I’d be honored if you like this podcast and also go check out the Business for Good podcast. It’s a great way to learn about companies doing awesome things.

So check that out and welcome hearing from you. If you want to get in touch with me, please email me through my website. Again, paul-shapiro.com.

And if there’s, especially if there’s some way that I can be helpful for you in your efforts to try to make the world a better place in some way, it would be an honor for you to enlist me.

Sheldon Young
Great, good stuff. And just on the website again for your company, it’s bettermeat.co, correct?

Paul Shapiro
Yeah, yeah, that’s right. .co, yeah.

Sheldon Young
Yeah, just to make sure. I know, I know, I know. Good stuff.

Paul, thank you so much for this. I really enjoyed talking to you again. And hopefully we’ll be continuing our communications in the future.

Paul Shapiro
Thank you, Sheldon. Thank you, Jason. Great to see you guys.

Sheldon Young
Thank you, Paul. Okay, welcome back to No Footprints. What’d you think of that?

Jason Moreau
I learned a lot. I think, well, one, I could listen to Paul talk all day. I know, right?

And, but two, no, just a ton of takeaways. Again, as somebody who’s not well-versed in this space, just really appreciated all the different topics and avenues that he opened up for me personally. So a lot of browser tabs in my future going down rabbit holes and exploring some of the stuff that he brought up.

Sheldon Young
I know, I know, right? Totally fascinating to just kind of learn it from someone that’s in that industry. You know, I see it a lot from an outside angle, you know, and things that I work with.

But, you know, just kind of hearing it from the inside, you know, he’s really sincere about kind of the real challenges as well, which I thought was, you know, it was, you know, I wasn’t surprised to hear, but, you know, it’s real. And, you know, we joked a little bit about, you know, around, you know, money solving problems. Well, you know, in his world, it kind of does in some cases, right?

But also, I really liked his take on just the industry in general. Like, I don’t think he sees, like, there was a room for all the different types of proteins, and I fully agree with that. You have to look at this as a portfolio approach, almost, from a category of feeding the world.

You just don’t have enough protein and the ability to scale it and such to feed the people and the demand for protein. Because as, you know, as countries, as they evolve and grow and have more access to resources, they certainly want more proteins. And, you know, if it all has to come from animal protein, that’s going to be really challenging and be really difficult.

It’s going to create shortages and problems like that. So we have to look at all these different avenues of protein to say, how do we feed the world? And I’m glad people like Paul and the other companies that are doing this are working on those problems.

And just fascinating to see the different ways they’re doing it, though, right?

Jason Moreau
Yeah, yeah, 100%. I appreciated, I think, more than that, his sort of putting this in a historical context for me as well, where as we develop as a society, we sort of rely on animals for all these things, right? He sort of talked about, you know, we used to use, you know, quills for writing.

We used to use, you know, horses for transportation, whale oil for lighting. And all of these things seem super antiquated now because we improved our technology and we were able. But also, more importantly, and what I appreciate about him is that he’s a realist in the sense of none of those technologies become pervasive until the economics make sense, until the cost equation allows for that mass adoption.

And so it’s a really interesting inflection point, I think, that we’re at now with some of the alternative protein space.

Sheldon Young
Yeah, totally. And again, I think he also made this clear in the interview. It’s like it’s not just the cost.

It does have to be an equal product, right? And I’ll be honest, I eat plenty of meat, regular meat. I mean, just like we talked about in the first part of the show, it’s like, you know, I eat all kinds of different things.

I enjoy the experience of meat. And so until they get there, it’s going to be hard to switch. I know there’s lots of arguments you can make to why I should.

And I try. But still, it’s like I’m not there yet. And I think there are a lot of consumers that are obviously even less to that point.

And so I think you have to kind of say, OK, look, it’s an evolution. And there are different steps that are going to get us there. And it’s going to be taste, quality, cost.

All those have to be a factor. And availability, frankly, you know, while to create enough protein for the world, that’s a lot of bioreactors or a lot of fermentation vessels or whoever they’re making it. Right.

So, you know, there’s there’s limitations in all kinds of different ways. And so I think the smart approach is, OK, look, we have to solve the food challenges of the future. And having people that are looking at that and working on it is going to be really important.

And, you know, whether it’s the work that you and I do every day or the work that people like Paul do or even the traditional protein people, I know a lot of them are also looking at alternatives and ways that they can feed the world. You know, I’m looking forward to having people from that industry on the podcast as well and hearing how they’re driving sustainability. So it should be fun.

Yeah, that’s the industry. So I did grab a couple of facts about the industry. Again, I say facts.

I do my research and I found what I can use. The numbers are hard to sometimes get kind of pinned in exact. But, you know, the alternative protein market, I think that includes like all alternative proteins.

So I think that includes like, you know, like whey proteins and things like that as well. But it’s it’s one hundred and eight billion in twenty twenty five. I think they like if you start whittling it down to white, like plant based meat or other products that are more specific.

That’s a that’s a smaller market. But overall, 108 billion for the alternative proteins. They expect that the expected growth of that is is supposed to be around, you know, five fold in the next like 10 to 12 years or so.

You know, it’s going to going to continue to evolve and grow. So looking forward to kind of seeing, you know, precision fermentation. Is it going to be a big contributor to that?

We’re going to see a lot of different, I think, mechanisms. I mean, as soon as you start hearing they’re making protein out of air. OK, everything’s on the table at that point, I think.

Jason Moreau
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s sort of if it seems like it’s more just like.

What is the what is the limit of our imagination and our curiosity and, you know, to explore all of the potential chemistry, biology that we have at our disposal to to sort of help solve this problem? Because, yeah, when he laid out that stat that, you know, currently, you know, I think it was like the animal agriculture is like, you know, bigger greenhouse gas contribution than all of our transportation industry. You know, it’s like that is a that is a big, big problem.

And it’s only growing as our population grows. And so, yeah, we’re going to need all hands on deck, all all ideas, right. And and sort of collaborating and figuring it out.

But I think it’ll be really exciting. I’m just, yeah, me as a sort of a consumer, obviously, but also somebody who sort of like tries to like pay attention to people and figure them out. And I’m curious what what people will adopt and how quickly they will adopt it.

Sure. Right. And I’m kind of reminded of that.

I think it was an industrial design principle called Maya. It’s a most most advanced yet acceptable.

Sheldon Young
Right.

Jason Moreau
So it’s for for most people, you know, maybe crickets are a bit too far outside of that acceptable window. But I think his approach, you know, sort of combining mycelium with with existing animal parts, right?

Sheldon Young
The hybrid approach.

Jason Moreau
Yeah, absolutely. Right. Right in that sweet spot.

Right. And it’s just sort of that, you know, it’s not perfect, but it’s definitely better than what we’re doing. And I think I my my sense or hunch is that a lot of what we talk about on this podcast is going to be exactly that, like sustainability.

It’s like we can’t aim for perfect. We have to aim for little steps of like, well, this is better than what we’re doing. Right.

Adding up enough of that kind of gets us farther along the journey.

Sheldon Young
Yeah. You can’t let perfection be the enemy of good. Right.

I mean, you have to again, I think it’s OK to aim for perfection. That’s fine. But achieving it is, you know, you just have to accept it’s going to be a longer road and you just have to say, you know, what are the steps to get there?

And and again, we’ve hit it a couple of times already. But this you have to look at all the approaches to solving the food challenges for sure. OK, so I think we should kind of wrap up here.

And so let’s close out a few things to reach Paul again. I’ll give a couple of his ways to reach him. It’s paul-shapiro.com, thebettermeet.co is his company’s name. And, you know, he also does a podcast at Business for Good podcast. It’s really interesting. Another great thing to listen to besides this show to to kind of get in and learn a little bit about what’s happening in the world around people doing good.

And then so for next time for this show, we’re going to do we’re going to alternate episodes. We’re going to do kind of a guest at the beginning of the month and then a mid month show that’s going to be just a topical one. We haven’t picked our topic quite yet.

We’re working on that. But so next time you will not have a guest, but we’ll have another guest at the beginning of the following month. And with that, Jason, I say we sign off.

What do you say?

Jason Moreau
I sounds good to me.

Sheldon Young
All right. We’ll see you next time on the No Footprints podcast.